Category: Human Development
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Vaccine Inequality
Already under siege in many quarters, Globalization has now added the seemingly unstoppable spread of the Corona Virus to its already dubious credentials. As expected, not one single country has been spared, rich and poor suddenly standing on the same level playing field – a milestone economic globalization never accomplished despite mainstream media coverage tirelessly…
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AI and Development Policies
Strongly supported by behemoth tech companies, the “ethical and responsible” AI discourse has almost completely overshadowed the relevant conversation on the potential socio-economic impact the resurgent technology might have in developing countries. While such discourse’s subtle agenda, apparently now failing, is essentially aimed at avoiding any government regulation by promoting “AI for good,” research on…
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Better “AI for Good”
While the dystopian camp perceives digital technologies as a formidable, perhaps even unsurmountable threat to society, those on the other, much more optimistic side do not seem to get tired of repeating its almost countless benefits. The latter camp apparently has the upper hand, at least for now, as its message captures most daily media…
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Digital Government in Jamaica
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…
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Evolving COVID-19
Over six months after its official birth, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to expand globally, as expected. Long-term lockdowns and other complementary measures have impacted, especially in industrialized countries that, back in June, were leading in cases and deaths. Not that the virus has been tamed, not at all. Rather, it now seems to be more…
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Digital Government Revisited – III
Institutions matter, more so for the development and implementation of Digital Government (DG), whose core target is public institutions’ transformation. On the one hand, public institutions should have an array of capacities to ensure public investments in digital technologies are effectively managed from beginning to end. In many low-income countries, such capabilities are exiguous or…
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Digital Government Revisited – II
Since the early 1980s, Governments have taken a bad rap. Menacing fingerpointing from most quarters ended up on a consensus that loudly declared them personas non-gratas. The 2009 Global Financial Crisis started to turn the tide. At the time, governments once again came to the rescue of capitalism, unveiling gigantic financial packages to prevent critical…
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Digital Government Revisited
Overview Running on the coattails of electronic commerce, Digital Government (DG) first saw the light of day over 20 years ago. Initially christened as electronic government or e-government, it has since experienced multiple name changes, ranging from e-governance and transformational government to intelligent and smart government. Nowadays, the field seems to be enjoying its run…
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Contentious Politics in the AI Age
Initially touted as revolutionary and progressive in the 1990s, the lightening evolution of digital technologies, running on the coattails of continuous innovation, has been accompanied by the rise of both extreme socio-economic inequalities and loud and widespread populism, nationalism and overt racism. Many countries are undergoing de-democratization processes undergirded by very resilient neoliberalism, while claim-making…
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Covid19: A “Swedish” Model?
Having been trashed for the last forty years or so, Governments have unexpectedly taken back center stage thanks to the Covid19 pandemic. The virus does not need a passport to travel around the world, nor any tough immigration legislation has managed to prevent it from freely crossing national borders. No country will be spared seems…
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Deadly COVID19
Over a week ago, a mainstream media news outlet published an article (behind a paywall) suggesting that the disease caused by the SARS–CoV-2 virus, COVID19, was not as deadly as initially thought. The article cited the results of a non-peer review study completed by a Stanford-led team seemingly showing that the number of people infected…
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Natural Disasters and Carbon Concentration
In 1988, the Brussels-based Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) launched the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) with the idea of promoting national and international humanitarian support to countries and regions affected by such events. Having a structured set of global data on the subject can also help policy and decisionmakers develop more…
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Yet Another Global AI Index
As Artificial Intelligence (AI) seemingly continues to permeate all interstices of society, measuring its undaunted progress in the age of data is more than a priority. In a previous post, I share some insights on the Global AI Readiness Index that covered almost all UN member states. The new Global AI Index (GAII), created by…
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The Development Onion
Governments in developing countries are just one of the many players involved in promoting sustainable development – in many cases, with direct support from bilateral and multilateral donor organizations. However, governments are, in principle, bound by the overall development commitments they make at the national and international levels. There are indeed several different interconnected layers…