The Global Internet Policy Observatory is expected to address the main challenges of the multi-stakeholder governance of the Internet: a combination of topic complexity, information overload and fragmentation of information between policy silos and in different institutional levels.
The main objectives of the feasibility study are to provide:
- An assessment of the technological requirements and available tools, to develop an online platform that would automatically collect and analyse information on Internet-related policy-making processes, as well as
- A set of recommendations on the "internal governance framework" for such a platform in order to ensure the maximum levels of transparency, accountability, independence and inclusivity.
The technologies recommended by the study are meant to enable the following functionalities:
- F1: automatic collection of online content
- F2: automatic analysis and classification of content (including events and identification of commonalities)
- F3: storage of the processed content (together with the output of the analysis), in order to allow the user to search and retrieve relevant information
- F4: visualization of the data through "dashboards"
- F5: evaluation of the information in such a way as to allow users of the platform to express their assessment of the quality of such information.
The study analyses more than thirty technological solutions and provides a final in-depth analysis of two solutions for each of the required functionalities.
Additionally, an online demo-website showcases some of the proposed technological options for the required functionalities.
The study explores different possible options covering both the possible legal framework and the management and decision-making structures.