[WSIS CS-Plenary] Digital Solidarity Fund in risk of disappearing: action required
Dr. Francis MUGUET
muguet at wtis.org
Wed Apr 15 09:53:13 BST 2009
Dear Daniel
The DSF is dead.
It had a serious birth defect
the legal basis of its main financial mechanism was wrong...
To force a supplier to "donate" to a third party, in the context
of a purchase, is called "racket", and for whatever goof reason this
donation is made.
During WSIS, I warned about. a swiss DSF proponent
told me that a legal study has been made...
for the city of Geneva.... it turns out that it is one of the few city
in the world that there is a legal hole agains racket....
the overexpenditure of the DSF staff has added to the problem...
to the point of creating a mini-scandal
and now there is a lack of credibility
and confidence....
better dissolve the current DSF, to start a completely new one,
transparent from the onset, with a new financial supporting
mechanism.
This could be discussed, and there is a CSTD recommandation
that would allow that.
I would call that the real emergency is the recommendation
that the CSTD has adopted last May... after the long work
of the WSIS-Finance group
tp://www.wsis-finance.org/
The CSTD <http://www.wsis-finance.org/cstd.html> has adopted a
recommendation in May 2008 :
*/ 32. Recommends that UNGIS organize focused open multistakeholder
consultations on the implementation of part B of the Tunis Agenda "
Financial Mechanisms for Meeting the Challenges of ICTs for Development"; /*
Jean-Louis Fullsack has not been allowed to assist to the last UNGIS
meeting.
What are they doing at UNGIS ?
Best
Francis
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>
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> _______________________________________
>
> Dear colleagues,
>
> I shall report on the critical situation of the Digital Solidarity
> Fund (DSF) in my quality of Latin America & Caribbbean civil society
> member of the Board. I wish to report in the WSIS civil society
> plenary list as well as in G at ID discussion list, in the hope to
> trigger some positive dynamics in both communities (and I am also
> informing the DSF Board of that initiative).
>
> The last couple of months have been of acute crisis after a change in
> the DSF Presidency and coordinated complains from the new DSF
> President and the President of Senegal (speaking as "historical
> father") on General Secretary management: basically they do not trust
> the 1% principle could be effective and wish a centering and hosting
> of the DSF on Africa, as an ICT4D project management organization.
>
> On November 25th a stormy General Assembly was held in Lyon (France)
> and was unable to reach consensus on further steps. An extraordinary
> Assembly was then scheduled in Bamako, January 27th, 2009. More
> confused than stormy this Assembly decided that a strategical and
> finance independant audit shall be organized and its results
> presented to a last extraordinary Assembly to be scheduled prior to
> May 27th. This last Assembly would finally decide on the proposition
> of the President of Senegal to take over the management of the DSF
> (he was also given the responsibility to contract this audit and
> manage the interim period).
>
> The investment made so far has reached some 6 millions of euros (a
> substantial part coming from developing countries) and one of the
> argument for not letting go the situation was the responsibility to
> protect that invested capital (which is no more in cash but hopefully
> some part has transformed into people and project experiences and
> institutional moves). Furthermore, it appears that the cashflow would
> allow to stand until the next Assembly but no more.
>
> The situation as of today is that the audit has apparently not been
> launched and the risk is extremely high, due to the shortness of
> cashflow, that the DSF will just fade out without any decision taken
> and no audit results presented. This could be the worst scenario for
> one of the most concrete products the WSIS process has tried to
> launch and a shameful situation for our ICT4D community in regard to
> the lost investment...
>
> In that context, I want to call upon global civil society to put
> pressure on stakeholders in order to try to save whatever is possible
> from the disaster. I am wondering, given the particular situation, if
> the best approach would not be to try to convince a UN related structure to
> take over the DSF, conduct an audit which appears a mandatory
> requirement (if only for accountability of public money invested!)
> and assess the situation, trying to preserve, as far as possible, the
> initial principles (multistakeholder global fund to overcome the
> digital divide based on innovative sources).
>
> ITU, G at ID or UNDP (which has been out of that field for some years
> now) are possible options. I am not sure that any of them is eager to
> take over a project in such a difficult situation; what I am quite
> sure is that it is my duty as a civil society involved actor to
> alert, inform and contribute to the search for a solution (I shall
> also remember as a possible contribution that Agence de la
> Francophonie had offered during the DSF Board debates to take
> responsibility to contract an audit of the DSF... although it was
> decided to do it another way).
>
> Daniel Pimienta
> Networks & Development Foundation
> http://funredes.org
> Member of APC Network
> As LA&C civil society member of the DSF Board
>
> _______________________________________________
> Plenary mailing list
> Plenary at wsis-cs.org
> http://mailman-new.greennet.org.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/plenary
>
>
--
------------------------------------------------------
Francis F. Ph.D MUGUET KNIS/ENSTA
Pôle de Développement pour l'Information Scientifique
"Réseaux de la Connaissance et Société de l'Information"
Scientific Information Development Laboratory
"Knowledge Networks & Information Society" (KNIS)
ENSTA/KNIS http://knis.org
32 Blvd Victor 75739 PARIS cedex FRANCE
Phone: (33)1 45 52 60 19 Fax: (33)1 45 52 52 82
muguet at ensta.fr http://www.ensta.fr/~muguet
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MDPI Foundation Open Access Journals
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muguet at mdpi.org muguet at mdpi.net
World Summit On the Information Society (WSIS)
Civil Society Working Groups
Scientific Information : http://www.wsis-si.org chair
Patents & Copyrights : http://www.wsis-pct.org co-chair
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------------------------------------------------------
--
------------------------------------------------------
Francis F. MUGUET Ph.D
World Tour of the Information Society (WTIS)
muguet at wtis.org http://wtis.org http://wtis.tv
REUSSI : http://reussi.org
KNIS/ENSTA http://knis.org
32 Blvd Victor 75739 PARIS cedex FRANCE
Phone: (33)1 45 52 60 19 Fax: (33)1 45 52 52 82
muguet at ensta.fr http://www.ensta.fr/~muguet
PC4D : http://www.pc4d.org
MDPI Foundation Open Access Journals
http://www.mdpi.org http://www.mdpi.net
muguet at mdpi.org muguet at mdpi.net
World Summit On the Information Society (WSIS)
Civil Society Working Groups
Scientific Information : http://www.wsis-si.org chair
Patents & Copyrights : http://www.wsis-pct.org co-chair
Financing Mechanismns : http://www.wsis-finance.org web
Info. Net. Govermance : http://www.wsis-gov.org web
NET4D : http://www.net4D.org
UNMSP : http://www.unmsp.org
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