Resources for Policy Makers

The Family Online Safety Institute makes available briefing papers for policy makers covering both its own work and, where appropriate, the work of others. Although they may refer to and discuss technical issues, the documents listed here are written from a policy perspective and are therefore non-technical in nature.

• White paper: Taking Online Safety Beyond Technology. This whitepaper - the second in the series from the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) - forms part of the Institute's year-long Online Safety Education Initiative and reflects the thoughts of delegates and the output from the roundtable discussion held at the University of Oxford in June 2008, "Educating Rita 2.0 - Effective Methods and Messages in Online Safety Education".
• PointSmart ClickSafe Summit Highlights (June 2008) A summary of the sessions at the recent NCTA/Common Sense Media conference held in Washington, DC.
• White paper: A Call to Arms: The Case for More Research, Education and Resources to Improve Online Safety. This paper reflects on the discussion at the Family Online Safety Institute's roundtable in April 2008, "What's Going On Out There?" as part of FOSI's Online Safety Education Initiative.
• State of Online Safety Report (December 2007). FOSI's annual report, which details the legislative, regulatory, technical and educational landscape in 9 countries, providing details of what works and what doesn't work in the field of online safety around the world.
• FOSI Submission to the Byron Review (November 2007). Dr Tanya Byron was commissioned by UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, to conduct a review of 'Children and New Technology'. This is the text of the Institute's submission, which lays out the online safety problem and FOSI's response to it. Much of the current FOSI philosophy and many of its work items are described here.
• Executive Briefing The Potential of POWDER and the Future Prospects of ICRA labels. Published to coincide with the publication of the POWDER Use Cases and Requirements document in May 2007, this briefing gives some background on what POWDER is, what it's doing and FOSI's plans for harnessing the new technology in ICRA labels.
• White paper: Everyone has an opinion on the Web. Produced originally to accompany a presentation to the International Ratings Conference in Sydney in February 2007, this document sets out the background to a lot of the technical work of the Institute.

External Resources for Industry and Policy Makers

	EU Kids Online www.eukidsonline.net The EU Kids Online project (2006-2009) will examine research carried out in 18 member states into how children and young people use the internet and new media. This three-year collaboration aims to identify comparable research findings across Europe to evaluate the social, cultural and regulatory influences affecting both risks and children’s and parents' responses to them. It will chart available data, note indicate gaps and identify factors that shape the research capability of European research institutions. Finally, it will examine methodological issues relating to cross-cultural analyses and the study of children’s online experience in order to develop a best practice guide to research.
	Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection www.asacp.org Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection is the organization that helps the adult site industry make a difference in the battle against child pornography (CP). ASACP recognizes sexual child abuse as a heinous crime committed against children. As a major deterrent to such abuse, ASACP was formed in 1996 and is dedicated to eliminating child pornography from the Internet through its CP reporting hotline.
	Quicklinks www.qlinks.net Links to news items about legal and regulatory aspects of Internet and the information society, particularly those relating to information content, and market and technology. The site carries frequent updates, an events page, news items organised by category as well as chronologically by issue and full text search.
	Internet Action Plan http://europa.eu.int/saferinternet The official website of the EU's Internet Action Plan. Includes details of all projects carried out under this initiative, several of which are mentioned on this page.