Category: e-governance

Digital Government in Jamaica

Raul Zambrano e-governance, Human Development, ICTD Leave a comment

The last time I visited Jamaica was in the early 2000s. A few years before, we had launched the national node of the old and now defunct Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP). It was labeled JSDNP and did quite a bit of work locally fostering digital technologies and creating and disseminating local content. Unfortunately,  JSDNP ended operations sort of unexpectedly in 2006.  Now I am playing catch-up with the island’s digital evolution. And thanks to COIVD-19, I was not able to travel. Virtual will never beat the good old analog thing, that is for sure.

The pandemic unexpectedly struck the world amid yet another wave of digital technology innovation, thus adding seemingly insurmountable obstacles to an already crowded set of development challenges. Jamaica has not been spared

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Innovation in the Public Sector

Raul Zambrano e-governance, Governance, Human Development, ICTD, Inequality, Social Innovation Leave a comment

I. Introduction

For the last 30 years, relentless technological innovation has seemingly conquered most, if not all, corners of the world. While in its early stages, the focus was on infrastructure and social networks, the latest phase has set its eyes on core productive and financial processes that will undoubtedly have profound socio-economic and environmental impact across the board. Rapidly adapting to the emerging global context is the clarion call for most countries if they want to remain relevant and competitive at the global level.

Many developing countries find themselves in a unique situation. For starters, most innovations and technologies hold a foreign passport and thus need to first travel and then be adopted and adapted to the national context. Having local capacities  –

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Identifying the Unidentified

Raul Zambrano Blockchain, e-governance, Human Development 1 Comment

Identity access and management (IAM) is perhaps one of the areas where Blockchain Technology (BCT) could make a real difference. Research I am currently undertaken indicates that over one hundred BCT startups around the globe are focusing on this area. Add to this number the many other startups and organizations who have been engaged with digital identity for many years now but do not use BCT.1 See this report by OneWorld Identity for details and examples.

Also, factor in target 16.9 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that explicitly calls for universal legal identity provision, including birth registration for all children around the globe.2 Links to other SDG targets are listed here. The ID2020 global public-private partnership is now spearheading these efforts.

IAM

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Endnotes

⇧1 See this report by OneWorld Identity for details and examples.
⇧2 Links to other SDG targets are listed here.

25 Years of the Sustainable Development Networking Programme, SDNP

Raul Zambrano e-governance, Governance, ICTD, Innovation, Social Innovation 1 Comment

The Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP) was a UNDP global program that ran between 1992 and 2004.  SDNP’s core goal was to enhance access to sustainable development information on a multi-stakeholder basis using new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Its scope of work was driven by Agenda 21, the sustainable development agenda endorsed by UN member countries at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

Agenda 21 was composed of forty chapters, organized under four separate headings. The very last chapter of the agenda called for increased access to information for decision-making as one of the means of implementation of the agenda. Adding to its approach the targets of chapters 27 (strengthening non-government organizations) and 37 (capacity building in developing

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Lights Off in Westchester

Raul Zambrano e-governance Leave a comment

Just as with the stock market, weather forecasting is a tricky business. Thanks to one too many inaccurate forecasts, most people seem to be aware of this and usually cast doubts on what weather people tell us, specially when storms of any kind are heading our way. In the Northern Hemisphere, weather talk is also one of the most used ice-breakers to initiative conversations with strangers and acquaintances. And when forecasts are completely off, these informal conversations turn even more lively and, why not, intimate.

The Butterfly Effect

Weather systems are known to be “chaotic” (i.e., non-linear). Chaos theory, initially developed in the late 19th century and formalized as we know it today in the (19)80s,

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