I was one of the 7 panellists that participated in The Guardian’s live chat on the role of technology in advancing the MDG agenda. The panel included a couple of experts on humanitarian aid which in my book is a bit different from actual development assistance. In any even below are some onf my inputs.…

As part of the CEB cybersec working group, UNDP has agreed to take the lead in two of the five thematic areas identified by the CEB Steering Committee, namely the role of cybersec in development and the post2015 agenda, and the coordination of cybersec activities of all UN agencies via UNDG. Below is the first…

Love is Colder than Death, that is the title of a film made a famous and now dead German director. This seems to be the case with IBM as our partnership refuses to die but it is usually very cold, most of the time. That is until I get this very unexpected messages from our…

For the last few months, OCHA has been developing the idea of launching a humanitarian data lab (or hub) which it sees as an expansion of the work that has been undertaken for several years now, IRIN included. The latest concept note was shared last week a few days before the conference call that took…

The Administrator will be participating  in this event on Contributions of North-South, South-South, Triangular Cooperation, and ICT for Development to the implementation of the Post-2015 Development Agenda which take place at the UN in New York on 21-22 May. She will be making a 10 minute speech. ExO has requested inputs from South-South, Post2015 and our…

Just got a last minute request from ExO to prepare a briefing on the above due at 2pm. I wonder what will happen with  stuff like this when they get rid of all of most of us in a few months…:) Background Internet governance is the name that has been given to the management and…

I will be attending this meeting that start on Thursday and which finally take place after 9 months of work and 2 previous postponements. The meeting has been scaled down quite a bit as many of the initial speakers dropped out the list as they could not handle the ever changing agenda and dates. The…

The OGP Secretariat asked all 4 multilateral partners to submit an update of activities for the upcoming OGP SC meeting which will take place in May. Here is what we submitted. After the OGP Summit in London, the UNDP Administrator sent a message to the UN Resident Coordinators and UNDP Resident Representatives in UNDP programme…

Last Friday we met with the President of the ICT for Peace Foundation to explore possible areas of collaboration. The President of the foundation is a former Swiss diplomat whom I met in 2001 and who back then was heavily involved in the organization of WSIS. The Foundation has essentially been working on crisis mapping…

UNDESA/DPADM will be holding its annual Public Service Awards (PSA) gathering in Seoul this coming June and has approached our Singapore center to organize a panel on e-governance/smart governance. As the center has no real expertise in these areas, in spite of their open support for innovation, it has reached out to DGG for support.…

While the links between public administration (PA) and e-governance (egov) are strong, as evidenced by many UNDP projects and programmes on the ground, this is certainly not the case at the conceptual level. The democratic governance practice, soon to be transformed into something else, has yet to produce any sort of report or guidance  on…

ODWG seems to be moving faster than the other 4 OGP workign groups. The group already had a conference call, created a steering committee that we were able to join as UNDP and prepared a draft workplan that has been shared for comments. Below is what I sent on behalf of UNDP. 1. Work plan…

Spearheaded by the ITU, the UN has created a high-level steering group (SG) to work on cybersecurity. The SG includes UNESCO, UNODC, and UNCTAD  in addition to ITU, UNDP, UN Secretariat and UNDG. The main goal of the group is to develop a cybersecurity/cybercrime strategy that will be presented to the UN in 2014. It…

Frontline SMS , founded by Ken Banks,  is the pioneer of using this technology in developing countries. For example, Ushahidi made use of the platform in 2007 when it started to track violent events related to the Kenya elections.  Nowadays, Frontline SMS has a large network of users and continues to to grow; it has…

Memory tells me this was the fourth time in the last 14 years I have been in Cape Town on official mission. But I have no doubt that this was the first time I was down there to support the Western Cape (WC) provincial government. Cape Town has a well deserved reputation of being  beautiful…