Workshop Discussion Sessions

DISCUSSION SESSIONS

Marwan Adam (Coordinator)

3.00 – 5.00pm on Sunday 29 January (PARRALEL Sessions)

Enabling Sustainable Digital Content Ecosystem

There is no doubt that the adoption of internet and modern ICTs has a high positive impact on economics, productivity, and socioeconomics of countries. However, it takes more than addressing coverage and affordability issues to fully unleash the potential of ICT. Research findings show that the availability of relevant local content is a big barrier especially in sub-Saharan Africa as well as the lack of citizen’s digital skills. In addition to the benefits of growing the market of creative industries, enriching digital content with local relevance, ICT is considered a key driver to pave the way toward an Information Society and hence a Knowledge Society. While digital content raises awareness, reach-ability, ease of doing business, innovation, and lean logistics and transaction can transform the whole economy into Knowledge-Based Economy. The lack of information and content is a big challenge. At the same time, the complexity of the digital content value chain requires the collaboration among all digital contents stakeholders and players in order to enable sustainable ecosystem. This is because beyond the creation of digital content, the continuous maintainability and provisioning of digital content remains an expensive proposition, and as a revenue stream; in most cases it is not directly attached with the content creation/production entity. It is important to understand how to ensure the sustainability of these ecosystems. A clear understanding of the ecosystem, barriers to adoption, value creation, and social impact will help in adopting a strategy that maximizes stakeholder engagement and enables an evolving and sustained environment.

In this discussion session, we will explore what are the essential enablers to ensure sustainable digital content ecosystem:

1.     What are the main barriers to a sustainable digital content? How can we overcome these barriers?

2.     Is the required human capital available?  What are the roles of university-Industry -Private sector partnership in preparing creative skill-set?

3.     To what extent is the sustainability of the digital content ecosystem dependent on effective collaboration and distribution of profits?

4.     What are the roles of government in the promotion of citizen acquisition of digital skill-set and incubation of digital entrepreneurs? 

5.     To what extent is the evolution of digital content maturity level linked with infrastructure development and economic structure?

National ICT Policy for Digital Content and creative industries

The developing countries face the challenges of globalization and the transformed world economy with the advancement of ICT in knowledge age era. These challenges exist in countries characterized with a low socio-economic development growth rate, weak industrialization structure, burden of heavy debts, and low infrastructure development. In the rising era of information and knowledge age, even the developing countries with a glimpse development situation, has an opportunity to enable systematic economy transformation and leapfrog by accelerating socio-development process through large stakeholder consulted ICT policy, which really implanted the seed of transformation to knowledge base economy. Digital Content is knowledge artefacts that will be the ultimate purpose of inclusive access. Maximising the utilization of the telecommunications infrastructure will need a careful ICT policy design to enable potentials and dismantle inhibitors along the access layer, from physical layer to content layer in order to foster digital content enrichment.

In this discussion session, we will explore an example blue print framework by taking different stakeholder perspective, and discuss some of the important issues in ICT policy:

1.     How ICT policies ensure the right of access to information and its consequences to treat information and knowledge as commons?

2.     How ICT policy enable the maximum development of infrastructure that reduce the Digital Divide, as well as ensure inclusion and justice in access and use?

3.     Do our policies regard innovation accelerators and incubators as enablers?

4.     How the policies foster true Stakeholder engagement?

5.     High Taxes in ICT inhibits investment in this sector, especially in the future. How is reflected in policy-making and how government give incentive to devices and technology of this industries?

6.     To what extent local knowledge and culture give a competitive advantage in the creative industries?