http://funredes.org/mistica

MISTICA: Re: Development Gateway ICT4D Topic Community

From: Daniel Pimienta (pimienta@funredes.org)
Date: Mon Apr 15 2002 - 08:15:45 AST

John Daly wrote:
>I would like to suggest that MIstica list members participate in the
>Development Gateway site.
>http://www.developmentgateway.org/
>It will serve us to the extent that we participate.

John,

The question of the relationship between the World Bank originated project
"Global Development Gateway" and the grassroots of ICT4DEV has been discussed
in Mistica sevral months ago. As you probably know, the majority of field
players
has rejected what they considered an unfair and wrongly focus (top down)
action in their field which turn to be more a competition than a
complementation...

They rejected the statement that the civil society was represented in each
country; the experienceshowed that only a tiny segment of the civil society
(what we could be
named "the politically correct segment of the civil society as perceived by
the World Bank") was
involved.

Times goes by and the World Bank made the move, to avoid the criticism, to
export the management of the gateway to a non profit organization. We feel
this a fake
move since the "economics" of the project remained unchanged (this top-down
project is
expending alone as much budget that the sum of the worldwide thousands of
bottom-up projects together).

Although this project represents, for Funredes and Mistica coordination,
the paradigm of the wrong doing, we leave obviously each member to decide
if they want to
participate.

As a conclusion we would like to share a note which was sent few weeks ago
into a list of project managers funded by IDRC. This note illustrate
crudely what could be the key
question: Is it for Mistica to help the World Bank's development gateway or
is it at reverse?

>Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2002 16:35:55 -0400
>To: "PAN Research partners in the Americas"
><panamericas-partners-cl@lyris.idrc.ca>
>From: Daniel Pimienta <pimienta@funredes.org>
>Subject: [panamericas-partners-cl] Comparacion necia
>
>http://www.developmentgateway.org/aboutus/gatewayteam
>
>¿Cual sera el costo mensual de este team de 32 personas de alto nivel
>(algun@s muy alto)
>quien asegura el trabajo del portal "developement gateway"?
>
>Segun mi estimación en 3 meses sobrepasa el costo total del portal Mistica
>(http://funredes.org/mistica)
>desde 1998 hasta hoy ... y eso sin contabilizar las sumas que Infodev da a
>las antenas nacionales para
>los portales nacionales.
>
>En un año el costo fijo de este portal debe pasar muy facilmente el millon
>de US$, solamente en salarios.
>
>El Banco Mundial "descentralizo" el portal pero tambien los fondos para
>darle la aparencia de ser "sostenible".
>
>El portal Mistica se mantiene en este momento por el esfuerzo solidario,
>solitario y extenuente de Funredes.
>Con 300,000 US$ se llevaria a llenar el clearinghouse Mistica, relanzar la
>metodologia EMEC con
>varias mejoras y hacer el portal realmente sostenible despues de 2 años.
>
>Con 50,000 US$ por año se podria mantener funcionando con todas las
>funciones...
>
>El contenido del primero se llena desde arriba con los insumos de
>"representantes de la sociedad civil"
>que el Banco ha seleccionado.
>El segundo se llena desde abajo con los insumos de la gente del terreno.
>
>Voy a dejar la comparación aqui para no molestarme...

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