[WSIS CS-Plenary] UN Official Document System is online

[richard jordan]

Hi, Rik, Perhaps a bit of history here might help. Please correct anything I mention here, but originally the Optical Disc System was available to NGOs to use -- for $1100, was it per year or a one-time fee, I don't remember. But that was quite a while ago, probably 2001?? And NGOs here at UN Headquarters have consistently said that the access needed to be provided to us free of charge. Free use of the system was one of the items mentioned, I think Bill Pace mentioned it actually, to former Pres. Cardoso when the high-level panel was still holding hearings on the civil society report for the Sec.-Gen. 

There also are other processes at Headquarters that folks may not be aware of, such as the Informatics Working Group.

And I am not sure if the Together Foundation is still in existence, but going all the way back to the Prep Coms for Rio in 1992 and after, they had a very elaborate presentation on Together Net ?? was that what their platform was called?? in one of the 33 large tents that various NGOs rented in Flamengo Park during the Earth Summit. The Together Foundation had worked with the G-77 to start up what I think was a closed list for Member States.

But back to the Optical Disc system -- it still does not provide the information that sitting in a meeting of a functional commission of ECOSOC can provide, in that the individual interventions of delegates really do not appear on the web sites of individual countries. I used to see what actually would appear on a country's web site, and if you could find an intervention that was fresher that 90 days, most were well beyond 90 days, it was rare. There is no staff to put the material up on a web site.

The precis writers at meetings where records are kept don't record verbatim notes for the DPI press summations of official meetings, so unless someone is there in person, a great deal of context can be lost. Just for an instance, at the Second Committee's penultimate meeting, there was a great debate on the draft resolution on trade, delegates actually presented two resolutions, one of which L.25 Rev.1, if I recall, was not the correct resolution. It was L.25 -- but the heart of the matter, we do not hear the drafting sessions where the REAL work is done and what the real issues are.

So Optical Disc, fine for what it presents, but let's remember that the real work is done in getting our voices heard and speaking with delegates "in the corridors" is where the real nitty gritty gets done.

Richard J.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rik Panganiban" <rikp at earthlink.net>
To: plenary at wsis-cs.org
Subject: Re: [WSIS CS-Plenary] UN Official Document System is online
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 14:25:50 -0500

> 
> I have confirmed same result on the Mac (OS X 10.3) using Netscape, 
> Firefox and Mozilla.  You double-click any of the query results, 
> which returns the javascript message.  Then you hit the "back" 
> button to go back to the search results, and all of the query 
> results appear to actually work.
> 
> Still doesn't work with Safari, or IE.  But explorer for the Mac is 
> very old (2001), so not too surprising.
> 
> All in all, perhaps this is less problematic than we had initially 
> feared if it works with the different flavors of Netscape.
> 
> Rik Panganiban
> 
> 
> On Jan 6, 2005, at 2:03 PM, Katitza Rodriguez wrote:
> 
> > On Thursday 06 January 2005 12:31, Rainer Kuhlen wrote:
> >> it works with firefox
> >> RK
> >
> > I made a search/querie of this TD/B/WP/175  with Firefox under 
> > Debian SID, the
> > results was:
> >
> > The first time appear this message after my click:
> > javascript:ViewDoc(0)
> > true
> >
> > My second try, after a minute and works fine.
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