Back to the office after one month away. Probably the longest time I have been away on leave since I joined UNDP. Lots of email to reply but luckily I was checking my mail box on a regular basis.
Demand from the field is increasing. This week alone I interacted with: Bangladesh, Brazil, Ghana, Iraq, Macedonia, Madagascar, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, St. Kitts, UAE and Venezuela. Missions to most of these countries are in the works. Bangladesh, Brazil, Ghana, and Venezuela will be policy support missions on work we have done in the part. Macedonia and Madagascar are requesting more programme support which does not entail travel. Iraq is just pipeline as we are still awaiting for the new government to actually start to function. Missions to Saudi Arabia and UAE will be for national or regional e-gov meetings. Demand for this region seems to be increasing this year.
The ongoing work on the BDP TTFs is moving slowly. New developments submitted by the company are not quite what we expected. This might be dragging for a while…
Also had an interesting phone call with CTIC, a Spanish Foundation based in Asturias and supporting ICTs. They have a set of quite interesting projects: Open Data, accurate detection of TB via new technologies, and support to SMMEs and ICTs via local chambers of commerce. We might support a couple of them. The one on early TB detection sounds fascinating -and CTIC has liaised with EHAS, another Spanish NGO working on e-health for the poor.
Also contacted IBM to explore ways to finalize the work on E-governance Interoperability Frameworks. The idea for now is to produce a report on the subject which focuses on successful cases and promotes the notion of Open Standards.
