ISSUE 40: NOVEMBER 2005-FEBRUARY 2006

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Making the information society open to all

Hans van Ginkel is Rector of UN University. This commentary first appeared in the Asahi Shimbun on November 30. These are his personal views

By Hans van Ginkel

The real challenge for the Tunis round of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), held Nov. 16-18, was to find ways to create an information society truly open to all, with the benefits shared by all of humanity.

This is a task of Promethean proportions. To be successful, we must concentrate our efforts.

Hence, we must focus on "how." How to spread the opportunities associated with the information society to the most disadvantaged in the world. How we can use the information society to help share the knowledge we desperately need to solve the world's pressing problems and achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

This is a time of opportunity, and our message is simple: We don't need to make major changes in order to achieve these goals.

In fact, the best way forward may only require that we open things up.

Let me give some examples. The United Nations University (UNU) is investigating the benefits of open source software for stimulating innovation and improving commercial software.

Open source does not always mean "free," but it does represent an important opportunity for institutions in the developing world to find cost effective solutions in many areas, from electronic governance to online health and learning.

Some of the most innovative applications of information communication technology in e-governance are coming from the developing world.

At the UNU Institute for Software Technology (UNU-IIST) in Macao we are building a knowledge network for e-governance, UNeGov.net, to share such experiences throughout the developing world.

The initiative will bring together various stakeholders--from government, civil society, academia and industry--to develop, share, and apply practical, concrete solutions for e-governance.

It is also our view that we need to build a global community of open-source developers.

UNU-IIST has begun the Global Desktop Project to help build this community, aiming to empower developing countries to become not only competent consumers in the information society, but important producers in their own right.

Related to this, the UNU Institute for New Technologies, along with the Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT), is involved in a project called WorldFLOSS, which stands for Free/Libre Open Source Software.

This is one area where developing counties can have immediate access and acceptance as partners in technology at the global level.

Another effort we believe to be crucial is that concerning open educational resources, also called open courseware and open content.

The exciting improvements to existing copyright and intellectual property right regimes associated with this new movement for open educational resources are worthy of more extensive support.

The UNU has been collaborating with MIT OpenCourseWare, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and others to try to raise the profile of open educational resources.

Realistically, however, open source software and open educational resources alone will not take us far enough, fast enough.

The developing world needs infrastructure, affordable technologies and technical skills.

The UNU is collaborating with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), to promote the idea of an African University Network (AFUNET).

The network would bring together the broadest possible coalition for reliable and affordable Internet access for African universities, under the auspices of the Association of African Universities and anchored in Tunisia, where the WSIS was held.

Extensive online connectivity is essential for the success of virtual university initiatives such as UNU's Global Virtual University and the African Virtual University.

We need to reach beyond universities, however. That is why I so greatly admire Nicholas Negroponte's proposed "One child, one laptop" initiative, which aims to bring down the prices of mass-produced computers to less than $100.

We invited Professor Negroponte to Tokyo in May when we helped organize the Ubiquitous Network Society thematic meeting with the ITU and the Japanese government.

The last issue is somewhat complex: technical training.

The concern we often find is how to keep trained people in their home countries where they are most needed.

In this contemporary and competitive world, information technology skills are highly sought after, and the "brain drain" is all too apparent.

The answer may lie in improving connectivity as rapidly as possible, so that graduates can work in the global labor market from their home countries.

We also need to promote new forms of online learning, so that people do not necessarily need to travel to an industrialized country to get a degree.

For this reason, the UNU and its partners launched the Global Virtual University in 2002. Our priority is to bring about an information society with a human face, and to build up local institutions, skill bases and capacities in developing countries so that the opportunities associated with the information society are spread globally.

We have a lot of work ahead of us to achieve our goal: an information society open to all.

Perhaps the first step is to open our minds a little.

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