[WSIS Edu] Education taskforce Summary report Week 2

[Meigs]

****This message is in English. French and Spanish versions will follow in a
day or two : i am preparing a group of volunteer translators' team  in
French and Spanish***
 
Welcome all to the list of the "education, academia, research" taskforce.
Below the summary report of Week 2.
 
Summary report week 2
 
Dear taskforce members
 
Apologies for being late in this summary report, but I felt the need to take
some distance before offering you this evaluation and I wanted to make clear
announcements about the website and the future together with advancing on
the listserve. For detailed notes on the sessions, please refer to Jane
Jonhsen¹s daily comments posted to the plenary list. Jane Johnsen also
volunteered to moderate the taskforce while I had to leave for family
reasons. The last two days were devoted to future considerations and I
summarize her report in the section on ³Organization² below.
 
General comments and assessment:
The second week of prepcom 2 was still very chaotic, as more splinter groups
and caucuses were being created within civil society, a worrying trend that
we have tried to avoid by organizing ourselves as a taskforce. The Tunisian
civil society has carried its inner strife to the Human rights caucus and is
putting in jeopardy both human rights and civil society. The bureau has
still got no charter and no clear mandate, neither has the civil society
plenary gotten beyond being an information body. The content and theme group
has not been as active as in the past and there is some indications that it
might be given more strength by being better structured, with a bureau of
its ownŠ The end of the prepcom was spoiled by the diverging forces among
NGOs, some trying to recover control, like APC, some trying to save the
process like CONGO which issued a statement in the name of all civil society
that was received as abusively consensual and soft. So everything is
unresolved on the side of Civil society for prepcom 3, to be held in
September, in Geneva.
 
Reassuringly, a similar situation seems to be occurring among the nation
states, as all the parts of the friends of the president document have been
left open and inconclusive, with many semantic debates on wording and few
proposals for action. Switzerland has offered a last minute compromise text
that will probably be reworked again, especially as it lacks chapter 2
(Financing mechanisms) and chapter 4 (Internet governance). The report on
financing mechanisms was heavily contested by countries of the South (Latin
America, Africa mostly). The main reproach was the role given to private
investment and liberal markets. The Solidarity Fund has been mentioned in
the final version, but without real commitment from the member states. The
report on Internet Governance will be discussed at Prepcom 3 and civil
society is invited to make some more contributions in upcoming meetings.
 
 A quick evaluation of the situation for education:
On the positive side, the education taskforce is now clearly well organized,
with an agenda and a strategy. You must all have received or seen on the
list the text Andy Carvin read for us in plenary (it is posted on our
website). As a taskforce it seemed interesting to see how we could create
synergy with the telecenters caucus, which is like-minded and is pushing
similar issues. We must not hesitate to continue working in this direction
in the future, with other caucuses, in a spirit of mutual collaboration and
distributed intelligence. The text has been well received and has allowed us
to make some progress, together with concerted lobbying efforts with
interested governments. Several points of our agenda have advanced and are
advancing fast:
*open access has been inserted in the official documents, thanks to our
lobbying efforts. France is considering having a thematic day/Event on this
issue in June or septemberŠ
*media and information literacy have been taken up by Unesco, thanks to our
lobbying efforts : there will be an extra thematic meeting organized by them
on this issue on April 5th (details at www. Unesco.org/wsis/meetings) I have
been invited to give a speech and I will provide a text of accompaniment
that I¹ll circulate among you. Any ideas you would like me to push on this
issue are most welcome and we will be able to provide input on a regular
basis beyond Tunis. We may also want to coordinate this event with the
European conference on media literacy organized by Tapio Varis, a member of
our taskforce, on May 26-27 in Tampere with the Hypermedia Lab (details at
http://ecml.pc.unicatt.it/events/events.htm).
*long distance education and capacity-building : Unesco and the Club of Rome
are organizing their fourth thematic meeting on this point, in Paris, on
11-13 May. Bernard Loing and Raoul Weiler, both members of our taskforce,
are heavily involved in elaborating the program and we can push some issues
there with them (details at  http:// esc. Clubofrome.org or at www.
Unesco.org/wsis/meetings)
*academia will be discussed in Japan, on 16-17 May 2005. The UN Universities
have invited me to a WSIS Thematic Meeting on « the Ubiquitous Network
Society », in collaboration with ITU and the Government of Japan (details at
http://www.wsis-japan.jp/). I will participate in two round tables, one set
up by governments, one by civil society (Adam Peake and Izumi Aizu are in
charge). 
 

For the future :

            *We need to finalize the input text for ourselves. I will be
circulating a revised version, with more of your suggestions as of next
week. I have incorporated also some of the positions of civil society on
financing and governance. I have also created two annexes: one with «
inspiring examples », one for « suggested or planned events ». This is for
you to let others know what you are doing or suggest the taskforce to do.  I
suggest we use this document as our own statement of purpose, to be posted
on the website and sent to as many entities and other sites as possible, at
your discretion, for lobbying purposes. You are invited to use its «
language » in whatever venue you are invited to talk or to participate.
Bernard Loing has also been elaborating a one page document (recto verso),
for similar propagation purposesŠ.
*We need to send input for WGIG. This can be done by discussion on the wiki
opened by Andy to facilitate drafting and developing of our documents Š
Please look at the 3 page document I sent as annex of ³summary report of
week 1²: it is the current state of the WGIG document on education, that
seems to have been open by an unknown member of the WGIG group. We should
complete it as much as we can and offer it for consideration to the WGIG. I
would like us to have a deadline, by end of April, once we have our own
response to the president¹s friends finalized.
* We need to have some members of the taskforce representing us at the UN
Ict taskforce meeting in Dublin, 13-15 avril. The theme is about ³harnessing
the potential of information and communication technologies for education.
For more details the website address is: http://www.unicttaskforce.org/.
This is an opportunity not to be missed, where we could make a contribution,
drawing on our input to the political chapeau. I could go, but i¹d rather
delegate. Kate Johnsen will go, but i¹d like to have expressions of interest
from other colleagues as well, especially those of you living in Ireland
(and there are some !).
*Strategically, we need to think of prepcom 3 and of  Tunis (november 2005)
: Bruno Salgues has accepted to be our liaison person for the side events.
He has already asked to have a slot dedicated to our taskforce for everyday
of the meeting at this point. Deadline is end of April for submitting ideas.
At this stage, we have to think of what points on our agenda we want to
push. Prepcom 3 will take place in september and, considering how far apart
we are from the governments¹ proposals for financing and governance, I
anticipate civil society will end up providing its own document, as in phase
1.  We need to be ready.

 
Organisation and communication among ourselves:

It is of great importance that we rather quickly are able to initiate a
virtual discussion. Not only on the documents, but also on how we structure
inputs and ultimately structure ourselves as a group. On the question of
securing the broadest possible participation, it was mentioned that in
addition to broad usage of virtual tools and reaching out to our respective
networks and other WSIS groups, language and translation are also important
elements. We did note however that in the past call for translators had not
produced many reactions and that a number of us only master one foreign
language. For lack of better options, it was suggested that we, for the time
being, could make use of some of the translation tools available on the
Internet.

It might be a good idea to ask new members on our future mailing list to
introduce themselves. This way we can keep record of the members ­ how many,
where are they from (representing?), what are their interests etc. The need
for a charter for the group, and a general discussion on how work and
document drafting is organized, made transparent and inclusive.
 

    *Creation of a listserv: we needed to set up  a listserv, as you are
seeing by this very message. It was noted that the best solution would be to
revive the list on the wsis-cs website, as this is the site new WSIS
participants are referred to. Yann Forget offered to host the list and he is
the one to contact in case of need at : <yann at forget-me.net>

*Organisation of the Website: Lucas Walsh, our webmaster, noted that it is
important for the group to decide which role the website should play in our
internal work ­ is it just to provide information or should it also be a
space for exchange and communication? In addition it was noted that the
sooner content is provided the sooner the website will be up and running.
Some of the things noted should be part of the website were: Dissemination
of information, Best practises, Concrete examples. To forward information to
Lucas, reach him at the address: <l.walsh at ecu.edu.au>
             *Deadlines for events in Tunis:

Side-events. The deadline for requesting space for a side-event is now April
30th. The space for side-events is within the ³UN realm² of the Summit and
should therefore be requested at the WSIS secretariat. Despite the extension
of deadline it might be prudent to  decide rapidly whether or not we want to
host an event, as the side-event caucus (although only advisory), might
quickly fill the available slots.
ICT4all. There was some doubt in the group if we would be able to man a
stall for an entire week, as many of the group¹s members are involved in
other activities as well. Moreover the costs of a space are uncertain and
finally the ICT4all space is outside UN jurisdiction.
Both questions will have to be debated more thoroughly virtually within the
next month.

 
Questions for discussion:
1)    Do we need to create our own charter or can we use the political
chapeau (with a few modifications) as our charter and plan of action ?
2) Who is going to the UN Ict taskforce meeting in Dublin? With  what
message and input?
3) What suggestions do we make for the side-events within the UN Realm?
4) Do we get involved in ICT4all? How? Can we manage a stall for an entire
week? Should we seek alliances? Finances?Š
5) Could we have a translation of the political chapeau input? We need it in
as many languages as possible. I will try to set up a small translation
committee for French and Spanish but we need to reach out for other
languages and cultures. The use of  tools available on the Internet to
provide translation (like Babbelfish) doesn¹t preclude the fact that we
still need human verification to finalize them.
            6) How do we reach out to a larger constituency of members? Some
areas are under-represented in the taskforce at the current time, most
significantly Asia and Africa. Most members of the taskforce represent big
constituencies and large worldwide NGOs but I would like to have more local
representatives in direct discussion and participation with usŠ
 
Best
Divina Frau-Meigs
Co-ordinator, education, academia and research taskforce
Member of civil society bureau, WSIS
 

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