The UNDESA GAID Annual Meeting, held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from 18 – 20 May, 2008 aimed to bring together partners to help implement a number of ICT projects of significant, catalysing impact. The Strategy Council and the Steering Committee met in Kuala Lumpur to chart the next steps on the path to reaching GAID’s objectives, and discussed the ways in which they could contribute to the successful implementation of the GAID Business Plan.

Proceedings now available!

The Strategy Council and Steering Committee meetings were being held back-to-back with a Global Forum that focused on issues of Access and Connectivity, particularly for the Asian and Island States as well as Innovative Funding Mechanisms for the implementation of the ICT infrastructure, services and applications.

Global Forum on Access and Connectivity and Innovative Funding Mechanisms

The UN GAID Annual Meeting brought together the International Telecommunication Union, the Islamic Development Bank and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and experts from the civil societies, academia and other regional and international organizations.

This collaborative effort sought to engage various stakeholders active in the region with the aim of supporting affordable connectivity, applications and services to stimulate economic growth, employment and development throughout the region. By having this meeting, partners built on the progress of countries which have established an attractive ICT policy and regulatory environment to accommodate the private sector investment required for sustainable network build-out, capacity roll-out and business innovations. These projects would turn trigger a cycle of further investment and development.

The Global Forum on Access and Connectivity and Innovative Funding Mechanism had a practical, result-oriented format, including interactive, multi-stakeholder panel discussions, partnership announcements, as well as opportunities for participants to showcase their ICT development projects to potential partners and donors. The Forum also provided an excellent networking platform for leaders from the public, private and financial sectors to meet and forge new partnerships for the future.

Participants at the Forum examined key success factors for ICT investment and development and identified areas for collaboration to:

• expand broadband backbone infrastructure and access networks, using innovative business and financing models, such as infrastructure-sharing and demand aggregation among local and regional institutions. This new infrastructure investment includes national and regional interconnectivity initiatives, such as Internet exchange points and rural connectivity projects;
• enhance workforce training to support employment and growth in the ICT sector and the overall economy;
• stimulate the development of locally-relevant ICT content, applications and services, and;
• broaden efforts to develop an enabling policy and regulatory environment for investment, including harmonization across regions and sub-regions.

New & Refurbished PCs

On the same occasion, GAID organized a meeting to discuss the initiative “New and Refurbished PCs” that is being developed under the Global Alliance umbrella. This initiative will provide 500,000 new and refurbished computers for 10,000 schools, catering for 35 million students by the year 2012. At the recent International CES® convention at Las Vegas, the UN GAID and Consumer Electronics Association jointly organized the Technology and Emerging Countries Brainstorming dialogue. It was noted that there was tremendous goodwill and willingness to collaborate from all parties present at that meeting. They showed willingness to work with the UN, through GAID, in a coordinated fashion, to scale up the supply of new and refurbished computers and ensure that the targets are reached. It was agreed to work out the details and to put in place a structure and framework that is consistent in the receiving end at their respective countries.

A concept note is currently being prepared and will be presented to the GAID Strategy Council and Steering Committee in Kuala Lumpur. It is expected that a pilot project with a committed multistakeholder approach will be developed and rolled out in four pilot countries before the end of 2008.

Private-Public Partnership

Recognizing the significance of the private-public partnership in the areas of ICT, Malaysia, representing the Asian continent, also hosted the 2008 World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT) during that period in Kuala Lumpur. These two meetings, the United Nations Annual GAID Meeting and the WCIT Meeting in total brought the possibility of member states interacting with more than 70 information technology (IT) industry associations that represents over 90% of the world's IT market together with civil societies, academia and other experts that will provide the crucial cross-cutting and partnership link between ICT, business, policy and society, and discussing and influencing global challenges such as healthcare, education, digital divide, privacy and security.

The Kuala Lumpur meeting heard from some of today's greatest minds on how information and communication technologies can be used to enable businesses by enhancing competitiveness; enrich economies by enhancing capacity to create and adopt new technologies; and particularly, to empower societies via access to information and knowledge acquisition.

All GAID Flagship Partnership Initiatives (FPIs) and Communities Of Expertise (COEs) were invited to Kuala Lumpur to showcase and share their activities, plans and best practices with all other FPIs, COEs, High-Level Panel of Advisors, Champions Network, Regional Networks, the Strategy Council and Steering Committee Members.

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