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Significance of World Summits like WSIS for ICTD activity
A lot of policy issues that get inscribed in the documents and declarations at important inter-governmental UN conferences, like the WSIS, set the directions for activities of governments and other important organizations in the area of development, for decades to come. It is therefore important to engage as much as possible in these kinds of forums, especially now when the UN system is showing much greater inclusiveness and acceptance of civil society viewpoints.
Civil society participation in WSIS process in structured in many formal and in-formal groups and caucuses. During the PrepCom 2 (Feb 17-25, in Geneva) for the WSIS a few NGOs from the North and the South (Communication Rights in the Information Society, Association for Progressive Communications, IT for Change, ITeM, Bread For All, Digital Divide Data) came together for collective advocacy around the issue of financing ICTD. Financing ICTD was the primary issue before the PrepCom.
Though the question of whether an exclusive fund for financing ICTD will be agreed to by countries of the North appeared to the focal point, the debates around financing went much further. This informal coalition of NGOs took the position that the manner in which issues connected to financing ICTD gets discussed and defined in the WSIS documents will determine the basic ways in which ICTD is perceived and implemented. And for countries like India where we put a lot of hope in the power of the new ICTs to lead institutional transformations that will help us grapple better with age old problems of under-development, these discussions and the outcomes from them are especially important.
Background of current ICTD Frameworks
Most ICTD thinking that currently dominates the scene around us came from the Digital Opportunity Initiative (DOI) report that was adopted by G8 countries at the start of this decade. This report does make important contributions in defining some basic concepts that have been very useful in building ICTD frameworks, but the report was far too gung-ho on private investment, at the expense of underlining the continued and important role of public policy and public finance in reaching the benefits of ICTs to everyone. Such a slant could be expected, since the report was authored by the private consultancy firm Accenture and Markle Foundation (a US based non-profit oriented to the US society) along with UNDP.
While it is undeniable that the ICT opportunities in development do provide avenues for involving private enterprise in development activity as never before, it also is the fact that a complete shift in ICTD from the equity and social justice basis of traditional development thinking, , to an un-abashedly neo-liberal interpretation of development has been at the root of many a problems with ICTD in India and elsewhere in developing countries today. Private finance we know is important, but it goes only so far and no more, and public interventions will always be needed to develop infrastructure, capacities, as well as institutions to serve the excluded areas, and marginalized sections of the society.
Civil Society Advocacy and Lobbying at Prepcom 2
The lobbying point for the informal coalition of NGOs at the prepcom therefore was to re-instate the primacy of public policy and public finance in the global ICTD discourse. This was expected to provide a new policy framework in the form of the WSIS documents to the ICTD world that loosens the exclusive grip that the frameworks given by the DOI report have on ICTD thinking and activity today. The emerging WSIS documents are far more balanced in their appraisal and advocacy of the respective role and importance of public finance and private enterprise than has been the DOI report and other earlier ICTD documents.
Apart from the importance of public finance, the interventions by the informal coalition of NGOs highlighted the need to take a public goods framework for financing ICTD, and the role played by local governments and community owned initiatives in ICTD. (See the statement read out by our group to the government plenary at the prepcom on 17th Feb here.
Two specific interventions in the form of suggested amendments made by the group of NGOs got included in the final document on financing ICTD (chapter 2 of the Operational Part of Tunis Declaration) that will be signed at Tunis.
Please see the (almost) agreed version of chapter 2 at http://www.itforchange.net/WSIS/chapter_2_at_WSIS.pdf in which these suggested amendments have been shown as point 31 and point 33 l reading as
31. We recognise that public finance plays a crucial role in providing ICT access and services to rural areas and disadvantaged populations including those in Small Island Developing States and Landlocked Developing Countries. (Agreed)
Among the areas which have not received adequate (financial) attention is listed
33 l. Local government and initiatives based in local communities that deliver ICT services to communities in the areas such as education, health and livelihood support.
Such a forthright and positive recognition (31) of the role of public finance in reaching access as well as ICT services to all people we think is a major victory, and can be used to both re-shape the priorities of international donor money, as well as to do pro-poor ICTD advocacy with ICTD programs at national and regional levels.
The second point (33 l) emphasizes the qualitative outcomes from localized ICTD projects, driven by communities themselves and by local governments, focusing on empowerment, livelihoods, health, education etc, moving beyond an obsession merely with quantitative indicators of tele-density, access, e-literacy etc. At national levels this point should be used to advocate re-allocation of USFs to such local projects that have been showing results, instead of keeping huge amounts of un-utilized funds without clear directions of how best to use them for developmental purposes.
In addition, the group also advocated for inclusion of the open access principle in telecom (completely free competition in the last mile). However, references to open access were not agreed to. The relative emphasis on open and propriety software was contested for a long time, and remained unresolved. This will now be taken up during PrepCom 3.
As for committing specific financing mechanisms for ICTD, the conference did back the Digital Solidarity Fund (DSF), but as a voluntary fund, with indeterminate sources. However, the nominal structure of DSF does provide a useful axis to develop ICTD funding strategies for LDCs in the future.
Other issues at the prepcom
Another significant issue for India was the inclusion of point 25 (in chapter 2) that basically calls upon governments to desist from protectionist measures with regard to the international market for ICT-enabled services. US supported India on this clause, which is somewhat ironical in the context of the tensions around outsourcing between India and some state governments in the US.
There have been many other interesting contestations/developments on issues of virtual financing, international ICTD policy structures, follow-up mechanisms for WSIS, and the issue of Internet Governance, which will dominate PrepCom 3.
The chapter 1 on implementation, and the important Political Chapeau will also be taken up during prepcom 3. IT for Change has also made some important comments/interventions on these, all of which are available on IT for Changes website at http://www.itforchange.net/WSIS/prepcom-2.php.
Bringing gains of global policy advocacy to the people
IT for Change proposes to use the legitimacy of the above inclusions in the Tunis documents for internal advocacy in India. Especially:
1. Point 31 above to call for greater commitments of public and donor funds for ICTD projects in India for the excluded areas and communities even where revenue models may not be immediately (or ever) possible.
2. Point 33 l above to call for greater commitments to community owned and local government owned ICTD projects.
There are other issues like the mention of networking initiatives based on local communities in the WSIS documents (point 37 e of the above referred chapter 2) that can be used as basis of advocacy for telecom connectivity solutions based in, and owned by, communities, which is a good framework to push for open access community owned ICT infrastructure - like WiFi networks and Internet over local cable networks.
Parminder Jeet Singh, IT for Change, Bangalore.
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WSIS and civil society: A backgrounder
We have compiled this backgrounder to give you a complete picture of the WSIS from the perspective of the civil society. Explains academic concepts and issues related to knowledge society, notes activities and concerns of the civil society, and lists actors and organisations involved in the WSIS process as well as links to related Websites.
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