2018 Declaration

As a result of these discussions, the active participants framed the following “Tempe Principles”:

• Access to the information commons should be recognized as a fundamental human right. We share a deep commitment to bringing meaningful, sustainable access to information resources for communities not well served by conventional access to the internet. This commitment is very much in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
• We are forming a consortium that comprises people and organizations working together to identify common solutions, setting standards for software development, content indexing, and metadata, in the service of leveraging digital resources for communities that are not currently connected to the internet.
• We share the belief that common development of standards and practices can help all interested parties to achieve their goals and meet their information needs more easily and effectively. We therefore seek a more integrated, easily-mastered user experience of offline internet.
• We judge that open source and open access tools and content best meet the interests of the communities we seek to support. We also see a need to champion the sharing of copyrighted materials to underserved populations.
• Communities of interest to our consortium include mainly those the internet fails to reach: certainly those in remote locations, post-conflict or emergency situations, and refugee communities, as well as those whose disadvantage is political (governments do not support infrastructure and access), economic (lack of resources for easy access to broadband or data plans that support information access), and social (members do not have the education or experience to access digital information).
• We recognize the value of experimentation and exploration in developing and creating hardware devices that can function effectively in a range of challenges, from the personal to the enterprise.
• We will engage and empower our partners in underserved communities to design and develop technologies, as well as create content collections, as peers alongside consortia members.
• We expect to work in the space of not-for-profit and non-governmental organizations, while welcoming conversations with, on the one hand, governmental entities and, on the other, commercial enterprises that can focus attention and resources on this work in ways compatible with our principles and commitments.
• We will not, at this time, seek legal standing. Our governance will emphasize participation and collaboration and be open to organizations and individuals that share our principles and commitments.
• We believe that this collaboration can help us identify potential funders and make the case to them that there are good reasons to invest in our activities.

Our next steps are to proceed along three tracks:

1. A governance group has been formed to propose overall structure, process, and identity.
2. Working groups have been formed to propose objectives and goals in areas of software, hardware, content, operations, and advocacy.
3. Meanwhile, certain agreed tasks will proceed on an informal basis. We warmly invite additional players, participants, and collaborators to endorse these Principles and join in this crucial work. The summit’s organizers are strongly supportive of this effort and pledge to remain actively involved.

We warmly invite additional players, participants, and collaborators to endorse these Principles and join in this crucial work. The summit’s organizers are strongly supportive of this effort and pledge to remain actively involved.