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…

After several attempts and 10 weeks in between, I finally visited GovLab which is hosted by NYU. The fact that I had personally met one of the GovLab co-founders, Stefaan Verhulst, did help a bit. Stefaan was previously with the Markle Foundation and we meet over 10 years ago when UNDP and Markle partnered to…

The 4th INSIHD meeting took place in Berlin the week of 3 March. We were able to bring together over 25 participants from 15 countries and ensure good representation from Motorola Solutions  -which previously had been limited at best. We also secured the participation of 3 UNDP country office staff. This was also the first…

We have been going back and forth with the analytical framework for the guidance note on the above. Below is a draft that tries to put it all together in brief form, keeping mind that the audience is comprised of CO staff. Democratic governance and conflict Democratic governance is often perceived as a stationary state…

A message from the  CO in Pretoria indicates that UNDP ZA is now working with the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA), the government OGP official counterpart, to support the implementation of the 2nd national action plan and the implementation of several of the 7 commitments spelled out in the plan. DPSA has also…

Contention at its core involves claim-making activities that bear on someone else’s interests (Tilly and Tarrow 2007: 4). Contentious politics represent the intersection between contention, politics and collective action. It is defined as “episodic, public and collective” claims made by one or more parties where the state is involved as either the object of such…

Background Created in 1998, the Internet Corporation for the Assignment of Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a US non-profit organization based in Los Angeles, California that is in charge of managing the allocation of Internet domain names and IP (Internet Protocol) addresses on a global scale. Although at first sight its core functions can be…

ITU has been providing support to the UN’s OWG while promoting at the same time the importance of ICTs in the post-2015 agenda. This process has been going on for a few months and apparently discussions on the subject have taken place at several fora. I was however not aware of this. So I was…

For the last few years, UAE has developed comprehensive policies and programmes to establish a National ID system. Institutionally, the country created in 2004 the Emirates ID Authority which has been leading efforts at the national level. In a country with less than 6 million people and average GDP/capita of close to 30,000 USD the…

Context Access to both new technology platforms, such as social networks and mobile technologies, and faster networks has enabled millions if not billions to share information on a global scale. The fact that most of these new platforms are private and operate in quasi oligopolistic fashion, has facilitated the concentration of data in a few…

Last Friday, UNDP Delhi sent me a message indicating that the RC will be participating in the 17th National e-governance meeting in Kochi, Kerala (see  http://www.nceg.gov.in/. I also recieved a copy of the draft agenda and was informed that the RC will be speaking about e-governance and business process re-engineering  -and not on e-participation which…

For the last few months, the Development Management Branch (DMB) of UNDESA’s Division of Public Administration and Development Management (DPADM, see here for organogram of DPADM) has been working in developing a e-participation methodology for use by UN member states to assess the level of people’s engagement with the public sector .