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Project Goals
While the immediate subject of this proposal is a 5 month planning project
to study community networking within Russia and to identify individuals
and organizations with whom we can work on a second, implementation,
phase, we wish to place this within the context of our longer term
objectives of creating a network of civic networks within Russia as a part
of the overall Friends and Partners "intranet". While we intend to learn
much during the 5 month planning effort which will modify much of the
following material, we offer the following as our current direction.
In our efforts to build civic networks in Russia, we propose to build upon
work done in partnership with "Friends and Partners" in the local
community of Knoxville and Oak Ridge, Tennessee with KORRNet
(http://www.korrnet.org) in providing a large civic network for the East
Tennessee region.
One of the primary purposes in organizing KORRNET was to broaden access
and use of local, regional, national, and international information and
communication services to the local public who might not otherwise have
the possibility of such access. But, of equal importance, was the ability
of community networks to offer the same public the ability to publish
information. This has proven to be of vital importance in giving "voice"
to such groups as non-governmental organizations, educators, government
agencies, senior citizens, etc. These are the same motivating objectives
for our work in Russia.
On a technical level, we wish to help communities develop their own
information services and supplement this with software for constructing
interactive bulletin-board systems, email listservers, interactive chat
sessions, etc. The community networks will provide software which will
allow access to basic Internet services such as email, World Wide Web,
telnet, ftp, etc., but to also make possible the easy construction of a
Web accessible version of the network using the same software we use for
KORRNet. This software will support multiple language content and will
provide the same services as the larger Friends and Partners project for
handling different Russian encodings.
An additional challenge, important to our work, is to make the content of
each community network accessible to other communities in Russia via the
Friends and Partners 'intranet' of mirrored information servers. The goal
is to extend the ability of local communities to publish easily in other
communities in their own country and in other locations of the world.
There are several components of this ambitious work.
- To provide software which will make it easy to build and maintain
community networks in different locations;
- To provide the software which makes it possible to mirror specified
parts of the community networks in other locations;
- To provide software for those users who would use the community
network for email as well as Internet browsing. (we have already modified
and installed such software for our own community network - it will only
need to be modified to support the Russian language);
- To provide basic server and telecommunications hardware (i.e., 'modem
pools') for establishment of the community network and to make some level
of public dial-in access available to local citizens and organizations;
- To provide continuing programs of training and support - for system
administrators, for community development activists, and for the end users;
- To develop a "community network" among local community network
developers, system administrators and users for facilitating indigenous
development of community networking throughout Russia.
One of the reasons that we are proposing an initial project of three or
four community network sites (instead of investing more resources in a
single community network) is to begin to lay the foundation for a
community of individuals and initiatives involved in Russian community
networking. There is little or no tradition for such in Russia. By helping
create several community networks simultaneously, we can take advantage
of a wider body of experience which should prove useful for subsequent
effort.
Of course, this creates additional challenges for project management. To
help make it manageable, we will encourage the use of identical hardware
and software platforms; will provide some good software tools for Web
authoring and management, other tools for listserver management (and other
communication services such as chat rooms and bulletin board systems) and
will provide a web site and communications services to support the network
of community networks- with specific services for system administrators
and others for community network activists.
By taking care of many of the technical problems on the front-end, we will
try to ensure that technical issues do not dominate the community network
deployment; we can instead together focus on what is required to make
community networks successful in terms of broad-based community interest,
support and participation.
By 'mirroring' each community network at each other site, making local
access quick and easy, each community network can stay well informed about
what the others are doing - taking advantage of good ideas and building
upon them. To further collaboration among the various participants, we
would like to propose that each site develop at least one resource that is
of genuine interest and benefit to all other community networks. For this
we are suggesting that each create and maintain a 'topical' community
network focused on a discipline or interest area in which local
participants have interest and possibilities of contribution. By doing
so, we hope to encourage collaboration across the entire network of civic
networks.
While the technical requirements of this project are non-trivial, the most
important part of this task will be identifying individuals and
organizations in a representative set of communities who are ready to
invest local time and resources sufficient to make this initial phase of
the project successful. In order to do so, we must prepare and broadly
issue an RFP and then evaluate submitted proposals to identify communities
where there is genuine interest and enthusiasm for community networking
and where local infrastructure provides good chance of success.
Included in the Appendix of this proposal is material drawn from our
"Friends and Partners Future" WWW server - in which we discuss the broader
goals of Friends and Partners and specific plans for the immediate and
longer-term future. This WWW server is still in a draft stage but will
soon be announced on the Internet at URL:
http://www.friends-partners.org/friends/fpfuture/ (U.S. address) and
http://www.friends-partners.ru/friends/fpfuture/ (Russian address).
Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others. - Robert Louis Stevenson
[English]
[Russian
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