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 in 2010 on Civil Society, National/Regional/Local levels of governance, and Anti-corruption. SL advisors were requested to deliver on this by Friday am. This is indeed a critical incident…
We also taped my virtual participation on the upcoming ITU Digital Inclusion and LDCs preparatory meeting that will take place in Geneva early next week. In a nutshell, I emphasized the need to go beyond “digital” approaches and instead focus on how can ICTs help deliver the development goals.The video is here: UNDP at ITU LDC Pre-conference meeting, 8-9 March 2011
Spoke to the Costa Rica CO about the Open Source Project which has been stalled for a few months now. The critical issue with the project is to make sure we can link it to broader governance and development issues, particularly to local governance and local development. We also need to ensure that the project does end up having some impact and the can then measure this in some way. The project board met in San Jose on Wednesday and seem to agree with my inputs.
Moving along are the Angola m-banking proposal. A conference call with UNDP Luanda is planned for next week. I also submitted to the Italian Mission the documentation Macedonia prepared to close down the e-accounting project and instead work on local e-governance. Italy has yet to reply to this request.
