2013 is not 2000. This short and seemingly tautological phrase was repeated several times during the first day of the just-finalized 2013 Global MDG meeting in Bogotá. It was also reused to magnify how much has changed since the Millennium Declaration was issued. While many of such changes might have negative implications for developing countries,…

With contributions from team members Ruhiya, Minerva and Maartje, here is the draft issues note that we finished just in time for distribution at the upcoming post-2015 Global Governance consultation meeting that will take place in Johannesburg next week.  Since we did not have time to get the paper peer-reviewed, the issue paper will initially…

I submitted a proposal for a paper (see http://blog.raulza.me/?p=1736) for the upcoming Global MDG meeting that will take place next week in Bogotá, Colombia. The proposal was accepted. I have just finished the paper, which is here: MDG-innovations-ICTs-2013-02-19-rz. I will present the paper at the meeting in Colombia. I have already seen a draft agenda, and…

This article was requested by the UK United Nations Association (http://www.una.org.uk/) and will be published in the next issue of their flagship publication, New World. According to UNA, New World has over 20,000 readers in over 100 countries. Thus, the article is customized for such readership. The new century is just about to enter its…

Below are the inputs we provided DGG for the upcoming global governance consultations in Joburg in less than 2 weeks. The final text builds on inputs from Minerva and Ruhiya. This should be a live document which we should be updating on  a regular basis. Cheers, Raúl ICTs for Democratic Governance and Sustainable Development  …

DGG has been working on this for the last few months. The week before last I got to see the latest version which had bu then changed substantially and added to its title the words collaborative governance and institutional innovations. Ruhiya and I discussed the text and spend a few hours adding track changes. Here…

Introduction As more people get connected to the global ICT networks (Internet, social networks, mobiles, etc.), especially in the developing world, the need to share information and knowledge through such networks increases. UNDP is not immune to these trends. As a result, the demand for IT services from programmes and units is on the rise.…

Oxfam Novib (OxNov, see here for background and short history: http://www.oxfamnovib.nl/history.html) has approach us to explore ways in which we can collaborate. OxNov informed me that they have an ongoing programme on access to information using ICTs. They also have interest on all the stuff we have promoting here at UNDP on empowerment, given voice…

Lats week I attended the second meeting of this group which includes representatives of most of the bureaux  – although RBx representation is on the weak side. We are invited by KICG to present the work we are jointly doing with BCPR which we are branding as governance innovations with ICTs in mind. The presentation…

Background The main objective of this two-day CO funded mission was to present to CCSS’s Board of Directors (BoD) the findings and recommendations of the diagnostic report that we completed and delivered to the Agency in early December 2012 ( a copy of the version submitted is here: http://undpegov.org/~raul/egov/country/costarica/CCSS-reporte-final-2012-12-06.docx, in Spanish). The mission also took…

Working with the support of the EU and the UN, UNDP Bishkek has just completed a e-readiness report that was undertake by an international e-governance consultant. A copy of the report that was shared with us by UNDP Kyrgyzstan is here: Final Assessment Report 19 Dec. The CO has requested us to provide comments. Here…

While completing the ROAR exercise for 2012, I run into his question. What has changed under this outcome area (with and without UNDP support)? Please specify the evidence base used. (4000 characters maximum) Here is what I quickly responded. The decisive impact of the Arab Spring and other social movements in this area has been…

The Administrator is planning to attend this forum (http://philanthropyforum.org) and BERA requested inputs along four questions. Here are the questions and the inputs provided. 1. What are ‘big’ opportunities for human development that can be spurred by ICT ?

The final version of this report does not have an Executive Summary. Plus we also discovered that the back cover had no text. So we decided to draft some text. I wrote the text below in response to an earlier draft prepared by Ruhiya. While developing countries continue to make important gains in accessing new…