[WSIS CS-Plenary] Approx costs of CS Participation...

Sun Jan 23 03:16:27 GMT 2005

At 7:59 PM -0500 1/22/05, Taran Rampersad wrote:
>Snipped a lot of irrelevant stuff, but that one sentence below...
>
>>  We need to find a way to fix the WSIS model, not get rid of it. Or
>>  what do you suggest instead of it? Replace it with the old model,
>>  where only governments participated?
>>
>>  v.
>
>hasn't anyone considered it might be cheaper to do this all through web
>conferencing, or other forms of online participation?

yup. several of us have.

Believe it or not, it was at the last latin american regional meeting 
in bavaro (jan 03) that a conenction was made allowing for a set of 
video conferences to be planned for the prepcoms.

Of the three that were planned and staged, 2 were archived and are 
available for your viewing pleasure:

Global Videoconference on The UN World Summit on the Information 
Society (WSIS): Promoting National Action for Dynamic and Inclusive 
Information Society. Geneva, Switzerland, September 16-17, 2003. The 
following countries participated: Bolivia, Bulgaria, Brazil, 
Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, India, Namibia, Sri Lanka, 
Switzerland, Tanzania, Saudi Arabia, United States, and Venezuela
http://www.worldbank.org/wbi/B-SPAN/sub_wsis_video.htm

"Geneva & Beyond: Operationalizing Recommendations of the World 
Summit on the Information Society" (WSIS) to Help Achieve Millennium 
Development Goals Video Conference. The event featured country 
perspectives and comments from participants in India, Lebanon, 
Mexico, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, and the US. December 2003
http://info.worldbank.org/etools/bspan/PresentationView.asp?PID=991&EID=518

>And before the
>software issue comes up again (and again, and again), I'd like to ask
>two questions:
>
>(1) How much has been spent on travel, accomodations and food for
>working groups and plenaries?

I don't think anyone has made an estimate or calculation of the exact 
numbers.  Several academics and development agencies have said the # 
is high , the no exact number.

Here's my very quick, likely low estimate of the numbers involved.

1. What's the cost per person ?

a. Flight
- since people come to attend the meetings from all over the world 
one can either break down the costs by region or use an best guess 
average value.
- To make things easy, let's assume an average flight cost/person of 1000 USD
-

b. Accomodation
- there are many options.
- To make things easy, again let's make an assume the participant in 
question stays at a hotel that has a NGO price. The "hotel mon repos" 
http://www.hmrge.ch/ is used by many, so let's use the prices they 
have for our calculations. Let's say it's 190 CHF / night
-  # days at event. the prepcom is 2 weeks, let's assume the person 
stays 15 days

thus the accommodation cost is 190 CHF x 15 = 2850 CHF

- using the currency converter at www.xe.com, that # in swiss francs 
comes to 2405 USD

c. Per Diem
- These are costs related to expenses, incidentals and meals
- Geneva is an expensive city.
- Where can we find an approx #, well several of the development 
agencies publish per diem rates. Let's use the site published by the 
US State department as it's a source many people use and are familiar 
with.
http://www.state.gov/m/a/als/prdm/
- Let's assume one will be frugal and estimate 40% of the # quoted 
for geneva (169 USD) = 84 /day
   (and yes, normal meals can cost you 30-40 dollars!)

Thus, the per diem cost is 15 x (169/2) = 1267.5 USD

d. Adding the #'s

1000 (flight) + 2405 (accomodation) + 1267 (per diem) = 4672 USD per 
person for a 2 week stay

An important # is the average per day cost. let's divide  4672 (total 
cost) by 15 (# of days) . this works out to 311 $/day (we'll use this 
# later)

2. What's the cost for CS for the prepcom

- that's a bit harder to calculate as one needs an approx # of participants.
- let's take the # of CS participants from a past prepcom. let's use 
PrepCom 2 of the first phase as an example as the details of the 
participants is available online @ 
http://www.itu.int/wsis/participation/prepcom2/
- if you click on "Types of Entity", you'll see a whole bunch of #'s. 
if you scroll down you'll find "Non Governmental Organizations and 
Civil Society Organizations" . it says 394 people actually 
individuals from NGOs "showed up"

- approx cost per prepcom = 394 x 4672 = 1,840,768 USD!

3. Cost for the CS Participation for the entire WSIS process.

- # of meetings for first phase = 4 (3 prepcoms & summit)
- # of meetings for second phase = 4 (3 prepcoms & summit)

Total # of meetings = 8

Summit calculations:
- let's assume that CS participation at the summits is indeed higher 
than for the prepcoms. Let's assume there's an increase. Let's be 
conservative and say 500 people show up for each summit and not 394 
as stated for the prepcoms.
- Summits tend to be shorter so let's , for simplicity sake just 
calculate for 2 days.

Total Prepcom cost: 6  (# of prepcoms) x 394 (# of participants) x 
4672 (cost ) = 11, 044,608
Total  Summit cost: 2 (# summits) x 500 (# of participants) x 2 (# of 
days) x 311 (cost/day) = 622,000

Approx cost = 11044608 + 622000 = 11,666,608 USD (approx 9 million Euros)

Disclaimer:

a. These calculations are based on very quick, as yet unproven 
assumptions. My feeling is that the true number is actually 
significantly higher than what i've come up with.
b. I haven't seem what #'s for other UN summits , so these quick #'s 
may be in fact quite lower, higher or about the same vs. other 
summits. if anyone has a reference to costs - please, do send them to 
me.

Things i didn't include in the calculation:

1.  cost attributed to people's time. it can range anywhere from 100 
to 500 USD a day (or more).
2.  Telephone/laundy - already included in the incidental/per diem cost
3. Cost of visas to travel to geneva
4. Health/travel insurance - you don't want to get sick in geneva
5. Other related meetings - there are regional meetings to attend as 
well as task force meetings. There's a cost to that too, but haven't 
included it to just keep things simple.

>(2) How much of that money would (whoever has the money for (1)) spend
>on a solution?

As I and others have mentioned there are significant cost savings to 
be had if one can participate in an effective manner in a virtual 
fashion. You'd think that having a summit that has ICTs as it focus 
would try to more effectively use ICTS to enable people to 
participate and engage in the actual WSIS preparation process.  Sigh.

My only recommendation is not wait for the WSIS structures to address 
the need. If you can work with others, and with existing networks - 
do so...it's the only way things will get done.

>It's quite odd to have such plenaries for an 'Information Society' when
>a lot of this could be done outside of the most expensive city in the
>world (so I have been told). Is the Geneva city council involved here?
>We obviously all have the appropriate equipment if we are reading and
>writing emails.

If an investment was made to improve the level and effectiveness of 
communications coming from meetings, then there could be a much 
improved virtual participation and engagement. Civil Society is good 
at communications (so we are told) - so it's something we have to do.

>By doing that, suddenly there could be more participation from caucuses
>(cauci?), or less basis for excuse of costs for exclusion. Working
>smarter is probably the goal of many people here. Technically speaking,
>it wouldn't be too hard to do.

It does need coordination and expert knowledge - hmm. sounds like you 
are proposing the creation of Civil Society IT working group, whose 
sole aim would be to insure that the resources and technical 
requirement for effective online collaboration is possible...

Giving tech minded people something to do would great .

Leads me to recommendations :

* See if there are enough people interested in creating a CS IT  working group
* if the ITWG is created, have it issue a very public call for help - 
this could lead to some very interesting results.
* If indeed there are Free Software solutions - they should be used. 
If they don't exist, we'd be able to see if in fact they could be 
built. it would be a good challenge !
* Let's spend less time tying long replies and get to the task, get 
things done, and make things better in the future...

In summary,  now you have some idea what attending a WSIS meeting 
costs and some suggestions as to what we could do. Both of seem to 
agree that action is needed - so, as i mentioned above - let's get to 
it...

regards

Robert
-- 
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Robert Guerra <rguerra at privaterra.org>
Privaterra - <http://www.privaterra.org>