This is the text of a letter scripted by the Bretton Woods Project - an IMF/World Bank watchdog - and sent to the President of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, expressing concerns about a new World Bank web project Wednesday September 20, 2000 James Wolfensohn President World Bank 1818 H Street, NW Washington DC 20433, USA 20 September 2000 Dear Mr Wolfensohn, The Bank, under your direction, is developing a major new internet initiative which aims to become "the premier web entry point for information about poverty and sustainable development". To achieve this it would need to include all shades of opinion and be a broad, multi-stakeholder initiative, including civil society. Many civil society groups, including many of the undersigned, have held discussions with the Bank and among themselves about the Gateway. We are writing to inform you that many of the major issues we have raised have not been addressed. It seems, especially from the report "Global Development Gateway Issues Identified During Consultations" recently produced by the Bank's Gateway team, that you and the Bank's Board may have been misinformed about the extent and nature of civil society concerns and our disappointment in the Bank's response. These concerns are serious both in relation to the opportunities missed by the Gateway, and because they have the potential to confuse potential funders, people asked to be Topic Guides, site visitors, and many others. It is not the case, as hinted in the above report of the consultations, that these views are only held by opponents of the World Bank or groups based in Europe. In fact a wide range of NGOs, academics and also officials are extremely sceptical about the initiative. Among the key problems identified with the Bank's Gateway plans are: 1) insufficient independence of Gateway governance. The Gateway's global and national governance structures do not adequately protect civil society interests. Whilst an independent foundation has been established, the constitution of the Board and Advisory Committee do not give grounds for confidence that the Gateway will be truly independent of the Bank, national governments and big business. Particular concerns are the role of the Bank in making appointments relating to the Global Gateway, governments' leading roles in Country Gateways and companies' ability to buy Gateway Board membership (and "co-branding" opportunities) with annual payments of a million dollars. Creating a nominally independent entity has thus not solved the acute accountability issues around the Gateway, issues which are very sensitive in portal development, essentially an editorial activity similar to publishing newspapers. 2) alternative design options rejected. Very early in discussions about the Gateway a number of civil society groups suggested an alternative design approach which would use the latest spidering software to allow distributed, user-driven topic aggregation. This would overcome the difficulties of the chosen Gateway design which gives power and impossible judgements to individual editors, and empower groups across the world to post and group information according to their needs. Yet the Gateway still favours a vertical, edited approach which will cause many problems of credibility and useability. 3) communication/consultation insufficient. Whilst there have been a number of consultation exercises, it appears that the Bank has overemphasised the production of pilot sites and fundraising rather than communicating with diverse audiences about the GDG's intentions and what might best meet their needs. Many important groups still know nothing about the Gateway and many who do have tabled questions which have not been answered. 4) overambition and unfair competition; The Gateway, whilst based on good intentions to increase coordination of web activity, is too ambitious and cannot meet all of its goals. At the same time its huge budget (60 million dollars over three years) and marketing reach are likely to have huge opportunity costs for the many existing and planned portal ventures in this area. It is not appropriate for the heavily subsidized Gateway to compete with these (for profit and non-profit) initiatives, including in many of the "pilot" countries. This approach clearly contradicts normal World Bank policy advice. At present, because of the above concerns and others, it is unlikely that a Civil Society Committee for the Gateway will be formed soon, despite two months of discussion about it. In fact a large number of civil society groups are likely to continue with independent initiatives to improve electronic information coordination rather than join the Gateway. We ask you to provide full responses to the above points as soon as possible. Yours sincerely, Alex Wilks, Bretton Woods Project, UK _______________________________________________ Crashlist resources: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/crashlist
