Yesterday in Geneva the Digital Solidarity Fund was launched, with the support of 120 towns and cities, as well as France, Switzerland, Algeria, Marocco, Senegal, to bring the benefits of the information revolution to the developing world. Meanwhile, debate continues online about the digital divide and market-led solutions. The Digital Solidarity Fund the brainchild of…
Tax Day
Well its Tax Day, which was virtually painless this year since I did all of my filing and payments online. This year all of my tax activities were done on the web using Turbo Tax online and the IRS’s online payment system. There’s many other aspects of e-government that have yet to be fully realized…
More on ICT Global Alliance
Doing some more thinking on the concept of a “Global Alliance for ICT Policy Development,” which will be discussed next week by the UN ICT Task Force in Ireland. The real issue is: how does one create a body to ensure that governments integrate ICTs into their development agendas and that the private sector and…
Simputer is a failure (AP)
The AP has a story purporting that the Simputer project has largely failed in its goals to bring computers to the rural poor in India. The article notes that many local governments prefer to accept donations of computer equipment from Microsoft and other multinational hardware vendors rather than pay for new technology. It’s tough to…
John Bolton is a big dork
My friends at Citizens for Global Solutions have started an online campaign to get the Senate to reject the nomination of the Bush Administration of John Bolton to be the next US ambassador to the United Nations. I had the displeasure of seeing John Bolton in action about 10 years ago in DC in a…
My talk at DPI NGO Briefing on WSIS
The following are my remarks to a bunch of non-governmental organization representatives last week organized by the UN Department of Public Information. These are my talking notes so there will probably be some questionable English in there, for which I apologize. My goal for the next few minutes is to bring you up to speed…
My talk at DPI NGO Briefing on WSIS
The following are my remarks to a bunch of non-governmental organization representatives last week organized by the UN Department of Public Information. These are my talking notes so there will probably be some questionable English in there, for which I apologize. My goal for the next few minutes is to bring you up to speed…
Building a community calendar for the UN
Every day there are amazing events organized by civil society organizations at the UN offices in New York, Geneva and Vienna that very few groups other than those in the know will ever find out about. Why? Because there is no central calendar of NGO events where folks can find out about what is happening….
Simputer is a failure (AP)
The AP has a story purporting that the Simputer project has largely failed in its goals to bring computers to the rural poor in India. The article notes that many local governments prefer to accept donations of computer equipment from Microsoft and other multinational hardware vendors rather than pay for new technology. It’s tough to…
SMS democracy in the Arab world
The Washington Post has an interesting article about political organizers and activists in the Persian Gulf using SMS cell phone text messaging to organize mass rallies and slam their opponents. This reminds me of the SMS uprisings in the Philippines that led to the ouster of President Joseph Estrada in 1991. When it comes down…