Both in the Okinawa Charter on the Global Information Society, and in
planning meetings and the first plenary meeting of the Digital Opportunity Task
Force (DOT Force), considerable emphasis has been placed on the importance of a
broad, participatory approach to the DOT Force's deliberations, securing the
views, participation and consensus of a wide range of stakeholders on a global
level. Particular attention has been given to the complicated challenge of
engaging civil society in general, and nonprofit organizations in particular, in
the DOT Force process, given the vast size and highly diverse composition of
this stakeholder community.
In this note, the term "nonprofit organizations" is used as an
umbrella term for three main groups of non-governmental stakeholders: (a)
foundations; (b) academic and research institutions; and (c) field-based and
other non-governmental organizations with experience and expertise on the issues
facing the DOT Force. There are three levels at which these groups will have
input into the DOT Force process. First, 8 NPOs, one from each G8 country, are
members of the DOT Force, and they will bring their own experience and
expertise, as well as their contacts and networks, to the DOT Force's
deliberations. They will take a lead role in consulting other NPOs and civil
society stakeholders in their own country. Second, it is envisioned that a
modest number of other NPOs might be brought into the DOT Force process by
direct invitation to a DOT Force meeting (on an ad hoc basis). Third, the
Secretariat will coordinate a broader process of face-to-face and electronic
consultations, leveraging already-planned events and already-existing
organizational networks in these three major NPO communities.
This note sets out recommendations for a wide-ranging and highly
participatory process for engaging nonprofit organizations, combining coherence
and central coordination (through a partnership of the Secretariat and the NPO
DOT Force members) with distributed implementation, to take maximum advantage of
already-existing networks given the short time frame of the DOT Force process.
Basic Principles
The proposed approach to consultation with NPOs (and through them to civil
society more broadly) is rooted in several basic principles:
- within the existing time and resource constraints, the consultative
process should be as broad and participatory as feasible, reaching out to a
wide array of stakeholders in both developed and developing countries;
- particular efforts should be made to secure the participation of those,
particularly in developing countries, who traditionally have limited access
to consultations of this sort, especially the poor;
- to maximize the effectiveness of these consultations and assure their
positive impact on the deliberations of the DOT Force, the process should be
coherent and well-coordinated, based on common templates of questions and
issues developed by the Secretariat in consultation with the NPO members of
the DOT Force; in preparing these, the Secretariat should take into account
and build upon the questions and issues addressed in similar consultations
in recent months (such as the ECOSOC High-Level Panel, the Global Knowledge
Partnership Action Summit, and others);
- at the same time, to maximize the scope and reach of these
consultations, they should be implemented in a distributed fashion by a
range of collaborating networks and organizations, under the general
guidance and coordination of the Secretariat in cooperation with the NPO
members of the DOT Force; in particular, the Secretariat should collaborate
actively with already-existing international networks and partnerships which
have been active in analysis, consensus-building and programmatic
cooperation on digital divide/ICTs-for-development issues, and should be
empowered to accept, on behalf of the DOT Force, propositions to conduct
specific sets or series of consultations from these networks or
partnerships;
- clarity about the objectives, scope and limitations of the consultations
is paramount; it should be understood by all that these consultations are inputs
into the DOT Force's deliberations, but that the conclusions and
recommendations from any particular consultation will not automatically be
included in the DOT Force's report;
- the consultation process should take advantage whenever possible of
already-scheduled meetings and conferences rather than devoting time and
resources to organizing new meetings for this purpose;
- this consultative process should make maximum feasible use of information
and communication technologies both to increase scope and participation and
to reduce the need for specially-convened face-to-face consultative
meetings; lessons should be drawn from the long-standing experience of the
NPO community in organizing electronic consultations on critical public
issues;
- the Secretariat should have final responsibility, in consultation with the
NPO members of the DOT Force, for synthesizing the inputs from the various
consultations with NPOs and feeding the results into the deliberations of
the DOT Force.
Implementation
The Secretariat proposes, in consultation with the NPO members of the DOT
Force, to proceed immediately on five fronts in organizing these consultations;
1) The Secretariat will prepare as quickly as possible, and circulate
informally for comments both within the DOT Force and to selected networks and
organizations knowledgeable on these issues, a draft of a "common
template" of issues and questions that should ideally be addressed in all
NPO consultations coordinated by the Secretariat, so as to facilitate the
aggregation of the results of these consultations for reporting back to the DOT
Force; the Secretariat will seek to have an agreed-upon final draft of this
template available for broad distribution by December 15; while use of this
template will of course not be mandatory, those organizing NPO consultations
will be encouraged to consider it as a framework for their work;
2) The Secretariat will pursue contacts with several credible and established
organizations or networks that have expressed a willingness to organize sets of
consultations as inputs into the DOT Force process (e.g. the Global Knowledge
Partnership). At the same time, it will work to coordinate DOT Force NPO
consultations with similar consultations on these same issues, such as the UN
ICT Task Force and the Digital Opportunity Initiative. It will also consult with
the NPO members of the DOT Force both to become informed of these members' plans
for consultations with their constituencies and stakeholders and to provide
assistance as appropriate.
3) In consultation with DOT Force members, the Secretariat will seek to
identify a manageable number of already-planned face-to-face meetings in various
regions where the Secretariat might be able to organize a parallel session for
DOT Force consultations with NPOs, attended whenever feasible by one or more
members of the DOT Force and/or a Secretariat representative.
4) The Secretariat will consult with the NPO members of the DOT Force to
identify what critical gaps would still exist in a broad NPO consultation
strategy once these existing networks and meeting opportunities were fully taken
advantage of; the Secretariat will then concentrate its direct efforts on
organizing face-to-face or electronic consultations to fill those gaps. It will
pay particular attention to assuring that NPOs from developing countries have a
voice in the process, both by recommending candidates for ad hoc participation
in DOT Force meetings and by working with the in-country networks of the World
Bank, UNDP and partner organizations to solicit the views and concerns of
developing country NPOs. It will also use the global videoconferencing network
of the World Bank and its associated Global Development Learning Network to
organize, as appropriate, a series of videoconference consultations that link
DOT Force members and/or the Secretariat with key stakeholders and consultative
partners in developing countries.
5) Finally, the Secretariat will begin consultations immediately with
interested DOT Force members (such as the European Commission, which has already
indicated its interest, and the NPO members of the DOT Force) about mounting a
comprehensive and coherent Internet presence for DOT Force consultation and
outreach, including not only a public Web site to inform and engage the public
but also comprehensive information on opportunities for civil society to
participate, either face-to-face or electronically, in the range of
consultations detailed above. To assure widespread dissemination of information
about these efforts, the Secretariat will reach out to several well-established
Internet "communities of practice" and email distribution lists on
development issues, such as the "Global Knowledge for Development"
list, the numerous list discussions hosted by Bellanet, the online networks of
One World Online and the Association for Progressive Communications, and others.
The Secretariat will report back regularly to the DOT Force on its progress
in implementing this broad consultative strategy, with a view to fine-tuning the
approach as appropriate in the light of experience. Throughout the consultation
process, the Secretariat will coordinate closely with the NPO members of the DOT
Force, who will serve as an informal advisory group to the Secretariat on
implementation of this consultative strategy.
