Dear GKD Members, I co-organized and moderated the Workshop, "Getting beyond the Digital Divide," after the Genoa G-8 Summit on 12th October 2001. Below is a summary.
Over 30 participants from the Global North, two key participants from developing countries and 7 speakers participated in the workshop held at the ETH Zurich on a Friday afternoon, <http://www.hsw.fhso.ch/ruddy/Workshop_2.htm> The main finding of the workshop was that organizations in a Strategic Compact set off a Development Dynamic. Many of our speakers confirmed with their presentations that they had had this experience, but the fact that terminology existed already for what they were describing was not realized until the last speaker, Nevin Cohen, drew it to our attention and summarized some impressive examples of it. We had speakers from other organizations with very diverse backgrounds who are involved in New Collaborative Partnerships ("Strategic Compacts") that are implementing such a Dynamic. The (GKP) partnership <http://www.globalknowledge.org> was described by Gerolf Weigel of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and GKP. GKP is a flexible and broad based multi-stakeholder network showing over that last four years that such a public-private partnership can contribute effectively to global and local efforts in bridging the digital divide. The experience of SDC as a bilateral donor illustrates the potential of boosting relevent efforts successfully through existing networks and processes. It is hoped that the International Telecommunication Union ITU will also be able to set off such a Development Dynamic at the World Summit on the Information Society WSIS 2003 by working together with civil society, as was envisioned by Philippe Capitaine and Rosa Delgado. Thomas Ruddy traced the history of the digital divide, pointing out how the issues raised were ultimately put together in what Nevin later described as Components of a Development Dynamic. One of the problems faced by the G-8's DOT Force was a lack of funds. Japan was the great exception to this problem. Shuzo Katsumoto, though, reported that much of the money pledged by Japan had been appropriated for projects already, and an ICT touch was added after they had been originally conceived. Milda Hedblom spoke briefly on the World Business Council for Sustainable Development WBCSD as a Strategic Compact. Nevin Cohen drew our attention to the concepts of Strategic Compact and Development Dynamic, and related how the Digital Opportunities Task Force consisted of Accenture, Markle and UNDP. So they have a Website in common, which is mirrored on two sites: http://www.opt-init.org/framework/pages/3.2.html http://www.markle.org/news/pages/3.html Besides the G-8's DOT Force, we are all eager to see what will come of the other major initiative, the UN's ICT Task Force, as it finally got together on 19-20 November at UN Headquarters in a restored Manhattan, <http://www.unicttaskforce.org/index.asp> We compared the components of the Development Dynamic as found in the existing G-8 initiative, the future WSIS, and the lesser-known initiatives GBDe and UNESCO, <http://www.hsw.fhso.ch/ruddy/themestable.htm> Proceedings will be maintained in MS PPT format archived on the server <http://www.empa.ch/iep01> and the chronology of global digital divide developments may be of some lasting value, <http://www.hsw.fhso.ch/ruddy/chrono.htm> Best regards, Thomas Ruddy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ------------ ***GKD is an initiative of the Global Knowledge Partnership*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.globalknowledge.org>
