I spent most of the week on mission, attending an international seminar on Technology and Citizen Participation, co-organized by UNDP México and the Electoral and Citizen Participation Institute of the State of Jalisco in México. I have already shared my back to office report will all concerned parties. As mentioned in the latter, I met…

For the last month or so, we have been discussing this issue with the UNGIS co-chairs. I even had a private call with the current UNESCO chair and asked for more details. After careful analysis our idea was to once to pass on this offer (as we did back in 2007/08). While on mission I…

Yesterday afternoon, I got a surprise call from UNDP Cairo late in the afternoon -or almost midnight in Egypt. UNDP Cairo has been essentially covering GKP. I thus shared my mission report with them. But the call was not about GKP, not at all. While the governance team here in NY and in the RSC…

The World Bank has launched a new strategy for Africa’s development. The strategy is here. The strategy has two key areas and one core pillar. The key areas are: competitiveness and employment; and vulnerability and resilience. The core pillar is governance and public sector capacity. This pillar focuses on fostering service delivery, providing access to…

I spent part of the week trying to “save” my surplus leave days (6 in total) that i will lose on midnight 31 March. But I was only able day off (Wednesday) and spent part of it on a longish UNGIS conference call discussing the future strategy for the group. I am sure I will…

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…