This was originally sent as a contribution to a UNDP sponsored list
discussing its post 2000 future.
M
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1998 10:19:36 -0300 (ADT)
From: Michael Gurstein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Some Thoughts on The Future
So far, I think, the discussion on this (the UNDP-Future) list has been
directed to the first two of the questions posed in the welcome message
i.e.: "* what UNDP has done and is doing well, including concrete
examples of good practices
* where improvements can be made, including concrete examples of
efforts that failed to achieve their goals"
I would like briefly to address the second two issue areas that our
hosts presented to us:
"* the future of development cooperation, and what UNDP's role and
orientation should be as we enter the new millennium
* what concrete steps can UNDP take to effectively use new
electronic information and communications technologies to support
sustainable development".
Briefly, to introduce myself, I have been an occasional consultant to
the UNDP, I'm a former Management Adviser with the UN Secretariat,
and currently I'm an academic working on how to use ICT to support
local economic development.
Most of the contributors to the discussion have I think, taken a
"business as usual" approach to the UNDP (and by implication the
UN)'s future--post 2000. But (IMHO) there are a rather significant
number of circumstances, which (in no particular order) suggest
that business as usual may not be the most likely scenario:
Continuing and seemingly unstoppable declines in ODA budgets and
overall compassion/donor fatigue
The on-going impasse of the UN's financial crisis and the sapping
of operational capacity and morale that is the result
The spreading of the Asian financial crisis
Globalization and the exacerbation of inter (and intra) national
divisions of wealth
The fall of the Soviet Union and the apparent discrediting
(abandonment) of non-market approaches to economic development
The transforming tidal wave of ICT and the "serpent in the
apple"--the Y2K "bug".
It is impossible to predict the impact of each of these and their
interactions with each other on the UN/UNDP. However, it is
evident that they present a turbulent and unstable context for the
future of multi-lateralism and particularly its Aid/ODA dimension and
collectively create a "crisis" for the UN/UNDP's future.
Based on these, some things can be anticipated which the UNDP should be
thinking about (it almost certainly is) and which it is worthwhile
for us (the ODA/UNDP's interested/knowledge/sympathetic lay support
community) to begin commenting on in this and other forums:
There is likely to (and should) be some significant institutional
re-alignments in the UN's family of aid/development-oriented
agencies--UNDP, UNICEF, UNFPA, IFAD, and even possibly the
International Financial Institutions (World Bank, Asian Development
Bank etc.).
A new "theory/practice" of development will have to be developed
which responds to and assimilates the market and the private sector.
Information technology will have to become part of what the
UN/UNDP "is" and not simply something that a few parts of the
organization "do"
New modalities of managing and supporting national and
intra-national development will need to be developed which
assimilate and respond to the opportunities of the technologies,
the overall decline in available resources, and the new global
market frameworks and stakeholders.
In the areas of my particular interests--the application of ICT to
both the management and the substance of economic development there
are truly dramatic opportunities for responding to the emerging
environment as for example:
The introduction of virtual and distance management
infrastructures which would allow for both a significant
decentralization of decision making authority to the field and
related reductions in overhead/operational costs combined with
improvements in the quality and the quantity of program activities.
Assimilating and formulating the "lessons learned" from the recent
practise of development, the exponentially increasing volume of
technical information of interest to development practitioners and
particularly those working at the grass roots, and combining these
with the very low cost ICT based information management and
delivery systems and more traditional methods of Distance Education
and Extension to create "smart extension workers", "smart
campesinos", "smart rural communities" and so on.
The development of approaches to localizing control over
development activities through techniques of on-line participation,
information distribution, transparent management practise and so
on.
The use of the technologies to provide access to markets, to
opportunities for telework, to information concerning terms
of trade as a way to lever the process of globalization in support
of the development process.
What I see missing in most of the discussion so far is a sense of
the real crisis in which the UNDP (and the UN system) finds itself.
As we are coming to learn, crisis represents both risk and
opportunity. By recognizing the depth of the risk, perhaps there
will also come an awakening to the opportunities that the present
crisis presents to rethink old practices, renovate old paradigms
and to renew the vision on which the UNDP was founded.
Mike Gurstein
Michael Gurstein, Ph.D.
ECBC/NSERC/SSHRC Associate Chair in the Management of Technological Change
Director: Centre for Community and Enterprise Networking (C\CEN)
University College of Cape Breton, POBox 5300, Sydney, NS, CANADA B1P 6L2
Tel. 902-563-1369 (o) 902-562-1055 (h) 902-563-1336 (fax)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Http://ccen.uccb.ns.ca ICQ: 7388855
