Intel has been developing this paper for the last few months and is now seeking endorsement from major development organizations. The paper is supposed to be out next week. I have been in touch with Intel on this since August last year and have provided an initial set of comments that were not added to…

The new Microsoft Technology Officer (MSTO), based in DC and assigned to International Organizations, has been contacting me since November last year. We finally met on Tuesday 15 January when he was in town also meeting other organizations, UNWomen included. Here is what we agree to do: 1. Extend or renew the current MoU between…

Thiss week a UNDP post-2015 team member went to Korea to explore ways in which that country could support the process. Korea had also expressed interest on youth and ICTs to DGG -DGG being UNDP’s focal point on youth. DGG had suggested to the mission to also pitch e-governance. Here is what I prepared on…

14 February Inputs for TICAD5 one deadline. Submitted on 15th after speaking with TICAD FP 12 February – GFM request for cost estimates re GPIV and staffing. Matric produced in sync with Ops Manager. 5 February – support yo youth event with Benin, 14 Feb. MM commkted to support. Meeting on 7 Feb with MM…

DGG received a request from RBAP to provide inputs on the above. The Director of RBAP is going on mission to Afghanistan and is planning to make a pitch to the CO supporting this. Here are the inputs provided. 1. A digital copy of our report on mobile technologies is attached – the report is…

I travelled  for 24 hours to DC to attend the 2012 edition of Beyond Access (http://www.beyondaccess.net/conference2012/, #BA2012). I took the opportunity to meet with colleagues from WBI who are working on ICTD and governance. At the informal meeting, I realized that the approach of WBI to the issues is similar to ours in the sense…

Additional comments shared with BDP on the platform and a bit more.. The platform in itself is meaningless if is does not attract people who are at the same time willing to put and share content. There are already over 2 billion web sites out there so having one more does not help. So the…

Comments sent to BDP SMs on the above. In a nutshell, the (daily) management of the process has been determined by the Teamworks development cycle which we have been informed by Mitchel and his team is of three/four weeks. That means that any work that we in TAG agree to put on the platform will…

I got several messages from UNDP Colombia asking me to provide comments on an initiative that the Ministry of ICTs in collaboration with UNDESA are designing. The project will establish an innovation center. The documents are here:  http://undegov.org/~raul/egov/country/colombia/innovation. The documents and my comments below are in Spanish (a google translated version can be found at…

Background This mission responds to commitments UNDP made back in June (see my previous BTOB here: http://blog.raulza.me/?p=1532) to support the modernization of CSSC which is under national scrutiny amid a global fiscal crisis which is also affecting Costa Rica. On 26 July CCSS sent a formal letter to UNDP San José requesting support to tackle…

Dear colleagues, I have been following with interest the current discussion on UNDP’s anti-corruption practices and emerging trends. In doing so, I have noted that so far that Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for development have been marginally mentioned. My contribution will focus on this area, which UNDP has been supporting for almost 20 years…

The Nordic Office in Copenhagen has started to think on how to reduce the costs of Electoral Voting (EV) systems which apparently are growing overtime and can be a burden for poorer countries. A concept note (BVR Concept Paper 16082012 and annex ANNEX 1_BVR Concept Paper 29062012 TABLE EXPENSES PSO) and ToRs (EVR-Feasibility Study –…