Dear DDN colleagues, WORLD BANK'S E-DEVELOPMENT THEMATIC GROUP
invites you to watch live webcasts for the following seminars 1. ICT Strategies for the Regions: Recent Developments in South and East Asia on Thursday, September 8, 2005, 11:00 am - 12:45 pm (EST) and 2. Evolving to Open ICT Ecosystems on Friday, September 9, 2005, 9:00 am ? 11:00 am (EST) The webcasts can be accessed at this URL (only during the events): http://webcast-ext.worldbank.org/streaming/live.ram +++ Detailed descriptions: 1. ICT Strategies for the Regions: Recent Developments in South and East Asia Thursday, September 8, 2005, 11:00 am - 12:45 pm (EST) Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) have now become an integral part and key enabler of today's development agenda. There is a growing and increasingly sophisticated demand for the Bank?s support in this area. Bank's capacity to respond to this demand is a ?fundamental test of the World Bank?s relevance in the years ahead? according to Jamil Kassum, EAP Regional Vice President, at the recent e-government workshop. Many countries are already receiving Bank support, and several integrated ICT projects are under preparation or implementation (e.g., in Sri Lanka, India, Ghana, Romania, Tunisia,Vietnam, Ethiopia, Mongolia et al). There is also a multitude of Bank sectoral projects with substantial ICT components. South Asia is a leading Bank Region in terms of mainstreaming the use of ICT in Operations. SAR management recently approved a Regional ICT strategy. There are different approaches to ICT in the Region, namely country-wide (e.g., e-Sri Lanka and e-India), sectoral applications (e.g., health, education, etc.), and as components of investment projects (e.g., business process automation in a central bank TA). ICT strategies as an enabler of reforms are included in all national PRSPs and need to be reflected in CASs as well. The e-SAR strategy highlights the need for a sectoral-driven approach to ICT-related initiatives. It proposes a 3-year implementation plan that would start with a first-year focus on e-Government related issues, followed by second and third year broader roll-out of other sectoral ICT applications and approaches. The initial e-Government program aims to develop a more coordinated and comprehensive analytical approach to e-Government issues, to build internal capacity and knowledge, and to help promote innovative projects with a focus on reaching underserved communities. The East Asia and Pacific Region, motivated by a desire to ensure that we are not missing opportunities to provide leading-edge value to our clients, is also rolling out a regional strategy. This approach, recently approved by its RMT, focuses planned activities on the sectors. EAP's goal is to equip sectoral staff with the training, tools, and networks to intelligently incorporate ICT -- where appropriate -- into their regular sectoral operations with client ministries. EAP clients have all identified the importance of ICT, and all have stated national ICT strategies, so the EAP approach will look for ways to find the best applications -- by sector -- that can become enabling components of broader project or AAA work. While still quite early in the process of implementing the EAP ICT strategy, EAP will share its planned program and analysis of future obstacles to successfully increasing the level of ICT in high-performing sectoral operations. This seminar will provide the opportunity to learn from the pioneer Regions and discuss how the Bank Group as a whole might be better able to respond operationally to this e-development challenge. We will also try and "make sense" of the rapidly changing world of ICT and the various different approaches to supporting operations and analytical work in the Regions. Chair: Jamil Kassum, Regional Vice President, East Asia and Pacific (EAP) Speakers: Praful Patel, Vice President, South Asia Region (SAR) - Opening Remarks Kareem Aziz, SASFP - Presentation of e-SAR Strategy Michael Kubzansky, EAPVP - Presentation of EAP ICT Strategy Simon Bell, Sector Manager, SASFP - Closing Remarks Discussants: Rakesh Asthana, Director, ISGCI - ISG Perspective Mohsen Khalil, Director, CITID - GICT Perspective Cheryl Gray, Director, ECSPE - Europe and Central Asia Perspective Roberto Panzardi - Latin America and Caribbean Region Perspective 2. Evolving to Open ICT Ecosystems on Friday, September 9, 2005, 9:00 am ? 11:00 am (EST) This discussion will focus on the key recommendations of the Berkman Center?s latest report, ?The Roadmap to Open ICT Ecosystems?, and will invite your reaction and feedback on how governments, industry and civil society can collaborate to build, and reap the benefits of, open ICT ecosystems. The Roadmap for Open ICT Ecosystems represents the collective wisdom of senior government officials (from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, India, Jordan, Japan, Netherlands, South Africa, Thailand, and United States), industry experts (from IBM Corporation and Oracle Corporation), as well as contributions from CSIS, European Union, Harvard, IETF, the World Bank and UNDP. The discussion will highlight case studies on how openness enables government efficiencies, innovative societies, and industry growth from the thirteen nations that participated in producing this report. Moderator: David Satola, Senior Counsel, LEGPS, the World Bank. Introduction: Professor Charles Nesson, Weld Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and the founder and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society Speakers: Karla Norsworthy, Vice President of Software Standards for IBM Corporation Dr. Donald Deutch, Vice President, Standards Strategy and Architecture for Oracle Corporation Tip: The live stream is only to be viewed with Real Player (RealOne or the latest RealPlayer10 that can be downloaded for free at http://www.real.com). We will encode at both 56K for low bandwidth connections and at 150K for higher bandwidth connections. You can send us your questions to speakers and short comments in advance of the seminar. For more detailed program and further information on the seminars, please write to [EMAIL PROTECTED], or contact Sally Song at 202-473-9078. All materials of this seminar will be posted to the e-Development Thematic Group site: http://www.worldbank.org/edevelopment. Warm Regards, Oleg Petrov Information Officer, e-Government [EMAIL PROTECTED] Informatics Program Facilitator, e-Development Thematic Group World Bank, 1850 I Street NW Washington DC 20433 Tel.: + 1 202 473 8861 Fax: +1 202 614 1169 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.worldbank.org/edevelopment http://www.worldbank.org/egov _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
