Amy Mahan was very much an international person. She worked successfully with several global networks of diverse ICT researchers, practitioners, policymakers and publishers. She lived and worked comfortably in three languages and cultures-English, French and Spanish, and she had experience in others.
After early childhood in the United States, she spent her youth in Montreal, Canada, and earned an honours bachelor degree in English from McGill University. At the School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, the thesis for her master's degree examined communication failures of legal language and processes in safeguarding the rights of abused women. This was part of a lifetime commitment to the support of women.
Her exceptional skills in comprehensive editing grew from her early experience working on media and communication issues in a variety of public and private sector positions in Canada. These skills became evident when she was a researcher at the Center for International Research on Communication and Information Technologies, Melbourne, Australia, in the early 1990s. Before she finished her contract there, she ended up editing the centre's newsletter and all its publications. This was the first of a continuing series of research and editorial collaborations that I had with Amy that continued until her death.
In 1995, with partner Bruce Girard, she moved to Quito, Ecuador, to work on developing country issues. Despite regular electricity and telecommunication failures, she was able to demonstrate the potential of the internet for collaborative work as production editor for a 1997 book that I edited, Telecom Reform1. She successfully coordinated production activity on three continents and the work of 26 chapter authors scattered around the world.
In 1998, Amy, Bruce and daughter Danielle moved to Delft, Netherlands, when Amy joined the new Economics of Infrastructures section that I was establishing at the Delft University of Technology. Her participation enriched the section's early growth in many ways, as she applied her skills generously across its activities. She also mastered the unique Dutch skill of riding her bicycle through a crowded old canal town on market day balancing a young child and two bags of groceries.
While at Delft, she was production editor for the international journal Telecommunications Policy for two years. She played a major role in the establishment of Learning Initiatives on Reforms for Network Economies (LIRNE.NET), a global network of ICT research centres and regional networks, and its major World Bank funded project, World Dialogue on Regulation (WDR). As global coordinator of both initiatives, she contributed research and edited all funding proposals, reports and publications. She also coauthored a book with Bruce Girard and Seán O'Siochrú, Global Media Governance, coedited another with Robin Mansell and Rohan Samarajiva, Networking Knowledge for Information Societies, and contributed to other publications. She was also engaged in research on energy, in cooperation with her colleagues and the Cligendael International Energy Programme. She made major contributions to the book Natural Gas in the Netherlands and other publications2.
In 2004, Amy and her family moved to Montevideo, Uruguay, choosing again to live and work in a developing country. She continued her role as global coordinator for the LIRNE.NET and WDR networks. Moreover she helped establish a new Latin American and Caribbean ICT research network (DIRSI). She also pursued an active collaborative research agenda in association with LIRNE.NET, DIRSI, Comunica, United Nations Development Programme, International Development Research Center (Canada), International Telecommunication Union and other international organizations.
She contributed pioneering research on the design and application of benchmark indicators of telecommunication sector development and national regulatory authority effectiveness. She focused particularly on performance indicators for assessing the websites of NRAs in providing information for and communicating with their constituents, and in implementing policy reforms. Her initial studies and reports for Africa and Latin America led to significant improvements in the website performance of many NRAs, especially in providing information for consumers of basic services3. Her research model continues to be used as the platform for studies by others in an expanding number of countries.
In recent years, her publication record includes, but is not limited to, contributions on indicators for ICT, the evaluation of the performance of Uruguay's communication regulator, best practices of open societies and the diversification of participation in network development. Additionally, she developed several handbooks and multi-media kits as training tools for the use of ICT in developing countries4. She was also book review editor for Southern Africa Journal of Information and Communication and info. She was technical editor for the Nordic and Baltic Journal of Information and Communication Technologies. She was engaged in an unknown number of voluntary assignments.
Amy Mahan's "work and contribution to the development of the Internet, particularly her support of research in Latin America and the Caribbean", was acknowledge posthumously in the first edition of the Latin America and the Caribbean Internet Address Registry (LACNIC) Outstanding Achievement Award.
Amy continued working with a quiet determination to the end on the full range of her activities, including guest editor of a special issue of the journal info on ‘Network development'5, which was published a few weeks after her death. Unaware of Amy's declining health over her last six months, as were most of us working with her, info editor Colin Blackman remarked on learning the sad news, in a personal correspondence: ‘I suppose I didn't know Amy that well, but I had great fun working with her over the past year, and it felt as if we would become great colleagues and friends - she was smart, diligent, warm and witty.' Amy Mahan will be missed and remembered warmly as a thoroughly professional colleague and a woman of grace, humour and goodwill.
Amy Kathleen Girard Mahan, scientific researcher, technical editor, writer, consultant and coordinator in information and communication technologies; born in San Francisco, California, United States, 25 August 1961; partner to Bruce Girard, mother of daughter Danielle; deceased in Montevideo, Uruguay, 5 March 2009.
1. W.H. Melody, ed., Telecom Reform: Principles, Policies and Regulatory Practices (Lyngby: Technical University of Denmark, 1997).
2. Sean Ó Siochrú, B. Girard and A.K. Mahan, Global Media Governance: A Beginner's Guide (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002). R. Mansell, R. Samarajiva and A.K. Mahan, eds., Networking Knowledge for Information Societies: Institutions and Interventions (Delft: DUP Science, 2002). A.F. Correljé, J.C. Van Der Linde and T. Westerwoudt (2003), Natural Gas in the Netherlands: From cooperation to competition? (The Hague: CIEP).
3. A.K. Mahan, ‘Benchmarking African NRA Websites', in A.K. Mahan and W.H. Melody, eds., Stimulating Investment in Network Development: Roles for Regulators (Lyngby: World Dialogue on Regulation for Network Economies, 2005), 91-110. A.K. Mahan, Benchmark Indicators for Latin American and Caribbean National Regulatory Authority Websites, unpublished report (Lyngby: World Dialogue on Regulation for Network Economies, 2005). A.K. Mahan (ed) NRA Websites: Benchmarking National Telecom Regulatory Authority Websites, (Montevideo, Comunica, 2009).
4. A.K. Mahan, ‘Universal access and e-readiness in Latin America' in H. Galperin and J. Mariscal, eds., Digital Poverty: Latin American and Carribbean Perspectives (Ottawa: International Development Research Center, 2006), 141-156. A.K. Mahan and G.G. Germano, ‘An institutional and Practical Evaluation of URSEC-Uruguay's Communication Regulator-and its Relationship with Citizens, 2007', in A.K. Mahan and W.H. Melody, eds., Diversifying Participation in Network Development (Montevideo: LIRNE.NET, 2007). A.K. Mahan, ‘Measuring Progress-ICT Indicators for Advocacy', Global Information Society Watch (2007), <http://www.giswatch.org/files/pdf/gisw_indicators_advocacy.pdf>. A.K. Mahan, ed., How to Build Open Societies: A Collection of Best Practices and Know-How (Bratislava: United Nation Development Program, 2007). A.K. Mahan and W.H. Melody, eds., Diversifying Participation in Network Development (Lyngby: LIRNE.NET, 2007). A.K. Mahan and M. Jensen, Toward a Single ICT Index: Considerations on the Formulation of a Single ICT Index for the ITU (Geneva: International Telecommunication Union, 2008).
5. A.K. Mahan and W.H. Melody, eds., special issue ‘Network development: wireless applications for the next billion users', info, 11, 2 (2009).
