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WORKSHOPS AND SEMINARS

The Digital Initiative for Development Agency (DID)
September 11th -12th, 2001, Gefinor Rotana Hotel, Beirut, Lebanon

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Contents

I. Workshop Report

Introduction
A. Background
B. Discussed Topics
Institutional Design of a DID Agency
The DID Agency Mandate
C. Other Debated Ideas for the DID Agency
D. Perspectives and Options for a DID Agency
Proposed Mandate

II. Discussion Paper

A. Background
B. International Initiatives and Programs
C. The Need for a New Agency
D. Functions of DID
Monitoring, Research, and Resource Center
Promotion of ICT for Learning
Support for Appropriate Technology and Local Development
Facilitation of Surplus Recycling and Exchange Programs
E. Parentage and Governance of a DID

III. Annexes

Abbreviations
Selected Background Documents

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I. WORKSHOP REPORT

Introduction

The Lebanese Center for Policy Studies (LCPS), in collaboration with the Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria (Canada) held a meeting of ICT experts, consultants and practitioners, in Beirut, on September 11-12, 2001. Among the 20 participants, several belonged to major institutions dealing with ICT for development (World Bank, UNDP, UNESCO, IFIP), while others came from NGOs or university and research background. The participants formed a cross-section of a wide geographical area, and came from ten countries (Dubai, Egypt, India, Lebanon, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa, the United States, Uruguay). The main objective of the meeting was to discuss the nature, the mandate and the areas of intervention of an international agency dedicated to fostering the use of ICT for sustainable development.
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A. Background

The DID agency meeting is one component of a larger project managed by the Centre for Global Studies (CFGS). This project (Managing Interdependence) aims to propose possible policy initiatives to enhance the impact of global governance institutions, and to promote practices of accountability, transparency, and participation. ICT for development is one of the fields identified that need to be assessed and studied for the purpose of possibly establishing a new dedicated international agency. This report presents the proceedings of the meeting where these issues were first discussed.

The participants reflected on a background paper drafted by the LCPS that was distributed prior to the meeting (see Discussion paper). The paper comes in four sections. The first part discusses the existing and ongoing international initiatives and programs that address the digital divide, digital opportunities and digital bridges. International initiatives can be grouped in four types: the policy framework approach (DOT force, UNDP’s DOI), the global gateway approach (macro portals), the international special fund approach (SBEM), and the private sector approach (WEF taskforce). Programs are mainly being promoted by UN development agencies and by donor agencies, international NGOs as well as by professional associations, corporations and business groupings. They target a variety of fields such as school networking, distance education, telecenter development, ICT skills development, and databases. The paper surveys two of those set of programs: those launched by the World Bank Group since 1995, promoting ICTs for economic and social development (InfoDev, worLD, AVU, GDLN, GDN, GDG), and those established by the UNDP as early as 1993 dealing with ICT for networking, awareness raising and solutions for sustainable development (SDNP, ICT for development, WIDE, DOI).

The second section of the paper discusses the reasons for establishing a new ICT for development agency. Several justifications are presented: the need for a fully dedicated institution on an international level, that would contribute to field building and that would act as an accountable and responsible agency; as well as the need for a coordination facilitating agency and for a user-oriented decentralized service provider.

In its third section, the paper details the proposed functions of a Digital Initiative for Development (DID) agency. First, the LCPS suggests that the DID agency would act as a monitoring, research and resource center for the numerous on the ground initiatives and programs concerned with ICT and development. Within this perspective, the agency could create an international observatory on ICT and development, and start an international ICT initiatives monitor. It could also conduct empirical research and comparative studies, and contribute to the establishment of sets of international indicators, indices and other methodological and analytical tools on e-development.

The second function of the DID agency would focus on a delimited and manageable field, ICT for learning. The LCPS proposes to work on the interface between technology and pedagogy, to enhance the capacity and the efficiency of educational systems in the developing countries. The agency could develop significant programs in this respect: a) supporting educational systems in the use and incorporation of ICT tools and applications (cataloguing existing multimedia products, establishing standards, encouraging regional and linguistic e-networking, etc.); b) promoting ICT-based teacher training programs, to improve the quality of education; c) helping development of distance education; d) supporting national telecenters initiatives. 

Third, the DID agency could provide support for appropriate technology and local content development. In this perspective, the DID agency would be promoting an appropriate use of ICT, taking into account the economic, social and technical conditions of developing countries. The agency could act both as a technology monitor and a technology advisor; it could play a leading role as a research and development promoter, and as a supporter of appropriate technology, for example in the field of radio for learning and development. The agency could also expand the innovative initiatives of committed local entrepreneurs and scientists.

Finally, the DID agency fourth function could target facilitating surplus recycling and exchange programs. There are millions of computers in industrialized countries that are dumped each year; recycling even one percent of them into developing countries could make a significant contribution to reducing the digital gap.

The report ends with suggestions for the parentage and governance features of the DID agency, with a set of criteria to bear in mind in selecting options. The main idea is to create an accountable institution, with a defined mandate and state-of-the-art governance features, going beyond the major existing international organizations, with the objective of inducing an incremental progress. This must be done through associating a variety of stakeholders and partners for cooperation, across cultures and institutions.
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B. Discussed Topics

The participants to the Beirut workshop discussed thoroughly the LCPS report about the feasibility of a DID agency. The workshop started with two introductory sessions where the participants reviewed the international initiatives and programs on the digital divide and raised the question of the value-added potential of a DID agency. The meeting focused afterwards on the four proposed functions of the agency: monitoring, research and resource center; ICT for learning, appropriate technology and local content development, as well as surplus recycling and exchange programs. Each function was comprehensively and methodically examined. The main considerations raised will be presented below. The workshop closed with a session dedicated to the governance features and institutional design of the DID agency, and a general synthesis of the main issues debated over the two days.

Institutional Designof DID

The issue of institutional design of the DID agency was raised early on in the meeting, and discussed at various sessions of the workshop. The participants examined the pros and cons of having either an independent or an affiliated institution. The idea of an independent agency was strongly favored, especially if it were to play an evaluation and monitoring role for existing ICT for development initiatives and programs. The need for an independent evaluation of activities and projects was largely agreed upon. The point of having a unique interlocutor of governments in ICT for development acting as a global clearinghouse was also made.

The issue of having parents and affiliates was discussed. Would they be international, national and/or regional networks of ICT for development institutions? Moreover, would the agency be a new separate legal entity? Having an independent agency brought up the issues of long-term sustainability and funding opportunities. Several participants discussed the choice of the agency to be proactive or to be demand-driven. Others discussed the choice of funding the agency mostly through capitalization or through contractual work. Several arguments addressed the necessity not to replicate nor duplicate existing efforts made by the Development Gateway Foundation and the UN ICT task force. The agency should channel demands not pilot them. Some suggested that having a small international NGO acting as a network-coordinating center might be the most suitable approach, and focused on the necessity of finding significant niches for its operations.

Discussions also focused on the nature of the agency, and the constitution of the international board. Identifying general criteria to determine the eligibility of possible major stakeholders was an issue that was raised but not sufficiently addressed. A majority of the participants stressed the need for insuring North-South parity, and also South-South cross-fertilization, especially among leading countries such as India, South Africa and Brazil, since there is a strong need for more voice from the South in international organizations. Some participants proposed to think of other institutional models, such as IDRC in Canada, which operates as a legal national entity with an international board of governors in which the South is represented, and has an equal say with the North. Others pointed that UNESCO could be an interesting host for the DID agency. Finally, an alternative name for the agency was suggested:  the Development Institute for Global Information Technology – DIGIT. 
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The DID Agency Mandate

Function 1: Monitoring, Research and Resource Center

There was considerable agreement on the function of monitoring and research for the DID agency. Several participants emphasized the importance of the agency doing independent evaluations of programs and initiatives, and measuring impacts of change empirically, and on the long term. In this respect, it is highly necessary to devise documentation methodologies and indicators. This function would also have the benefit of helping countries and institutions to compare and share experiences, regionally. Participants emphasized moreover the importance of creating incentives. The discussion also stressed the value of pro-active information dissemination; some pointed that while information is widely available, data mining and knowledge building in the ICT field is still lacking.

The issue of transfer of experiences was widely covered: suggestions for establishing an information service center were discussed, where concerned players would come with ‘shopping lists’ for needed items. The DID agency could thus act as both a coordination center and a service provider. Some participants suggested focusing also on training local groups so they are able to do themselves the design, management and evaluation procedures of their information and research needs.

Function 2: Promotion of ICT for Learning

Most participants approved that ICT for learning should be a priority field of intervention of the DID agency because new technology might be the only tool that would allow to bridge the gap in education between developing and developed countries. Supporting ICT for learning could be a challenging function for DID to address, especially since learning has to be contextual. Also, the agency could promote research and development (R&D) activities, and focus on encouraging innovative methods of teaching through media ICT, and the design of learning materials.

In this respect, the problem of local languages use in ICT was mentioned, and a suggestion was for the DID agency to play a role in translating content, since there is a wide availability of interesting educational software but their accessibility is limited by most of them being in English. In addition, some participants raised the possible role of the DID agency in promoting university programs and curricula relating to ICT and education. Others had reservations about the agency involvement in education, as this entails a long-term commitment, and complex procedures, which raises issues of sustainability. They also emphasized that the agency should not duplicate existing policy initiatives and programs, but should rather act as a coordinator and an intermediary between providers and users.

Function 3: Support for Appropriate Technology and Local Content Development 

The need for the promotion of local content development was largely acknowledged. Issues of penetration, cost and availability were main key words in this session. Some participants mentioned the difficulties created by national and global regulations and legislations (the policy environment) that would limit development and dissemination of locally designed software. Others referred to successful experiences in digitizing printed content, and highlighted the potential role of the private sector. There was also concerns that the DID agency should not be a producer of content, but rather develop interfaces and portals through which it promotes networking among existing initiatives that operate in the field of local content development. Suggestions were made to think of creative methods of funding to make dissemination possible, such as micro-loans for innovative start-ups, according to the market availability. In this respect, providing advice and information on alternative business models and financing formulas to support ICT for development, such as prepaid phone cards, could be interesting options to investigate. Specific “how-to-do” models and ideas to package ICT projects could be among the services proposed by the agency.

Two important points were finally made: about the possible brain drain following training for local content development; and about the difficult role of the DID agency as a technical advisor in a field where changes are very fast. 

Function 4: Facilitation of Surplus Recycling and Exchange Programs

There was considerable debate about this function of the DID agency. Several participants raised the problems of transportation costs and customs that recycling and exchange programs have to deal with. National regulations, taxation systems and complex bureaucracy are key variables in this respect. Hence, it is crucial to address issues of appropriate regulations and intellectual property rights, when dealing with   technology transfers. The discussion also focused on the need to consider maintenance costs in ICT recycling programs. Furthermore, a major consideration related to cultural issues, since local groups could reject what could be viewed as an ‘obsolete’ technology; moreover distributing hardware and software for free can seriously disturb local economies.

Interesting suggestions to facilitate rural accessibility to ICTs were made, promoting for example ‘caravans’ equipped with PCs and other “mobile” projects. Most participants emphasized the coordination and mediation role a DID agency could play in this area, matching donors, institutions and players, and also promoting job opportunities.
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C. Other Debated Ideas for the DID Agency

Sustainability

- Operating in a club-like form: members would benefit from sharing experiences and, in exchange, would provide information to the agency.
- Enhancing the networking function, and developing niches programs.
- Functioning as an international agency with country offices of other agencies as relays, at the regional and local levels.

Research and Resource

- Bridging research and policy making.
- Need to establish hard evidence that ICT can make a difference in development.
- Need for trend analysis in ICT for development.
- A solution identification center based on a networking model.
- Producing indicators, data, innovative ideas, methodologies, and action-oriented knowledge.
- Constructing legal and financial templates for ICT in development work.

Information Sharing and Dissemination

- Information service center, mapping issues, identifying the players, sharing the lessons, giving responses.
- Need for demand driven, pro-active data mining of the wealth of information available.
- Dissemination of existing initiatives, ideas, and projects.
- Need for more systematic sharing of experiences.
- Establishing an efficient and sustainable portal.

Capacity Building and Training

- Helping to build capacity of researchers in the different regions of the South.
- Addressing the issue of professional mobility and brain drain.
- Identifying and training local human resources.
- Training trainers, helping them develop their own pedagogic tools; reject the formula of imported infrastructure and content.
- Training in multimedia production and local content development.
- Proposing a ‘Computer driving license’ that would promote job opportunities.

Networking, Participation and Partnerships

- Bringing together initiatives on ICT volunteering (where and how to go…).
- Assembling a pool of ICT professional (including diasporas ICT professionals from the South).
- Linking emerging regional centers on ICT for development (West Africa, East Africa, India…).
- Enhancing the role of private sector.
- Working with local groups.
- Match making between requests and supply.

D. Perspectives and Options for A DID Agency

The workshop ended with a consensus on the need for establishing an international agency working in the field of ICT for development. However, the nature and mandate of such an agency needs to be further researched and discussed, in more specific details, as this first meeting was mainly for brainstorming purposes.

A rich set of elements came out from the workshop that pave the way for future discussions, especially in the frame of forthcoming international events (such as the World Summit on Information Society, Geneva 2003 – Tunisia 2005). In conclusion, a variety of challenges will have to be addressed in the establishment of a DID agency: its precise institutional nature, its specific mandate, its long-term sustainability, its resources and funding, as well as political issues, and coordination problems.

The LCPS suggests provisionally the following mandate for a DID agency, based on the four components presented in the discussion paper, and developed in relation to the Beirut international workshop. The agency would mostly be monitoring initiatives and conducting research, offering project and training support, and operating as a global clearinghouse and a referral center.

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Proposed Mandate for a DID agency

1) Monitoring

-       Monitoring and data mining of projects, initiatives and experiences

2) Research

- International set of indicators and measurement tools

- Independent evaluation of activities

- Impact assessments studies

- Comparative research

- Trend analysis of ICT for development

3) Support

- Support for ICT project development

- Support for specific training programs (local content development, multimedia)

- Support for specific R & D niches

- Pool of ICT professionals

4) Clearing-house and referral

- Systematic sharing of experiences

- Facilitate recycling and e-volunteering

- Supply of alternative business models, technical solutions…

- Match making between requests and experiences

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II. Discussion Paper

A. BACKGROUND

In many ways, the year 2000 has come to be known as the “year of the digital divide”.

From the Secretary General of the United Nations at the UN Millenium Assembly to the President of the United States at a White House Global Leaders Conference, from Davos January 2000 to Davos January 2001, and from the G8 Okinawa summit to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum in Brunei, the world suddenly started to realize that some of it, five to ten percent, was going digital fast and the rest was being left out in the pre-digital cold.

This recently discovered gap was quickly superimposed on all the previous structural gaps, such as the power gap, the resource gap, the knowledge gap, the education gap, the governance gap and others.  It was invested with high-level visibility and sense of urgency. Each week, somewhere in the world, representative of different actors, mostly from the North, met to try to define it, assess it and discuss ways of partnering to resolve it. The motto, “bridging the digital divide”, entered the international vernacular and became a “legitimate” part of the development discourse.  A crowd of conferences, web-sites and new programs were competing to appropriate the new banner or some its variants.

The protagonists of this new global conversation would generally agree on the broad terms of the divide: A heavy concentration in few countries; an access along the fault lines of national societies, including wealth, education, gender, age, urbanity, and minority status; a large deficit in the three dimensions of connectivity, capacity and content; a dualistic world society with a minority of connected, having plentiful information at high speed and low cost and the unconnected majority, locked out by high barriers of capacity, cost, uncertainty and outdated information.

International reports and media review articles highlighted some spectacular indicators of the divide: The Internet links over a hundred million computers, but that represents no more than two percent of the world population; the monthly connection cost for the Internet in Africa exceeds the monthly income of a significant proportion of the population; eighty percent of the world population never made a phone call; the poorest 20 percent of the world population account for 0.2 percent of the world’s Internet user, whilst the  richest 80% make up 93.3% of users; there are more telephones in New York than in the whole of rural Asia; there are more Internet accounts in London and cellular phones in Thailand than the whole of Africa.  

Participants to the global debate would, however, disagree on the short and medium terms potential of the expanding ICT’s in alleviating poverty, promoting sustainable development, and creating a more equitable world.

Cyberprophets and cyberhopefuls have been underlining the tremendous creative potential for change, real progress and prosperity in the technological revolution we are witnessing. They see a wide developmental potential in the Internet and bundled communications services reaching formerly remote, poor and disenfranchised areas of the world.  From health care to school systems, and from democratic participation to local empowerment, and from global markets for local producers to job creation and enhanced productivity, ICT, in their views, could give a formidable leverage and leap frogging possibilities to world wide development efforts.

But cybersceptics and cybercritics have been emphasizing that reform, access or equity are not inherent in the new technologies, or, in any technology for that effect.  Their impact cannot be meaningful without continued and significant investment in fundamental needs from literacy and education to basic health services and sanitation systems. This impact will remain marginal if availability and accessibility is not progressively provided to broad population groups, starting by reliable electric power and extensive telephone wiring.

The cybersceptics would note that the poor need penicillin not Pentium; that you can’t eat computer or prevent malaria with software.  Some would remark for example that with the money invested in projects such as the African Virtual University, hundreds of African lecturers could have been trained or supported to return back to African Universities.  Others would add that if hygiene, safe drinking water and illiteracy are the priorities, they want to know exactly how having access to the Internet is going to change that.  These reactions might seem anecdotal or bitter, but they do reflect serious concerns about the current hype around ICT’s and raise significant issues of priority, best use of scarce resources, marginality of impact, and quasi randomness of experimentation, projects and programs. 

A consensus should gradually emerge, assuming that if ICT’s are certainly not a magical solution and may be not the highest priority for developing countries, they are most probably part of the solution.  Well focused, carefully thought off and effectively coordinated, ICT’s could become a growing and strategic component of a world wide comprehensive development strategy to move us faster from the frightening and dangerous slide into a two-world system of haves and have-nots, toward a more reconciled and converged one-world system, in which individuals share the technology and the prosperity.
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B. INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVES AND PROGRAMMES

The year 2000, as we noted, witnessed a flurry of activities and initiatives to address the suddenly growing awareness of the digital divide.

The call for digital bridges, digital opportunities, and other digital dividends was at its highest.  Unfortunately, many of these turned out to be, or might turn into, talk-fests with few concrete results achieving little beyond platitudes and occasional cross-sector collaboration, and could soon create a new divide between spectacular promises and announcements as well as  effective commitments and delivery.

The most significant initiatives of 2000 could be classified into four kinds of approaches:

- The global study group and policy framework approach: It is best represented by the G8 Okinawa Charter on the Information Society (July 2000) and the establishment of a Digital Opportunity Task Force (DOT Force) including tri-sectoral representation of government, business and civil society in G8 country delegations, representatives of nine developing countries, and participation of international organizations and business groupings.  The final report of the DOT Force proposed mostly a list of generic actions to the July 2001 G8 Genoa summit, to be taken towards bridging the international digital divide.  About the same time, UNDP, partnering with Accenture and the Markle Foundation in the Digital Opportunity Initiative (DOI) proposed a Strategic Policy Framework to help development stakeholders take advantage of the potential of ICT for development.

- The global gateway approach: It would be best represented by the competing investments of international organizations and other in creating Macro Portals, by bringing together, in spectacular ways, information and documents, mostly already available on existing sites and in other electronic locations.  Although these initiatives are useful, they might really cater to the already connected and would probably affect the existing divide in a limited way.

- The international special fund approach: It is best represented by the partnering of Soft Bank, a Japan-bases global Internet company, and the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group, in creating Soft Bank Emerging Market (SBEM).  Announced in February 2000, SBEM will invest an initial USD 200 million in incubating Internet-related businesses in developing countries.  SBEM will nurture new Internet enterprises both by investing seed money and by providing an array of technological, legal and management support to turn ideas into business in dozens of developing countries.  World Bank officials hope that investment through the establishment of a Global Incubation Center will accelerate the inclusion of developing countries in the information revolution by transferring technologies and fostering sustainable new local businesses.

- The “let’s engage the private sector” approach: It is best represented by the great emphasis that the World Economic Forum in Davos 2000 and 2001 gave to the international digital divide.  WEF established a global digital divide taskforce to develop and test a framework for action and to engage world business leaders and other on ways that ICT can transform the digital divide into an opportunity for economic growth in the developing world.  Another example would include the digital dividend conference organized in October 2000 by the World Resource Institute, a Washington based think tank, in collaboration with Business Week.  The idea here is also to make the business case, by bringing together business leaders, key technology providers and potential users to explore novel business models and market developments strategies that extend connectivity and can potentially create significant social benefits.  Predicated on the idea that bridging the digital divide is good for business, and what is really sustainable is profitable enterprise, the WRI project is another attempt at mobilization, dialogue and advocacy among the major IT corporations and other business leaders around the word.

In the last few years, almost all major development agencies within the UN system, as well as major multilateral and bilateral donor agencies, international NGOs, international professional associations, international business associations and multinational corporations launched and promoted their programs.  All have been working to position themselves and create their own niches in this emerging developmental field (or should we say market).

A number of alliances and partnership were also created, often at the initiative of the large international agencies, bringing together international and regional players, older and newer players, general developmental and sectoral specialized players, international agencies and multinational corporations, in field such as school networking, distance education, telecenter development, ICT skill development, databases and super site development, or the funding of pilot applications of ICTs for development.  We will survey briefly below, two of the most important actors.

Not surprisingly, the most determined and well-funded strategy has been developed by the World Bank Group.

The Bank started its moves in 1995, with the establishment of InfoDev, as a multi donor grant facility to "promote innovative projects that uses ICTs for economic and social development".  The Bank was able to mobilize, in addition to its own contribution, a group of over twenty donors to contribute to InfoDev trust fund.  Thus, In the last six years, InfoDev was able to spend over 60 million dollars.  InfoDev received hundred of applications and funded more than 250 projects in more than a hundred countries.

Integrated, since 2000, in a new, consolidated Global ICT group of the Bank, InfoDev supported a very large spectrum of projects: workshops, assessments, electronic fora, feasibility studies, data bases and indexing for other global initiatives (Global Knowledge for Development), conference scholarship funds, planning grants and over fifty pilot projects, demonstration projects and best practice projects (with an average grant of $ 200.000) promoting ICT in health, education, environment, government and e-commerce.

This diversity and flexibility certainly allowed InfoDev, in the first phase, to experiment with different approaches, to explore a number of grant-making areas and to test a large number of applicants and grantees.  It remains difficult however, to ascertain if this all-out funding strategy represents today the most cost-effective approach in making a difference where it really counts, in having a cumulative effect that would produce a significant change, and in supporting actors in the South that are really in need of support.

Two years later, in 1997, the World Bank Institute (WBI) and the Education Group of the Bank, launched each a significant initiative.

A World Links for Development program (worLD) was started by the Institute to facilitate school connectivity, provide teacher training in ICTs and promote collaborative projects between schools of developing and industrialized countries. In few years, World was expanded to over 20 developing countries, reaching about 500 high schools (an average of 25 school per country) and arranging for collaboration with more than a thousand schools in over 20 industrialized countries.

worLD certainly helped cultivate pockets of innovation in a selected number of developing countries high schools, using ICT to improve education and contributing to the professional development of few thousand teachers by enhancing their technological and pedagogical skills.  The program also contributed to exploring and testing alternative technological solutions (internal web server and proxy web software; various wireless connectivity solutions) in the context of low level and unreliable connectivity in many developing countries. However, four years into the program, it was becoming clear that serious barriers were emerging, hindering the sustainability and further expansion of this pilot initiative: Continuing lack of computer hardware and software and reliable access in schools; lack of local technical support; weak coordination with the Ministries of Education; lack of continuous funding sources; lack of integration of the technology into the general curriculum and the development of basic skills; lack of time in busy school schedules.

In a move that will be repeated in other Bank initiatives, the program was partly spinned-off in 1999 to a non-profit organization, separate from the WBI, the World Links for Development organization.  Today, the future of the program rely very much in its ability to work more closely with Ministries of Education and think more strategically about the use of scarce educational resources.  Only then could it possibly extend its limited reach and become more rooted, and owned by the community of educators in developing countries.

In the same year 1997, after a feasibility study funded by InfoDev, the Education Group (Human Development Unit) moved to establish an African Virtual University (AVU).  Defined as “an interactive –instructional telecommunication network”, AVU operated from sites that extended to over twenty African universities and from an uplink and rerouting central hub in Clarksburg, Maryland.

Integrating satellite and Internet technologies, AVU connected professors from a variety of high standard universities to a dispersed group of several thousand African students.  In its pilot phase (1997 – 1999), which cost over 13 million dollars, AVU delivered over 2500 hours of non credit instructional programs, registered over 12000 students in semester-long courses, and enrolled 2500 professional in business seminars.  Courses offered were mainly in math and sciences, computer science and language instruction.  World Bank projections in 2000 expected AVU, by the years 2002-2003, to offer degree courses to over 5000 undergraduates and seminars to over 65000 professionals, generate maybe 15 million dollars in revenue and make its first operating profit.

AVU is the only institution offering technology – based distant education to the whole African continent.  As a very wide and complex pilot project applying modern ICT to provide quality higher education services in response to a huge and dispersed demand, AVU is an emblematic initiative in the new field of digital development.  It remains to be seen however, if AVU will succeed in raising the substantial new funding needed to develop it to scale, in integrating successfully the university – based and the private licensed learning centers, in reaching cost – effectiveness and fee-bases sustainability over the long-term, in offering courses mostly developed and delivered from within the continent and in consolidating its spin – off on the organizational, financial and academic levels.

Again, two years later, around 1999, the World bank Institute and the Education Group started each an outreach and net working initiative in the field of distant learning.  WBI engaged into building a Global Distance Learning Network in partnership with developing countries agencies, foundations and private companies.  The targeted audience was leading practitioners, development decision makers and community leaders and the purpose was to share “cutting-edge development related knowledge and experience across boundaries in real time”.

Through a combination of courses, seminars, and global dialogues, GDLN set out to provide cost effective learning activities to the development community, to improve decision making through learning based on real-life experience, and to facilitate regular exchanges among practitioners and experts.  WBI was hoping to establish by 2002 a network of around fifty Distance Learning Centers, housed, owned and operated by local training and educational institutions.

Although the initiative was officially targeting to set out an independently operated network and to provide courses, seminars and discussion opportunities from a variety of sources and partners facilities around the world, it remains to be seen how much GDLN will really become a self sustaining, multilaterally fed, and jointly owned international network.  The alternative outcome is that GDLN could become a sort of WBI - online and a powerful outreach instrument for a centrally generated and managed development learning production.

At the same time, the Education Group established "a Task Force on Bridging the Digital Divide through Education".  It focuses on how to help countries make decisions regarding technology to improve access, quality and equity of education and will develop tools and assists in pilot interventions based on country specific needs and approaches.  The Task Force started developing a Global Distance Education Network as a knowledge guide to current information about distance education and training from around the world.  Focusing primarily on the design and implementation of institutional systems of distance education, the Network, in a classical approach, is mainly an on-line publishing operation, scanning the global environment, collecting literature, case studies and other information relevant to distance education and development, and making selection available on a core site located at the World Bank.  The initiative mentions the possibility or regional sites and the development of versions in Spanish and Chinese.

The most interesting aspect of the Global Distance Education Net is that WBG success- fully enlisted as partners several of the oldest and most established players in the field of international distance education.  The International Center for Distance learning of the Open University (United Kingdom) and the Commonwealth of Learning (based in Vancouver ), the most active international association for distance learning.  In addition the partnership included distance learning centers, institutes on networks from Hong-Kong, South Africa, Indonesia and Mexico.  However, apart from positioning WBG as the center of a potentially powerful web of distance education knowledge, the value added effect of the new initiative in term of additional resources and effective promotion and facilitation of distance education initiatives in the developing countries remains to be seen. 

Finally, from 2000 on, the WBG engaged into two major initiatives to use ICTs and networking tools to lead development related knowledge generation and knowledge dissemination on a global level.

The Global Development Network (GDN) launched in June 1999, regrouped already existing regional research networks and enlisted hundreds of research and policies institutes involved in the field of development.  Using WB funding and additional resources, GDN aim to develop research through competitive peer review grant mechanisms and build capacity of research and policy institutes in the developing countries through training for researchers, joint activities, networking opportunities and services to improve institutional practices.

The Global Development Gateway (GDG), launched in July 2001, is based on the premise of the need for a macro-portal, a one-stop super-site to access, in a systematic and vetted way, a selection of the wealth of information, resources and products available on the World Wide Web.  This super-site is proposing to filter and catalogue material from all perspectives on development, divided into 30 major topics and 130 sub-topics.  Features includes an comprehensive aid projects database, a set of guided pages to development information available on-line, resources for e-government and e-business and information about funding, commercial opportunities, product review, jobs and directories.  In addition, a roll out of 50 Country Gateways, within three years, will replicate the feature of the Global Gateway at the national level, building a large share of the content from the contribution of local partners.

Several NGO's and development practitioners raised a number of questions: About the Gateway priviledging the perspective of global development professionals and large institutions; about top-down editorial policies and structure; about a donor's taxonomy in the definition of topics; about filtering the material on the basis of a selective definition of "quality"; about the emphasis on English content and a strategy of translation; about country Gateways representing an unfair competition to existing country - oriented portals; about the governance structure and the institutional design (the setting up of an "independent" Gateway Foundation to manage the initiative) where a number of seats on the Board will be allocated on the basis of financial contribution. Many observers recognized however that the Gateway initiative could become a very useful repository of data with numerous links to people, organizations, projects and documents and that it could contribute to a better information and equipment of development workers and professionals.

In any case, the WBG seems determined to continue investing significantly in this new line of work, seen as essential for its transformation into a "Knowledge Bank"

The United Nations Development Programe (UNDP) is the other major player in the ICT for Development field.

UNDP was an early adopter and initiator of ICT for networking, awareness raising and solutions for sustainable development in a large number of developing countries, quite before the current hype.

Through the Sustainable Development Networking Program (SDNP) that started in 1993, as a program to implement some of the Rio conference recommendations, UNDP progressively developed a large network of country-owned, non-profit, thematic networks, including each a diversity of stakeholders, with a primary focus on environmental and gender issues.

SDNP, over the next seven years, contributed to connecting more than 15 countries to the Internet for the first time, to deploying the first internet networks in more than 40 countries, to creating more than 5000 websites for government units and civil society organizations and to providing ICT basic training for over 25,000 organizations.

Today, as this initiator role has been overtaken in most places by the development of national markets, national ISP providers and hundred of local initiatives, SDNP, which still operate in 45 countries, has largely shifted to piloting telecenters and to developing initiatives on e-governance and e-commerce for development.

In 1997, UNDP started its ICT for Development Program with a focus on generating ICT strategies at the national levels, deploying Technical Access Community Center in pilot locations (UNDP's name for telecentres) and managing a portal site on ICT and development. 

In 1998, through its Special Unit for Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries (TCDC), UNDP launched the Web of Information for Development (WIDE), as a global data-base of institutions, capacity, expertise, knowledge and innovative experiences in development.

The two last initiatives seem to have suffered, the first from a heterogeneity of objectives and lack of sustained funding and the second from a rising competition from more powerful portals, the last but not least of course being the Global Development Gateway of the Bank.

In search of a new role for the coming decade and in the face of somehow diminishing core and trust funding, UNDP seem decided to move boldly in the direction of building partnership with resourceful allies at the global level and of becoming more of an intermediary and a technical assistance provider at the country level.

In partnership with Cisco, UNDP helped establish the NetAid. Org Foundation as a one stop e-Action site to facilitate aid through on line donation to specific poverty alleviation programs, on line volunteering with non-profits in developing countries and on-line purchase of fair trade arts, crafts and food from around the work.

In partnership also with Cisco, UNDP contributed to a Least Developed Countries Initiative to extend the Cisco Networking Academy Program to 27 of the world's 49 least developed countries.  The program has until how trained over a hundred instructors, mostly from LDC and launched Networking Academys programs in cooperation with over 15 learning institutions in LDC.

In partnership with the Markle Foundation, IBM and the Center for International Development, at Harvard University, UNDP is working on a Global Network Readiness and Resource Initiative.  Though this partnership, UNDP aims at acting as a lead agency for network readiness initiative worldwide, offering country level assistance to build national information strategies, community initiatives, local entrepreneurship, regulatory environment and rural connectivity.

In partnership with the Markle Foundation and Accenture, UNDP established the Digital Opportunity Initiative (DOI).  Its main contribution to date has been to provide strategic input to the DOT force and to produce another global report in July 2001, "Creating A Development Dynamic", that assesses the implications and potential of ICT for development and proposes a strategic policy framework for national and social actors, to enhance their cooperation in this field.

Leveraging its broad experience, its brand name in the field of development, and its unrivalled asset of country offices in 130 developing countries, UNDP has been recently engaging major public and private partners to work mainly on stimulating and enabling the global environment on ICT and on delivering some targeted training and technical assistance services.
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C. THE NEED FOR A NEW AGENCY

While acknowledging the possible relevance and used fullness of many of the above mentioned approaches, the present project and this workshop are predicated on the uncovered need for an international agency focusing entirely on the best ideas, ways, means and partnership to foster the most cost-effective, efficient and scalable uses of ICT for sustainable development.

In the context of the apparent flood of international initiatives, what would justify the creation of such a new agency?  On the basis of the preceding review and of opinions expressed by several analysts, practitioners and stakeholders, a number of arguments could be advanced to make the case for the establishment of a Digital Initiative for Development (DID) agency:

1) Beyond the necessarily limited and often unrelated ICT special programs of the general developmental agencies, and the topical ICT added-on programs for the sectoral international agencies, there is a need for a fully dedicated international agency, entirely focussing on ICT for development in an integrated, flexible and extensible way.

2) Beyond the current fad and after the end of special programs, support for pilot or exemplar projects, and funding of experimental phases, there is a need for a field building institution.  The novelty, challenges and complexity of the field and the huge unmet demand require a sizable and sustained institutional investment for a least the next two decades.

3) Beyond an emerging networking ideology and e-development mythology, there is a need for a concrete, visible, responsible agency, with a defined workplan and clear accountability to its stakeholders and to the public.

4) Beyond competing, over lapping and energy scattering international initiatives, there is a need for a synergy and coordination facilitating agency, acting to obtain at least a reasonable convergence of efforts between the various international actors.

5) Beyond "grand" project approaches (potential white elephants) and centralized, top down production of Global Policy Frameworks, Plans of Action, Macro Portals, Resource Networks, there is a need for a decentralist, user-oriented, easy to access, service provider, working to support, fertilize and energize the thousand and one on the ground initiatives and the struggling national actors in the developing countries.

6) Beyond the waste of good ideas and orphaned proposals, that never got the opportunity to be really tested and implemented, there is a need for an international agency to give a second chance to, adopt and market the best already available idea on bridging the digital divide.

7) Beyond the dispersion of attention and the multiplicity of confusing banners, claims and domain names, there is a need for one international focal point, an easy to use international address, where all interested actors, contributors, users and new comers to ICT and development, could start their search, raise their questions, promote their work, or publicize their needs.

8) Beyond the merit and benefits of existing programs, there is a need for a new international agency to seriously work to make good on some of the new wide promises made in the most recent international plan of action of the Digital Opportunity Task Force, presented to the G8 summit in July 2001.  Some of the DOT force more specific proposals such as the International Development Resource Network of regulatory, policy and strategy expertise, could find their natural home in a DID like, dedicated international agency.

Advocating for a new international agency, it is important to underline what this agency should avoid to be:

- A heavy, expensive and cumbersome additional international bureaucracy.

- A new actor striving to reinvent the wheel, to substitute players on the ground or compete with existing successful international initiatives.

- A Northern driven, supply driven, donor driven body with a traditional or revamped “I know better” and “let me help you” mindset.

- A completely autonomous new structure, hanging in the air and without the benefit of existing infrastructures, accumulated institutional knowledge, and stock of expertise.

On the contrary, it would be crucial for the new agency to strive to be:

- An agency embodying in its governance, orientations, workplan and funding, a North-South parity and explicit mechanisms for multi-stakeholders participation.(see last section)

- An agile, flexible and task oriented unit able to rapidly deploy, expand and contract as needs and opportunities emerge and shift.

- An agency with a well thought institutional affiliation, which could possibly a joint affiliation, based on the interface between knowledge and development.

- An agency grounded in the solid, years-old work of early investors, be it development agencies, international professional associations, national programs, or on the ground initiatives.

- An agency that would contribute to expand the outreach, and help buildup a larger Southern component in ongoing successful projects on a national, regional or developed country basis.

Based on the preceding rationale, the following sections briefly present tentative suggestions to frame a discussion about the possible functions of a DID agency.

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D. FUNCTIONS OF DID

1) Monitoring, Research and Resource Center

A primary function of the DID Agency could be to constitute a monitoring, research and resource center for the expanding universe of on the ground initiatives, development workers, and actors concerned with ICT and development.

Such an international center could benefit also a variety of specific constituencies as and communities of practices such as:

- The growing web of education networks (schools, universities, training centers etc…)

- The older and now expanding distance and open learning traditions and practices.

- The telecenters movement and other community access experiences around the world

- The concerned international professional associations particularly in their North-South cooperation and professional development program

- The producers of creative, customizable and affordable applications and multimedia contracts related to development

- The innovators working to develop and adapt new approaches to low-cost or quasi-free connectivity in the developing world

- The designers and implementers of national IT strategies, E-readiness assessments, regulatory frameworks and incentive measures in the developing countries. 

- The relevant decision-makers, opinion shapers and community leaders in the South.

The following are possible activities that DID, as an international resource center, could initiate, support or expand:

- Creating an international observatory on ICT and development: 

The observation would systematically document and follow-up on successful and less successful initiatives and projects at the local, national, regional and international levels.  The observatory could build-up, harmonize and consolidate existing partial listings and databases (such as the lists of InfoDev applicants, Stockholm Challenge finalists, Dot Force consultations, One World net’s list of partners, Benton Foundation’s digital divide list and listing develop by UNDP, IDRC, Bridges.org and may others). 

The observatory would aim to go beyond superficial description based on websites “About”, organizational claims, program documents and promotional literature.  The purpose would be to develop progressively in depth profiling of the most important initiatives.  The observatory could develop templates to usefully characterize, compare and learn from the included projects from various perspectives.  It could conduct trend analysis at the quantitative and qualitative level, to assess the development of the field.

- Starting an international ICT initiatives monitor: 

Since the mid-Nineties, the field in littered with programs, action plans, and announcements of international or regional actors.  Many of these has been even accompanied with specific goals, target figures or time frames.  As for the UN international conferences and country compliance, DID could start a monitoring of implementation and follow through of international actors announcements and promises.  The monitoring could include signaling the dead links and old updates in many of the web pages of international actors sites.  DID could thus hopefully contribute to more rigor and accountability and better adequation between claims and possibilities in the field of ICT and development.

- Conducting empirical researches and comparative studies in the field of ICT for development: 

The last two years have seen an accumulative of global assessments, general overviews, and review articles that repetitively made the case for ICT as a potentially powerful tool for development.  Many of these has been a mix of analytical assumptions about the field, illustrations with a number of exemplary cases or stories (often the same “famous” cases) and a menu of generic recommendations.

The field is now mature enough for substantial in-depth case studies, rigorous evaluations of practices and experiences (not based mainly on the beneficiaries asked to report on and evaluate the program) and cost effectiveness studies trying to evaluate the trade-offs and the real return on ICT for development investments.

Off course, a few in-depth studies have already been conducted, but DID could go a long way in helping the international community develop a better understanding of what worked and did not work, what are the opportunity costs of a high priority for ICTs or how to better design and implement ICT for development projects.  Among other contributions, DID could build on the systematic and interesting work of IDRC on Telecenters evaluation.

- Contributing to define, standardize, refine and test a set of international indicators, indices, measurement and analytical tools on E-readiness, E-policies and E-development:

DID would build on the many existing public or private attempts in this field.  (Bridges. org identified and compared 9 e-readiness assessments tools developed by public and private agencies).  DID could develop and try to build a consensus around a set of coherent, comprehensive and operational ICT and development assessment tools.

- Producing a regular International Report (or Annual year book) on ICT and Development: 

DID’s report would examine the state of the field, analyse the emerging trends, highlight problems and needs and feature some of the Agency's studies, indicators and monitoring results.

The International Report could help in building the field and accompanying its development through carefully selected thematic foci, statistical time – series and stakeholders point of views.  DID could build on existing partial attempt, including the yearly State of the Internet, sponsored by the US Internet Council.  But DID should target mainly a developing countries audience, give priority to multilingual versions, and use the clearest possible language, away from the international development jargon.

- Supporting developing countries governmental units, academic units and NGO’s in ICT project development:

DID could help in project proposal formulation, in matching with donors and existing sources as of funding, in project monitoring and evaluation, and in post project knowledge sharing and dissemination.  To the largest possible extent DID should rely on national, regional or Southern expertise in its project development support.

DID could also help in twinning and bilateral cooperation arrangements with comparable actors from the North or the South and with similar, more mature projects.

- Facilitating or co-organizing specialized training programs:

The programs would include face-to-face workshops, on-line training, training modules and cyber-mentoring.  As a priority, DID would target specific strategic categories such as governmental units IT managers, Telecentres managers, schools IT support staff, head librarians, NGO leaders, teachers as trainers and others.  DID programs could be organized on an national, regional or inter-regional level.
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2) Promotion of ICT for Learning

An international development agency could have a broad mandate, a narrow mandate or a wide enough but delimited and manageable mandate.  It is recommended here that a DID agency should mainly focus on the field of ICT for learning, leaving to other specialized international agencies the support of areas such as ICT for health care, environmental management, agricultural development or E-commerce.

It is in the application of ICTs to enable more widespread and more creative learning and to develop productive linkages between new technologies and renewed pedagogy that a DID agency could hope to have the most effective impact on bridging the divide.

DID could coordinate a developing countries oriented international effort to develop ICTs as powerful tools for better initial learning, renewable learning and life long learning and for easier access to a worldwide basis of knowledge.  The adapted set of ICT tools could be applied to all possible sites of learning: formal educational sites, distance learning sites, workplaces, community centers and homes. They could be harnessed to improve the efficiency, accessibility and quality of the learning process in developing countries.

Within that larger context, a DID led international effort could more effectively concentrate on the newer generations, on the community of educators, and on the local producers of learning content and methodologies.  This might mean initially avoiding apparently universalistic all-out attempts at spreading ICT literacy in all levels of developing countries societies.

DID could develop a particular focus on the interface between technology and pedagogy as a powerful tool to enhance broadly and decisively the capacity of students and the efficiency of fundamental education systems in the developing countries.

Among the many possible points of entry and in this area, the agency could consider contributing to:

- The development of affordable software education products responsive to local needs, including possible translation and customization of existing products.

- The innovative approaches to developing and upgrading teaching skills in ICT.

- The creation of repositories of study materials that can be transmitted and reproduced at very low cost.

- The setup of regional production centers for educational products to exploit economies of scale.

- The initiatives to enlist and enhance the mass media as a tool for learning.

- The efforts to reconceptualize educational processes in developing countries to include an appropriate balance between investment in skills related to the use of ICT’s and in generic competencies for participating in emerging knowledge societies.

A DID agency could develop few major programs to consolidate and expand strategic fields of application of ICTs for learning:

- ICT in Education Program:

The DID agency could help governments, Ministries of Education, school systems, and ICT for learning initiatives in the South, identify sort-out, test, translate, and adapt a selection among the expanding and sometimes pedagogically dubious and confusing universe of ICTs tools and applications for education.

DID could promote and support further research into effective means of incorporating ICT technologies into developing countries school curriculum and efficient approaches to use these facilities to reform traditional teachings functions, develop cognitive process and promote collaborative learning.

DID could promote international level efforts for a suptematic cataloguing of available educational multimedia products as well as the establishment of standards for production, selection and evaluation of educational software.

DID could finally facilitate collaboration between developing countries on a regional and / or linguistic areas basis, to share limited resources and address common problems concerning the progressive introduction of ICT's into educational septems and the development of culturally, economically, and linguistically appropriate educational material.

         - ICT-based Teacher Training Program:

Support for teachers is one of the most important requirement for improving the quality of education in any society. Teachers in developing countries mostly receive low salaries, work in schools with poor infrastructure and tight budget and have little access to opportunities to further their learning and enhance their teaching skills.

Traditional class room based teachers training programs are irregular, not feasible on a large scale, limited by the pool of available trainers, not usually supplemented by consistent follow-up and involve costly transportation and accommodation costs and undue disruption of school schedules and community life. In addition, many developing countries are increasingly experiencing teachers shortages and teacher colleges output might not be able to follow the rate of expansion of the school aged population.

DID could develop a program to explore the potential of ICTs to d