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PRESS RELEASE
For immediate release

12 August 2002

The Open Knowledge Network: Local Content, Local People, Local Languages

Open Source community encouraged to support initiative to make Internet work for world's poor

OneWorld (www.oneworld.net) and a range of partners are to develop an Open Knowledge Network, a major local content initiative with an emphasis on developing countries, after pledges of funding from the UK and Canadian governments following the G8 Summit in Canada.

The proposal for an Open Knowledge Network (OKN) emerged from the G8 Digital Opportunity Task (DOT) Force, a body set up to identify how governments, businesses and civil society can work together to advance human development and reduce poverty through the use of information and communications technologies (ICT). The DOT Force identified local content as a keystone in efforts to bridge the global digital divide.

"Increasing access to the Internet for poorer communities around the world will only be beneficial if people can find useful local content that is relevant to their lives," says Peter Armstrong, Director of OneWorld International and DOT Force delegate. "The Open Knowledge Network aims to promote content and information exchange on knowledge that can make a life or death difference to the majority of the world's population - from AIDS to education, agriculture to human rights."

The OKN will connect existing knowledge centers in developing countries into a new network to unlock the potential of the poorest communities to use ICT. It is based around four key concepts:

- creating an 'offline Internet', giving free access to information and the means to communicate via public access points.

- operating agreed standards for exchanging digital content worldwide with explanatory metadata so that OKN information can be shared everywhere.

- networking knowledge workers and translators across developing countries in a peer-to-peer architecture.

- licensing for the common public good through new forms of 'Open Knowledge License', based in part on the approach pioneered in the Free Software and Open Source movements.

The OKN will use whatever technology is appropriate to provide solutions for each context where it is implemented. However, all public access points and their interconnecting hubs will be offered a powerful new suite of software. The prototype version, developed by OneWorld using Open Source principles, was piloted in India in early 2002.

"The Open Source community provided a lot of the inspiration for us to conceive of an 'open content' initiative like this. And Open Source technology will also be crucial for its success," says Peter Armstrong who will present the OKN at Linuxworld 2002, the world's leading event focused exclusively on Linux and Open Source (San Francisco, 14th August). "We invite interested programmers or organizations from the Open Source community to contact us with a view to working together to refine the OKN concept and contribute to the software development."

The OKN will be publicly launched at the first-ever U.N. World Summit on the Information Society taking place in December 2003.
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For media enquiries contact:
Glen Tarman, OneWorld Publicity Manager, tel: +44 (0)20 7091 4541 email: media@oneworld.net
Organizations and individuals interested in active involvement in the OKN should contact:
Tori Holmes, OKN Communications Executive, OneWorld International tel: +44 (0)20 7091 4546 email: tori.holmes@oneworld.net
Notes to editors:

1. OneWorld is a non-profit network that aims to harness the democratic potential of the Internet to promote sustainable development and human rights. Its website, www.oneworld.net, is the world's leading portal on social justice and a gateway to over 1250 partner non-profits worldwide.

2. OneWorld chaired the DOT Force working group on local content with support from the UK Department for International Development (DFID). The group that has developed the OKN to date includes the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, the Institute for Communication and Development (IICD), Accenture, International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Harvard Law School and others.

3. A web-based discussion forum has been opened for the OKN at http://www.dgroups.org/groups/okn. The site also stores key resources and documents relating to the OKN.