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 GENERAL INFORMATION : GENERAL DOCUMENTS

Documents of the UN General Assembly and of ECOSOC

 

go  Development and international cooperation in the twenty-first century: the role of information technology in the context of a knowledge-based global economy, Report of the Secretary-General, 18 May 2000.

go  Main website of the ECOSOC High-Level Segment 5-7 July 2000, Theme: Information Technology for the World.

go  Report of the Secretary-General, 2 May 2001. The role of the United Nations in promoting development, particularly with respect to access to and transfer of knowledge and technology, especially information and communication technologies, inter alia, through partnerships with relevant stakeholders, including the private sector.

go  Road map towards the implementation of the United Nations Millenium Declaration.

go  The United Nations and the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs): a Core Strategy. See also the Millennium Development Indicators web site and the detailled website of the World Bank on the Millennium Development Goals.

go  United Nations Millennium Declaration.

Documents Related to Procedures at UN Summits

 

go  Reference document on the participation of civil society in United Nations conferences and special sessions of the General Assembly during the 1990s Version 1 August 2001.

Interesting Conference Reports

 

go  Asia-Pacific Telecommunity: APT Meeting on Bridging the Digital Divide and Preparation Meeting for the WTDC-2.

go  Digital Inclusion, Impact and Challenges of the Networked Economy for Developing Countries. Report of a Conference of the German Foundation for International Development (DSE) in cooperation with the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the German Federal Ministry for Economics and Development (BMWi), 23 -24 January 2001, Berlin, Germany.

go  InfoDev Symposium 2000, Information and communication technololgies for development, lessons from Experience, Cairo, Egypt, 9-10 October 2000. Symposium presentations.

Recent Declarations and Action Plans

 

go  Action plan for the Asia-Pacific Renaissance through ICT. Asia-Pacific Telecommunity: APT Asia-Pacific Summit on the Information Society, 31 October - 2 November 2000, Tokyo, Japan.

go  Istanbul Declaration. World Telecom Development Conference Istanbul 2002.

go  Okinawa Charter on the Global Information Society.

go  Tokyo Declaration: Asia-Pacific Renaissance through ICT in the 21st century. Asia-Pacific Telecommunity, APT Asia-Pacific Summit on the Information Society, 31 October - 2 November 2000, Tokyo, Japan.

Recent Reports and Initiatives

 

go  Accountability and oversight of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). a report to the Markle Foundations by Prof. Tamar Frankel, Bosten University School of Law.

go  African Information Society initiative (AISI).

go  Creating a Development Dynamic: Final report of the Digital Opportunity Initiative. (a short overview)

go  Digital Opportunities for All: Meeting the Challenge, Final Report of the Digital Opportunity Task Force. (a short overview)

go  ILO World Employment Report 2001.

go  ITU World Telecommunication Development Report 2002: Reinventing Telecoms. (a short overview)

go  ITU World Telecommunication Development Report 2003: Access Indicators for the Information Society. (a short overview)

go  Louder Voices, Strengthening Developing Country Participation in International ITC Decision Making. A study by the Commonwealth Telecommunication Organisation and Panos London. The study was presented to the DOT-Force meeting at Calgary in May 2002 and to the G8 Summit in Kananaskis in June 2002.

go  Spanning the Digital Divide: Understanding and Tackling the Issues. (a short overview)

go  Sustainability at the Speed of Light, opportunities and challenges for tomorrow's society. Published by WWF Sweden and WWF International.

go  The Global Information Technology Report 2001-2002. Readiness for a Networked World, edited by Geoffrey Kirkman (Harvard University), Peter Cornelius (WEF), Jeffrey D. Sachs (Harvard University and Klaus Schwab (WEF). This major report can now be downloaded chapterwise free of cost from the web. In addition, the Executive Summary by Geoffrey Kirkman, the foreword by Bruno Lanvin and the preface by Klaus Schwab are available separately on the Harvard University website.

go  UNDP Human Development Report 2001, Making new Technologies work for Human Development. (a short overview)

go  UNESCO World Report on Communication and Information 1999-2000.

Useful Newsletters

 

go  Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation: register for the free Weekly Newsletter from ICT Development Agenda.

go  e-govmonitor, a UK-based knowledge service on e-government and public sector information and communication technology markets.

go  I-Connect online, applying knowledge to development.

go  s-asia-it, a newsletter on ICT for Development in South Asia. s-asia-it is the most extensive newsletter on ICT for Development in South Asia, published by the Asia Pacicif Network Information Centre, APNIC, one of four Regional Internet Registries in the world, responsible for providing vital resource allocation and registration services to the Asia Pacific Internet Community.

go  The Bridges.org Newsletter has a focus on new ICTs and bridging the dividal divide.

go  The Communication Initiative overview of e-magazines . A useful list of available e-zines and newsletters on the web.

go  UNESCO Webworld Newsletter, the newsletter in the field of ethical, cultural, legal and social issues of cyberspace.

Access (general)

 

go  AGORA Access to global online research in Agriculture. The AGORA site provides access to over 400 journals from major scientific publishers in the fields of food, agriculture, environmental science and related social sciences. AGORA is available to students and researchers in qualifying not-for-profit institutions in eligible developing countries.

go  Aidworld. Aidworld is an independent, not-for-profit organisation dedicated to making the world-wide-web accessible over poor communications networks

go  Budapest Open Access Initiative. The Budapest Open Access Initiative arises from a small but lively meeting convened in Budapest by the Open Society Institute (OSI) on December 1-2, 2001. The purpose of the meeting was to accelerate progress in the international effort to make research articles in all academic fields freely available on the internet. The participants represented many points of view, many academic disciplines, and many nations, and had experience with many of the ongoing initiatives that make up the open access movement. The initiative has been signed by the Budapest participants and a growing number of individuals and organizations from around the world who represent researchers, universities, laboratories, libraries, foundations, journals, publishers, learned societies, and kindred open-access initiatives.

go  Collaborative development of open content: a process to unlock the potential of African universities.

go  Computer Aid International. Computer Aid International is a non-profit organisation registered as a charity with the government in England and Wales. It is the world's largest and most experienced non-profit supplier of quality refurbished Pentium computers to non-profits in developing countries. Computer Aid International has supplied over 27,000 fully refurbished PCs to where they are most needed in schools, colleges and community organisations in more than 80 different countries.

go  e-ForAll: A Poverty Reduction Strategy for the Information Age. Pervasive poverty and inequality amidst plenty is the major threat to prosperity, stability and peace at the dawn of the 21st Century. Notwithstanding extensive discourse about the digital divide, most information and communication technology (ICT) initiatives start by encouraging nations to become e-ready: to boost economic growth and increase e-commerce.

go  eNRICH website. eNRICH is a generic and yet easily customizable browser that acts as a gateway to a community’s own world of knowledge, communication and empowerment. It enables communities to quickly and efficiently build their own gateway website, enriched with their own local content and connected to knowledge sources and services that are tailored according to their own information and communication needs. eNRICH is a product designed by National Informatics Centre, Government of India based on an idea conceived by UNESCO.

go  GetWeb : Bellanet's for Web to E-mail services. The Bellanet list contains several GetWeb addresses and instructions how do get websites through e-mail. This is specially valid in case of poor connections. These servers are operated as a public service to help people who can't access essential information on the web. Overuse and abuse very often cause them to crash or be taken offline. Please don't use the machines for frivolous requests.

go  GetWeb page of Satellife. SATELLIFE's GetWeb server allows you to request the text content of World Wide Web pages through e-mail.

go  How to set up and operate a successful computer refurbishment centre in Africa.

go  IFAP, homepage of the Information for All Programme, UNESCO.

go  Knowledge as a Global Public Good, by Joseph Stiglitz.

go  Panel on Universal access to information and informatics for human development, organised under the aegis of UNESCO and the ECOSOC, New York, 10 May 2000.

go  Putting ICTs in the hands of the poor. Information, knowledge and communication needs of the poor are equal to those of all other people, yet poor are often unable to address these needs

go  Readiness for the Networked World, a Guide for Developing Countries, developed by the IT Group, Center for International Development at Harvard University.

go  Reflections on the Debate: Topic #8: Open Access to Scholarly Publications: A Model for Enhanced Knowledge Management? Prepared by:Helen Doyle and Andy Gass, The Public Library of Science.

As the recent gpgNet Web Forum made clear, a growing and diverse global constituency argues that the world’s scholarly literature is insufficiently accessible, and that the problem is remediable. Electronic publishing and the Internet, itself, seemingly offer the promise for academic and scientific findings to be made available at little or no cost to users around the world…

go  Right to Information. Published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in July 2004, this 39-page guidance note was written to assist UNDP programme offices in the design and implementation of right to information programmes.

go  Simputer Website. The Simputer is a low cost portable alternative to PCs, by which the benefits of IT can reach the common man.

go  The Global Public Goods Website.

go  The Public Face of Cyberspace, The Internet as a Public Good, by Deborah L. Spar.

go  The Public's Right to Know, Principles on Freedom of Information Legislation, by Article 19, London.

go  The right to information and India's struggle against grass-root corruption, by Bunker Roy (from the UN Chronicle online edition).

go  Universal Access to Telecoms, an Article of CRIS on the WACC website.

Access (for disabled people)

 

go  A flow of words for the physically challenged, posted by Taran Ramprasad on worldchanging.com.

go  Dive Into Accessibility, disability webpage.

go  FULL COVERAGE: Disabilities and the Disabled.

go  GKP Partners newsletter special theme: Overcoming Disabilities with ICT. On the newsletter page, click "September 2002".

go  Information Technology and Disabilities Vol. IX No. 1, October 2003. This special issue theme addresses the public policy aspects relating to the emerging civil right of access to information.

go  Liberation Technology, by Prof. Norman Coombs. Western Civilization has had a centuries' long romance with technology and has often worshipped it as the "savior of mankind".

go  Links to other disability ressources.

go  The DAISY Consortium website.

The vision of the DAISY Consortium is that all published information is available to people with print disabilities, at the same time and at no greater cost, in an accessible, feature-rich, navigable format. Its mission is to to develop the International Standard and implementation strategies for the production, exchange, and use of Digital Talking Books in both developed and developing countries, with special attention to integration with mainstream technology, to ensure access to information for people with print disabilities. The acronym stands for Digital Accessible Information SYstem. DAISY is a globally recognized technical standard to facilitate the creation of accessible content. The standard was originally developed to benefit people who are unable to read print due to a disability, but it also has broad applications for improved access to text in the mainstream.

go  The Use of ICT to Support Independent Living of Older and Disabled People.

Access (software)

 

go  Aidworld. Aidworld is an independent, not-for-profit organisation dedicated to making the world-wide-web accessible over poor communications networks. See also the description of the tool in the BBC news technology pages

go  Altruistic individuals, selfish firms? The strucure of motivation in Open Source software, by Andrea Bonaccorsi and Cristina Rossi.

go  Aspiration Tech. FLOSS and NGOs: A Compilation of Resources and Community Events.

go  Free as in Education. Significance of the Free/Libre and Open Source Software for Developing Countries. A summary of this new and important study was published under the title "Liberation Technology" in Linux Today on 10 June 2003 (by Fred Noronha, Goa).

go  Free/Open Source Software: Localization. This primer provides a broad perspective on the localization of Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) for the benefit of policy- and decision-makers in developing countries. It highlights the benefits and strategies of FOSS localization, along with case studies from various countries that are on the road to software freedom.

go  FSF/UNESCO Free Software Directory. The Free Software Directory is a project of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). We catalog useful free software that runs under free operating systems — particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants.

go  IndLinux.org, the website of the Indian Linux Project.

go  Information for Development (i4d). The i4d (Information For Development) print magazine is one its kind, and is intended to provide a much-needed platform for exchange of information, ideas, opinions and experiences, both inside and outside the Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) sector. While several electronic publications do currently exist, i4d is perhaps the first that addresses the need by utilizing the strength and potential of the print media

go  International Open Source Network. The Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (APDIP) launched the International Open Source Network (IOSN), which will serve as a Centre of Excellence on Open Source technologies and applications. It will aid countries in sharing information on Open Source (OS), assist with the development of needed toolkits and resource materials, support "localization" efforts and, generally, help facilitate and co-ordinate OS programmes and initiatives through networking.

go  License fees and GDP per capita, the case of open source in developing countries. There is a strong case for free software (also known as open source or libre software) being deployed widely in developing countries. As argued in this note, the open source development community provides an environment of intensive interactive skills development at little explicit cost, which is particularly useful for local development of skills, especially in economically disadvantaged regions.

go  MIT OpenCourseWare portal. Welcome to MIT OpenCourseWare a free, open, publication of MIT Course Materials.

go  Open Source Software in Developing Economies, by Steven Weber, University of California, Berkeley.

go  SEUL (Simple End-User Linux) home page. The end goal of SEUL is to have a comprehensive suite of high-quality applications (productivity applications as well as leisure/programming applications) available under the GPL for the Linux platform, as well as a broader base of educated users around the world who understand why free software is better. SEUL is a volunteer project currently focusing on Linux in education, Linux in science, advocacy documents, managing and coordinating communications between projects, and hosting related development projects.

go  The GNU website. This website (a classic) of the Free Software Foundation contains also links to the Free Software Foundation Europe and India.

go  The top 10 Open Source Tools for e-Activism.

civil society

 

go  "Communicating in the Information Society", a 235 page volume edited by Sean O'Siochru and Bruce Girard of the CRIS Campaign: The chapters can be downloaded free of cost from this website.

go  A selection of major documents and links on civil society by ELDIS. ELDIS is a gateway to information on development issues, providing free and easy access to wide range of high quality online resources. It is managed by the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, is a leading centre for research and teaching on international development.

go  Can we surf together if we are bowling alone? An examination of virtual communities and social capital, by A. Blanchard and T. Horan.

go  CIVICUS. CIVICUS is an international alliance established in 1993 to nurture the foundation, growth and protection of citizen action throughout the world, especially in areas where participatory democracy and citizens' freedom of association are threatened.

go  High-level panel on UN-civil society: civil society and global governance. Contextual paper prepared by the Panel's Chairman Fernado Henrique Cardoso

go  How computer ed will create civil society, by Larry Berger.

go  Information Society and civil society: The promised land of the Information Society, by Ricardo Gómez. Article first published in "an Ethical Global Information Society: Culture and Democracy Revisited", Jaques Berleur and Diane Whitehouse (Eds.), London: Chabman&Hall, 1997, pp. 186-196

go  Involving civil society in ICT Policy: The World Summit on the Information Society (published by APC). The book can be downloaded from this webiste.

go  Involving civil society in ICT Policy: The World Summit on the Information Society, published by the APC, September 2003.

go  Panel on Civil Society. The Panel has concluded its work and launched its final report on 21 June 2004 at UN Headquarters in New York and in Geneva. The following links provide copies of the Report and press materials from the launch event.

go  Philospohy and Civil Society on the web, a webpage of civsoc.org.

go  Report of the UN Civil Society Outreach Symposium.

go  The World Summit on the Information Society and its Legacy for Global Governance.

go  What is civil society? Too little attention to the aspect of legitimacy, by Frank Bliss.

Community ICT

 

go  Community Informatics Research Network 2004 Inaugural Conference at Prato, Italy.

go  Community Information Network for Southern Africa. CINSA is a pilot project designed to support community ICT projects in the SADC region through networking, training, service brokerage, technical support, creating a resource base and assisting with project evaluation.

go  Community Radio gives India's villagers a voice, Special to the Washington Post 17.9.2003, by Rama Lakshmi.

go  Communmity Technology Review.

go  Cybercafes and their Potential as Community Development Tools in India. The Internet is dramatically changing the way people live, work, communicate, recreate and participate in public life all over the world. But the growth and the penetration of the Internet is far from being distributed equally around the globe.

go  Guide to Rural Telecentres Published in Brazil. A “Guide to Rural Telecentres” (Guia Gemas da Terra de Telecentros Rurais) was recently published by the Brazilian NGO Gemas da Terra. The Guide, that was produced with resources from UNESCO’s Information for All Programme, is aimed at helping Portuguese-speaking communities to establish community multimedia telecentres in rural areas.

go  Kothmale Community Radio - Sri Lanka, a case study report.

go  The Association for Community Networking. Starting a community network? The AFCN offers individuals and member communities information, conferences, discussion, and sharing of work and ideas.

go  Village Kiosks bridge India's Digital Divide, Washington Post Foreign Service 12.10.2003, by John Lancaster.

go  VOICES for social change, website of the Indian NGO. VOICES, a unit of Madhyam Communications (a registered non-profit trust), was set up in 1991 as a development communications organisation working towards the empowerment of the disadvantaged and marginalised sections of society.

Culture

 

go  GKP Partners newsletter special theme: Culture. On the newsletter page, click: "March 2003".

Development (ICT4D)

 

go  AGORA Access to global online research in Agriculture. The AGORA site provides access to over 400 journals from major scientific publishers in the fields of food, agriculture, environmental science and related social sciences. AGORA is available to students and researchers in qualifying not-for-profit institutions in eligible developing countries.

go  Antyodaya Pathway of Bridging the Digital Divide, by M.S. Swaminathan. Anthyodaya or 'attention to the poorest person' is the pathway Mahatma Gandhi described over 60 years ago. He wanted all involved in formulating developmental policies and strategies to adopt a bottom-up approach. In this article, Prof. M.S. Swaminathan, the founder of the Green Revolution in India, explains how this principle is applied in the ICT4D strategy of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai, India.

go  Arab Human Development Report: Building a Knowledge Society.

go  Background and Perspective. An article by Aditya Dev Sood from the Centre of Knowledge Societies, Bangalore, on the Information sectors in India, the feasibility of technology-driven social change in South Asia, infrastructure bottlenecks, focus areas of development, ICTs impact on rural economies and the future digital development, thw whole with a lot of useful links.

go  BDO, Homepage of the Building Digital Opportunities Programme.

go  Can ICT Applications contribute to Poverty Reduction? Lessons from Rural India, by Simone Cecchini and Christopher Scott.

go  Community Telecentres. A Highlight Page from the Development Gateway website, focusing, in particular, on the sustainability and effectiveness of Community Telecentres.

go  Completing the Revolution, The Challenge of Rural Telephony in Africa. In the midst of the current enthusiasm for ICTs for development it is often forgotten that most rural Africans do not yet even have access to telephones.

go  Development Effectiveness Report 2003 Partnerships for Results.

go  Diminishing the Digital Divide in Switzerland, ICT-Policies, Practicies and Lessons learnt, by Richard Gerster and Andrea Haag.

go  FAO website on the Rural Digital Divide.

go  GCR-Exchange. A website on sharing information about (good) governance in development,created by DFID and IDS.

go  Guide to ICTs for Development, by Aditya Dev Sood from the Center for Knowledge Societies, Bangalore, India, 2002. A short version of the text is available here

go  ICT and Human Development: Towards Building a Composite Index for Asia. This quantitative study was undertaken as an exercise for the preparation of UNDP’s Regional Human Development Report Realising the Millennium Development Goals.

go  ICT and Poverty Reduction in Sub-Sahara Africa, a Learning Study, October 2003. Its purpose is to identify, and help remove, some of the key barriers to, and to develop genuine opportunities for, poverty-focused ICT for development.

go  ICT based interventions Can help reducing poverty UNESCO research project report.

go  ICT Development Library. The Commonwealth TelecommunicationTelecommunications Organisation's ICT Development Digital Library (ICT DevLibrary) provides a unique collection of ICT-for-development reports and documents for policy-makers and practitioners in developing countries. It uniquely provides direct, “one-click” access to these documents, and makes these often bulky documents accessible to users on low bandwidth connections. Stocked with key reports published by the leading organisations in the field, the ICT Development Library supplements ICT Development Agenda, the CTO’s web-based newsletter which provides breaking, objective updates on the outcomes of decision-making meetings and summaries of important new reports.

go  ICT for Development page of the Development Gateway Foundation. As the developing countries of the world rush to embrace the information society, it is important to remember that their success depends….

go  ICT for Development, a e-resource page of the Asian Development Bank.

go  [New] ICT Update, a current awareness bulletin for ACP Agriculture. Each issue of ICT Update focuses on a specific theme relevant to ICTs for agricultural and rural development in African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, and features four commissioned articles.

go  ICT, poverty and empowerment, a publication by DFID, July 2001.

go  ICT-Enabled Development Case Studies Series: Africa.

go  ICTs and development, a KIT web resource to donor policies and approaches.

go  IDRC website on Information and Communication Technologies for Development.

go  Improving Development Effectiveness. Concern for global stability and prosperity requires development efforts that achieve measurable results. Desirable outcomes can include raising greater numbers of people out of poverty, achieving higher levels of education for more people, and lowering infant mortality rates. Countries need to focus on such results so that they can make better policy decisions and design better strategies for their own development.

go  Information and Communication Technologies, Poverty and Development: Learning from Experience A Background Paper for the infoDev Annual Symposium December 9-10, 2003, Geneva, Switzerland, Kerry S. McNamara.

go  Information Society and Sustainable Development: Finding Linkages. This is a background paper published by the IISD.

go  Information Technology, Globalization and Social Development, by Manuel Castells, September 1999.

go  Jagriti.com. Jagriti is a platform for application of Information Technology for the masses, with special focus on the needs of Rural areas.It aims at deployment of IT Enabled Services for education, agricultural information, health, e-governance and other location-specific needs. Jagrithi is franchising Kiosks (Telecenters) in India.

go  Knowledge Management for Development, Documents page of Bellanet. There are more than 200 documents on Knowledge Management for Development in the Database.

go  Knowledge Management for Development, produced by Bellanet, entry page.

go  Magazine for Development and Cooperation; New media and the fight against poverty by Siegfried Karwatzki.

go  Mainsstreaming ICTs, digital futures for ACP agriculture. The Special CTA 20th annversary edition of the ICT update is dealing with mainsstreaming ICTs in agriculture. (CTA is the Technical Center for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU).

go  Missing the connection? Using ICT in education. February 2003 Insights Education Issue #1, from id21.

go  Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships for ICT-enabled Development: IICD Experiences.

go  Nayudamma Information Bank. The Nayudamma Information Bank contains information about and easy access to technologies supported by IDRC - technologies from the South for the South. Providing contact names for all the technologies described, it is a way of sharing and updating information on technological advancements for international development.

go  Open Knowledge Network (OKN). OKN is an initiative of the DOTForce: the Digital Opportunity Task Force set up by the G8 Heads of State to make a decisive contribution to bridging the digital divide. OKN has since been adopted by the UN ICT Task Force. The OKN consortium is made up of: OneWorld.net, IICD, IDRC, M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, Accenture and the Berkman Center of Harvard Law School.

go  Portal Site of the World Agricultural Information Centre.

go  Proceedings from the Seminar on Global Perspectives of Development Communication.

go  Promoting ICT for Human Development in Asia 2004: Realising the Millennium Development Goals - Summary. The summary of this report can be downloaded free of cost.

go  Promoting ICT for Human Development in South Asia. Realizing the Millenium Development Goals (An initiative of Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme and Human Development Resource Centre, New Delhi).

go  Report of the First Consultation on Agricultural Information Management, FAO 2001.

go  Report of the Second Consultation on Agricultural Information Management, FAO 2002.

go  Rural Knowledge Centres: Harnessing Local Knowledge via Interactive Media.

go  Social Capital and Information Technology, a website of the PovertyNet, World Bank.

go  Technology Empowerment Network. Technology Empowerment Network, TEN, is a virtual community of CEOs and other leaders who volunteer to help bridge the digital divide by supporting social entrepreneurs in under-served areas. TEN members offer their time, insight and expertise to help bring information technology to schools, businesses and civil society in poor communities around the world

go  Telecentres: How did we lose the plot? By Earl Mardle. Check also the peer review by John Daly

go  Ten steps for Establishing a Sustainable Multipurpose Community Telecentre (a publication of the UNESCO Bangkok Office).

go  The Information Society and development, a review of the EC's experience in Asia, Latin America and the Mediterranean.

go  The Internet and Rural Development: Recommendations for Strategy and Activity, by the Sustainable Development Department, FAO.

go  The Network Revolution and the Developing World, Final Report for World Bank and InfoDev, by Analysis Consulting, May 2001.

go  The Petersberg Prize. The prize aims to recognise exemplary contributions in the field of information and communication technologies (ICT) for development. It will be awarded during the Development Gateway Forum, which will take place in 2004. Deadline for submissions is 1 February 2004.

go  The Power of Information, a grassroot organisation in India defeats corruption, by Bunker Roy.

go  The significance ot information and communication technologies for reducing poverty, a publication by DFID, January 2002.

go  The World Summit in Reflection. Information Technologies and International Development will be the premier journal in its field, focusing on the intersection of information and communication technologies (ICT) with international development. We aim to create a networked community of leading thinkers and strategists to discuss the critical issues of ICT and development, an epistemic community that crosses disciplines (especially technologists and social scientists), national boundaries, and the North and South hemispheres.

go  Towards empowerment, how a project that provides village residents easy access to information could make all the difference in their lives.

go  UNDP Best Practices and Know-How in ICT for Development: E-book downloadable for free.

go  UNDP observatory articles.

go  Unleashing Entrepreneurship: Making business work for the poor. In this report to U N Secretary-General, the Commission focuses on how business can create domestic employment and wealth, free local entrepreneurial energies... Downloadable for free.

go  Untouchables in the World of IT, an article by Gail Omvedt. This article was published by PANOS, London (http://www.panos.org.uk) 1.2.2004

go  Wi-Fi in rural India, an article from The Hindu, May 4, 2003.

Digital Divide

 

go  Digital Divide Network. DDN serves as a catalyst for developing new, innovative digital divide strategies and for making current initiatives more strategic, more partner-based and more outcome-oriented, with less duplication of effort and more learning from each others' activities. The shared knowledge base that emerges from DDN will go a long way toward establishing the right benchmarks for judging the effectiveness of digital divide initiatives. As a nonprofit leader in addressing the digital divide, the Benton Foundation serves as producer and coordinator of the Digital Divide Network.

go  Effective use, a community informatics strategy beyond the Digital Divide, by Michael Gurstein.

go  Global Information Technology Report 2003-2004. The Executive Summary as well as Chapter 1 and 2 of the Report can be downloaded from the WEF website free of cost

go  Information and Technology development indices, published by UNCTAD, June 2003.

go  Monitoring the Digital Divide, and beyond. An ORBICOM - CIDA Project. In their preface to the report, Jose-Maria Figueres, Chairman of the UN ICT Task Force, and Bruno Lanvin, Manager of infoDev at the World Bank say: ‘The Orbicom report is a remarkable attempt to offer a global set of indicators (infostate) showing how the availability of ICTs and access to networks can be a misleading indicator if it neglects people’s skills, and if ICT networks and skills combined (infodensity) are not matched by a measurement of what individuals, business and countries actually do with such technologies (info-use). It also offers important perspectives into the central role that e-policies and knowledge have started to play in determining how countries will fare in the global competition to benefit from the information revolution and move away from poverty’. A French version is also available on http://www.orbicom.uqam.ca/index_en.html .

go  The 'digital divide' could lead to the creation of a gigantic 'cyber ghetto' in the developing countries. By Alain Modoux.

go  The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries. The Electronic Journal on Information Systems in Developing Countries (EJISDC) strives to become the foremost international forum for practitioners, teachers, researchers and policy makers to share their knowledge and experience in the design, development, implementation, management and evaluation of information systems and technologies in developing countries.

go  The 'grey digital divide': perception, exclusion and barriers of access to the internet for older people. By Peter Millward.

go  The Senior Net Digital Divide page. The mission of SeniorNet is to provide older adults with computer education and access to computers and the Internet in order to enrich their lives and enable them to share their knowledge and wisdom with the world. SeniorNet believes that the senior segment has been neglected in the Digital Divide. In order to close the gap, SeniorNet has partnered with the eBay Foundation, IBM and The Charles Schwab Foundation to provide education and programs that focus on the needs and interests of older adults.

go  UN ICTs Benchmarking Tool. The ICT benchmarking tool was developed to provide policy-makers in developing countries with a useful interactive tool to assess their countries' ICT capabilities in terms of connectivity and ease of access and to compare them against those of other countries. Designed with a flexible and open-source system, the ICT Benchmarking tool allows users to configure the parameters to suit their specific needs.

go  W(h)ither the Digital Divide? By Karsten Fink and Charles J. Kenny.

Digital Preservation

 

go  Austrian Experts to Discuss Long-term Preservation in the Digital Era. The instability of the Internet is an additional risk for knowledge accumulated in the html format. The need to safeguard this relatively new form of documentary heritage calls for international consensus on its collection, preservation and dissemination which resulted in the adotion of "UNESCO Charter on the Preservation of the Digital Heritage"

go  Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage, 15 October 2003.

go  Data Storage: From Digits to Dust. "Surprise--computerized data can decay before you know it".

go  Digital Preservation Summary, by Jeff Rothenberg. This document by Jeff Rothenberg, addresses the vulnerability of digital records, what affects digital records and preservation.

go  The Long Now Foundation. Time and Bits Managing digital continuity. Content, data, information -- all are different terms for knowledge. Humans store knowledge because we benefit as a species from the ability to communicate information over time and space with accuracy.

go  The Rosetta Project. Building a near permanent archive of a 1000 languages. The Rosetta Project is a global collaboration of language specialists and native speakers working to develop a contemporary counterpart of the historic Rosetta Stone.

E-Commerce

 

go  E-business for NGOs, a IICD Research Brief, January 2002.

go  E-COMMERCE AND DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2004. Chapters are available for download on the UNCTAD site.

go  E-Commerce for Developing Countries, impact, obstacles and policies, a website of the GAP project of IDS. The pages refers to several new documents and research papers regarding e-commerce for developing countries.

go  E-commerce, no business for the poor, a article on the report by John Humphrey, Robin Mansell, Daniel Paré, Hubert Schmitz: The Reality of Ecommerce with Developing Countries.

go  GBDe Recommendations 2003. TheGBDe (Global Business Dialogue on electronic commerce) 2003 recommendations note that ‘as the impact of the Internet has moved beyond the developed world, there is increasing concern about its potential effect on culture and society. In addition, issues such as cyber security, unsolicited electronic communications (also known as spam), and piracy continue to demonstrate the need for improved international cooperation. The first phase of the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS), commencing in Geneva during December, 2003 will be an important process for highlighting emerging Information Society issues’.

go  India's Information Technology Sector: What contribution to broader economic development? OECD Technical paper no. 207.

go  Southern African Development Community - World Economic Forum Consultation Report on e-readiness.

go  The reality of E-Commerce with Developing Countries, by J. Humphrey, R. Mansell, D Pare and H. Schmitz, March 2003. A major new report by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and the London School of Economics.

go  The Reality of E-commerce with Developing Countries, prepared by J. Humphres (IDS), R. Mansell (LES), D. Paré (LES) and H. Schmitz (IDS).

go  UNCTAD "Measuring the Information Society" website. The Electronic Commerce (E-Commerce) branch of UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) launched a new web resource during November 2003 called Measuring the Information Society: Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Indicators for Development. ‘Measuring the Information Society’ is an interactive site for information on the development of statistics and indicators related to ICTs, which allows practitioners from all countries to exchange views and best practice in the field of information society statistics, and to work towards common definitions, indicators and measurement frameworks. Its creation sprang from the ‘Measuring Electronic Commerce as an Instrument for the Development of the Digital Economy’ meeting held in Geneva (Switzerland) from 8-10 September 2003. In particular, it is intended to help monitor progress made between the two phases of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) held in Geneva during December 2003 and Tunis in November 2005.

go  UNCTAD E-commerce and development report 2003. This third edition of the E-Commerce and Development Report, published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, identifies some of the implications that the growth of the digital economy may have for developing countries. It aims to provide practitioners and policy makers with a better understanding of the options available to them in leading sectors of developing-country economies. It is also meant to contribute to the debates at the World Summit on the Information Society and efforts to create a truly inclusive information society that serves and empowers all people (from the inagural text by Kofi Annan)

go  UNCTAD, e-commerce and development report 2001.

go  UNCTAD, e-commerce and development report 2002. The Electronic Journalon Information Systems in Developing Countries ( EJISDC) , released on the web a special volume devoted to the recently issued UNCTAD 2002 report

on E Commerce and Development. It consists of 12 commentaries written by IS researchers and practitioners, each of whom comments on the report - either on a single chapter, or else on the report as a whole. The Journal can be found here . Click on "volume 11".

Education and literacy

 

go  Bridges to the Future website. The Bridges to the Future Initiative (BFI) will address the Digital Divide of education and technology in emerging economies by improving literacy, basic education, and technological literacy, thereby assisting the world's poorest peoples to better determine their own social and economic future.

go  Global Digital Literacy Council, entry page.

go  ICTLiteracy.org home page. This Web site is the “public face” of a fast growing international movement focused on promoting Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Digital Literacy. This website, created by the Kempster Group, provides a rich, centralized portal for the repository of ICT Literacy resources, highlights innovative efforts and partnerships promoting ICT Digital Literacy, and facilitates the interaction between researchers, business, government and educational segments. New surveys, studies and reports on ICT literacy will be presented on the site.

go  Learningchannel.org. LearningChannel.org is a OneWorld themed portal, which brings together organisations and audiences involved in the challenges around education today.

go  Literacy.org. Literacy.org is a gateway to electronic resources and tools for the national and international youth and adult literacy communities. This site is jointly sponsored by the International Literacy Institute (ILI) and the National Center on Adult Literacy (NCAL) at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.

go  MIT Everyware. Every lecture, every handout, every quiz. All online. For free. Meet the global geeks getting an MIT education, open source-style. When MIT announced to the world in April 2001 that it would be posting the content of some 2,000 classes on the Web, it hoped the program - dubbed OpenCourseWare - would spur a worldwide movement among educators to share knowledge and improve teaching methods. No institution of higher learning had ever proposed anything as revolutionary, or as daunting. MIT would make everything, from video lectures and class notes to tests and course outlines, available to any joker with a browser. The academic world was shocked by MIT's audacity - and skeptical of the experiment. Read about the outcome today, September 2003 in this WIRED article

go  Multimedia Training Kit, from itrain online. Supported by ItrainOnline partner UNESCO, the MMTK aims to promote and support linkages between new and traditional media for development through a structured set of materials. The materials are based on a standard set of templates, and are intended to be used as building blocks from which trainers can build up training workshops appropriate for their own contexts

go  REFLECT Website. REFLECT is an innovative approach to adult learning and social change, which fuses the theories of Paulo Freire with the methodology of Participatory Rural Appraisal.

go  Resources for policy-makers / decision makers on ICT in education: policy and practice. This resource pack is a collection of web resources assembled and annotated by the UNESCO Asia and Pacific Regional Bureau for Education (UNESCO Bangkok) in support of a recent planning workshop for educational policymakers on issues related to ICTs in education. This resource pack aims to provide a comprehensive selection of informative, relevant and up-to-date resources for policy-makers and decision-makers on ICT in education, with both a global view of how ICTs can transform education, with specific emphasis on the Asia and Pacific region.

go  Same Language Subtitling (SLS), a small change for colossal gains in literacy. Entry page.

go  Schoolforge home page. Schoolforge's mission is to unify independent organizations that advocate, use, and develop open resources for primary and secondary education. Schoolforge is intended to empower member organizations to make open educational resources more effective, efficient, and ubiquitous by enhancing communication, sharing resources, and increasing the transparency of development.

go  SEUL Simple End-User Linux) Education home page.

go  Tataliteracy.com website. The programme has been developed by Tata Consultancy Services, Asia's largest software enterprise, and it operates under the aegis of the Tata Council for Community Initiatives. The CBFL project uses a mix of methods to teach an uneducated person to read in a fraction of the time it takes to do this by conventional means. At the actual stage, programmes are available in 5 Indian languages.

go  The "elephant schools" of Thailand. In an effort to reach education to the three million illiterate people in far-flung areas of Om Koi district and integrate them into the mainstream, Thailand's Non-Formal Education Department came up with the novel idea of using pachyderms and modern ICT under the project, "bringing school to the children". The project is at the forefront of a unique campaign to reach education to three million people in Thailand's remote corners.

go  UNESCO Bangkok, Education for All website.

go  UNESCO Bangkok, ICT for Education in Asia and the Pacific website. UNESCO Bangkok’s ICT for Education in Asia and the Pacific website is a comprehensive site on ICT for education in Asia and the Pacific. It provides up-to-date information dealing with the use of ICT in education in the region. The dynamic new site offers easy-access webpages, searchable databases on resources, news and events, projects, organizations, teacher training on ICT, indicators, powerful searches, etc.

go  WWWEDU. WWWEDU (pronounced 'we do') is the Internet's largest and longest-running forum on the use of the World Wide Web in education. Founded and moderated by Andy Carvin of the Benton Foundation (acarvin@benton.org).

E-Government

 

go  Digitalgovernance.org. A website created by Vikas Nath, containing extensive resources on e-Governance and ICT.

go  Districts of India website. The Districts of India Portal features among other variety of citizen services to facilitate government-public interaction and strengthen e-governance at the grass-root level. It is an endeavour of the National Informatics Centre (NIC) of India to provide a one-stop source for all the information about Districts of India at one place on the web. A very significant value addition in the form of Citizen Services attempts to bridge the gap between government and public in day-to-day administration. The Portal operates on a Participatory Model soliciting citizens' direct involvement in updating the Portal through Citizen Services Registration.

go  e-Govenment Bulletin from Headstar.com. E-Government Bulletin from Headstar.com is a email service covering electronic public services, 'teledemocracy' and the information society in the UK and worldwide. The Bulletin is a free, independent publication, aimed at everyone in government, local government, the social sector and their private sector partners

go  E-Govenment for poor countries? Modernizing the state in the Third World, by Christian von Haldenwang.

go  E-Governance in developing countries, a IICD Research Brief, March 2001.

go  E-Government and Democracy Report, by Steven Clift - Publicus.net.

go  e-government for Development home page.The "eGovernment for Development Information Exchange" project is coordinated by the University of Manchester's Institute for Development Policy and Management .

go  European Commission: Links to e-government websites of member states of the EU and to other national e-government sites.

go  Force3, Forum for creative entrepreneurship. Force3 ( Forum for Creative Entrepreneurship ) a registered Non Profit society NGO from India having Chhattisgarh / Vidarbha Chapters is focussed on IT Enabled employment oriented E-Governance initiatives.

go  Life-Line to Business. Tuesday, November 16, 2004,

ICT and e-Gov for achieving MDGs Case study on: “ICT and e-Gov”

go  Logging on in Belandur. Belandur Gram Panchayat in Karnataka, India, which is the first in the State to computerise its administration, finds that e-governance cuts costs and removes corruption, among other things.

go  Making E-Gov Work, IT leaders discuss what is needed to fully integrate e-government services and operations, published by Federal Computer Week June 2002.

go  Plan of Action, E-Government for Development, by UN-ESA and the Ministry for Innovation and Technologies, Government of Italy. The plan of action is the outcome of the International Conference on E-government for Development.

go  Roadmap for E-Government in the Developing World, 10 questions E-Government Leaders should ask themselves. A publication of the Pacific Council on International Policy, the Western Partner of the Council on Foreign Relations.

go  The E-government Handbook for Developing Countries, a Project of InfoDev and the Center for Democracy and Technology.

go  the e-government webpage of the Government of Andhra Pradesh (India).

Environment

 

go  Scrapping the High-Tech Myth, Computer Waste in India, by Toxics Links, February 2003.

go  Sustainability at the Speed of Light, opportunities and challenges for tomorrow's society. Published by WWF Sweden and WWF International.

go  SustainIT Newsletter website. SustainIT is an initiative of UK CEED, a research foundation. It conducts research on, and provides best practice examples of, synergies between ICT and sustainable development. It is supported by British Telecom (BT).

French documents and links

 

go  Damocles.org. Site web du bras juridique de Reporters sans frontières.

go  Encourager la participation de la société civile dans les politiques des TIC : Le Sommet Mondial sur la Société de l'Information. Ce livre est publié sur le web par L' Association pour des Communications Progressives (APC) et la campagne pour les Droits à la Communication dans la Société de l'Information (CRIS) (download sans frais).

go  Enjeux et perspectives de la société civile au Sommet mondial sur la société de l'information.

go  Film de l'Atelier "Droit et Toile", UNITAR, enregistré lors du SMSI.

go  Gouvernement français: L'action de l'état pour le développement de la société de l'information, site portail.

go  Gouvernement français: Site de la consultation nationale pour la préparation du SMSI.

go  Le Forum des droits sur l'intenet, page de liens.

go  Le Forum des droits sur l'internet. Ce site est un espace d'information et de débat sur les questions de droit et de société liées à l'internet.

go  L'information est un bien public. Prise de position de Pain pour le prochain (Suisse) en vue du Sommet mondial sur la société de l'information

go  UNESCO Webworld, Communication et information. Site portail de l'UNESCO pour la société de l'Information. Si le site ouvre en anglais, l'utilisateur peut cliquer sur la version française.

go  Union Européenne: Activités de l'UE, Société de l'Information. Site portail de l'Union Européenne concernant la société de l'information.

go  uZine.net. uZine est un espace d’expression, d’information, d’échange et de pédagogie autour des enjeux de l’internet. Créé par des militants du Web indépendant, il fonctionne pour et grâce à la participation des utilisateurs. Chacun est donc invité à participer activement à la vie du site pour construire cet espace web, au-delà de la simple consommation passive de l’information.

go  VECAM. VECAM est une association qui s'est constituée sur les constats suivants : L'information, les productions culturelles et le savoir connaissent une numérisation croissante ; Les réseaux informatiques maillent progressivement les territoires ; Toutes les forces structurant les sociétés humaines sont ou seront touchées par la combinaison de ces éléments.

go  Villes-internet, centre de ressources de l'internet local et citoyen.

Gender

 

go  Connecting Voices and Expanding Horizons. ABSTRACT Anju Vyas describes the genesis, developments, doubts, dilemmas and challenges of moderating BOL, an electronic discussion list on gender issues in South Asia.

go  Declaration of the GKP forum on ICT and Gender. More than 300 participants from around the globe gathered at the "Forum on ICTs and Gender: Optimizing Opportunities" in Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur end of August. In their declaration for WSIS, they stressed the importance of ICT as a tool to promote women's empowerment, rights and dignity and full participation in the information society.

go  Extract of the Report of the First Session of the Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality, New York, 26 February to 1 March 2002.

go  Gender and ICT, 2004, an overview Report by Anita Gurumurthy.

go  Gender, Information Technology, and Developing Countries: An Analytic Study, conducted in June 2001 for the United States Agency for International Development.

go  GenderIT.org. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are being used by women’s organisations to communicate their own agendas and perspectives in order to effect women’s empowerment and social change.

go  ICT, Gender Equality and Empowering Women, by John Daly, from the Development Gateway website. The page contains several interesting links to other gender sites

go  Key recommendations of the WSIS Gender Caucus, The Aftican Regional Preparatory Meeting for the World Summit on the Information Society, Bamako, Mali, May 25-30, 2002.

go  Let's Close Gender Gap in Information Technology, an editorial by Steve Gladis, Washington Business Journal.

go  SIGIS Strategies of Inclusion: Gender in the Information Society. SIGIS is a project funded by the EU Information Society Technologies Programme (IST). This project has analysed 30 initiatives and related processes of gender inclusion, partly to study the strategic features, partly to learn from relative successes, and partly to provide a knowledge base to support and encourage development of new inclusion efforts. This is needed to safeguard the development of an information society for all, but it is also an important prerequisite of commercial success of many new ICT projects.

go  The GKP Newsletter of May 2003 has a special focus on gender. On the Newsletter page, click on May 2003.

go  Women's Economic Empowerment through ICTs. Book chapters available on the site.

Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Relief

 

go  A Pension in Fish - India. A beneficial long term idea arose from a catastrophic natural disaster.

go  Aid Workers Network. Aid Workers Network links relief and development field staff to share support, ideas and best practice. This web site is being developed by a team of experienced aid workers to provide a comprehensive resource for busy field workers needing practical advice and proven resources to help with their current work.

go  'Bytes for All' Special Issue on 'Disaster Mitigation'.

go  Community Based Care for Separated Children. Worldwide, children can become separated from their parents, caretakers, and communities as a result of armed conflict, natural disasters, pandemics such as AIDS, and various forms of exploitation and abuse.

go  Community Radio Society of Tafea (CReST FM) - Tafea, Vanuatu. In 2004, the Community Radio Society of Tafea (CReST) began the process of setting up a community FM radio network for people who live in the province of Tafea on the island of Vanuatu.

go  Community-Based Disaster Preparedness (CBDP) Programme - Andhra Pradesh, India. Twenty NGOs involved in disaster management in Andhra Pradesh train children to recognise cyclone warnings and act on them, build floating devices, rescue and treat the injured and get people safely into cyclone shelters. For the children it’s fun and games, but with a very serious undertone.

go  Dateline Earth: Journalism as if the Planet Mattered. Kunda Dixit's claim is that issues like jungle families sickened by mine tailings, peasants adversely affected by global free trade, countries impacted by toxic dumpsites, and general environmental neglect, are often ignored.

go  Economics for Ever.

go  Emergency ITN Distribution and Retreatment, Mozambique. Following the extensive flooding that affected southern Mozambique during February 2000, the Ministry of Health, in collaboration with UNICEF and several NGO partners (SCF-USA, WVI, LWF, ADPP, Oxfam, Concern, Merlin, World Relief), distributed 200,000 ITNs to flood-affected families in conjunction with participatory communication for malaria. These nets were distributed free of charge.

go  Familylinks, the website of the ICRC concerning people sought by their families in connection with conflicts/crisis worldwide.

go  forcedmigration online. Forced migration online provides instant access to a wide variety of online resources dealing with the situation of lforced migrants worldwide.

go  HAM Radio Project - Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda. Reaching out to farmers and rural communities, a network of amateur radio operators supports efforts to improve communication on droughts and floods throughout the continent.

go  Information Management System for Mine Action. IMSMA is the information management system is developed by the Centre for Security Studies at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology (ETH) Zurich on behalf of the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining and is part of Switzerland's effort to strengthen humanitarian demining.

go  Involving Local Communities to Prevent and Control Forest Fires. "Globally, 95 percent of all fires are caused by various human activities," said Mike Jurvelius, an FAO forest fire expert.

go  Reconstruir Information System - El Salvador. El Salvador Earthquake Reconstruction Aided by Internet: Web site data helped speed planning and reduce costs.

go  Reducing Disaster Risk: A Challenge for Development (Part 1 of 2). Natural disasters exert an enormous toll on development. In doing so, they pose a significant threat to prospects for achieving the Millennium Development Goals in particular, the overarching target of halving extreme poverty by 2015.

go  Refugees International website.

go  ReliefWeb. ReliefWeb is a project of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and serves the information needs of the humanitarian relief community.

go  Sphere Project - Global. The Sphere Project was launched in 1997 by a group of humanitarian NGOs and the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement.

go  UNHCR Website.

go  Water: Foremost Cause of Natural Disaster. Source: WHO Information Fact Sheet Feature No. 203, September 2001

Healthcare

 

go  Health Communication Insights Information and Communication Technologies for the Developing World by Andrew Maxfield, Ph.D. Health Communication Insights, published by The Health Communication Partnership (HCP), aims to explore issues related to advances in strategic health communication.

go  Satellife, the Global Health Information Network. SATELLIFE has frequently been recognized for its accomplishments as a pioneer and leader in the international development community. SATELLIFE was recently named: Winner, 2002 Stockholm Challenge Award in Health, Finalist, 2002 Digital Partners Social Enterprise Laboratory Award, Finalist, 2002 ICT Stories Competition sponsored by infoDev and the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD).

go  Should Public Health Trump Private Rights.

go  The Digital Pulse The Current and Future Applications of Information and Communication Technologies for Developmental Health Priorities. A report published by The Communication Initiative 2003 By Warren Feek of The Communication Initiative with substantial support and guidance from Greg Long.

go  WorldVistA. WorldVistA is a non-profit corporation with the mission of furthering the cause of making affordable healthcare information technology available worldwide. WorldVistA aims to further this mission by championing and promoting the deployment of the VistA System as part of an open-source free software (OSFS) stack.

Human Rights

 

go  CRIN, the Child Rights Information Network.

go  Human Rights around he world, a links page.

go  Human Rights Internet. Founded in 1976, HRI is a leader in the exchange of information within the worldwide human rights community. Launched in the United States, HRI has its headquarters in Ottawa, Canada. From Ottawa, HRI communicates by phone, fax, mail and the Internet with more than 5,000 organizations and individuals around the world working for the advancement of human rights. HRI is dedicated to the empowerment of human rights activists and organizations, and to the education of governmental and intergovernmental agencies and officials and other actors in the public and private sphere, on human rights issues and the role of civil society.

go  Human Rights links.

go  Human Rights Net. The aim of the Human Rights Net site is to provide a platform for human rights organisations and networks. Here you will find the homepages of NGO's and information on their activities and publications.

go  Human Rights Ressource Center. The Human Rights Resource Center is an integral part of the University of Minnesota Human Rights Center and works in partnership with the University of Minnesota Human Rights Library.

go  Human Rights Window. The HUMAN RIGHTS Window provides a specific focus on the information related to HUMAN RIGHTS on The Communication Initiative website.

ICT for peace

 

go  ICT for Peace Website.

go  Untying the gordian knot. How can ICT help strengthen peace processes?. This study focuses on the use of new information and communications technology (ICT) to augment traditional conflict transformation techniques. It argues that much of the literature on ICT fails to treat it as one factor among many that shape inter-state and intra-state relations in developing countries. The author seeks to address this by critically exploring the underlying assumptions of the creative use of ICT in peacebuilding interventions, drawing on a case study of Info Share, an ICT initiative involved in the peace process in Sri Lanka. The study identifies conflict transformation as a necessary bedrock of successful ICT interventions, and discusses key challenges and limitations of such interventions.

ICTs for MDGs (internationally agreed development goals as set down in the Millenium Declaration)

 

go  A Dialogue on ICTs and Poverty: The Harvard Forum. In September 2003, 30 experts from around the world gathered at Harvard University to discuss how information and communication technologies (ICTs) can help to reduce poverty.

go  How ICTs can help achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Goal 8 includes a target to make available the benefits of ICTs to all the world's inhabitants. As well as this commitment, ICT can play a major role in achieving most of the other goals. The role of ICT for each goal is suggested in column 2. This text is designed to be used to compile information on best practices in using ICT to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that would help development practitioners identify what works and replicate success stories.

go  Human Development Report 2003 Millennium Development Goals: A compact among nations to end human poverty. The range of human development in the world is vast and uneven, with astounding progress in some areas amidst stagnation and dismal decline in others. Balance and stability in the world will require the commitment of all nations, rich and poor, and a global development compact to extend the wealth of possibilities to all people.

go  ICTs and MGDs, World Bank Group Perspective.

go  Information and Communication Technologies for Poverty Reduction? Discussion Paper By Richard Gerster and Sonja Zimmerman. Poverty is seen as the opposite of well-being. Beyond a lack of income, the multidimensional concept of poverty also refers to disadvantages in access to land, credit and services (e.g. health and education), vulnerability (towards violence, external economic shocks, natural disasters), powerlessness and social exclusion.

go  INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGIES FOR DEVELOPMENT Elements of an Action Framework for Implementing the Millennium Development Goals Task Force on Science, Technology and Innovation of the United Nations Millennium Project. Metaphors play an important role is shaping policy discourses. One of the most salient of these is the “digital divide” which is used to capture the growing divergence between the industrialized and developing countries in the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs).

go  Measuring, Monitoring and Analyzing ICT Impacts by the United Nations ICT Task Force. As we approach the five year measure of progress toward the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), international development organizations are taking stock of what progress has been made. Results to date are showing some countries are progressing well toward achieving the MDG.

go  Nord et Sud numériques (Les cahiers du numérique Volume 2 n°3/4-2001) Auteur(s) : SOUPIZET Jean-François, GILLE Laurent.

go  Poverty and e-Readication by Bruno Lanvin and Christine Zhen-Wei Qiang. The year 2000 saw the launch of two major international efforts, which are now expected to converge. One was the “Digital Opportunity Task Force” (DOT Force), initiated by the G-8. The other was the adoption by the UN General Assembly of a new set of development targets, called “Millennium Development Goals” or MDG, to be achieved by 2015.1

go  Short website on the Millennium Development Ggoals, made by the UN. This site contains the Millennium Development Goals, the declaration, The SG's 2000 report and press releases on the progress on the Millennium Development Goals.

go  Statement of the President of the Economic and Social Council H.E. Dr. Ivan Simonoviæ, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Croatia.

go  The MDG Dashboard, developed by the European Statistical Laboratory. The "MDG Dashboard" presents these indicators in a highly communicative format aimed at decision-makers and citizens interested in the Millennium Development Goals and Sustainable Development. This free database provides 60 indicators for ca. 200 countries and 15 years (1990-2004) based on original UN Statistics Division data.

go  The Regional Human Development Report on Promoting ICT for Human Development: Realising the Millennium Development Goals,.

go  UNDP website on the Millennium Development Goals. UNDP, as the UN's global development network, links and coordinates global and national efforts to reach the Millennium goals.

go  Video of Jeff Sachs, Special Advisor to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and Director of the Millennium Project. March 1st discussion on the Millennium Development Goals and the challenges facing the Donor Community.

go  Website of the UN General Assembly. The turn of the century is a unique and symbolically compelling moment for the 189 Member States of the United Nations to articulate and affirm an animating vision for the Organization in the new era.

go  Working Paper: Tools for Development - Using Information and Communications Technology to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals. The UN ICT Task Force is developing a comprehensive conceptual framework which underlines the role that ICTs play in the overall development agenda.

go  Working Party on ICT Indicators and MDG Mapping. An informal working party was established by the United Nations ICT Task Force in April 2003, led by the Canadian government, to examine the impact of ICT on the international development agenda and more specifically, the impact of ICT in furthering efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDG).

go  World Bank website on the Millennium Development Goals.

ICT- policy and Internet Governance

 

go  Beyond ICANN vs. ITU? How WSIS tries to enter the new territory of Internet Governance, by Wolfgang Kleinwächter.

go  Donor ICT Strategies Matrix, published by OECD/DAC, December 2003.

go  Framing ‘Internet Governance’ Policy Discourse: Fifteen Baseline Propositions by William J. Drake. Paper based on presentations at the Workshop on Internet Governance, International Telecommunication Union, Geneva, February 26-27, 2004; and the UN ICT Task Force Global Forum on Internet Governance, New York City; March 25-26, 2004.

go  Frequently Asked Questions About Conducting a National WSIS Consultation Process Version 1, June 2003, Association for Progressive Communications. This APC guide outlines the steps to take and key components in organising a national consultation around ICT policy. The primary target audience is people that are active in using

or promoting the use of ICTs in their work, but who have not necessarily been involved in national level policy processes previously.

go  Global E-policy resource network (ePol-NET). ePol-NET provides a focal point for global efforts in support of national e-strategies for development. The initiative, presented as WSIS in December 2003 at Geneva, brings together Partners from a range of organisations around the world who contribute e-strategy and e-policy information and expertise for the benefit of individuals, organisations and governments in developing countries.The network provides ICT policymakers in developing countries with the depth and quality of information needed to develop effective national e-policies and e-strategies.

go  Global E-policy resource network, Press release.

go  Governance webpage from the Global Internet Policy Initiative.

go  Herding Schrodinger’s cats: Some conceptual tools for thinking about Internet Governance. Background Paper for the ITU Workshop on Internet Governance Geneva, 26-27 February 2004.

go  How Domain Name Servers Work. By Marshall Brain.

go  ICANN. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a private sector initiative to assume responsibility for overseeing the technical coordination of the Domain Name System (DNS), which allows Internet addresses (for example, web pages and email accounts) to be found by easy-to-remember names, instead of numbers. Incorporated and headquartered in California, ICANN is a non-profit corporation structured to make decisions on the basis of Internet community consensus. As ICANN's start-up phase progresses, its Board of Directors will be elected in part by a global membership of individual members of the Internet community, and in part by supporting organizations representing the business, technical, non-commercial and academic communities.

go  ICANN Announcement regarding certification of "At-Large Structures", 16 December 2003. In an important step towards fulfilling the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' (ICANN's) objective to have informed, structured participation of the individual Internet user community ("At-Large"), six organizations in three geographic regions have received "At-Large Structure" certification. Certification recognizes that the following groups meet ICANN's criteria for involving individual Internet users at the local or issue level in ICANN activities and for promoting individuals' understanding of, and participation in, ICANN.

go  ICT Policy and Internet Rights page from the Association for Progressive Communications (APC).

go  ICT Policy for Civil Society: A Taining Course.

go  ICT Policy, a Beginners Handbook, Association for Progressive Communications, Ed. Chris Nicol, December 2003. This book by APC lays out the issues and dispenses with the jargon to encourage more people to get involved in ICT policy processes. It is for people who feel that ICT policy is important but don't know much about it, e.g. a government official worried about a gap in her technical knowledge of how the internet works, a human-rights worker concerned that his need to send secure email is being challenged by national government policy, a citizen fed up with paying exorbitant rates for dial-up internet access and ready to organise… The book can be downloaded from the website at no cost (zip-file).

go  Ideology and policy: notes on the shaping of the Internet by Katharine Sarikakis. This paper considers some of the ideologies that are shaping Internet policies. It addresses the priorities of international policy initiatives and identifies their discursive constructions. It takes stock of some of the most characteristic policy directions that seek to define the Internet and its uses within an agenda of predominant privatisation.

go  Information about the the DNS Root Server Mirror Service and Anycast.

go  Information and Communication Technologies, Poverty and Development: Learning from Experience. A background paper for the InfoDev Annual Symposium 2003, by Kerry S. McNamara.

go  Internet Exchange Points Their Importance to Development of the Internet and Strategies for their Deployment - The African Example 6 June 2002 (revised 3 May 2004).

go  Internet governance and the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) by Adam Peake. Adam Peake is Executive Research Fellow at the Center for Global Communications (GLOCOM), International University of Japan.

go  Louder voices. A study by the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation and Panos London. Strengthening Developing Country Participation in International ICT Decision-Making

go  Open code and open societies: values of Internet governance, by Lawrence Lessig.

go  Who rules the Internet? Understanding ICANN. Internet governance is becoming an influential factor in the way we access, consume, produce and exchange information. As an internet governance working group prepares to meet in advance of the World Summit on the Information Society, Panos London launches the first brief of its WSIS media toolkit.

Knowledge Societies

 

go  Arab Human Development Report: Building a Knowledge Society.

go  Connecting Voices and Expanding Horizons. ABSTRACT Anju Vyas describes the genesis, developments, doubts, dilemmas and challenges of moderating BOL, an electronic discussion list on gender issues in South Asia.

go  Exiled to Cyberia, a third world view on the Knowledge Society, by Kunda Dixit, Director, Panos South Asia.

go  Information Management: A Proposal. The historical document written by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in 1989 which triggered off the World Wide Web.

go  Knowledge for Development website of USAID.

go  Knowledge in the service of development, by Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul.

go  Knowledge Societies, Information Technology for Sustainable Development, by Robin Mansell and Uta Wehn.

go  Making Knowledge Networks work for the Poor, Final Report of an ITDG workshop, March, 2003.

go  Scan globally, reinvent locally, Knowledge infrastructure and the localisation of knowledge, by Joseph Stiglitz. A shortened version can be found here.

go  The Open Knowledge network. The Open Knowledge Network (OKN) is a human network, which collects, shares and disseminates local knowledge and is supported by flexible technical solutions.

go  The Public Knowledge Project. The Public Knowledge Project is a research initiative located at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. It seeks to improve the scholarly and public quality of academic research through innovative online environments

go  The Wayback Machine.

go  Toward the global knowledge and information society, the challenges for development cooperation, by Dr. Hans d'Orville, Director, IT for Development programme, Bureau for Development Policy/UNDP.

go  Website of the Bibliotheca Alexandria, Egypt.

go  Website of the Library of Congress.

go  Website of the World Bank on knowledge sharing. Knowledge sharing at the World Bank has evolved over time. From an early emphasis on capturing and organizing knowledge, its focus now is on adopting, adapting, and applying knowledge in a way that helps World Bank staff, clients, and partners work more effectively to reduce global poverty.

Media

 

go  ARTICLE 19, homepage of ARTICLE 19, the Global Campaign for Free Expression.

go  Centre for International Media Action. This website is designed as an information-exchange and networking center for people and organizations who are challenging the corporate-driven media through activism, education, research, organizing and policy advocacy.

go  Changemakers.net webpage library website on communications: media and networks.

go  CRIS (Communication Rights in the Information Society) homepage.

go  Democracy needs public discourse By Reinold E. Thiel. Independent and critical reporting helps to democratically monitor the state. Only well informed citizens cast their votes sensibly.

go  Eastern Empires, Foreign Ownership in Central and Eastern European Media: Ownership, Policy Issues and Strategies. Published by the European Federation of Journalists. A useful summary is at http://www.euractiv.com/cgi-bin/cgint.exe/523137-535?204&OIDN=1505789&-tt=me

go  Elitist public, high growth rate: how the the internet is changing the face of journalism by Werner Eggert.

go  Hearing the Voices of the Poor: Encouraging Good Governance and Poverty Reduction through Media Sector Support, by Dr. Ann Hudock.

go  International Freedom of eXpression (IFEX) home page (with a special section on WSIS).

go  Internet sous surveillance, Les entraves à la circulation de l'information sur le réseau, Reporters sans Frontières, Rapport 2003 (french only).

go  Involving civil society in ICT Policy: The World Summit on the Information Society (by the APC). The book can be downloaded from this page.

go  Le guide mondial de la presse en ligne / 500 links to newspapers worldwide (in french only).

go  Markets thrive on information: the role of functional business media for market efficiency by Jenny Luesby.

go  Proceedings from the Seminar on Global Perspectives of Development Communication.

go  Reporters sans Frontières, page d'entrée (from the French entry page, you can switch to the English page).

go  Website of the People's Communication Charter.

Participation, e-democracy

 

go  A People's approach to produce web content (PAPWEC). This web-based tutorial/manual provides the underlying concepts and practical guidelines for a participatory web design methodology.

go  Deliberative Democracy Consosrtium. Deliberative democracy strengthens citizen voices in governance by including people of all races, classes, ages and geographies in deliberations that directly affect public decisions. As a result, citizens influence--and can see the result of their influence on--the policy and resource decisions that impact their daily lives and their future.

go  DoWire - Democracy Online Newswire. DoWire is promoting online civic participation and democracy efforts around the world through information exchange, experience sharing, outreach, and education.

go  Governance page of the British Council Website.

go  Integrated approaches to participatory development (IAPAD). Participatory Avenues aims at sharing significant progress in visualizing people's spatial knowledge (cognitive maps) and in providing communities added stake in tailoring and owning conservation and development initiatives.

go  Logolink. LogoLink is a global network of practitioners from civil society organisations, research institutions and governments working to deepen democracy through greater citizen participation in local governance. LogoLink encourages learning from field-based innovations and expressions of democracy which contribute to social justice.

go  Making the Net Work. Making The Net Work aims to help organisations, centres, neighbourhoods or networks plan and use the Net effectively.

go  Participation toolkit. The toolkit offers information on tools which promote citizen participation in local governance. Over hundred of cases are described and analysed. The site also presents articles and links for further reference

go  Participation Website of the FAO.

go  Partnerships Online. A Website for Partnerships, participation and Online Communities

go  Resource Centres for Participatory Learning and Actkon Network. The RCPLA website aims at bringing together a diverse, international network of development practitioners to strengthen impact on processes of social change, by sharing field experiences, facilitating capacity building and encouraging the use of participatory practices.

go  Teledemocracy Action News + Network TAN+N. The TAN+N website of the Global Democracy Movement is primarily dedicated to the creative use of modern technologies (ICT) and face-to-face deliberative techniques in all forms that directly empower citizens to have authentic input into political systems at all levels of governance around the world.

go  The Community Planning Website. This well structured website provides an overview of these new methods of community planning. It is aimed at everyone concerned with the built environment. Jargon is avoided and material is presented in a universally applicable, how-to-do-it style.

go  The Jefferson Center: originator of the citizens' jury process.

go  The Loka Institute. Loka works to make science and technology more responsive to social and environmental concerns by expanding opportunities for grassroots, public-interest groups, and everyday citizen and worker involvement in vital facets of science and technology decision making.

go  The Participation Kiosk of the German Society for Technical Cooperation (GTZ).

go  The top 10 Open Source Tools for e-Activism.

Rights, Law, Ethics

 

go  A comprehensive section on Cybercrime and Lawfull access from lexinformatica.org.

go  Association of Internet Researchers, Ethics working committee - a preliminary report.

go  Code and other laws of Cyberspace, A summary of Lawrence Lessig's book written by Bob Magnant, web-published with permission of L. Lessig.

go  Cyberethics, Computer Ethics. Homepage of IS World Net.

go  Damocles.org. The Damocles Network, the legal arm of Reporters Without Borders, has launched this new site in French and English entitled Toolbox. Designed for professionals but also for the use of anyone interested in freedom of expression, www.damocles.org carries basic texts that guarantee press freedom, along with extracts from codes of ethics.

go  Electronic Privacy Information Centre consultation paper on Lawful access for the Canadian Department of Justice.

go  ETHICOMP, a journal on computer ethics and social responsibility.

go  Ethics in Communication, Ponitifical Council for Social Communications.

go  Ethics in Internet, Pontifical Council for Social Communication.

go  Global Governance in the Information Age, by Prof. Wolfgang Kleinwächter, Aarhus 2001.

go  Governing the Internet: Engaging Governments, Business and Non-Profits, by Zoe Baird (500-words preview of the article in Foreign Affairs, November/December 2002).

go  Human Rights Window of the Communication Initiative. The HUMAN RIGHTS Window provides a specific focus on the information related to HUMAN RIGHTS on The Communication Initiative website.

go  ICT & Intellectual Property Rights, by John Daly, from the Development Gateway website. The webpage contains links to the most important resources for this topic

go  Lex Informatica: The Formulation of Information Policy Rules Through Technology, by Joel L. Reidenberg (from Texas Law Review, February 1998).

go  Making Law Count, Background and Rationale of the People's Communication Charter Movement, by Cees Hamelink.

go  Privaterra/Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility consultation paper on Lawful access for the Canadian Department of Justice.

go  The Freedominfo.org Global Survey Freedom of Information and Access to Government Record Laws around the World.

go  The right to freedom of opinion and expression. United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Commission on Human Rights Resolution 2003/42

go  The World Summit in Reflection. Information Technologies and International Development will be the premier journal in its field, focusing on the intersection of information and communication technologies (ICT) with international development. We aim to create a networked community of leading thinkers and strategists to discuss the critical issues of ICT and development, an epistemic community that crosses disciplines (especially technologists and social scientists), national boundaries, and the North and South hemispheres.

go  Toward a Framework for Internet Accountability, published by the Markle Foundation, July 2001.

go  Welcome to T182, Law, the Internet and Society: Technology and the Future of Ideas. This course originally formed part of the Relevant Knowledge undergraduate programme at the Open University. The university has now taken this course out of its academic programme, but the authors have decided to make the material available to a wider public under a Creative Commons licence.

go  What are global public goods? By Dr. Carola Donner-Reichle.

Science

 

go  Committee on Data for Science and Technology homepage. Virtually everything we do has been profoundly affected by the Information Revolution: How we travel, how we shop, how we communicate, how we do business.

go  International Council for Science, WSIS page. Scientific research is one of the key factors underpinning the development of the Information Society.

go  Sci-DevNet Home page, News views and information about science, technology and the developing world.

go  Scientific output: The real "knowledge divide. A new international study of scientific publications shows that the gap in scientific output between developed and developing countries is even greater than the gap in inputs (i.e. research spending).

go  The Role of Science in the Information Society, homepage of the conference. The open exchange of information, made possible by the World Wide Web and other information technologies….

Security

 

go  Information Insecurity: A survival guide to the unchartered territories of cyber-threat and cyber-security , by Eduardo Gelbstein (2.3 MB).

go  Links to Information Security websites, courtesy of Eduardo Gelbstein.

Special Focus: Africa

 

go  7th Highway Africa Conference: "Mainstreaming Medi3 in the Information Society", 8-10 September 2003 - Grahamstown, South Africa.

go  African Information Society Initiative.

go  Balancing Act, useful links to African websites.

go  Bisharat! A language, technology and development initiative. Bisharat! is an evolving idea based on the importance of maternal languages in sustainable development and the enormous potential of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) to benefit efforts in the area of language and development. Anticipating the gradual introduction of computers and the internet to rural communities in Africa, the current focus of Bisharat is on research, advocacy, and networking relating to use of African languages in software and web content.

go  Bisharat! Links page. An annotated list of links on: Languages, Knowledge, Development, & ICT, Research & reference concerning languages & ICTs, Research & reference concerning African languages, Software, e-mail, & ICT projects for African languages, Automatic translation - software, research, On-line dictionaries for African languages and a few sites largely or entirely in African languages, + Other links on Africa.

go  Catalysing Access to ICT in Africa (CATIA). The Catalysing Access to ICT in Africa (CATIA) programme aims to enable poor people in Africa to gain maximum benefit from the opportunities offered by Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and to act as a strong catalyst for reform. It will support a package of strategic activities to improve affordable access to the full range of ICTs, from Internet to community radio.

go  Completing the Revolution, The Challenge of Rural telephony in Africa. In the midst of the current enthusiasm for ICTs for development it is often forgotten that most rural Africans do not yet even have access to telephones.

go  Conference on the Financing of NEPAD, Dakar 15-17 April 2002.

go  Connectivity Africa homepage. Connectivity Africa (CA) was announced during the 2002 G8 Kananaski Summit. It will build on Canada's experience in connectivity projects in Africa and adapt Canadian expertise and models to the needs of African countries, particularly in education, health and economic development. Connectivity Africa is being implemented by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), in partnership with the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).

go  Database of online ressources from Bridges.org.

go  Drumbeat no. 187, Special Focus on ICTs in Africa, Part 3. On the Drumbeat page, put the keyword "Africa" and search.

go  Fair Access to Internet Report (FAIR) Reveals Cost And Regulatory Barriers To Internet Access in Africa. The findings of this report were presented at the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva, December 2003.

go  ICT-Enabled Development Case Studies Series: Africa.

go  Kabissa, a website using technology to strengthen non profit organizations working to improve the lives of people in Africa.

go  Partnership for Information and Communication Technologies in Africa.

go  Report of the Africa Regional Conference for WSIS (Bamako 28-30 May 2002).

go  Research ICT Africa! seeks to fulfil a strategic gap in the development of a sustainable information society and knowledge economy on the African continent….

go  Soulbeat Africa. A project of Soul City and the Communication Initiative, Soul Beat Africa aims to be a space for communicators across Africa to share experiences, materials, strategic thinking and events, and to engage in discussion and debate. This site is meant for communicators, practitioners, media makers, academics, researchers, and others who are using or are interested in communication for change in Africa. The site focusses specifically on Africa, providing an opportunity for the unique experiences and issues of the continent to be shared and debated, while helping to strengthen communication for development and social change.

go  Summary of the 4th Africa Computing and Telecommunications (ACT) Summit, Nairobi, Kenya, 6-8 August 2002.

go  Summary of the African Infrastructure and Services Report 2002/20.

go  The Africa ICT Policy Monitor.

go  The Association for Progressive Communications. The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) is an international network of civil society organisations dedicated to empowering and supporting groups and individuals through the strategic use of information and communication technologies, especially internet-related technologies.

go  The Business for Africa website.

go  The Centre for Connectivity in Africa (Canadian Government Initiative/IDRC).

go  The LINK Centre is the leading research and training body in the field of information and communications technology (ICT) policy, regulation and management in Southern Africa.

go  Website of the ACACIA Initiative.

Spanish documents and links

 

go  Actividades de la Unión Europea, Sociedad de la Informatión.

go  CEPAL, Sociedad de la Información.

go  Derechos.org. Derechos Human Rights trabaja junto a su ONG hermana Equipo Nizkor por el respeto a los derechos humanos en todo el mundo. Nuestra principal tarea consiste en la socialización de información y análisis sobre los derechos humanos a través de nuestro web y nuestras listas de derechos humanos. Además, impulsamos juicios contra violadores a los derechos humanos y apoyamos el trabajo de ONG locales y activistas.

go  eEurope 2005: Una sociedad de la información para todos.

go  Funredes.org. FUNREDES es un Organismo No Gubernamental Internacional, dedicado a la difusión de las Nuevas Tecnologías de la Información y de la Comunicación (NTIC) en los países en desarrollo, en particular en América Latina y el Caribe. Esto en colaboración con los Organismos Internacionales, ONG, los Estados, las Administraciones y las Instituciones públicas o privadas interesadas, con el objetivo de contribuir al desarrollo e integración regional.

go  Historia de la Red Cientifica Peruana.

go  Involucrando a la sociedad civil en políticas de TIC, La Cumbre Mundial sobre la Sociedad de la Información. Una nueva publicación de la La Asociación para el Progreso de las Comunicaciones (APC) y la Campaña Derechos a la Comunicación en la Sociedad de la Información (CRIS)

go  La Brecha Digital: Mitos y Realidades. Uno de los objetivos de este libro es contribuir a concienciar al lector sobre la importancia de la reducción de la brecha digital distinguiendo los mitos y realidades que existen. De esta forma se podrá desarrollar una visión integral sobre el papel de las nuevas tecnologías de la información en la sociedad. Una cosa es innegable: el deterioro ecológico, la migración hacia las grandes ciudades, el avance de la ciencia y la tecnología y los fenómenos sociales que estos procesos traen consigo ya no están circunscritos a una sola región del mundo y la humanidad, como un todo, enfrenta los retos de un desarrollo balanceado y sostenible. Las nuevas tecnologías de la información - como detonadores del desarrollo - tienen el potencial de transformar las terracerías de la información que puedan dar acceso al conocimiento aplicado a las necesidades básicas actuales.

go  Lincos Segunda Generación. LINCOS es una iniciativa de la Fundación Costa Rica para el Desarrollo Sostenible (FCRDS). La Fundación inicia sus operaciones en el año 1998 bajo la dirección del ex Presidente de Costa Rica (1994-1998) José María Figueres Olsen. La Fundación trabaja en países en vías de desarrollo con proyectos novedosos buscando en todo momento un impulso al desarrollo sostenible de las comunidades.

go  Los caminos hacia una sociedad de la información en América Latina y el Caribe, CEPAL, Julio de 2003.

go  Los Pueblos Indígenas y la Sociedad de la Información en América Latina y el Caribe, CEPAL y Instituto para la Conectividad en las Américas, Isabel Hernández Silvia Calcagno, Marzo 2003.

go  Manual para el desarollo de ciudades digitales en Iberoamerica. La informatización de los municipios, considerada en forma integral, puede considerarse como una nueva generación de obras públicas. Esta nueva generación tiene, como impacto en la comunidad y en su administración, el mejoramiento de la calidad y la eficiencia de la gestión municipal, y el perfeccionamiento de las infraestructuras de la economía, al establecer sistemas que incrementan la competitividad de los agentes de la producción y de los servicios. El presente manual pretende esbozar todo lo necesario para que la autoridad local y la UE (Unidad Ejecutora) cumplan un cometido de esta naturaleza.

go  MISTICA, Metodología e Impacto Social de las Tecnologías de la Información y de la Comunicación en América, Página de entrada. MISTICA es un proyecto de dos años que tiene dos objectivos: el fortalecimiento de los actores/actrices sociales de las NTIC de América Latina y el Caribe y la experimentación de una metodología articuladora para comunidades virtuales.

go  Pagina de enlaces externas de FUNREDES.

Success Stories, Case Studies, Experiments

 

go  A hole in the wall has been extended to coastal Maharashtra, and other stories of change from India.

go  A hole in the wall, an stunning story about how illiterate slum children start learning to surf on their own.

go  Akshaya.net. Akshaya net is a project implemented by IT Department, Government of Kerala with Private Sector Participation. It is one of the most ambitious ICT programmes ever attempted in developing countries.It endeavours : to bridge the digital divide in Kerala, to propel Kerala as India’s foremost Knowledge Society,to impart basic IT literacy to at least one member in each of the 65 lakh families in the state, to generate and distribute locally relevant content, to Improve public delivery of services and to catalyse all sectors of IT industry in the state.

go  ITU-BDT (Telecommunication Development Bureau of the International Telecommunication Union): Selected success stories.

go  LINCOS (Little Intelligent Communities) is an initiative of the Fundacion Costa Rica para el Desarollo Sostenible, directed by former president of Costa Rica, José María Figueres. LINCOS consists in the installation of modern Community Centers with information and technology platforms and an educational and sustainable development approach for the use of the technology.

go  Sucess stories of Online Land Records and Revenue Governance from India.

go  Tarahaat, an Indian website for village communities.

go  The Brides.org case studies website. The ICT-Enabled Development Case Study Series aims to disseminate best practice examples of how information communication technology has been successfully used by ground-level initiatives to alleviate poverty. Case studies are an effective tool for examining what works best, what fails, and why. The intention of this series is to share knowledge and catalyse lessons learned about ICT by local organisations and the international community. The current focus is on efforts based in Africa. The case study series is a joint initiative of the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD) and bridges.org, two organisations that share the goal of encouraging the effective use of ICT in developing countries.

go  The finalists of the ICT Stories competition 2002 of the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD), Netherlands.

go  The Knownet links page to ICT case studies and knowledge products.

go  The Petersberg Prize 2004. The Petersberg Prize is focused on innovative use and impact in the use of ICTs for social and economic development. The Petersberg Prize 2004 will recognize the most exemplary contribution in the field of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for development during the last ten years. The awardee will receive the €100,000 Prize. Deadline for nominations is March 22, 2004.

go  The Stockholm Challenge Award Website. By highlighting some of the best ICT projects the World over, the Stockholm Challenge helps bring out new models for the information society of tomorrow. The Stockholm Challenge, together with the IICD ICT Stories competition ( http://www.iicd.org/stories/) are the two major sources for ICT success stories.

go  The Village Phone Programme of Grameen Telecom, Bangaldesh.

Transparency

 

go  ICTs for Anti-Corruption and Transparency in Public Services. This article on the Development Gateway website was prepared by Basheerhamad Shadrach and edited by Pat Daly. Basheerhamad Shadrach is the Head of Knowledge and Information Services at Transparency International in Berlin.

go  ICTs for Anti-Corruption and Transparency in Public Services, by Basheerhamad Shadrach ICTs for Anti-Corruption and Transparency in Public Services, by Basheerhamad Shadrach. This paper presented at the 11th International Anti-Corruption Conference, Seoul, 25-28 May 2003, has a good reference list on the topic.

go  Public Sector Transparency: What Works?. This Special Report on Public Sector Transparency illustrates current international trends in advancing transparency through civil society, government and the media. Through extensive interviews with leaders across a range of sectors as well as survey feedback from Development Gateway users, this Report explores the practical issues of ensuring openness in governments around the world.

go  Transparency International Sourcebook 2000. The first version of this Source Book (now translated into over 20 languages) argued the casefor a "National Integrity System", an holistic approach to transparency and accountability andembracing a range of accountability "pillars", democratic, judicial, media and civil society.

go  Using ICT to improve Governance and Transparency, from the Development Gateway website. The page contains several links to other transparency sites

Youth

 

go  Local Voices Global Visions. Creator: TakingITGlobal

INDEPENDENT FILM

Video Genre: Documentary

Title: Local Voices Global Visions

File Size: 110mb

Length: 00:45:00

go  Newsletter: Updated newsletter from the Youth Liaison and daily newsletters from all WSIS meetings.

go  Roadmap to the Summit and Beyond: The roadmap for youth creating digital opportunities spanning policy-input, networking, celebration and project support.

go  The official website of the Youth Caucus provides details on activities past and future for the benefit of young people, international agencies and governments.

go  Youth Awards at WSIS. The Youth Creating Digital Opportunities Coalition and the Youth Caucus are coordinating an important international awards program for WSIS. It will reward and showcase Youth led ICT4D projects in areas such as health, education, environment, rural and human rights, including a $10,000 overall award sponsored by the Global Knowledge Partnership

go  Youth Creating Digital Opportunities, ycdo.net is an on-line portal designed to enable youth to share experiences and seek new opportunities and partnerships in the area of Information Communications Technology for Development (ICT4D).

Resolutions from ECOSOC

 

go  Resolution 2006/46, adopted on 28 July 2006: Follow-up to the World Summit on the Information Society.

Resolutions from the UN General Assembly

 

go  Resolution A/RES/56/183, adopted 21 December 2001, the first Resolution on WSIS adopted by the General Assembly.

go  Resolution A/RES/57/238 adopted 20 December 2002, the second Resolution on WSIS adopted by the General Assembly.

go  Resolution A/RES/59/220, adopted 22 December 2004, the third Resolution on WSIS adopted by the General Assembly.

go  Resolution A/RES/60/252, adopted 27 March 2006, the fourth Resolution on WSIS adopted by the General Assembly, proclaiming 17 May as annual World Information Society Day.

go  Report from ECOSOC for 2000 (A/55/3), adopted 21.8.2000, on the role of information technology in a knowledge-based economy.

go  Resolution A/RES/55/2, adopted 18.9.2000, the UN Millennium Declaration.

go  Resolution A/RES/56/258, adopted 31.1.2002, regarding a meeting of the General Assembly devoted to ICT for development.

go  Resolution A/RES/57/270, adopted 20.12.2002, on the integrated and coordinated implementation of and follow-up to the outcomes of the major UN conferences and summits in the economic and social fields.

go  Resolution A/RES/57/53, adopted 22.11.2002, on developments in the field of information and telecommunications in the context of international security.

Resolutions from ITU

 

go  Decision PLEN/1 adopted at the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference, Marrakech 2002.

go  Resolution 1158 of the ITU Council adopted in 2000.

go  Resolution 1179 of the ITU Council adopted in 2001.

go  Resolution 1196 of the ITU Council adopted at the 2002 session.

go  Resolution 1207 on ITU Preparatory Activity for WSIS adopted at the ITU Council, Geneva 2003. This resolution instructs the Secretary General and the Directors of the Bureaux to perform a “stock-taking exercise” and prepare an analysis paper, to show how ITU’s current work programme contributes to the fulfillment of the objectives outlined in the WSIS draft action plan. The paper is now available here

go  Resolution 1222 on ITU activities relevant to WSIS adopted at the ITU Council, Geneva 2004.

go  Resolution 1244 "ITU role in the Tunis phase of WSIS and in implementation and follow-up" adopted at the ITU Council 2005.

go  Resolution 68 "World Telecommunication and Information Society Day" adopted at the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference, Antalya 2006.

go  Resolution 73 of the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference, Minneapolis, 1998.

go  Resolution GT-PLEN/6 "ITU’s role in implementing the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society" adopted at the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference, Antalya 2006.

go  Resolution GT-PLEN/7 "Study on the participation of all relevant stakeholders in the activities of the Union related to WSIS" adopted at the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference, Antalya 2006.

go  Resolution PLEN/7 adopted at the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference, Marrakech 2002.

 

 

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