 | |
| |
TechnologyDaily Mobile
'Digital Divide' No More?
by William New
When officials from eight of the richest countries in the world gathered for their annual meeting in 2000, they engaged in pointed talk about addressing the world's gap between digital haves and have-nots, highlighted by the host nation Japan's pledge of $15 billion for the cause.
Two years later, the leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized nations -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States -- completed their annual meeting in Canada last week with scant public mention of the so-called "digital divide" and few firm commitments to address it in the future. Little to none of Japan's $15 billion has ever been seen, and U.S. leadership on the issue is in question, sources said.
Advocates are divided on whether the lack of attention to the issue is planned obsolescence or evidence of inaction, but all agree that the technological gap remains.
A Force No Longer To Be Reckoned With
The G-8 formed a group called the Digital Opportunities Task Force (DOT Force) at the 2000 summit in Okinawa. A year later, at the 2001 summit in Genoa, Italy, nine working groups were formed from the DOT Force, with the mandate of producing a report this year.
But the group's impact on development is not clear. It provided no new money or technological breakthrough, said Ernest Wilson, a University of Maryland professor and author of the forthcoming book The Information Revolution and Developing Countries. "Compared to e-commerce and e-government, e-development got modest attention," from the G-8, Wilson said.
Shortly before the press conference to release the DOT Force report at last week's meeting in Kananaskis, Alberta, the G-8 officially revoked the group's status, citing completion of its mandate. "Formally, the DOT Force died in Calgary," a spokesman from the host agency Industry Canada said. "The G-8 has no permanent structures. Everything sort of evaporates."
The DOT Force report contains forward-looking language, identifying goals and challenges to be overcome. The working groups of the DOT Force will continue their work in various ways, loosely reporting to the U.N. Information and Communication Technology Task Force. Some U.S. businesses opposed the DOT Force being formally tied to the United Nations, which is seen as bureaucratic, a foreign government source said.
The DOT Force working groups targeted issues such as access to technology, training, e-government, e-commerce, health, policymaking and local content.
A Bush administration official said Friday that termination of the overall group as a G-8 entity was the design from the start. "DOT Force was formed to be a catalyst of ideas and to create partnerships between governments, the private sector and nonprofits," he said. "It was never contemplated as a permanent G-8 entity."
This year's leaders' meeting focused on "a couple of big things," the official said, namely terrorism, global growth and economy, and an action plan for Africa. The "driving force" of the summit was a U.S. commitment to give $1 billion each year for 10 years to destroy and stop proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, while trying to raise another $10 billion for the effort. The leaders also agreed to a new initiative to strengthen transportation security.
"It's not an indication that the U.S. government is not focused on [information technology] in development," the U.S. official said. "I think there is a growing appreciation across the world of the importance of IT in development."
Shying Away From The Problem?
But Larry Irving, a former Commerce Department assistant secretary turned technology consultant, was skeptical about efforts to address the digital divide. Of the world's roughly 6 billion people, some 5 billion are not connected to the Internet, Irving said. In addition, more than half of the world population has no telephone access.
Irving said the worldwide economic slowdown has led to less funding to purchase tech products, which can lead governments and the private sector to become more active in trying to create markets for their products. "When less money is available, you often see commerce disguised as altruism," he said. The people complaining the most about the level of need are often "merchants in sheep's clothing."
For instance, a lot of government and private-sector attention is being paid to helping China bridge the digital divide. "It's a continuation of the geopolitical hypocrisy," Irving said.
In Canada, a private-sector initiative was formed out of a team of companies and organizations brought together by the DOT Force. The so-called DOT Force Entrepreneurial Network (DFEN) will help small and medium-sized businesses tackle the divide and stimulate economic and social growth in developing countries.
DFEN will make grants of up to $2 million each. Founding participants of the network include: Accenture; Hewlett-Packard; Open Economies, a policy center run in association with Harvard University law school; and Telesystem, a Canadian private equity company. The Markle Foundation has played a key role in DOT Force activities as well.
This year, in keeping with an attempt to make the G-8 process more focused and flexible, the leaders did not (for the first time) issue a formal communiqué at the conclusion of their meeting. Rather, they sent a "chairman's summary" that some observers noted is similar to its communiqué predecessors.
In a bullet point, the chairman's summary welcomes the DOT Force report, highlighting its "initiatives to strengthen developing countries' readiness for e-development, such as the e-model to improve the efficiency of public administrations and to enhance the transparency of national budgeting."
Still, the funding for digital divide initiatives as a result of the G-8 group appears to be slim. "There was a lot of commitment-shyness at this summit," the Industry Canada spokesman said. Canada announced that it would give about $23 million for three DOT Force initiatives, mainly in Africa. Italy made vague promises of funding for e-government programs and France for community access centers.
A Plea For Multinational Attention
As for America, "It's not a secret that the United States has some problems with multilateral organizations," an official from another G-8 country said. "It always seems to keep its distance."
Wilson said, "Nobody would say nothing has been done [to address the digital divide]. There's been progress. The question is, relative to the initial political rhetoric, have the benefits been commensurate? [Some would say] it's the beginning of the process. But it's a thin soup."
But, he added, the process brought non-governmental organizations (NGOs), governments and the private sector together, "and it did put [information and communication technology] and international development on the international leadership agenda."
Starting in 1999 and 2000, groups such as the Global Business Dialogue on Electronic Commerce, Global Information Infrastructure Commission and World Economic Forum -- as well as U.S. high-tech leaders such as Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and AOL Time Warner chief Steve Case -- began saying that the digital divide must be taken seriously. Task forces, working groups, consultative committees and the like were created, including at the G-8. "There was a huge effort to get NGOs to go to sessions," Wilson said.
But in response to the Bush administration official who highlighted the momentum from the DOT Force, Wilson said, "Let's see some projects [in] bilateral or multilateral [organizations], or innovative policies implemented, or point to any statistics that show the gap is reduced."
NEW FEATURE
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
