TechPlus+

TechPlus+ | Technology & Development Redux

  • Bridge-IT Global Support Team meeting in DC

    Nokia, IYF, Pearson and UNDP held its quarterly meeting on 4 April. The meeting concentrated on 3 central isssues: International launching for Philippines pilot in May; discussion on the guidelines for visual representation of the partnership including use of logos; set up of conditions for pilot scalability and replicability at the country level. The launch…

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  • Meetings with WB/DGF in DC

    Yesterday afternoon I visited he offices of the DG at the WB. I met with Sid Kane to introduce me to gateway stuff. I also met Carlos Braga and Robert Valentin. The meeting with Carlos centred on OS. The WB is agnostic about OS but will advice governments on the advantages/disadvantages of OS if requested…

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  • Visit to Microsoft

    Bruce Jenks, Stephen Browne, Sarah McCue and I traveled to Seattle to discuss with MS a potential partnership on e-learning and related initiatives. The meeting took place on Friday, 21 March 2003. Here are my notes. MS key ideas and issues – MS has rallied three parts of the company to work along the lines…

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  • 2nd Open Source Conference in DC

    Atsushi and I attended the conference which went from 17th to 19 March. The focus of this one was on OSS efforts in the US, Europe and Japan. We made several contracts, including: – UNESCO: possible collaboration on OS, have a keen interest. A regional OS workshop in Perú is being planned by their regional…

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  • UN ICT Task Force Meeting

    Stephen, Radhika and I met with Sarbuland Khan and Sergey Kambalov to discuss a) ICTD Strategies workshop and b) follow-up to high level meeting of this morning with the UN on WSIS The TF expressed interest in supporting the proposed workshop in Mozambique and agreed in principle to fund part of it. They have 60k…

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  • Information Disclosure Panel meeting

    Yesterday, I attended the first formal meeting of the Information Disclosure Oversight Panel which is being supported by BRSP/Civil Society unit. The information disclosure policy of UNDP was approved by the EB back in 1997, after extensive discussions and reviews both within UNDP and external partners. The document is buried somewhere deep in the UNDP…

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  • Bangladesh Mission

    Great trip to Bangladesh. We have an SDNP project with great potential and lots of resrouces. The Staff is top notch too and support from the host institution is rock solid. The report spells out the recommendations I am making which in a nutshell call for a refocusing on more development oriented (less techie) pilots…

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  • Bridge-IT/Nokia Partnership meeting

    The Global Support Team (GST) of the Bridge-IT partnership (Nokia, IYF, Pearson and UNDP) held its 5th formal meeting at the offices of Pearson in New York City. The core of the meeting dealt with issues related to the ongoing pilot and the upcoming formal launching of the initiative that will take place in Manila…

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  • Irish Aid Meeting

    Today, Stephen, Sarah and myself met with an Irish Aid delegation which included Mr. Tom Hanney- Director, Multilateral UN Policy, Ms. Dympna Hayes Deputy Director, Multilateral UN Policy, and Ms. Joana Betson, First Secretary. Mission of Ireland to the UN. The delegation had great interest in hearing from UNDP about the relevance of ICT into…

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  • Private Sector RM Strategy

    Yesterday, Sarah and I met with Casper Sonneson from BRSP to discuss the above. BRSP has some resources and consultants that can work full time on this. They are planning to do a pilot on two practice ares, ICTD and Energy. The consultants are former McKinsey staff that left the company to create their own…

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  • NetAid

    Yesterday afternoon I met with Bea Bezmalinovic, NetAid Online Volunteer Programme Manager. For the last 18 months or so, we have had several discussions with NetAid reps on how to bring their initiatives closer to developing countries using some of the successful SDNP networks. The latest proposal is to have a two country pilot where…

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  • Wireless Internet Institute (W2I)

    Yesterday I had a rather longish lunch with Daniel Aghion, Executive Director of W2i. Wi-Fi is exploding all over the place given both its low costs and easy access to the networks. It has a lot of potential in developing contries also for this reasons, potential that fits within the context of a sound last…

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  • Ecuador

    Lack of both time and connectivity prevented me from using the Net more effectively in Quito. The recent volcano eruption was also to blame, at least partially. I could neither connect from the hotel room as the UNDP SITA config had changed and I was not aware of it. At any rate, the hotel was…

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  • HP MD Finance Follow-up

    Spoke to Janine earlier today. She is excited after the summit last week in NY. They found out that a) they need to be more proactive in developing “the solutiton” instead of waiting for the industry to come up with one; and b) they are glad to report that Mckinsey will become a full partner…

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  • Nokia/Brigde-IT MoU

    The MoU was signed earlier this morning by IYF, Pearson and Nokia. Due to a breakdown in communications last week, we did not get the revised and final MoU from Nokia until this morning. Since we had to a) clear this with UNDP legal and b) get permission from BRSP to allow the RR to…

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