Category: e-governance

  • Meeting with Microsoft

    The new Microsoft Technology Officer (MSTO), based in DC and assigned to International Organizations, has been contacting me since November last year. We finally met on Tuesday 15 January when he was in town also meeting other organizations, UNWomen included. Here is what we agree to do: 1. Extend or renew the current MoU between…

  • Pitch to South Korea for Funds?

    Thiss week a UNDP post-2015 team member went to Korea to explore ways in which that country could support the process. Korea had also expressed interest on youth and ICTs to DGG -DGG being UNDP’s focal point on youth. DGG had suggested to the mission to also pitch e-governance. Here is what I prepared on…

  • Requests Tracker

    14 February Inputs for TICAD5 one deadline. Submitted on 15th after speaking with TICAD FP 12 February – GFM request for cost estimates re GPIV and staffing. Matric produced in sync with Ops Manager. 5 February – support yo youth event with Benin, 14 Feb. MM commkted to support. Meeting on 7 Feb with MM…

  • Bangladesh A2I programme in Afghanistan

    DGG received a request from RBAP to provide inputs on the above. The Director of RBAP is going on mission to Afghanistan and is planning to make a pitch to the CO supporting this. Here are the inputs provided. 1. A digital copy of our report on mobile technologies is attached – the report is…

  • The Role of ICTs in Empowering People

    The Role of ICTs in Empowering People

    In the last twenty years, we have witnessed a very rapid and dramatic evolution of ICTs at a pace perhaps unprecedented in history. This evolution, however, has come in a series of waves. First, we saw the advent of the Internet in the early 1990s, a network of networks that quickly gained global relevance -although…

  • BTOB: Mission to Washington DC – 3 October 2012

    I travelled  for 24 hours to DC to attend the 2012 edition of Beyond Access (http://www.beyondaccess.net/conference2012/, #BA2012). I took the opportunity to meet with colleagues from WBI who are working on ICTD and governance. At the informal meeting, I realized that the approach of WBI to the issues is similar to ours in the sense…

  • More on the post-2015 platform Vision

    Additional comments shared with BDP on the platform and a bit more.. The platform in itself is meaningless if is does not attract people who are at the same time willing to put and share content. There are already over 2 billion web sites out there so having one more does not help. So the…

  • Update on post-2015 management

    Comments sent to BDP SMs on the above. In a nutshell, the (daily) management of the process has been determined by the Teamworks development cycle which we have been informed by Mitchel and his team is of three/four weeks. That means that any work that we in TAG agree to put on the platform will…

  • Innovation Center in Colombia

    I got several messages from UNDP Colombia asking me to provide comments on an initiative that the Ministry of ICTs in collaboration with UNDESA are designing. The project will establish an innovation center. The documents are here:  http://undegov.org/~raul/egov/country/colombia/innovation. The documents and my comments below are in Spanish (a google translated version can be found at…

  • BTOB: Support to Costa Rican Social Security Agency (CCSS) – 10/14 September

    Background This mission responds to commitments UNDP made back in June (see my previous BTOB here: http://blog.raulza.me/?p=1532) to support the modernization of CSSC which is under national scrutiny amid a global fiscal crisis which is also affecting Costa Rica. On 26 July CCSS sent a formal letter to UNDP San José requesting support to tackle…

  • Contribution to Anti-Corruption CoP Discussion

    Dear colleagues, I have been following with interest the current discussion on UNDP’s anti-corruption practices and emerging trends. In doing so, I have noted that so far that Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for development have been marginally mentioned. My contribution will focus on this area, which UNDP has been supporting for almost 20 years…

  • Electoral Voting Systems and FOSS

    The Nordic Office in Copenhagen has started to think on how to reduce the costs of Electoral Voting (EV) systems which apparently are growing overtime and can be a burden for poorer countries. A concept note (BVR Concept Paper 16082012 and annex ANNEX 1_BVR Concept Paper 29062012 TABLE EXPENSES PSO) and ToRs (EVR-Feasibility Study –…

  • Comments on Intel’s Broadband Paper

    A contact from Intel asked me to provide feedback on a white paper the company is finishing on broadband. The draft paper is here: Intel-Broadband_v 1. The paper looks good but I have a few issues which I briefly highlight below. 1. Unlike others, I do not think broadband alone is going to promote all…

  • Mission to Swaziland – 26 – 31 August

    Objectives Conduct 3 day workshop on strategy development with the existing e-governance committee (egovCom), assess gaps and pinpoint emerging issues Meet with local counterparts to explore synergies with other sectors that can benefit from related e-governance work Liaise with UNDP CO and strategize on how to integrate current and pipeline programming using e-governance as a…

  • Inputs for e-gov article in Panama’s press

    I received a request from UNDP Panamá to provide inputs for a press article on e-governance that will be published this coming Tuesday. The office received 5 questions and I am replying to three of them. The article and my inputs are in Spanish. 1.       ¿Qué es la gobernanza electrónica? El surgimiento del Internet a…