Another short week for me as I came back to the office on the 4th. Not that work stops because I am on leave, not at all.
We had our first e-gov staff meeting of 2012 and focused on identifying priority areas for 2012. They are:
Ongoing
- Mobile governance – primer, case studies, guidance note, pilots
- Social networks (and social media) – complete primer, link to innovation, case studies, “competition” with TWs group!
- Open Government (starting) – link to R2IP, transparency, accountability, participation and open source
- Crisis Response (starting) – CAR pilot, link to BCPR, ToolBox, possible mission to CAR February
- MDGs (mMDGs but need more!)
New/Emerging
- ICTs and environment (part of the Broadband Commission) – assess niche for us and UNDP
- Local governance/development and ICTs – some work has been done but no support from DG advisors
- Social innovation – just emerging, have spoken to potential partners to do mapping study in Africa
- Civic engagement and ICT (linked to Human Rights, Anti-corruption, etc.) – share OGCs paper on the subject
In addition, we are working on the following partnerships:
- Motorola on mobiles: will probably get 1 million USD over the next 3 three years
- UNICEF: innovations (now tech for development) plus birth certificates
- ITU- UNESCO/Broadband Commission; ongoing, more high level meetings and calls
- UNGIS/WSIS: continue to work together, possible Rio+20 sessions on ICTs
- Tata Group/foundation: potential large contribution to UNDP to ICT/e-gov in India
- UNCTAD: potential partneship on Measuring ICT for Development, workin with them in South Africa
- Korean Government: support to UNDP Seoul Policy Center. UNDESA involved through UNPOG in Seoul
- IBM, Cisco, Microsoft potential partners…
- UN Office for Partneships: UNWired 4.0 Conference in May
Please bear in mind that the bulk of our work is on policy advise and knowledge development and not so much on programme support and implementation. Thus, producing top-notch knowledge products and comparative knowledge is essential for us. We can also promote “pilots” to help COs implement innovations in the field, etc.
Cheers, Raúl
