ICTs and LDCs: Opportunities and Challenges Introduction More than ten years after the onset of the UN Millennium Declaration, developing countries have, on average, made substantial progress towards the achievement of Internationally Agreed Development Goals (IADGs). Governments, in partnership with the private sector and civil society, have redirected strategic resources to directly tackle poverty and…

Here are some additional inputs on the above, in response to comments provided by the Director of KM. 1. Let me start by saying that this is not really a NEW area for of work for UNDP. We have been “pushing” this, with a focus on the programme side, from the DGG/ICTD/egov side for the…

I was away most of the week on mission attending the Executive Committee (ExComm) meeting of  GKP. I heave shared my BTOR, which I completed almost immediately will all DGG staff. I did not mention a few things. One is that ExComm is anxiously looking for funding at almost any cost. One of the ideas…

Below is a concise proposal submitted to DGG to BDP’s Policy Group as part of the so-called multi-practice proposals that the Bureau plans to launch. This is still a very early stage in the process. Concept The explosive growth of mobile technologies and social networks’ role in recent events in the Middle East provides fertile…

I ran into Douglas Gardner, DD BDP, on my way to the restroom and this conversation on mobile technologies started after he asked me what we were doing in this area. After 20 minutes of discussion, he asked me to send him a short note on the subject. The note is below. He then asked…

Most of this week was dedicated to corporate stuff as we had to finalize the revision of corporate outcomes early in the week, We also found out on Wednesday that DGG annual report to be presented at the Executive Board and due on Tuesday was never prepared. As previously agreed with OG,DGG was to focus…

Here is an update on the meeting I attended this afternoon on behalf of DGG. Meeting Summary 1. The meeting was chaired by the AA who in doing so provided her inputs on all of the suggested changes received from BDP and BCPR. She started with BCPR, followed by HIV (as Jeff had to leave),…

The project was launched over a year ago but it is moving very slowly. I sent the comments below to the country office just before they had a project board meeting on Thursday. Translate this Entry 1. Impacto: es importante que aprovechemos esta oportunidad para re-evaluar los objetivos finales del proyecto como prioridad. Entiendo la…

Inputs provided to DGG on the above, upon request. 1. To answer OGs questions on what is reported under SL 2.1, the answer is rather simple: most of that is reported here related to civic engagement, civil society, human rights, participation, etc. This we know from looking at the country defined outcomes for this SL.…

The first part of the week I spent quite of a bit of time providing support to DGG Directorate on various UNDP draft papers and strategies. I have already posted some of these inputs in this blog. We participated via video on the WSIS Forum organized by ITU, UNESCO, UNCTAD and UNDP. The meeting lasted…

Here is a set of comments furnished to DG Management upon request on a draft two-page outline of the above mentioned paper. 1. The first issue that can be highlighted is that so-called “changing development landscape” is not new to UNDP. We have been facing this at least since the late 1990s and the change…

Below are the set of comments I prepared upon request on the above mentioned paper. 1. Although the paper is divided in 4 separate sections, in reality it addressed 11 critical issues that UNDP will need to eventually address to continue to be a key player in the development arena. 6 of those issues are…

We finally hooked again with the Danish organization, Danish Management who has interest in working with UNDP and developed e-governance policies and programmes in St. Kitts and Nevis. A 5 day mission has been tentatively scheduled for the week of 7 March. ToRs and Agenda are being prepared by the Danish organization and government officials.…

RBAS had prepared a draft regional strategy which is supposed to present UNDP’s response to the current crisis -and the ones emerging almost on a daily basis. We received the strategy document on Friday and were asked to provide comments by Sunday morning. Here is what I shared with DGG. 1. Not surprisingly, there is…

Two more conference calls this week on WSIS and UNGIS. The latter is getting a bit more interesting as UNGIS has secured a side event of ICTs and LDCs in the upcoming UN Conference on the LDCs on May 10. And UNDP is having a DG session on 11 May. We need to sync up…