How to Write an Internet Impact Brief

A Step-by-Step Guide

1. Validate your assumptions
   Contact the Internet Society at [email protected]. Our experts can review your preliminary analysis or one-page summary and help you determine if there are corrections or additional work before you take your next step.
   
   Tip: Be ready to start with the urgency of your analysis work, so you have the right resources to meet the deadline.
2. Read some existing Internet Impact Briefs
   Absorb some good examples of published analyses in our Impact Brief library. You might find examples of work you’d like to emulate.
   
   Tip: Read the IIB on South Korea’s Interconnection Rules
3. Determine your drafting process
   If you’re working collaboratively, you should review the template together, create a shared workspace, and identify responsibilities. You could divide by article if you’re looking at a law, by technical specifications, if it’s a corporate proposal, or by your team’s ability to commit time to writing. If you’re getting help from a communications or content professional who hasn’t been part of this analysis work, make sure you give them time and support to understand the purpose of the work, as well as the critical properties and enablers in the analysis.
   
   Tip: Make sure you set clear deadlines.
4. Produce a draft for your own review
   Ensure that you cover all the enablers and critical properties from multiple angles, such as the consumer, provider, intermediary, and compliance perspectives. Even if you didn’t find any impact, you should mention this in the text.
   
   Tip: Create a clear set of guidelines for feedback and change requests.
5. Submit a draft to the Internet Society
   If you want to publish the brief on the Internet Society website, this is where the editorial process starts with our team. Send a draft for us to review, and if it’s ready for our internal Editorial Board, we’ll take it to the next step, and if not, we’ll return it with recommendations. Even if you don’t want to publish it with us, we can help you bring the document to completion.
   
   Tip: Let us know how urgent your issue is when you submit your draft, so we can reply within your timeline.
6. Fine-tune your brief based on the feedback
   The editorial board will respond with comments and recommendations, including suggestions that will help you polish your messages and content for better engagement. Update your brief and make final adjustments. 
   
   Tip: If you’re publishing in more than one language, do a final review for version control.
7. Use your brief
   If the brief is published on the website, you’ll be able to use and share it from there. If it’s published elsewhere, or for your internal use, keep us posted on how the process has worked for you.
8. Continue growing the Internet
   The Internet exists because of people like you. Whether protecting it from harm, or creating ways to make it stronger, every decision that supports the Internet Way of Networking helps make the internet open, globally connected, secure, and trustworthy.

Internet Society Can Help

If you contact us, let us know your expected timeline, so we can support you along the way, if that’s what you need.