world bank

Net neutrality is a hot topic right now in various countries around the world, with the debate over its value and its feasability being tied to discussions about broadband penetration and service delivery over the internet.

For a quick definition of the concept, here's an excerpt from Wikipedia:

A neutral broadband network is one that is free of restrictions on content, sites, or platforms, on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and on the modes of communication allowed, as well as one where communication is not unreasonably degraded by other communication streams.

In essence, net neutrality advocates argue that internet service providers (ISPs) should not be able to discriminate against certain kinds of internet transfers and lower quality of service or access based on that discrimination. The concept of net neutrality says that ISPs don't have the right to restrict access or limit traffic or speeds to certain kinds of sites or certain types of activity — in the end, the user should be in charge of what they do once they have paid to access the network.

Seems like a no-brainer issue to most, but that hasn't stopped hot debates around the world about the power of ISPs to control the content that their customers can access, and why they should or shouldn't be allowed to exercise that power.

My question today: should the World Bank care?

The World Bank's recent IC4D 2009: Extending Reach and Increasing Impact report found that access to high quality mobile phone and internet services enabled development across all levels of the economy. It also claimed that access to broadband completed the information foundation for a modern economy and called for this access to be a priority in national development plans.

If good and widespread internet access is so integral to economic growth and development, does the Bank have a responsibility to ensure that this access is open, unfiltered, unshaped, and not throttled by ISPs? What is the risk in allowing traffic shaping to occur in developing economies?

All questions I don't have answers to, but that have been weighing on my mind for quite some time. If you have any ideas about net neutrality and the role that the Bank may have in the debate, let me know in the comments below.

For more information, check out the Wikipedia article on net neutrality, the FAQs on SaveTheInternet.com, and a multitude of other places around the web that have chimed in on the topic.

(Photo by Don Solo.)

As a global institution, it's no surprise that the World Bank has to create content that can be accessed by a diverse public around the world. Part of those efforts to be truly accessible is to create and translate content into different languages.

The multilingual team here at the Web Program Office does an amazing job of coordinating the Bank's language efforts — the Bank website is fully accessible in French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, and Chinese, as well as other pockets of content available in various other languages — but a recent podcast got me thinking:

Is there value in crowdsourcing the Bank's translation?

Of course, there would have to be coordination and oversight, but perhaps we could learn from the Open Translation Project launched by TED recently:

A year in the making, the TED Open Translation Project brings TEDTalks beyond the English-speaking world by offering subtitles, time-coded transcripts and the ability for any talk to be translated by volunteers worldwide. The project launched with 300 translations in 40 languages, and 200 volunteer translators.

A noble and perhaps groundbreaking effort: letting users themselves decide what content they want to have translated, and have other users do the translating for them, in a peer-reviewed, crowdsourced model.

Could this model work at the Bank? Is there opportunity for us to pilot a similar effort around our content on international development?

(For another example of crowdsourced translation, check out Global Voices. Photo of flags by pinke_olive.)