Program
Opening Lecture: Bridging the data divide: building real policies for real people
Sonia Jorge
Short course 1 – Policy assessment and the ICT ecosystem
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April 27th and 28th
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Alison Gillwald
Day 01
Session 1: The ICT ecosystem and policy formulation and regulationPurpose: To identify the challenges of evidence–based policy in a globalised communication system with resources constraints.
- Changing nature of global and national governance
- Drivers of reform: digitisation, liberalisation, democratisation
- Changing nature of the state: interplay of state and market
- Telecom reform: economics of infrastructure industries
- Measuring policy outcomes against policy objectives
Purpose: Assessing the quality of evidence in global indices (and improving our ability to do so critically).
- How robust is the evidence?
- What are the underlying data sources and how effective are performance indicators?
- What data is needed to improve such indices?
- What data is available?
- Who is funding and disseminating the ‘research’?
Purpose: To consider the value and limitations of perception survey as evidence of regulatory performance.
- Value and limitations of perception surveys
- Ensuring anonymity: Building trust and credibility
- Methodological issues: techniques for robustness, verification, triangulation through reflective analysis, and in-depth interviews technique
- Longitudinal and comparative analysis
Purpose: To gain insights into how the absence and problems associated with operator data can be overcome in order to inform evidence- based regulation and monitoring of progress towards meeting policy objectives.
- Core supply-side ICT/Telecom indicators: access, prices and quality of service
- Reliability of data and timing
- Overcoming supply-side data shortfalls
- Challenges of assessing prices in converged voice and data world
Day 02
Session 5: Demand-side data for policy formulation and assessmentPurpose: To share strategies and methodologies to move beyond basic descriptive national indicators to acquire the data necessary to inform points of policy intervention.
- Using data from the census and household surveys for high-level national and subnational ICT data
- In-depth surveys in households, with individual, informal sector or government to understand drivers, barriers to fixed, mobile and broadband access and use
- Cost effective strategies and compromises
- Qualitative methods to supplement/inform quantitative data
Purpose: to understand the changing conditions of dynamic markets and how regulatory instruments of static market regulation (sector and ex ante competition regulation) may have negative unintended consequences on investment and innovation.
- From static regulation to dynamic regulation
- Investment and innovation
- Economics of networks
- Adaptive regulation
Purpose: To think about the potential of big data to answer certain national policy questions (not just ICT) and the impact of this on other fields of study and methods and how can access to it be safeguarded in the public interest.
- Definitions of big data: concepts and property
- Privacy and anonymity
- The potential of big data and open data as a public good
Purpose: To share OECD’s experience in data collection and data analysis for policy purposes.
- Presentation of highlights on the “OECD Digital Economy Outlook 2015” report
- OECD experience in data collection for regulation and policy analysis.
Short course 2 – Design and Analysis in Qualitative Research
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April 29th and 30th
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Liz Spencer
DAY 1:
Session 1: Design in Qualitative ResearchPurpose: To equip participants with a good understanding of the planning and preparation required when conducting a qualitative research project.
- The nature of qualitative research – what it can and cannot deliver
- Main methods and techniques
- Developing qualitative research questions
- Choosing an appropriate research strategy
- Designing topic guides for use in interview or focus group based studies
- Drawing a qualitative sample
- Judging the ‘quality’ of qualitative research
DAY 2
Session 2: Analysis of qualitative dataPurpose: To make sense of qualitative data and learn the basics of thematic analysis.
- Alternative approaches to qualitative analysis
- Key stages in the analytic process
- The contribution of computer assisted analysis software
- Data management
- Developing qualitative categories
Sonia N. Jorge Sonia N. Jorge is an expert in the confluence of development and communications policy. She has over 20 years of diverse international experience in a career spanning both the private and not-for-profit sectors. Her work has included ICT policy and regulatory advice and analysis, strategic industry planning, national ICT/broadband policy development, creating new legal and regulatory frameworks (to address issues including competition, interconnection, cost-based pricing, spectrum allocation and management, infrastructure sharing and convergence), understanding universal access and digital inclusion in the context of development, and promoting gender analysis and awareness in the ICT planning process. Sonia has worked in over 20 countries around the globe, including many in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia. She holds a Masters in Public Policy (Tufts University) and a BA/BS in Economics and Business Finance (University of Massachusetts) and is fluent in Portuguese, Spanish and English. Ms Jorge assumed her current role on 1 July 2013, having previously been Director of Research & Consulting at Pyramid Research, a UBM company.
Alison Gillwald (PhD) is Executive Director of Research ICT Africa and holds an adjunct professorship at the Management of Infrastructure Reform and Regulation Programme at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business, where she convenes an ICT policy and regulatory executive training programme for regulators, policy-makers and parliamentarians; and supervises doctoral students. Alison was appointed by then President Mandela on the advice of Parliament to serve on the founding Council of the South African Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (SATRA). Prior to that she set up the policy department at the first Independent Broadcasting Authority. She also served on the first South African national digital advisory body which reported on digital migration in 2001; the board of the public broadcaster; the South African Broadcasting Corporation; and is currently deputy chairperson of the SA National Broadband Advisory Council. In 2013 she assisted the Ministry of Communication with South Africa’s Broadband Plan: SA Connect, and in 2014 she served on the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) President’s Strategy Panel on Multistakeholder Innovation.
Liz Spencer is a Sociologist and a Fellow of both the Academy of Social Sciences and the Royal Society of Arts, who has specialized in qualitative methods since 1973. She has held research posts at a number of British universities, including the London School of Economics, The London Graduate School of Business Studies, The University of Kent and the University of Essex, and was a Research Director at the National Centre for Social Research. She teaches a range of short courses for the Social Research Association and for the Universities of Hong Kong, Fribourg, Aberdeen and Essex, and has been a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Higher Studies in Vienna.
Currently Liz is an independent research consultant and partner in Q2 training Complete. Her recent publications include Rethinking Friendship: Hidden Solidarities Today; chapters in Qualitative Research Practice (Ritchie et al, 2013), and a report for the Cabinet Office on judging the quality of qualitative research and evaluation. Together with Jane Ritchie, she pioneered ‘Framework’, a matrix-based approach to data management and display.