Protecting the Digital Citizen: the impact of digital personae on ideas of universal access to knowledge and community

Abstract : Universal service obligations (USOs) are designed to ensure that citizens of a modern state get access to basic services, from telecommunications to postal services. USOs are interventions in the marketplace to ensure that inequalities caused by geography or income or other impediments to access are compensated for. What constitutes access to ‘basic’ telecommunications, however, is being challenged by new technologies and new understandings about how people use telecommunications and media. In the past the Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) was the ‘basic’ service. However, in this paper the authors argue that internet telecommunications makes ‘persona’ an important part of definition of USOs and in the delivery of essential telecommunications to modern digital communities and digital citizens. The Digital Citizen Jo Twist, a reporter for the BBC, says that 2005 was the year of the digital citizen; “citizens really started to do it for themselves. Raising mobiles aloft, they did not just talk and text, they snapped, shared and reported the world around them.” (Twist, J. 2006). Citizens can use Vlog’s, video blogs, to show people what is happening in their community. Regularly, US Boston Councillor Tobin reports and shows his voters the positives and negatives about their community. “He shows them the new mural or neighbourhood graffiti problems.” (Twist, 2006). Vlog, like blogs and podcasts, can be subscribed to and each visual is automatically given to viewers. While the new technologies give enhanced access to communication Twist reports what we already know – “that still leaves swathes of the nation digitally excluded” (2006). There can be no doubt that extension of access to electronic communications is perceived as a priority precondition for access to the knowledge economy. “The need to eliminate or at least minimise any “digital divide” that excludes major social groups from access to and use of, in particular the Internet is universally accepted and at a minimum expressed by the notion of a “universal service.” (Huntley, McKerrel & Ashgar 2005). However, how we achieve that universal service is hotly debated. There are those who support government intervention to achieve it and those who argue that the market achieves equity without intervention. The very idea of a digital divide means that lack of access impacts adversely on groups socially excluded by age, social standing, race and geography. A Universal Service Obligation (USO) is an explicit social inclusion agenda clearly reflected in legislation. It is USOs that have enhanced access to knowledge over the past century, together with earlier equivalent in copyright and in the public distribution of knowledge. These USOs are often not reflected upon in the public mind, but they have existed and have contributed to access to basic services associated with communication and knowledge. For example, public libraries are a ‘USO’. They are a publicly supported legislated means for a citizen to get access to knowledge, regardless of social standing. Postal services are under USOs. There is an assumption that basic mail services will cost the same, regardless of the location in a country. In Australia, the Telecom’s Universal Service Obligation has been the requirement: