[GKD] World Civil Society Forum - Information Society

[Jeroen Van Hove]

Dear GKD Members,

We would like to announce our first World Civil Society Forum that will
be held in Geneva, July 2002. The working group on the Information
Society will prepare civil society input for the second PREPCOM and
generally discuss different aspects of the digital divide. Please find
more information below and on our website 

Feel free to contact me for more information.

Kind regards,

Jeroen Van Hove
WCSF secretariat
Tel (41 22) 959 88 54
Fax (41 22) 959 88 51
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.worldcivilsociety.org

-

EVENTS RELATED TO CIVIL SOCIETY, NGOS and the INFORMATION SOCIETY

 Geneva, June 26 - July 20, 2002
 
Civil Society organisations from all over the world will be congregating
in Geneva for two major events that will engage NGOs, international
organisations, governments and the private sector in debates on a wide
range of themes on the Information Society, international cooperation
and new forms of partnership.
 
*  First Preparatory Committee on the World Summit on the Information
Society (WSIS) July 1-5, 2002

*  World Civil Society Forum (WCSF) July 8-20, 2002
 
 
 PREPCOM I
*  informal consultations with the WSIS Executive Secretariat on
preparations for PrepCom 1: June 26-28, 2002.
 
*  the First Preparatory Committee (PrepCom 1) of the Summit on the
Information Society will take place July 1-5, 2002 at the International
Conference Centre of Geneva (ICCG).
 
The issues and themes discussed at PrepCom 1 will provide valuable input
to the debates at the Summit in December, 2003.
 
N.B. All NGOs must register for PrepCom 1 by June 3. Non-governmental
agencies that are not accredited to a UN Agency or ECOSOC must apply to
the Secretariat for that purpose.

For registration and accreditation please see 
 
 
International Conference Centre of Geneva (ICCG)

The Forum takes place in Geneva right after Prepcom I and includes many
events related to the Information Society. It will also contribute non
governmental input for the World Summit on the Information Society
(WSIS) from a gathering of some 1000 organizations from all over the
world.

Objectives: Strengthening international cooperation

Facilitating cooperation between civil society and the whole United
Nations system, including specialised agencies and other international
organisations.
 
Promoting cooperation among civil society organisations from different
regions of the world and different fields of activity.

Opening a space for dialogue on the relation between the different
stakeholders of the international scene such as civil society
organisations, international organisations, governments and the private
sector.
 
Considering the establishment of a permanent forum to reinforce the
cooperation between civil society and international organisations.
 
Included in the Program:

Working group on the Information Society 

This working group will focus on different aspects of the Information
Society including: access to the Information Society in developing
countries, Information Society and governance, telemedicine and
tele-education, e-commerce, the role of electronic media, etc. It will
try to improve cooperation among the various networks and organizations
working in this area.
 
Workshop on the World Summit on the Information Society

At the end of the working group, a workshop will gather proposals and
recommendations in order to strengthen the participation of civil
society organizations in the World Summit on the Information Society
(Geneva 2003), including Prepcom 2.
 
Training sessions

Before and during the Forum, several training sessions will be provided
with priority given to representatives from developing countries.
 
Access to the Internet in developing countries (10 - 12 July)
Journalists training (8 - 12 July)
Communication privacy (19 July)
 
Other activities related to the Information Society
 
ITU special exhibition on digital divide, tele-education and telemedicine 

Working group on the relation between civil society and the private
sector  

Working group on environment, trade, and sustainable development

Information sessions: freedom of information, the role of media in
crisis management, etc.

Exhibition areas and World Civil Society Village (info. booths,
concerts, world food, handicrafts, etc.)

Youth Forum


Dates 

8-20 JULY 2002
 (Following PREPCOM I)
 
8-13/07/02: training sessions
 
10-12/07/02: preparation of Youth Forum
 
13/07/02: Youth Forum

14-19/07/02: WORLD CIVIL SOCIETY FORUM with 9 working groups, panels,
information sessions, workshops, cultural activities etc.  

20/07/02: civil society village
 

LOCATION

CICG (International Conference Centre Geneva 15, rue de Varemb Geneve)
 
 
For registration and additional information: WWW.WORLDCIVILSOCIETY.ORG
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - fax:+41 22 959 88 51
 
The WCSF working group on the Information Society has a discussion group
on the Internet: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/infosoc4all/

Re: [GKD] Analyzing the Harvard e-Readiness Guide

[sandoval]

I am in agreement with Cornelio Hopmann and Michel Menou about CID
Readness Guide.

I have a lot of criticisms but I add just one:

The most fundamental things in future information society are Education
and Healthcare. To have a well educated people and in good health is the
main challenge. But the CID Readness Guide tells nothing about
healthcare. Then it lacks of one essential foot! From this point, it is
not a scientific tool for any developing country.


Victor Sandoval



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Re: [GKD] Non-profit Local Wireless Networks

[Venkatesh \(Venky\) Hariharan]

I am with Media Lab Asia (www.medialabasia.org) and we are exploring the
use of 802.11 technology for rural networks. However, we envisage these
as small village telcos that will be set up by rural entrepreneurs.
Decades of experience with Universal Service Obligation etc makes it
clear that the big telcos are not be interested in providing
telecommunications to rural markets. I recently met someone from
Malaysia who said that his country has around $300 million earmarked for
USO but there has been little progress till date. The story in India is
also the same.

A better alternative may be to follow the growth of cable networks in
India. Most cable networks in India were set up by small local
entrepreneurs. Since cable networks were unregulated, they grew at an
astonishing rate and soon outnumbered the number of telephone
connections in India! It may not be possible to replicate this success
in the telco sector which is far more regulated than the cable networks
in India but there is a good chance that local entrepreneurs would be
far more interested in providing telco services in rural areas than the
big telecom companies. This may be a win-win for everyone -- small
entrepreneurs, large telecos and national governments -- because these
village telcos may most likely operate their services under franchise
from a larger teleco, thus providing connectivty to the disconnected,
additional revenues to larger telecos and help governments fulfill their
USO dreams.

Another advantage of this "bottoms-up" approach is that it creates a lot
of employment opportunities in rural areas. The example of India's
Public Call Offices (PCOs) is another good example that comes to mind.
These manned PCOs created a lot of employment in rural areas and brought
telecommunications closer to the rural masses. These PCOs are also
popular in urban areas and the manner in which these yellow and black
signs have sprouted up all over India in the last ten years has been eye
opening.

I look forward to hearing from other members on this list on this
subject. I am particularly interested in hearing if others on this list
have tried to apply 802.11 technology for rural connectivity and their
experiences so far.

Venky
www.medialabasia.org




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Re: [GKD] Analyzing the Harvard e-Readiness Guide

[Michel J. Menou]

Mr. Hopmann's comments on the CID E-Readiness Guide are most useful.

A number of other caveats can be added, e.g. about the thresholds for
the successive levels, the relative emphasis on E-Business and E-Gov at
the expense of human resources, social capital, learning, etc., the lack
of clear links with priority needs of the respective countries, etc.

We are again dealing with a "fit all" approach which implicitly compares
a particular country with the "more advanced" one.

While such instruments are certainly useful, all depends on the way they
are used. If they are a tool for helping the formation of a clearer
understanding of the situation among all stakeholders and an aid for
their collective analysis and formulation of hypotheses fine. If they
are used as a straight basis for decision-making in a technocratic
process, they are more likely to facilitate failure.

Another basic weakness lies in the notion, or actual practice, that such
assessments are one time exercises rather than a continuing process.

The ease with which the CID E-readiness guide has imposed itself, or has
been imposed, as a de facto standard, is worth reflection. In any case
the issue of indicators and assesment tools and practices for the
"information society" or whatever one wishes to call it, is far from
being resolved. Hopeflly the debate will soon widen. A panel is for
instance planned at the forthcoming conference of the Association of
Internet Researchers 

Michel Menou


Cornelio Hopmann wrote:

> I accepted to do an e-Readiness evaluation of Nicaragua based on the
> Harvard Evaluation-guide (which by the way is the almost the same as the
> Worldbank and the GDG-Foundation use).

> The more I get into it, the more I feel that this approach does not fit
> to the specific situation of developing (hopefully) countries.

> Reason: the guide concentrates only of available infrastructure & it's
> usage producing the indirect impression the higher the scores, the more
> effectively (and appropriate) you are using ICT.

> As it concentrates only on supply and usage of ICT leaving out basic
> economic and social data, the final results are simply incorrect.




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[GKD] Free/Open-Source Software for Engineering Students (India)

[Frederick Noronha]

THE PENGUIN AS ENGINEER: TAKING GNU/LINUX TO THE PORTALS OF HIGHER
EDUCATION

By Frederick Noronha

IT MAY BE taking its time to get done, but this is one simple idea that
could have a wide-ranging impact for thousand of young
engineers-in-the-making across India.

Put briefly, the idea is simply to compile a whole range of useful and
'free' software that engineering students from this 'talent-rich,
resource-poor' country of a thousand million-plus can effectively use in
their studies and work.

It calls for quite a bit of scouring around -- and matching the needs of
students with what's available out there, in the wide world of
cyberspace. But since the software to be used is from the Free
Software/Open Source world of GNU/Linux, it means that once compiled,
this useful collection could be freely distributed without copyright or
unreasonably-high cost restrictions.

(GNU/Linux is a computer operating system that runs on many different
computers. It has been built up largely by volunteers worldwide, and
comes with along with its freely-copyable 'source-code' and thus offers
you the freedom to its users and programmers in many more senses than
just coming across at affordable costs.)

First to initiate this Nagarjuna G, a scientist and keen Free Software
proponent at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education. This centre
is located at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in the Indian
commercial capital of Mumbai (formerly Bombay). Incidentally Nagarjuna
is also the founder of the Linux-in-Education (LIFE) mailing list. See
details at http://mm.hbcse.tifr.res.in/mailman/listinfo/life

Prof Nagarjuna irst broached the subject thus, via one of the many
GNU/Linux-related mailing lists active in India: "I am presently
planning a single CD distribution containing the applications and
goodies required for a regular engineering college student.  I would
like to keep in mind the syllabus and projects students do.  Can some of
you tell us what kind of applications are used/needed by students?"

He argues that volunteers can build the list and "sit on one Sunday" and
put together the 'distro' (or distribution, referring to the collection
of software required).

It sounds easy. But this is a task which calls for considerable thought,
coordination and planning.

Nagarjuna admits that this project has been on the cards for some time
now. Inspite of being such an interesting idea -- a whole generation of
engineering students could get access to the power of GNU/Linux software
-- it has not been easy to push through. Not surprising in the world of
volunteer work, where real-life jobs and earning a living mean one can't
always do what one wanted to.

But the efforts are on.

"(This is) another thing which needs to be done but could not do it
because no volunteers.  But this is also on the agendas of the FSF-India
(the Indian-branch of the Free Software Foundation).  We will soon
identify a team for this and get it going," says he, determinedly.

Mumbai-based Trevor Warren agrees. He recently noted that working to
build up such a forum would be suitable for "like-minded GNUers like us
to spread and nurture the idea of Free Software". This is increasingly
seen as an important job in a country like India, rich in software
talent but poor in terms of the code it actually has access to when it
comes to meeting its own requirements.

There has been a lot of debate over what software would be best squeezed
into the space available on the CD.

Electronic students, for instance, would have their own requirements.
For instance Spice, the analog circuit simulation software or Varkon
(which plays the role of a computer-aided design software). BruseY20 is
a VHDL generator. VGUI is a block-diagram to VHDL. SAVANT is a VHDL
simulator while Alliance offers a complete set of VLSI tools. (VLSI
stands for very large scale integration, and relates to the important
field of chip design.)

Other suggestions that have come up include something for CAM/gerber
post-processing, a FPGA design package and a VLSI design package.
Besides, GNU/Linux also offers such suitable tools like RDBMS with its
front-ends and admin tools; PostGreSQL; MySQL; PgAccess; Tcl/Tk; Perl5;
PHP; PHP MyAdmin and PHPPgAdmin (administrative interfaces for MySQL and
Postgres in PHP).

For chemical engineers-in-the-making, GNULinux also offers a chance of
finding suitable molecular manipulation software.

There were many other names of free software products that could be
included.

GNULinux is a great operating system for the Net, since it was itself
born in an Internet generation, though collaborative cooperation among
thousands of volunteers worldwide. This means it has a number of useful
web tools -- including Apache, PHP, Perl5, Webmin and CGI scripting.
Zope and Python, Tomcat and jservers are the other useful tools.

For civil engineers, Free Software offers a whole list of useful tools
to engineers-in-the-making. These include Varkon (CAD), Grass5 (GIS),
and s

[GKD] Non-profit Local Wireless Networks

[Alan Levy]

I suggest creating an initiative to foster internal collaboration within
as many countries as possible; to form national IP systems following in
the example of PBS. I urge universities to play a leading role. A
national public system could assist communites in establishing local
wireless networks.

A non-profit structure is superior to other alternatives; it provides
transparency and trust, promotes community-based participation, shares
costs and reduces investment. In fact, a nationwide non-profit network
takes no longer to build, territory by territory, local-loop by
local-loop, than in public or private activities. I suggest a
non-profit network might be capable to achieve nationwide expansion
faster; with a network supporting initially only a minimum set of basic
IP applications, including VoIP.

To enfranchise local communities in a drive to adopt IP communications
we must promote community-based initiatives, whether for:

(1) physical wireless local-loop networks;
(2) VPN platforms (basic IP applications reside here);
(3) content.  

A nation's public IP system might employ one or all, flexibly, or
evolving in a gradual process.

A national organization provides a framework to collaborate and share
resources, for VPN development and content, and in negotiations with ICT
vendors, governments and development agencies. They have the resources,
and need added only the vigorous community participation that can be
structured in an organized collaboration between communities and
supported through a national organization.

Our goal is to reach universal participation in a minimum set of basic
IP applications, one sustainable step at a time, community by community,
region by region. A network knows no boundaries, can continue to
expand, to interconnect new community networks, to allow an even greater
sharing of investment. A VPN platform can be reutilized. Content
acquisition can be shared.

The communities within a country must be organized; they need wireless
local-loop networks, or reduced telecom connection cost for
community-based virtual private networks, and an organized national
representation similar to the public broadcasting system.

Better yet, a group of national systems, under an umbrella international
organization wholly-owned by it's member national systems, can equal,
some would say equalize, the purchasing power of the largest incumbents,
and their public influence. It could have an affect on standards. I
know this to be a fact, and have had it expressed to me by several
leading ICT's.

Governments, having charged fees, must eventually regulate, and
subsidize, the cost of a part of the network platforms of their
commercial oligarchies, or cause a cross-subsidization between the
applications residing in portals and sub-portals... or allow a
completely new and independent, interoperable, low-cost system, free
from the costs of older existing networks, based on independent but
interconnected community local-loops.

In whatever outcome, there needs to be a trusted non-profit community
effort. Commercial providers can't do it, and government shouldn't. 
Let the US provide this example, where PBS has 349 noncommercial
stations.

Of the 171 licensees that own these stations, 88 are community
organizations, 56 are colleges/universities, 20 are state authorities
and 7 are local educational or municipal authorities.

Would anyone like to make suggestions or participate? If so, please
elaborate.

Alan Levy
Mexico, D.F.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]




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