Torbjörn Fredriksson, UNCTAD’s Chief of ICT Analysis, explains the how good macro- and micro-level data and insight leads to adopting good policies, and highlights how a healthy e-business sector can make a significant contribution to more sustainable communities and economies.

In the area of ICT, what we really need a lot of is impact assessments – to understand what is working, what is not working and why… if government officials don’t have good data it’s very difficult to adopt good policies.

Torbjörn also discusses the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) 10-year review, and highlights how collaborations between agencies and disciplines is critical to achieving the objectives of development agendas.

About Torbjörn Fredriksson

Torbjörn Fredriksson is Chief of the ICT Analysis Section of the Division on Technology and Logistics at the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). He is among other things the lead author of the annual Information Economy Report, responsible for UNCTAD’s work on measuring the information economy and lead facilitator of the WSIS Action Line on e-Business.

Torbjörn joined UNCTAD in 2000 and was for eight years one of the principal authors of the World Investment Report. Before joining UNCTAD, he held positions at the Invest in Sweden Agency, the Swedish Ministry of Industry and Commerce the Industrial Institute for Economic and Social Research in Stockholm. He is the author of several books and has published articles related to international trade and investment in such publications as the Journal of International Business Studies, International Journal of Industrial Organization and the Journal of World Investment.

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Episode links and resources

• UNCTAD website
• World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
• WSIS e-business action line

60-second snapshots

On the importance of measuring the information economy for governments:

On managing expectations about ICT as a tool for development:

On why e-business is important to community development and sustainability:

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The pilot project will be trialing how ICT – and particularly the use of mobile – can play a role to support the traditional, human-centric tribal processes and enable greater local participation in democratic processes.

The originality of this project is that we do not aim at implementing an ICT tool without looking at the traditional role of chiefs in the local politics.  Rather, we want to incorporate these [ICT] tools within the traditions and not look at only online tools but the offline world as well.

About Kheira Belkacem

Kheira Belkacem is Assistant Programme Director at eGovlab, and is currently completing her PhD in Political Communication at the University of Leeds UK. Her experience in the European Parliament, when working closely with the Director General of the Directorate-General for Innovation and Technological Support in 2008-2009, left her with a strong expertise of parliamentary systems and adoption of new technologies in democratic institutions. She also spent a summer internship at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) on the e-Governance Programme in 2008.

In 2010, Kheira worked as a research assistant for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford and in 2010-2012, she taught modules on communication theories and new media group project as a teaching assistant at the Institute of Communications Studies. She is currently the Assistant Programme Director of Botswana Speaks and is involved in other projects run by the eGovlab.

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• Botswana Speaks website, on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
• The Parliament of Botswana
• eGovlab of Stockholm University / Department of Computer and Systems Sciences (DSV)
• Gov2u
• Swedish Trade Council
• Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA)

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The 54 countries of the Commonwealth of Nations represents more than 2 billion people across every region of the world and a vast diversity in development and capacity.

Professor Tim Unwin, well-known as UNESCO Chair in ICT4D, now heads up the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO). In this wide-ranging and provocative discussion, he explores the impact of ICT across diverse economies, the value of technology for governance and also provides an overview of the CTO’s work.

Prof. Unwin claims that, while it can change the relationship between citizens and the state, technology by itself doesn’t change very much.  It is how people use the technology that matters.  He also argues that social media’s role in participatory democracy may be over-hyped, and that while technology can accelerate change, it only does so for those who have not only access but also the literacy to use it, and that an over-focus on technology can in fact create a greater development divide.

If ICTs are to be used effectively by governments, all their people need to access them – otherwise, they’re going to lead to greater inequalities.

About Prof. Tim Unwin

Tim Unwin has been Chief Executive Officer of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation since September 2011. He is also Chair of the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the UK, UNESCO Chair in ICT4D, and Emeritus Professor of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London. From 2001-2004 he led the UK Prime Minister’s Imfundo: Partnership for IT in Education initiative based within the Department for International Development (DFID), and from 2007 he was Director and then Senior Advisor (until 2011) to the World Economic Forum’s Partnerships for Education initiative with UNESCO. His recent work has concentrated  on the use of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D), and in 2004 he created the ICT4D Collective at Royal Holloway, University of London, which is now one of the world’s leading centres for ICT4D research and teaching.

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Episode links and resources

• Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation
• CTO Strategic Plan (PDF)
• Tim Unwin’s blog
• The ICT4D Collective

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• Tags: #ict4d #digitaldivide #telcoms