[governance] IGF and GAID

[Ronda Hauben]

Does anyone know what are the actual plans for the future of GAID?

It is good to see there is some discussion of it on these lists, but I am
wondering what is the actual plan for it, if there is one being planned
or in the process of being implemented?

I have proposed that those interested in integrating Internet development in
the development process have much to learn from studying and discussing the
actual development process that built the Internet.

When I returned home from the WSIS meeting in Tunis in 2005, I had some
discussion with someone who described the struggle in his country in Africa,
over how to spread the Internet.

The experience he described was about how commercial entities wanted to
limit how the Internet was used. Meanwhile there some in government who
recognized that there was a need to spread the Internet at a low cost,
especially in the education sector. He described the government idea of
wiring a government building and then using that to offer low cost or free
Internet education to the school systems nearby. Instead those interested in
commercial development claimed the wiring of the government building should
only serve the government site. The struggle between these two visions of
Internet development was not unique to that country, as I had experienced a
similar struggle in the US.

It seemed reviewing both the vision guiding early networking development and
the history of how the Internet was developed and spread in its early
phases, would be of value in general, and in particular to the developing
world.
Unfortunately, those drafting the millennium development goals didn't find a
way to build in this kind of focus into the goals themselves.

Happy New Year to all.

with best wishes

Ronda

On Sat, Jan 2, 2010 at 3:49 PM, Hakikur Rahman <email at hakik.org> wrote:

>  Dear Parminder,
>
> I agree with you cent percent, but wish I could have knew those strange
> reasons that you have mentioned. Not only UNDP, but seems majority of
> development partners are no more interested in ICTD. For many years, it has
> become stalled somewhere, when the field was really going to launch in many
> lagging nations. Hope GAID, as it has been expected could come up with
> something in this aspect.
>
> Best regards,
> Hakikur
>
> At 06:48 02-01-2010, Parminder wrote:
>
>
>   Jean-Louis FULLSACK wrote:
>
> Dear Parminder
>
> As usually your message clearifies the debate ; therefore all my thanks.
>
> > concrete suggestion for IGF reform, which may be taken up when the
> resolution/
> > discussion on IGF continuation finally comes up at the UN general
> > assembly or at the CSTD (there is a confusion at this stage how the
> > process will go forward).
>
> Isn't there another confusing situation with GAID as far as IG is dealing
> with Developing Countriers issues are concerned ?
> If this is the opinion of a majority among us, our relation with -and/or
> position on- GAID should be laid down accordingly.
>
> Dear Jean-Louis,
>
> Development has never been a serious political issue at WSIS, and has been
> even less so post-WSIS. It is for this reason that the levels of interest of
> major actors and therefore the trajectories of the IGF and GAID have been
> very different. (It is a different manner that the subject of development is
> treated as a red herring with such regularity, and often deviousness, in the
> IGF that it would make a very interesting study/ story.)
>
> IG is very political because it concerns the governance, and thus the
> possibilities of shaping, of the Internet. Development in post-WSIS
> structures has been seen in largely in the normal 'charity view' of
> development, plus as new possibilities of political alliances for
> transnational businesses to expand their markets in developing countries.
> The fact is that, at present, no major actor of any significant power has
> really much interest in ICTD at the global level. (UNDP for some strange
> reasons has mostly withdrawn from this area.)
>
> So while IGF seems to be headed towards even keener political contests,
> GAID, post-Sarbuland, may be headed towards getting folded up into a regular
> UN department, doing mundane work (thats what I fear). The way GAID was run
> as a new age network had many huge problems - and we kept pointed them out
> at all GAID meetings - but it will be a mistake to forgo  its open new-age
> network structure for a bureaucratic UN department. What we need instead is
> a set of more focussed and clearer objectives and work plans, and a better
> network structure focussed on public interest actors, chiefly those involved
> with development issues.
>
> Parminder
>
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> <snip>


-- 
Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook
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