UN Chronicle: Issue 2, 2000: How Experts Would Connect the World

By Inga Eggers

From 17 to 20 April 2000, 17 information technology experts from all around the world met in New York to discuss how the United Nations and the international community can support access to and parity in information and communication technology (ICT). The Panel of Experts' recommendations were stated in the Report of the High-Level Panel on Information and Communication Technology.
The discussion was straight, left out formalities and got down to business, according to Chuck Lankester, Director of the United Nations Development Programme's Sustainable Development Networking Programme, who organized the meeting of the expert panel. He spoke with the Chronicle just before the opening of the High-Level Segment of the Economic and Social Council.

Despite living in countries at all stages of development and working in different spheres of life -- business, government and civil society -- the Panel of Experts shared a passionate appreciation for the potential that information technology holds for developing countries. The Panel felt their task was to make the international community recognize the urgency of enabling developing countries to share in the benefits of ICT. Instead of demanding progress in the areas of poverty, health and education before employing ICT, it was time to acknowledge the fact that ICT must be integrated in the social and economic package for developing countries. In the area of e-commerce, for example, countries that do not enter the market in the near future are bound to lose their chance.

The answer of the Expert Panel as to what should be done was twofold. First, before being able to act on a global level, the United Nations should use ICT to enhance its own performance and fully embrace the new technologies. The second task would be to re-examine every development programme, whether dealing with sustainable development, HIV/AIDS, global warming, poverty or health, in order to see how they could be implemented more rapidly with the help of information technologies.

The big challenge they set for the Council's High-Level Segment about the role of information technology in a global economy was to adopt the goal to connect the world by the year 2004.

Connectivity did not mean a personal computer in every household, said Mr. Lankester. "What connectivity means is that it should be possible for a farmer in the most remote rural area to travel for a few hours and be able to have access to the Internet, to receive an answer on questions of current prices, fertilizing techniques or long-range weather forecasts", he said. These community-access points or "cybercafes in the bush" should be accessible and affordable to anybody and would therefore have to be subsidized.

UNDP/Vince Roberts

The experts recommended setting up an ICT Task Force, which should undertake the task of bridging the "digital divide" by creating a fund and providing effective procedures to manage it. On the part of the developing countries, the experts stressed the importance of having a strong political leader committed to the ICT campaign. Countries were asked to support the efforts of creating a competitive telecommunications environment in their policies and budget considerations.

Technology, the Panel agreed, can stop excessive migration to urban centres and the negative consequences that go with it, since cyberspace would render geographical space less important. Health and government services could be made available to every community, as well as distance learning and training. The challenge presented by the Panel is in every respect global: it is to connect the whole world by an information network and to let the one truly global organization acknowledge the right to universal access as a human right. "What we hope for", says Mr. Lankester, "is that the debate will shift from whether to use information technology in development to how to use it".

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