Internet Impact Assessment Toolkit > Doing an Internet Impact Assessment
Doing an Internet Impact Assessment
Use this toolkit to defend and strengthen the Internet’s core principles and practices.
This toolkit is designed for people who create policies, do advocacy or policy analysis work, or who want to understand better how decisions affect our ability to keep the Internet healthy. Use it to create campaigns, brief a policymaker, write meeting notes, or shape a media opinion piece. Or expand your findings into a longer Internet Impact Brief.
What Is an Internet Impact Assessment?
More and more policies and business decisions touch on the digital world, and this means they’re increasingly likely to have an effect, even an unintended one, on the characteristics that make the Internet open, global, secure, and trustworthy to all.
An Internet Impact Assessment uses an analytical framework we developed. It’s called the Internet Way of Networking, and is based on our description of how the Internet works at a basic level.
You can do an Internet Impact Assessment in a policy creation process, to analyze a law or policy proposal, or to understand the effects of a decision or trend. It requires policy and technical expertise, as well as knowledge of geopolitical and local contexts, including how legislative decisions are made.
Use these guides and templates to spark discussion or make better decisions. Or expand your analysis into a full Internet Impact Brief, many of which we include in the Impact Brief library.
When to Do an Internet Impact Assessment?
If you’re working with a policy or trend that touches on the digital world, you should consider doing an assessment to see if it harms the Internet in any way. When a policy turns out to have a positive effect—such as enshrining a right to encryption in law—this is also valuable to highlight.
If you see that there’s impact, even if it’s positive, or you’re able to mitigate a risk, we encourage you to write an Internet Impact Brief. A brief helps the global community see examples of how policies, trends, or decisions can be challenged or shaped.
If you’re trying to build arguments to defend or support the growth of the Internet, an impact assessment can help you offer concrete support. It can inform decision makers about the potential consequences for the Internet, and what effects these could have on people and organizations. It’s a chance to offer expert guidance on how to protect and strengthen the foundational architecture that the Internet needs to exist for everyone.
You might also be doing something like a privacy impact assessment or another type of risk assessment. The Internet Impact Assessment should be done at a similar point, and can complement this work.