General Assembly, Special Session



	Parallel Event

Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
and Good Urban Governance
- Experience from Asia and the Pacific
4:00 - 6:00 p.m.
Friday 8 June 2001
Conference Room 8

The Information Age is increasingly making itself felt in all sectors of society. The ability to deal with information and communication technology (ICT) is fast becoming a basic requirement for citizens to make their way in today's world. In an era in which the tremendous expansion of information and communication technologies has been mirrored at the social level by the burgeoning expansion of cities, local authorities are faced with the crisis of urban governance - an enormous demand for service delivery by the multitude of citizens juxtaposed against the serious lack of resources and capacities on the part of local authorities to deliver the same.

The Urban Governance Initiative (TUGI) is promoting the potential of ICT as one of the tools that cities can use to encourage participation and consensus building, transparency and responsiveness to their stakeholders. This will be done through awareness building on the utilization of ICT for good urban governance, especially to the local government. The objective of promoting the use of ICT by local government is to encourage them follow and adapt to the recent progress of technology, adopting the concept of e-governance that would promote good governance, i.e. a system of government and a culture of governance that is participatory, inclusive, based on the rule of law, responsive to the need of the population, efficient, transparent and accountable.

The Urban Governance Initiative (TUGI) has attempted to harness the power of ICT towards enabling local governments to increase their capacities for service delivery. TUGI first embarked on this effort in 1999, by offering 15 local government institutions and civil society organizations working on urban issues in the Asia Pacific region a training that equipped the participants with the skills necessary to translate some, if not all of their organisations onto the Internet. It was envisioned that through using web-based tools, the level of effectiveness, efficiency and responsiveness of local authorities could directly be increased, if not improved.

In order to be effective in this area of IT and good urban governance, TUGI also developed and maintains a portal on urban governance at http://www.tugi.apdip.net, connecting to over 100 urban governance website from around the world. TUGI has also conducted an initial mapping of city websites in the region, and will develop this mapping into an indicator-based award system that would assess and rate the effectiveness of the city in using IT to govern within its constituency.

There is a critical need for equipping ourselves and others in the urban profession with the knowledge, skills and information, that enables effective management of our cities. With this is the need for developing and elaborating existing processes, procedures and partnerships between different organizations and sectors to respond to urban conditions and situations today.

Learning and sharing experience, discussions and debates have tremendous value. They can lead to productive partnerships and set a common platform of understanding and interpretation of technical terms and new ideas in urban management. This process requires a conducive platform, which TUGI intends to create with the launch of the TUGI-Virtual Policy Studio (TUGI-VPS) available at http://cebe.cf.ac.uk/tugi/.

TUGI foresees that information communication technology, with its inherent capacity to handle large quantum of information, and construct a system with which this information can then be managed and used towards the betterment of humankind, holds within its hands the key to good governance challenges in this new millennium. And TUGI would like to help local authorities throughout the region, take advantage of this opportunity.

Provisional Agenda