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

Fri Jan 7 17:17:10 GMT 2005

Richard,

That matches my recollection as well of "together.net" partnering with 
the UN on providing IT support.  I don't recall anything concrete 
coming out of the post-WSSD period however.  I also don't know if 
Together Foundation is still around, but they seem to be co-sponsoring 
the "Best Practices" website of UN Habitat: 
http://www.bestpractices.org/ . Their own website together.org is down 
however.

Yes, the $1,100 fee for ODS web access I believe was still in effect up 
to 2003 for NGOs.  It was an annual fee.

I agree that the ODS is a good addition to our information resources, 
but nothing beats "being there."  A live webcam would be nice however.

Rik Panganiban

On Jan 7, 2005, at 7:44 AM, richard jordan wrote:

> 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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===============================================
RIK PANGANIBAN       Communications Coordinator
Conference of NGOs in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations 
(CONGO)
web: http://www.ngocongo.org
email: rik.panganiban at ngocongo.org
mobile: (+1) 917-710-5524

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