TechPlus+ | Technology & Development Redux
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Information Disclosure Panel meeting
Read more: Information Disclosure Panel meetingYesterday, 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
Read more: Bangladesh MissionGreat 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
Read more: Bridge-IT/Nokia Partnership meetingThe 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
Read more: Irish Aid MeetingToday, 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
Read more: Private Sector RM StrategyYesterday, 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
Read more: NetAidYesterday 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)
Read more: 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
Read more: EcuadorLack 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
Read more: HP MD Finance Follow-upSpoke 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
Read more: Nokia/Brigde-IT MoUThe 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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Mozambique VI
Read more: Mozambique VIThe trip back was even longer than the one going there. I have done this before but somehow keep forgetting about it… The public meeting for the presentation of the UNDESA/Italy e-gov mission, held at the luxurious Polana Hotel, was well attended. I would guess about 40 to 50 people were there. The session was…
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Mozambique V
Read more: Mozambique VToday we had UNDP day. Early in the morning we had a debriefing with the DRR before the UNDESA/Italian mission arrived. The big idea here is to make UNDP the coordinator or facilitator of all e-governance activities by integrating the two areas within the office and use this externally to advice others such as DESA.…
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Mozambique IV
Read more: Mozambique IVOn Wednesday morning, the mission heads went to see the MZ PM. The PM thanked UNDP for helping field this mission. No substantive issues came up nor any funding details, luckily… The rest of the mission started the 2nd work session on Govnet. When we arrived at the the ministry’s conference room, we found out…
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Mozambique III
Read more: Mozambique IIII am running two days behind due to the digital divide at work, i.e., lack of easy and speedy access to the Internet. Tuesday was basically spent in two long sessions. In the morning, the mission along with the Policy Commission and UNDP sat down to hammer out the final agenda details. In the end,…
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Mozambique II
Read more: Mozambique IIA series of interesting meetings on Monday with the government counterpart and the Italian delegation. There has been live discussions as to which of the e-gov priorities presented on the ICT Policy Implementation Strategy should be supported. The Italians have apparently disregarded the requests by GoM and come up with a 3rd priority (e-accounting) in…