In the context of the emerging information society, countries are increasingly looking to leverage entrepreneurship to facilitate growth and transformation in the way in which development and business activities are carried out. To date, the focus on entrepreneurship has mostly been limited to the private sector form. However, it is becoming clear that there are important roles for social (social change & empowerment) and public entrepreneurship (effective delivery of public goods) in development activity, particularly in the context of service delivery, catalyzing investment and support to under-served areas, and empowering local communities. Further, the insight that ICT can be particularly useful in facilitating entrepreneurship and transformation in key social sectors has been given limited operational support in spite of emerging evidence and the focus on multi-stakeholder and public private partnerships.

Key areas where the focus and the approach needs to be broadened to incorporate public, social, and community entrepreneurship, including bottom-up empowering approaches, comprise: (i) national development, communication & broadcasting, and ICT sector regulatory policies; (ii) financing mechanisms and implementation strategies (e.g. eligibility to access universal access funds, e-governance services and programme delivery, platforms for development of content and applications) to support the provision of ICT-enabled services and applications; (iii) capacity building services; and (iv) models for ICT access and infrastructure services for development. These issues are also highlighted in the WSIS Task Force on Financial Mechanisms Report and the chapter on Financial Mechanisms in the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society.

While there are a number of important and dynamic ICT-D networks and knowledge partnerships, none of them appear to have a dedicated focus on strengthening capacities to address the nexus between broad-based entrepreneurship, enabling development policies and financing mechanisms.

The proposed CoE on ICT Policy and Finance for Social, Community and Public Entrepreneurship will explore the implications for key development and regulatory policies for enabling broad-based entrepreneurship and will look into the effectiveness of national financing and implementation strategies (ranging from the governance and operation of Universal Access Funds to approaches for content development and delivery) with a view to identifying how gaps be addressed and impact enhanced through enabling relevant social actors to contribute as well as how ICTs can play an effective enabling role in development practices.