>Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2005 21:39:37 +0200
>From: Soenke Zehle <s.zehle@kein.org>
>To: incom <incom-l@incommunicado.info>
>Subject: <incom> CFP PPP-L - A New Listserv on Public-Private Partnerships
>in ICT
>
>[The call below is the result of discussions - and multiple edits -
>between Steve Cisler, Ljupco Gjorgjinski, Mike Gurstein, Lisa McLaughlin,
>and myself, building on an Incommunicado05 workshop on the issue of PPP
>that involved several other incom-mers, Soenke]
>
>Call for Participation
>
>A New Listserv on Public-Private Partnerships in ICT
>
><ppp-l@pppwatch.org>
>
>This is an invitation to join a new listserv that focuses on
>public-private partnership initiatives in the field of information and
>communication technologies (ICTs), with a particular emphasis on the
>economic and political dynamic usually referred to as 'development'.
>
>Following the growth of private-sector involvement in public
>infrastructure projects across the globe, corporate investments often have
>become a substitute for public funding formerly provided by
>intergovernmental agencies, international aid organizations, and
>governments. Usually considered in terms of a pooling of private and
>public resources, public-private partnerships aim at a cooperative
>provision of services and products to exploit synergy effects although
>they take many forms and adopt a variety of organizational, funding and
>governance structures. Through this process, public institutions are
>expected to become more 'proactive' in terms of their engagement with
>private actors, and the development process is projected as being,
>altogether, more equitable and sustainable.
>
>Such official pronouncements aside, assessments from the ground tend to
>view the relatively new tool of PPP with much more ambivalence. While
>major info-corporations are indeed offering themselves as 'partners in
>development' and support ICT development as vehicles for 'effective
>service delivery' and 'e-governance', they also take advantage of the
>newfound enthusiasm for Public-Private Partnerships to stake out their own
>commercial claims, crowd out public-sector alternatives, and actively
>discourage alternative forms of development cooperation. Questions
>concerning the motivations particularly implicit in relation to these
>initiatives include the gaining of inter-company competitive advantages,
>pole positions in standard setting (and pushing aside technological
>alternatives), influencing procurement strategies, and so on.
>
>Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships (MSPs) are offered as an alternative form
>of development cooperation. Unlike PPPs, which are based on the primacy of
>an ambiguous private/public distinction, MSPs focus on whoever has a stake
>in a given process. Because the position and identities of 'stakeholders'
>are largely self-defined, MSPs, at least theoretically, are open to
>individual and collective actors that may be left out of PPP processes
>that involve only state and private sector actors. Beyond the contractual
>relationship of PPPs, in principle MSPs prioritize overlapping interests,
>emphasize trust and transparency, and could also play an important role in
>the development of new accountability mechanisms. More generally, perhaps,
>MSPs affirm that the idea of 'partnerships' is itself in flux and open to
>contestation.
>
>The idea to launch a project committed exclusively to PPP-in-ICT arose
>during a two-day conference, Incommunicado 05: From Info-Development to
>Info-Politics, held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands in June 2005.
>Incommunicado 05 attempted to offer a critical survey of the current state
>of 'info-development', generally known by its catchy acronym 'ICT4D'
>(Information and Communication Technologies for Development) but also
>created an interest in more focused follow-up projects that would engage
>specific dimensions of the info-development process. Public-private
>partnerships in ICT became a topic of debate during the conference, with
>discussions concerning, for example, the role of Cisco and Cisco Academies
>in their partnership with the UN Development Program, the on-going role of
>Microsoft in its Unlimited Potential program and its recent partnership
>with Canada's International Development Research Centre, and the role of
>WSIS in the evolving landscape of similar info-development alliances.
>
>What we envision is a lively exchange of research, critical discussions
>and reports from the ground, a sharing of experiences both via a mailing
>list and - later on - a collaborative weblog. Given that PPPs in ICT
>involve a complex set of actors - including intergovernmental
>institutions, states, local authorities, transnational corporations,
>small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and non-governmental
>organizations (NGOs) - the scope is both specific - PPP in ICT - and broad
>enough to address related developments and processes.
>
>To be taken up at a later time, we also propose the joint development of a
>code of conduct for PPP that addresses the specificity of ICT.
>
>A great deal of research is done outside the institutional loops of the
>academy, research labs, or development consulting, so we hope that the
>framing of this topic will be of interest to those who wish to engage in a
>substantial PPP-in-ICT exchange, regardless of whether or not they
>consider themselves researchers, community and/or media activists, etc.
>
>On PPP-in-ICT and PPP-Watch
>
>The domain currently used for this project is pppwatch.org. In the context
>of software, 'pppwatch' refers to a small demon used to monitor the PPP
>connection. In the more general context of info-political efforts, the
>idea of a 'watch' also suggests common cause with other 'watch' projects
>that attempt to create a modicum of transparency and accountability in
>development processes - regardless of whether they involve public or
>private actors - where there is none. Both offer apt descriptors for a
>project that intends to keep an eye on the evolving dynamic of
>'partnerships' in the field of ICT.
>
>We are hoping that you will participate in this project. The listserv will
>'go live' once an initial threshold of 50 subscribers has been reached.
>Online subscription will be enabled once this number has been reached. To
>subscribe, please contact Soenke Zehle (s.zehle@tmsp.org) or Lisa
>McLaughlin (mclauglm@muohio.edu). The site and list are currently
>maintained by kein.org .
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Nearby Wed Oct 19 17:22:13 2005