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Note: This document is from the archive of the Africa Policy E-Journal, published
by the Africa Policy Information Center (APIC) from 1995 to 2001 and by Africa Action
from 2001 to 2003. APIC was merged into Africa Action in 2001. Please note that many outdated links in this archived
document may not work.
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Africa: Survey Report, Lessons
Any links to other sites in this file from 1996 are not clickable,
given the difficulty in maintaining up-to-date links in old files.
However, we hope they may still provide leads for your research.
Africa: Survey Report, Lessons
Date Distributed (ymd): 960818
Africa Policy Electronic Distribution List
Reader Survey Analysis
Possible Lessons
A full version of this report (49K) is available in html
format at http://www.igc.org/apic/survey/report96.html.
To receive an ascii version of the full report by e-mail,
in two files, send a message to apicdata@igc.org,
containing in the first line the message:
send report96
The survey itself can be found at
gopher://gopher.igc.org:7040/00/docs96/survey
This posting is preceded by a separate posting with an
executive summary of survey results, available on-line at
gopher://gopher.igc.org:7040/00/docs96/report.sum
Possible Lessons from Survey
In general, the lessons we can draw at this time are
influenced by
(1) the objectives and location of APIC and WOA, which are
particularly relevant in determining the selection of
postings, and
(2) the constraint of how much predictable staff time is
available for managing the Africa Policy Electronic
Distribution List, which is particularly relevant in
determining how much "value-added" we can provide for reposted
documents.
The first point leads to our focus on Africa-related policy
issues seen as particularly relevant for the U.S. government
and other U.S-government-influenced multilateral institutions.
The second limits us to specific commitments for the
Electronic Distribution List and parallel Web site that can be
sustained with an average of not more than 10 to 15 hours a
week of staff time.
We hope that readers will understand that some very good ideas
they have suggested may not be practical for us to implement
at this time. As explained below, some of them we hope to be
able to implement in the future. As for others, we hope that
other groups or individuals (perhaps some of you) will take
the initiative to implement them themselves.
Several readers asked us where we get our information, and how
we organize the work for the distribution list. In brief,
publications written by APIC or by WOA that are distributed
via the list are a selection from printed publications
prepared in the course of the ongoing work of the two
organizations. Versions of almost all APIC publications
(except longer book-length publications and internal reports)
are distributed through the list. A smaller proportion of WOA
advocacy and lobbying communications are distributed through
the list.
Our pool of information from which we draw reposted documents
includes those that are sent to us by e-mail. In many cases,
however, they are documents that we first receive by fax, post
or at meetings we attend, and subsequently locate on-line or
request from the originating organization in electronic
format. They also include ones we find on-line in relevant
conferences on IGC, in Usenet newsgroups, or on the Web.
There is not much staff time available for random Web surfing,
but we often use the Web to find relevant documents that we
have heard about through other means or think likely to be
available on a particular issue or crisis.
Priorities are determined taking into account urgency of the
information contained, relevance to current policy debates,
reliability of the source, how much time it is likely to take
for us to obtain an electronic version of appropriate length
for redistribution, and whether it provides new information or
perspectives readers are unlikely to have already seen.
Lessons For APIC and WOA
1. The positive ratings from respondents, combined with the
continued growth rate, indicate that the list is meeting a
real need. We definitely plan to continue. Thank you for all
your encouragement.
2. The frequency of postings, satisfying 88% of the
respondents, is probably as good as we can get. Our rough
internal guidelines are to send out on average not more than
2 or 3 in a week, and a minimum of 6 to 8 in a month.
3. The length of postings is satisfactory to a substantial
majority (76.2%) of respondents. But there is a significant
minority for whom the postings are generally too long. Only
3% thought they were not long enough.
On this point we hope to do better. We will try to reduce the
average size moderately in the future, avoid documents over
22K whenever possible, and excerpt more drastically when
redistributing longer documents we still judge particularly
important.
The tag at the end of each posting has been reduced slightly.
We realize that it is unnecessary for regular recipients.
Since the documents regularly go to new recipients, however,
through redistribution, we think it essential to keep basic
information mentioned here.
A number of respondents suggested regularly providing short
executive summaries or abstracts at the beginning of each
document distributed. We think this an excellent idea.
Before implementing such a policy, however, we will have to
consider carefully the extra staff time this would add up to.
4. A number of readers requested more postings on particular
countries or particular topics, or a different balance, such
as less U.S.-centric material. We welcome such suggestions.
Our capacity to respond is limited in a number of ways.
Without increasing the frequency or length of postings,
neither of which seems advisable, there is a limited amount of
space available. We therefore have to make choices.
That is why we have tried to keep a fairly narrow focus on
policy-relevant and advocacy information. Although some
readers indicated that they find us useful as a news source,
we have neither the ambition nor the capability of serving as
an adequate news source. We urge readers to find other ways
of getting more regular comprehensive news on the entire
continent or on countries or topics of particular importance
to them. Links to such sources can now be found on our Web
site, and we will continue to refer to these and other new
sources on occasion in our postings.
Even within the limitation of a policy and advocacy focus,
however, WOA and APIC's organizational objectives and location
imply that we further focus primarily on issues we consider to
be particularly relevant and timely for policy-making by the
U.S. government and U.S.-government-influenced multilateral
institutions, and on which U.S. public opinion particularly
needs to be better informed. To the extent that our
perspectives on these issues can be widened by input from
sources on the ground in African countries in particular, and
in other parts of the world as well, we welcome -- and indeed
are eager to receive -- specific corrections and additional
information. But we think we neither can nor should be of
equal relevance to policy debates as they take shape in other
national capitals. Those tasks, of selecting and distributing
policy-relevant information by criteria specific to other
contexts, should, and we are convinced will be, taken on by
institutions based in other places, first and foremost on the
African continent itself.
The selection is also tilted toward the range of issues on
which we are particularly active and feel more confident in
judging the quality of information, and toward what we feel
are gaps that are not currently being filled by other
organizations or information sources. It is as a result
tilted towards issues of general relevance for a range of
African countries, or to "crises" that are or, in our
judgement, should be particularly the subject of Washington
debate.
In practical terms, our selection is influenced not only by
such relatively thought-out editorial guidelines, but also by
the range of information easily accessible to us without
prohibitive investment of proactive staff time in new research
and fact gathering. If we receive material on a relevant
topic that (1) has already been published or distributed, (2)
is public domain, or authorized for redistribution by the
author/originating organization, (3) is from a reputable
source, to which we can refer people for further information,
(4) is relatively short (a text file less than 20K, or less
than 2500 words) and readable, including general background
for those who are not specialists in the particular issue or
country, (5) is timely, and (6) is already in electronic
format, so that we don't have to retype or scan it, the
chances of it showing up through our list are significantly
increased. In cases where we do not receive such information,
or have it called to our attention, important issues or
countries are less likely to show up among our reposted
documents.
We are considering ways to make a wider selection of material
than can be conveniently distributed through e-mail, available
as documents or links through our Web site. But that will
happen only when we are able to work out sustainable
procedures for processing a much larger volume of material
while still maintaining consistent quality guidelines. Even
then, and even if it were feasible, we do not think it an
appropriate goal to become "the" centralized source of Africa
policy information. Our approach is rather to stress that the
provision of such information should and will be
decentralized. We will consider our efforts most successful
if we serve as a model for others to provide complementary
sources of electronically published information.
5. A number of readers suggested the option of filtering the
list so that recipients could opt to receive postings only on
a given region or country. While we recognize that this would
be an added convenience for many readers, and that its lack
may deter some from subscribing, particularly those that have
significant monetary or time costs for receiving messages,
this is not a practical option from our point of view.
The primary reason is the significantly greater complexity
that would be added in keeping track of separate mailing list
options for different subscribers. Managing the list is
practical for us with limited time commitments precisely
because we have kept it as simple as possible. And while
automating such a system is theoretically possible, that would
also involve significant costs in debugging and explaining
such a system to subscribers. Considering that different
subsets of readers would be getting different sets of articles
would also complicate editorial judgements about the balance
of information presented.
We hope that those who suggested this improvement will
understand our reasons for not being able to provide such a
service at this time. This means that on balance you will
simply have to decide whether the value of the useful
documents you receive outweighs the nuisance of receiving ones
you do not find useful.
There are alternatives, however, which may be relevant to at
least some of those wishing such an option:
(1) Use the delete key, or its equivalent on your system. Be
assured that we are not offended. We understand that almost
everyone has too much to read, and has to make choices. Note
that survey respondents on average deleted 1.5 of ten
documents, skimmed 4.3 and read carefully 3.9.
(2) Most mail systems, including Pegasus, Eudora and others,
have the capability of customized filters to sort incoming
mail, filing it, deleting it, printing it or taking other
actions depending on words found in the headers or the text
itself. Learn to use this capacity, and you can provide your
own customized filters for our postings as well as other
material.
(3) Request to be removed from our list, and instead visit our
Web site from time to time to check only for documents you are
interested in. If you are on any of the APC networks, check
our postings in the africa.news conference instead of
subscribing to our distribution list.
In theory, it would be possible for us to try to establish
more specialized lists dealing with specific regions of Africa
or with particular topics, with material from our list plus
additional material on that region for people with specific
interests. We do not rule out ever doing so, should we have
the additional resources in staff time to make it practical.
However, we think that most such ventures are probably more
appropriate for organizations and individuals with greater
specific expertise in--and, as feasible, location in--specific
regions of the continent. So instead of establishing such
specialized lists ourselves, among our goals over the next
year are to collect more systematic information on lists that
are currently available, and to encourage others to improve
and expand the range of such resources. (For starting points
on locating existing resources of this kind, see APIC's July
1996 Background Paper, "Africa on the Internet: Starting
Points for Policy Information," which is available on our Web
site.)
Possible Lessons for Other Electronic Publishing Initiatives
The Africa Policy Electronic Distribution List model is only
one model of electronic publishing, and the survey results
provide no basis for systematic comparison with other models.
However, there do seem to be some lessons that might be of
wider application.
Among those lessons:
(1) E-mail distribution remains a viable alternative, despite
newer communication tools such as the World Wide Web.
Despite the current publicity focus on the Web, e-mail
distribution of information continues to have its own
advantages. There exist substantial numbers of people,
including those with Web access, who welcome receiving
carefully selected information in their e-mail boxes even when
they have the option of obtaining the same information from
the Web. An audience defined by subscribers to an e-mail
distribution list is likely to be a more consistent group than
the possibly much larger but more intermittent set of visitors
to a Web site.
Organizations currently establishing a presence on the Web
might well want to consider whether a selection of the
information they are putting on the Web might also be
attractive to potential subscribers to an electronic
distribution list.
(2) More is not automatically better. It is necessary to
strike a balance between providing too much and too little
information.
A frequency of two to three times a week, and a length of 10K
to 20K, seem to satisfy the needs of a significant number of
readers. This pattern seems to strike a balance between
creating overflowing mailboxes and providing too little
regular information to be of maximum benefit.
While other frequencies and lengths may also be appropriate
for some audiences, electronic publishers might well consider
whether the Web rather than e-mail may be the more appropriate
venue for longer documents or more frequent additions of new
information. Periodic e-mail notices can be used to notify
regular readers of significant additions to a Web site, and
mailservers, including public web-by-e-mail servers, can be
used to make longer or more frequent documents available to
readers without Web access.
(3) There should be scope for many other Africa-related
electronic distribution lists on a similar model, but with
different editorial guidelines and intended audience niches.
In fact many country-specific and topic-specific lists, or
newsletters with an e-mail version, exist already, but there
is still considerable scope for new ones seeking to define an
information niche and to strike the best balance between too
much and too little information in that niche. Many existing
lists, as well as future ones, could benefit from more
explicit editorial intervention to provide value-added for
recipients. This does not necessarily imply writing or
editing new material, but does require at minimum the
editorial sifting function of picking out what is seen as most
useful among a much larger flow of information, and
proactively seeking out additional repostable information to
meet the needs of the readers. Since recipients' information
needs vary, there is room for different editorial guidelines
and judgements appropriate for different groups.
Among desirable requirements for organizations or individuals
considering such publishing options:
(a) an existing program of good quality print publications,
which can be complemented by lower-cost distribution of
summaries or full documents via e-mail;
(b) access to an incoming flow of information, at least part
of which is appropriate for public redistribution;
(c) access to an internet service provider at reasonable flat
or hourly rates with zero or low per-message charges (this is
easy in the U.S., but probably still quite difficult in many
locations in other countries);
(d) clear editorial guidelines determining the niche of
information/opinion to be filled (taking into account other
resources already available to potential readers), as well as
the target size and frequencies of postings;
(e) consistent encouragement of further redistribution, along
with a brief explanation explaining to recipients of a
redistributed document how to receive postings regularly.
We, and others, are continuing to experiment and learn how to
make best use of new electronic media for the benefit of
grassroots African interests. We welcome continued dialogue
with others engaged in the same or similar efforts. Please
feel free to share your experiences and your suggestions.
Our particular thanks to all those who returned their survey
forms.
************************************************************
This material is produced and distributed by the
Africa Policy Information Center (APIC), the educational
affiliate of the Washington Office on Africa. APIC's primary
objective is to widen the policy debate in the United States
around African issues and the U.S. role in Africa, by
providing accessible policy-relevant information and analysis
usable by a wide range of groups and individuals.
************************************************************
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