The TRC is likely to address problems of a “level playing field” that come up when a global tech company offers the same service that a local company does.
LIRNEasia is known for its work on ICTs, but it works on all infrastructures. Electricity is an area we have done considerable work in. Our work is shown here. In 2002, after years of work involving all stakeholders including those working at the Ceylon Electricity Board, new legislation was enacted so that some incentives would be created for efficiency in the electricity industry. But unfortunately, this law was not implemented and following a change in government it was gutted of the key elements that would have made benchmark regulation possible. 
Now that the fate of the “online safety” bill is in the hands of the many petitioners (45) and the three-judge bench that is looking at its constitutionality, we can look at the big picture of what the government is trying to do with this draconian legislation. It appears that even the committee that was formed in 2021 to advise on it has distanced itself from the final text. LIRNEasia Chair, Rohan Samarajiva gave a talk on this at the CMR-Nepal Journalism Academy in Kathmandu on 19 October 2023. The slides can be viewed below.
Is the extraordinary imprecision of drafting found in this act and the obvious mismatch between the proposed solutions and the real problems of online harms simply a result of incompetence, or is the intention that of getting everyone (content creators, sharers, platforms) to engage in excessively strict self-censorship because no one will be able to clearly define what is permitted and what is not.
"Safeguarding freedom of speech and expression is so important that it is constitutionally protected in most civilised countries, as it is in Sri Lanka. Legislators seeking to address the new problems posed by rapid and articulated dissemination of user generated content must first decide what the priority is. If it is rapid takedown (to avoid situations such as the live-streaming of the Christchurch massacre), the solution is not what is proposed in this bill. By the time the “Online Truth Commission,” likely to be ill-resourced like most regulatory bodies, issues its orders the damage will be done."
Without dwelling too much on the causes, some solutions may be sketched out. They will range from actions that must be taken now (where the choices are highly constrained), to those that allow more play for creativity. Unless we are willing to live like in Afghanistan or in Jaffna during the war, we have little alternative but to take on more debt to get the economy to fire on all cylinders.
Today, I delivered the keynote at the 9th International Conference on multidisciplinary approaches at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura. Here is on story that I told. In 2008, Nokia, then a leading global telecom equipment supplier, came to LIRNEasia with a question they wanted answered: How was it that countries in South Asia, not known for the highest standards of policy and regulation, were offering the lowest prices for mobile communication to their customers? Conventional wisdom was that a stable policy environment with an independent and efficient regulatory agency was essential for good performance. Nokia provided us with comparative price data which we looked at in the context of the findings of the extensive “Teleuse at the Bottom of the Pyramid” surveys and qualitative studies we had conducted and the Telecom Policy and Regulatory Environment studies we were running in countries in South and Southeast Asia at that time.
Can nation states, especially those in the Global South effectively regulate Global Tech Companies? Should they try? Why is it important to separate the data localization issue from data protection? GDPR is not fully enforceable even in Europe; should it be the model for countries in the Global South?
Pirongrong Ramasoota, Senior Research Fellow who served on the Board of Communication Policy Research south for many years including a term as Vice Chair, has been confirmed by the Senate of Thailand to serve as a member of the seven-member Board of the Thai regulatory body responsible for spectrum, telecom and electronic broadcasting. A scholar who has given weight both to the conduct of well-designed research and to taking research findings to the policy process, Pirongrong exemplifies the kind of policy intellectual LIRNEasia was seeking to develop through CPRsouth.
මූලික වශයෙන් ආපදා අවදානම අවම කිරීමේ වගකීම භාර ගත යුතු වන්නේ රජයයි. සුනාමිය ඉදිරියේ රජය අසරණ වුවද එම භූමිකාව පවරාගත හැකි වෙනත් ආයතනයක් නැති බව අපි එකල කීවෙමු. පූර්ව අනතුරු ඇඟවීමට අමතරව අනතුර සන්නිවේදන කිරීම පිළිබඳවද අවධානය යොමු කල යුතුය. පූර්ව අනතුරු ඇඟවීම් ප්රමාණවත් නොවේ. එමගින් ජීවිත හානිය අඩු කර ගත හැකි වුවද ජීවිකාවලට වන හානිය එමගින් වලකා ගත හැකි වන්නේ නැත.
Successful reform of telecom (or information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure) sectors requires ex-ante, sector-specific regulation under present market and technological conditions. Theories and concepts relevant to regulatory agency design and the practice are not nation-specific.
Impactful utilization required a focus on outcomes: did it achieve the good that was sought to be achieved by the legislation? In general, that would require demand-side studies to see if people had been brought out of poverty, whether employment had been created, etc..
But before one gets to outcomes, it's necessary to have outputs. If the fund has not resulted in the rollout of networks or whatever it was supposed to support, there is not much point in looking for evidence of outcomes, good or bad.
The fears are that those who are connected or corrupt will get free vaccines, even if they are not on the priority list; or that vaccines obtained for the free channel will be diverted to the pay channel, allowing private providers to make excessive profits which will feed the corruption.
There was overlap between budget analysis and an invitation to contribute to thinking on how things could be made better for Jaffna using ICTs. The result is described here.
Now in 2020, the Postel Award has been given to LIRNEasia alumnus Onno Purbo. We congratulate Onno for this well-deserved honor. What he did before and after his association with us is what won him the approbation of the jurors of the Postel Award. Onno played an important part in one of our formative wins, something that defined LIRNEasia. In this post, what we can talk about is what we know.
One of the most contentious issues in platforms is the employment status of those who offer services on them: are they employees or independent contractors? If the former, in Sri Lanka they would qualify for employer contributed mandatory retirement savings; in the US, they would get health insurance and other benefits. A state law in California said those who offer services on platforms are employers. A vote on a proposition said no. In voting to support Uber and Lyft, Californians rejected the principles outlined in a 2018 State Supreme Court ruling and enshrined in a 2019 state law that said workers who performed tasks within a company’s regular business — and were controlled by the company and did not operate their own firms — must be treated as employees.