[WSIS CS-Plenary] Information?: WSIS Tunis Documents

[karen banks]

Dear all,

I'm putting together a piece on PrepCom III for APC - and, when looking at 
the documents for negotiation, have a question.

As far as i can tell, we have three documents, two of which will be 
negotiated, one of which is just a report of sorts.

1. the political chapeau
2. the operational part
3. the 'Draft' stocktaking report

my question is really in relation to the latter - what is the purpose of 
this document (other than being a summary of the ITU led stocktaking exercise?)

I see two elements worth focussing on - sections 12 and 13 - Achieving the 
WSIS committments, and Evaluation and benchmarking, but wonder, how much 
effort others have put into this, and what people's general reactions are, 
for example:

Section 12: Achieving WSIS objectives, goals and targets

refers to explicit activities 'worth highlighting'  (ITU, European 
Commission, digital solidarity fund etc), but also includes a table, Table 
3: The WSIS commitments, and the prospects for achieving them by 2015 - 
which is, i suppose, the WSIS equivalent of the Millennium Development 
Goals, listing all WSIS committments from the first part of the WSIS POA, 
and comments as to how achiveable they are, for example:

----------------
WSIS Commitment:
a) to connect villages with ICTs and establish community access points.

Comments:
There are around 2.7 million "villages" worldwide of which around 
three-quarters already have telephone service. However, coverage of 
community access points is not so widespread and, in many cases, there is 
no formal measurement of their number.

Prospects for achieving goal by 2015:
Good prospects for connecting all villages by 2015. Poor prospects for 
putting community access points in each village.
----------------

or for example:

----------
j) to ensure that more than half the world's inhabitants have access to 
ICTs within their reach.

Around 80% of the world's inhabitants are within range of a mobile signal. 
Household ownership of phone service (fixed or mobile) stands at around 40 
per cent worldwide. Personal ownership of mobile phones stands at around 30 
per cent.

Excellent prospects for achieving 50% household coverage. Very good 
prospects for achieving 50% personal ownership of ICTs.
-----------

apart from finding the above terribly optimistic, and, that mobile 
connectivity is significantly highlighted, i do wonder whether some efforts 
should be made responding to these predictions? in spite of the fact that 
there isn't one objective focussing on backbone infrastructure, the 
predictions for achieving all committments by 2015 range from GOOD to VERY 
GOOR or even EXCELLENT.

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and then, there is a whole section on developing indicators, including 
gender indicators, and a composite ICT index, but again, it appears to be a 
general listing, and i'm not clear if there is an objective to develop 
common indicators which would be applied to the WSIS committments over time

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apoligies if this is not of interest to the broad group, but it's the first 
time i've looked at the document and wonder what it's purpose is..

karen