-----Original Message----- From: Soenke Zehle [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: October 19, 2005 9:17 PM Subject: CFP Mailing List on Public-Private Partnerships in ICT
Call for Participation A New Listserv on Public-Private Partnerships in ICT <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> This is an invitation to join a new listserv that focuses on public-private partnership initiatives in the field of information and communication technologies (ICTs), with a particular emphasis on the economic and political dynamic usually referred to as 'development'. Following the growth of private-sector involvement in public infrastructure projects across the globe, corporate investments often have become a substitute for public funding formerly provided by intergovernmental agencies, international aid organizations, and governments. Usually considered in terms of a pooling of private and public resources, public-private partnerships aim at a cooperative provision of services and products to exploit synergy effects although they take many forms and adopt a variety of organizational, funding and governance structures. Through this process, public institutions are expected to become more 'proactive' in terms of their engagement with private actors, and the development process is projected as being, altogether, more equitable and sustainable. Such official pronouncements aside, assessments from the ground tend to view the relatively new tool of PPP with much more ambivalence. While major info-corporations are indeed offering themselves as 'partners in development' and support ICT development as vehicles for 'effective service delivery' and 'e-governance', they also take advantage of the newfound enthusiasm for Public-Private Partnerships to stake out their own commercial claims, crowd out public-sector alternatives, and actively discourage alternative forms of development cooperation. Questions concerning the motivations particularly implicit in relation to these initiatives include the gaining of inter-company competitive advantages, pole positions in standard setting (and pushing aside technological alternatives), influencing procurement strategies, and so on. Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships (MSPs) are offered as an alternative form of development cooperation. Unlike PPPs, which are based on the primacy of an ambiguous private/public distinction, MSPs focus on whoever has a stake in a given process. Because the position and identities of 'stakeholders' are largely self-defined, MSPs, at least theoretically, are open to individual and collective actors that may be left out of PPP processes that involve only state and private sector actors. Beyond the contractual relationship of PPPs, in principle MSPs prioritize overlapping interests, emphasize trust and transparency, and could also play an important role in the development of new accountability mechanisms. More generally, perhaps, MSPs affirm that the idea of 'partnerships' is itself in flux and open to contestation. The idea to launch a project committed exclusively to PPP-in-ICT arose during a two-day conference, Incommunicado 05: From Info-Development to Info-Politics, held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands in June 2005. Incommunicado 05 attempted to offer a critical survey of the current state of 'info-development', generally known by its catchy acronym 'ICT4D' (Information and Communication Technologies for Development) but also created an interest in more focused follow-up projects that would engage specific dimensions of the info-development process. Public-private partnerships in ICT became a topic of debate during the conference, with discussions concerning, for example, the role of Cisco and Cisco Academies in their partnership with the UN Development Program, the on-going role of Microsoft in its Unlimited Potential program and its recent partnership with Canada's International Development Research Centre, and the role of WSIS in the evolving landscape of similar info-development alliances. What we envision is a lively exchange of research, critical discussions and reports from the ground, a sharing of experiences both via a mailing list and - later on - a collaborative weblog. Given that PPPs in ICT involve a complex set of actors - including intergovernmental institutions, states, local authorities, transnational corporations, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) - the scope is both specific - PPP in ICT - and broad enough to address related developments and processes. To be taken up at a later time, we also propose the joint development of a code of conduct for PPP that addresses the specificity of ICT. A great deal of research is done outside the institutional loops of the academy, research labs, or development consulting, so we hope that the framing of this topic will be of interest to those who wish to engage in a substantial PPP-in-ICT exchange, regardless of whether or not they consider themselves researchers, community and/or media activists, etc. On PPP-in-ICT and PPP-Watch The domain currently used for this project is pppwatch.org. In the context of software, 'pppwatch' refers to a small demon used to monitor the PPP connection. In the more general context of info-political efforts, the idea of a 'watch' also suggests common cause with other 'watch' projects that attempt to create a modicum of transparency and accountability in development processes - regardless of whether they involve public or private actors - where there is none. Both offer apt descriptors for a project that intends to keep an eye on the evolving dynamic of 'partnerships' in the field of ICT. We are hoping that you will participate in this project. The listserv will 'go live' once an initial threshold of 50 subscribers has been reached. Online subscription will be enabled once this number has been reached. To subscribe, please contact Soenke Zehle ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) or Lisa McLaughlin ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). The site and list are currently maintained by kein.org. _______________________________________________ telecentres mailing list [email protected] http://mailman-new.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/telecentres To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
