|
||||
|
|
Weaving Real Connections through WSISFriday 12 Oct 2007
Digital Divide Data crash landed at WSIS Geneva with little preparation. We were a project, just over two years old at the time, with little sense of what WSIS was about, who would be there, what it might mean for us, or what we could contribute. We arrived on the heels of winning the World Bank’s Development Marketplace Award—only to find out that we would also be the recipient of GKP’s Youth Award, recognizing our work in creating sustainable technology jobs and building skills for disadvantaged youth in Cambodia and Laos. It was a heady, exciting time. At WSIS Geneva, we met people from around the world, doing all kinds work on development issues using ICTs. Representatives on the ICT4D platform from NGOs and businesses were interested to learn more about our work-and we found many others whom we could help us. No one quite understood that Paul Htay, our Burmese junior manager who accepted the Youth Award for DDD, wasn't actually Cambodian, but it didn't matter much where any of us were from. What matter was our individual and collective commitment to building an information society.  After the meeting, DDD continued its work…and the small connections we made in Geneva began grow. Through a GKP project in Timor Leste, we came to know Open Forum Cambodia—and before long, one of our staff “graduated” to help them in their mission of teaching Cambodian NGOs and government officials to use the Khmer language with computers. We hosted a Burmese youth intern as part of GKP’s youth program. A representative of DANIDA, the Danish development agency, introduced us to the IT Ministry in Bhutan—and we conducted a feasibility study to start DDD there. Folks we met from Thai Ruralnet invited us to Kuala Lumpur to help lay the groundwork for GKP’s Youth Social Enterprise Initiative. Meanwhile, with support from UNDP, the International Finance Corporation, and others, we opened offices in Battambang, Cambodia and Vientiane, Laos. We grew, from employing about 60 staff at the time of the Geneva conference, to more than 180 by the time we headed to Tunis. People from more than 40 countries wrote us to learn more about our model. We approached Tunis a bit more prepared. We had planned a session to talk about the role of IT services businesses in development. UNDP invited us to show the “Replication Toolkit” they had developed from our expansion to rural Cambodia. On our first day, at an “Open Space” meeting, we connected with more than a dozen other organizations from around the world also interested in the potential of creating jobs and building skills through IT services businesses. Over the next few days, this group met several more times to lay the groundwork for a new partnership. And, we found that our connections had multiplied. Kann Kunthy, one of our Cambodian managers, traveling outside his country for the first time, was overwhelmed by how many people from around the world knew about Digital Divide Data. In Tunis, one of the most innovative technologies on display was a new networking system presented in the Japan Pavilion. The technology allows for making network connections through the human body, carried over the small electric currents present in all of us. The potential applications cited, such as alarms for pill containers, were not especially convincing. However, the idea of human networking technology is a potent metaphor for the greatest value of the two-year WSIS process. The ostensible focus of WSIS was a set of political meetings on Internet governance and the development of a global information society. In terms of the official authorized activities designed to build a global information society, little happened beyond flowery declarations by politicians. As a political process, WSIS was a disappointing failure. Yet the Summit was more than just a political process. Indeed, WSIS was among the first United Nations processes to integrate participation of the private sector and civil society. Also, as a two-year process, it allowed these players to engage more fully than any previous international process. According to the Tunisians, more than 23,000 people attended the meeting in Tunis; many more participated in a range of related meetings around the globe over the past two year. Despite the bumbling of national representatives, this emergent engagement of businesspeople, activists and social entrepreneurs enabled WSIS to succeed in building a set of critical human networks. The value of these human networks has important implications along three different dimensions. At one level, the WSIS process facilitated knowledge-sharing on a global scale about how we are building an information society. The tens of thousands of participants from around the globe, hundreds of presentations and meetings, and thousands of publications have helped formulate visions for how information and communications technologies can help us more fully achieve our human potential. While we have not emerged with a single concept of what this means, the multiple overlapping ideas are a source of strength, as they represent fertile ground for the continuing development of a knowledge society. Perhaps even more important, the WSIS process facilitated a negotiation of understanding of what building an information society means, between representatives of the developing and developed worlds. Governments from developing countries were pushed to articulate their technology policies on a world stage. OECD nations needed to examine how funding for ICTs in the developing world, as well as at home, fit into their priorities. Multinational technology corporations saw it in their interest to articulate their outlook on ICTs for development, and in many cases, to launch exploratory initiatives. Smaller scale enterprises in developing countries looked for the opportunities to grow. Civil society organized to push for openness and equity. Most important, tens of thousands of people from around the world were engaged in a broad conversation about what information and communications technology is making possible, what is working, and what is not. Finally, WSIS represented a marketplace for financing the information society. In Geneva, in Tunis and between the two, governments, businesses and social entrepreneurs networked, developed proposals and sought out and made investments. While one can bemoan an overall lack of resources—and perhaps the waste of resources in these glitzy summit meetings—there is no doubt that funding connections were made, deals were cut, and that a great deal more money flowed toward developing a global information society than if WSIS never happened.  Since Tunis, DDD has made huge strides. We have learned valuable lessons from board members who joined us from the private sector and the International Finance Corporation. We reorganized our management structure—and our business operations have become profitable. We strengthened our social mission to develop our staff—and seen how the staff we train, in turn contribute to the development of the information society in countries where we work. And we are interconnected with many others around the world doing similar work. Together with colleagues in India and the Philippines whom we met in Tunis, I have personally been exploring the human development impact of work in larger IT services businesses. And, following up on the partnership we formed in Tunis, DDD and Datamation will soon be training groups from several countries on how to start their own IT services businesses. The process of building community in ICT4D continues. We were thrilled to hear the announcement of a Third Global Knowledge Conference (GK3) in 2007, where we will come together again to continue to build an information society, anchored in the strength of our growing human network.  Post Your Comment
|
|||
|
|
||||