WEB FOR DEVELOPMENT
Richard Maciver – David Galipeau
The fifth annual Web4Dev conference, hosted by UNICEF in February 2009, brought together global thought leaders, academia, the development and private sectors with United Nations system Web managers, to focus on the value of strategic partnerships, knowledge sharing, capacity building and innovative ways to use online communication and the rapidly changing Internet tools.
Community Coordinator, Richard Maciver, from the CEB Secretariat and David Galipeau, Chief of the Web for UNCTAD give us some details about the annual event and its impact on our future work.
How can this conference contribute
to a better UN?
RM: The adoption of online and mobile technologies
within the area of development has
given rise to the role of web strategy as an enabler
of UN system objectives, as well as an
opportunity to transform how development is
advanced. Now, more than ever, the
Web4Dev community has a role to play in key
initiatives such as: Delivering as one, Greening
the UN and Making more out of less.
How will that affect the outside
world?
DG: The United Nations is using online communication
increasingly, as a policy and
knowledge tool, rather than simply as a means of conveying information. Moreover,
rapid changes in social media and the digital
communication channels offer new, cheaper
and more effective ways to communicate
with more people in all areas of the world.
This creates opportunities that benefit developing
nations and underserved minorities. By
focusing on innovation, collaboration, knowledge
and skills sharing, we can present ourselves
as ‘One U.N.’ online. Why? To support
the efficient and effective delivery of our economic,
trade and development programmes.
What are the difficulties you face and
need to overcome to achieve your
goal(s)?
RM: The goal is to support the UN system organizations
to communicate and share information
more effectively. All UN system organizations
are in the business of generating
and sharing knowledge – members of the
W4D community are the experts in this field.
It stands to reason that we should consider
our knowledge as currency and that new
media presents us an opportunity to add
value. Reaching this ideal requires us to build
on our similarities, common targets for example and adopt common information and
exchange standards: the bedrock for new
web services. First, the community itself
needs to evolve. We need to regroup now
and respond collectively to the need for
measurable impact.
How do you address the situation of
accessing UN web sites by people
with disabilities?
DG: Accessibility is one online policy area
that is starting to receive priority attention by
our stakeholders, especially Civil Society and
Member States. Web managers understand
the necessity and are addressing this issue.
Multilingualism is another important online
policy that needs to be addressed. Unfortunately,
progress in these areas varies between
organizations. At the moment, we
raise these issues by inviting knowledge leaders
to showcase best practices at the annual
W4D conferences. What we need, of course,
is to go beyond the need of raising awareness
and promote the UN system websites and social
media tools as a showcase to the rest of
the world. The UN should be leading in online
knowledge sharing, partnering with private
and public organizations and increasing
our expertise in an effort to support these important,
yet under implemented policies.
What’s next?
The 2009 conference concluded with discussions
on the role of this community as an
agent of change as well as its own need to
evolve. We need to introduce a more formal
governance structure that decides upon standards
and helps promote inter-agency cooperation.
We have a collaborative platform
to set-up to support the emergence of specialized
technology and working groups. We
are confident that all these endeavours will
advance before the next conference – still in
the pipeline, but already guaranteed to be a
unique event
