Tunisia – World Summit on the Information Society
Location: Tunis (Tunisia)
Position: representative, for the e-Governance Academy
Duration: November 13th to 20th, 2005
Funded by: UNDP (Bratislava Office)
The e-Governance Academy (eGA) attended the WSIS conference and its cluster events in Tunis on the very kind invitation and with the support of the Bratislava office of the UNDP.
Mr. Ivar Tallo, Mrs. Zhanna Pilving and myself represented the Academy at the UNDP/UNIDO pavilion of the ICT4all exhibition, which was one of the big events surrounding the summit. We took the chance to showcase the activities of eGA, and to explain to an interested audience what role promoting the use of ICT in government can play in improving governance and in building open and transparent information societies.
On the square meters next to us, Nicholas Negroponte and his team presented the first prototype of the “One Laptop Per Child” system, which was exciting for all of us. We had been following the news about this project for a while already, and were thrilled to see one first-hand. It wasn’t a fully working prototype, unfortunately, but it wasn’t hard to see its potential.
Needless to say, Mr. Negroponte attracted quite some attention and a steady stream of visitors.
I further had the opportunity to speak at some of the sessions that were organised during the event, and took the opportunity to advocate the idea of an integrated information society and the dissemination of democratic processes using ICT, topics that have been in the mission of eGA since its creation.
Equally important were the many contacts and face-to-face meetings with old and new friends and colleagues, and the visit of The Estonian minister of Telecommunications and Economic Affairs, Mr. Edgar Savisaar, to the eGA stand.
Concrete results of the WSIS conference in Tunis have been bundled in a “golden book”, which is available online. The list of participants can be found here.