{"id":1066,"date":"2011-08-15T06:39:41","date_gmt":"2011-08-15T11:39:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/?p=1066"},"modified":"2011-08-15T17:45:19","modified_gmt":"2011-08-15T22:45:19","slug":"reaching-sustainability-of-free-access-to-law-initiatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/2011\/08\/15\/reaching-sustainability-of-free-access-to-law-initiatives\/","title":{"rendered":"Reaching Sustainability of Free Access to Law Initiatives"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In May of this year, one of us wrote a post<\/a> discussing two research projects being conducted at the University of Montreal\u2019s Chair in Legal Information<\/a>. One of those projects, known by its team as the \u201cFree Access to Law \u2013 Is It Here to Stay?\u201d Project, has just concluded. This co-authored post is about that project, the stories we heard throughout conducting the research, and what we can learn from those stories about sustaining legal information institutes (LIIs) — a concern that came up on many occasions at this year\u2019s Law via the Internet Conference<\/a> in Hong Kong, and again in the blogosphere in Eve Gray\u2019s recent post<\/a>, and Sean Hocking\u2019s post on Slaw<\/i><\/a>, among others. <\/p>\n

The first section of this post — written by Isabelle Moncion<\/a> of Lexum — is about the \u201cFree Access to Law \u2013 Is It Here to Stay?\u201d project as a whole, and the second portion, written by AfricanLII<\/a> co-founder Mariya Badeva-Bright<\/a>, focuses on lessons learned as applied to The African Legal Information Institute (AfricanLII)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

First, a few words about the methodology of the \u201cFree Access to Law \u2013 Is It Here to Stay?\u201d project. In 11 countries and regions \u2013- Burkina Faso, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Niger, the Philippines, South Africa, and Uganda \u2013- researchers under the coordination of the Chair in Legal Information<\/a>, AfricanLII<\/a>, and the Centre for Internet and Society<\/a> interviewed users of Free Access to Law (FAL) services, and practitioners who create and maintain those services, for purposes of building case studies on one FAL initiative per country. The research was guided by the Local Researcher\u2019s Methodology Guide<\/a><\/em>, which among other things asked the question, \u201cWhat determines the sustainability of operations of Free Access to Law initiatives?\u201d Along with the case studies (available here<\/a>, published in the language in which they were written), a Good Practices Handbook<\/i> (humbly renamed \u201cGood\u201d rather than \u201cBest,\u201d as stories from the FAL initiative showed that unfortunately, but not surprisingly, an always-successful series of practices does not exist) was written based on the results found in the case studies. The handbook will be online soon.<\/p>\n

Do check out the case studies and good practices to find out more, as they will be able to provide you with much more in-depth analyses than we can provide in this post. But for now, allow me (Isabelle Moncion) to share a few stories and observations, and perhaps a preview of some good practices, before Mariya shows how these stories can be applied to building new, and supporting existing, LIIs.<\/p>\n

PART 1<\/h1>\n

Sustainability\u2026 isn\u2019t just about funding \u2013<\/h1>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This statement is as much a conclusion from the case studies as it is the result of group discussions — held prior to the field research — devoted to defining “sustainability.” Did sustainability mean how we fund LIIs, or was it start-to-finish practices leading to that funding? We went with the latter, and field stories showed that that was the right choice.<\/p>\n

Organisational capacity is pivotal to a FAL initiative\u2019s capacity to stick around. In Mali, funding wasn\u2019t so much the issue: the FAL site disappeared when the student intern who had decided to launch the site — after noticing the immense quantity and quality of legal information available at the NGO where he was working, and concluding that this information should be made available online — completed his internship. In Indonesia, funding is without a doubt a challenge, but the Indonesian FAL site<\/a> currently depends on a single individual, who is unable to devote the time required to maintain the site. The situation is similar in Niger, where the editor must go from court registry to court registry with an external hard drive to collect judgments. The Hong Kong Legal Information Institute<\/a>‘s (HKLII<\/a>\u2019s) team is also small, but thanks to a judiciary-supported workflow, the team has been able to offer its users a high quality, reliable service. The Southern African Legal Information Institute<\/a> (SAFLII<\/a>) case study further demonstrates that organisational capacity facilitates response to financial crises. To quote from the Good Practices Handbook<\/i>,\u00a0 \u201c\u2026 it is important to build redundancy and transfer knowledge to ensure continuity even on tight budgets. Having a meaningful internship programme with intense mentoring covering the two core skill areas of IT [information technology] and content management, coupled with good documentation, could contribute enormously to the viability of the FAL initiative.\u201d<\/p>\n

Organisational capacity also means knowing where one is headed. How many FAL initiatives did we encounter, whose personnel told us their objective is to \u201creinforce the rule of law\u201d and their target audience is \u201ceveryone\u201d? These are no doubt admirable and overarching goals of FAL, but if not coupled with specific objectives, these goals do little to help determine an organisation\u2019s priorities and response to the needs of a particular stakeholder group that is potentially capable of financing the FAL initiative in the future.<\/p>\n

Innovation\u2026 isn\u2019t just another buzzword \u2013 <\/h2>\n

After using “sustainability” as many times as I have in this post, and now throwing in “innovation,” I beg you to indulge me in this section, and assure you that I will attach meaning to my list of buzzwords. (I promise I\u2019ll save \u201cempowerment\u201d or \u201cparticipatory governance\u201d for another day, but I may have to use \u201ccapacity building\u201d soon.)<\/p>\n

Innovation seems like an obvious \u201cgood practice\u201d \u2013- but what does it mean in the context of FAL? Many organisations now claim to have \u201cinnovation\u201d as part of their values, but as Ginger Grant pointed out so well at a conference on Managing by Values<\/a>, when asked, “Who are the organisation\u2019s\u00a0troublemakers?” bosses and managers seem proud to reply that they have none. Well if you have no troublemakers, asks Grant, who\u2019s innovating?<\/p>\n

Small FAL teams with limited resources have been able to succeed. Small teams seem to favour the birth of new ideas, which face less resistance than they may in larger teams. Larger teams have managed to reach their size precisely because they initially did something that no one else was doing at the time, but staying innovative can become an increasingly challenging feat.<\/p>\n

Having a team knowledgeable in both (legal) information management and IT, knowing who the users are and what their needs are (e.g.<\/em>, making the effort to find out why and how users use the service, and how else they might use the service if resources were unlimited; using Web 2.0 technologies for all they have to offer respecting getting user feedback; etc.), and staying in touch with others doing similar work (the Free Access to Law Movement (FALM)<\/a>; the open source software movement; various open-access, access-to-knowledge, open-knowledge, etc. movements) are just some of the ways FAL initiatives have managed to stay ahead of the curve. This is in part how SAFLII<\/a> and Kenya Law Reports<\/a> became among the first LIIs to look in to mobile services. This is how the Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII)<\/a> began offering point-in-time<\/a> comparison of statutes. This is also how Indian Kanoon<\/a> — described in this VoxPopuLII<\/i> post<\/a> — rests upon a single software engineer<\/a> and hasn\u2019t stopped growing<\/a> since its launch.<\/p>\n

Where there\u2019s a will \u2013 <\/h2>\n

\u2026 there may not always be a way, but there is definitely no way without a will.<\/p>\n

In any of the eleven countries studied, the success of FAL initiatives is often the result of key individuals passionate about the task at hand. In places where FAL initiatives have suffered, it is again often the result of lack of interest or competing priorities. Working to (here it comes) build capacity and foster innovation is the M.O. of FAL practitioners motivated often by nothing more than a conviction that \u201cit\u2019s the right thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

And I hear now what we\u2019ve been told so often throughout the course of the study: \u201cBut what do you do when there just isn\u2019t any money?\u201d Of course, this is a monumental challenge for a number of FAL initiatives, but where legal information is being produced, legal information needs to be accessed. The beauty (and essence) of FAL is that content is available to users accessing content for professional reasons, and to any other user, whether he or she is interested in legal information for personal matters, education, social justice, etc. But each of those users may have different needs, and going back to what I was saying above, this is why, particularly with limited resources, it\u2019s important to know whose needs will be prioritized.<\/p>\n

Users requiring legal information for their profession are a great stakeholder to target, as they are likely to come with funds. Insure they are receiving a service that facilitates their work and they will see benefit in ensuring the service stays around. (This is part of CanLII\u2019s story<\/a>.) But, as in the case of West Africa, the legal profession itself isn\u2019t always well funded. So, although I started by stating that sustainability wasn\u2019t all about funding, allow me to conclude by admitting that funding is often FAL initiatives\u2019 greatest concern. In the course of the study, we identified the following funding sources:<\/p>\n