Meeting of content professionals in Lugano: An Alarming Observation

Random connectivity, prohibitive telephone costs, outrageous prices for access to online scientific data, almost non-existent vocational training opportunities; these are but a few of the numerous obstacles that professionals encounter in developing countries when creating, processing, disseminating or preserving online information. The problem is even more acute in the least developed countries (LDCs).

Scientists, journalists, teachers, librarians and archivists in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean made this alarming observation at a meeting held from 14 to 16 March in Lugano, in the Italian-speaking canton of Tessin. The meeting took place at the invitation of the Swiss commission for UNESCO and enabled some 70 experts from north and south to take note of the disastrous impact of the digital divide on these professions, without which the information society would exist in name only. The difficulty of access to information and knowledge that content professionals encounter while working in LDCs prevents them from participating actively in international cooperation in their respective fields. Further, their exclusion from the information society is also a burdensome handicap to social, economic, and cultural development in their countries, which are already at a terrible disadvantage, since information is at the heart of most sectors of human activity.

International professional organizations representing content professionals have welcomed the fact that the digital divide tops the list of concerns of the various bodies preparing the upcoming World Summit on the Information Society. However, some organizations fear that the Declaration and Plan of Action, to be adopted in Geneva next December, might be confined to a statement of principles and good intentions, with no follow-up. They want concrete action in the field, in everyday life. To this end, in close collaboration with many of their members from LDCs, they have prepared a series of national and regional projects accompanied with concrete measures. The implementation of such measures will make it possible to bridge the digital divide in their respective fields of competence.

These projects were developed following the in-depth studies conducted by the international professional associations in 2002, notably in conjunction with the Swiss Italian University of Lugano. These studies helped identify the obstacles that professionals in LDCs encounter on a daily basis in the course of their work. Subsequently, concrete measures were developed profession by profession in order to remove the obstacles and remedy the insufficiencies. Thus, the conditions could be created for professionals in these countries to obtain the means to take part in the sharing of information, to increase their skill levels, and to be able to fully participate in international cooperation in their respective fields. Once finalized, these projects will be submitted to the participants at the Geneva Summit as concrete examples of what can be done in LDCs to bridge the digital divide.

For more information, please contact: Mr.Alain Modoux, Swiss Executive Secretariat for WSIS, modoux.a@wanadoo.fr