Category: ICTD

  • Women, empowerment and new technologies

    Women, empowerment and new technologies

    Yesterday, we celebrated International Women’s Day (IWD) for the 108th time. The celebration first took place in 1908 in New York City. Back then, it was called the International Working Women’s Day (IWWD), first organized by the Socialist Party of the US. At some point, the additional W dropped, and the event became a celebration…

  • 10 steps to ensure successful ICTD/e-governance implementation

    10 steps to ensure successful ICTD/e-governance implementation

    Since the dawn of the new Millennium we have seen rapid changes in the ICT environment where mobiles and mobility are explicit trendsetters. The same can be said about the use and deployment of ICTs in the public sector. We started with e-government and then moved to e-governance a few years later -we can also…

  • Perception, Sampling and Crowdsourcing

    Perception, Sampling and Crowdsourcing

    In  Kurosawa’s 1950 film classic Rashomon, four people share with us gripping details about a murder and alleged rape that had taken place 3 days earlier on the road in the middle of a deserted forest. Three of them were part of the actual event (including the murdered Samurai who, thanks to a medium, manages…

  • Public Sector Information, Open Data and Data Revolution

    Public Sector Information, Open Data and Data Revolution

    For a while, I have been planning on writing about the post-2015 High-Level Panel (HLP) report and the role of ICTs in the new development agenda. As I see it, the report has missed an ample opportunity here (as the old MDGs did!) by focusing primarily on one aspect of the new technologies potential to…

  • ICTs and Sustainable Development: Tacking Stock

    ICTs and Sustainable Development: Tacking Stock

    Background The idea of SDNP ( http://www.undpegov.org/sdnp/) emerged during preparations for the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit. The perception that many countries, especially poorer ones, lacked reliable information to make effective decisions and promote sustainable development issues was on the table. How could countries take responsibility and be accountable for implementing UNCED agreements in…

  • Weekly Update: 15 July

    This week was essentially focused on the upcoming BDP agenda for change and the follow-up to the GMM. I posted some of my inputs earlier in the week in this space. Overall,  BDP seems to be taking a low profile approach to the change process being push by top managers. If anything, BDP should prepare…

  • Free/Open Source Software and Public Sofware: Concept Note

    Objective The purpose of this concept note is to shed some light on the notion of Public Software (Software Publico, SP), based on the original model developed by the Brazilian Government (Software Público Brasileiro – SPB), and compare it with the broader concept of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). The idea of SP has…

  • Latinux Magazine Interview

    “Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are not an end in itself but rather a means to reach people and enhance their lives.” (Raúl Zambrano) Born in Colombia, Raul Zambrano is trained as an engineer, sociologist and economist. He currently works as ICT and e-governance policy advisor at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) headquarters in…

  • ICTs and the Millennium Villages: A Research Proposal

    Background There is no question that the last 20 years have witnessed the explosive deployment and grow throughout the globe of the new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). This growth has been usually identified with Internet access which, according to the latest statistics, has almost 1.6 billion users -or close to 24% of the world’s…

  • e-governance Assessment Mehodology

    Methodology Framework The proposed methodology framework focuses on measuring the value delivered by e-governance projects to different stakeholders and beneficiaries, as well as the effectiveness in the way UNDP implements and manages such projects. In general, a positive correlation is expected to exist between larger impact and good implementation and management but, on the other…

  • Comments on Draft Governance Assessments Global Programme

    Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2008 13:14:45 -0500 (EST) From: Raul Zambrano To: Noha El-mikawy Cc: Terence D Jones , Bjoern Foerde , Pauline Tamesis, Joachim Nahem , Veronica Perera Dear Noha,As mentioned in my previous message, here are some comments on the draft. I will skip all formalities and get right into the subject matter.…

  • e-gov and gender

    I am still I am still working on the e-gov and gender paper. It is taking longer than expected but then again the previous draft was a bit all over the place. I hope to finish this in a couple of days. Drafts can be found here http://sdnhq.undp.org/~raul/egov/gender Raul

  • Meeting with MOFA on Non-Core Funding

    This morning BDP and BRSP met with Mr. Nobuaki Ito, Director of Multilateral Cooperation Division, Economic Cooperation Bureau, MOFA at the Japan Mission to the UN. Minutes of the meeting were prepared by MOFA and are available. The big idea here is the “unification” of all non-core contributions to a single source of funding. It…

  • Beta Laptop

    I received a message from the OLPC team informing me that I will be receiving a B laptop early this week for testing purposes. The unit is being FEDEX to my office. I saw a similar machine a couple of weeks ago when a rep from OLPC based in NYC came to my office and…

  • e-voting Selected Papers

    Found this uselful site (http://www.social-informatics.net/evoting.htm) that is being maintained on a continuous basis by the Department of Science System Assessment at the Rathenau Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.