| Eveline Lubbers on 14 Sep 2000 16:47:13 -0000 |
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| <nettime> WorldBank Internet plans |
Date sent: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 14:01:25 +0100 To: [email protected] OPEN LETTER ON WORLD BANK INTERNET PLANS Below is an open letter to World Bank President Wolfensohn explaining the concerns of many researchers and NGOs about the Bank's plans to develop a major (60 million dollars over 3 years) internet initiative, supposedly involving civil society as a key partner. The World Bank is planning a major sales pitch for its Gateway plans at its Prague Annual Meetings starting next week. The Bank's Gateway team is claiming that just a few European malcontents still have problems with the plans and so the Bank should move full steam ahead. If civil society groups worldwide do not express their reservations/opposition clearly now, the Gateway is likely to eclipse the independent web initiatives many of us are involved in. Undoubtedly some would phrase this stronger and some slightly weaker, this aims to be quite neutrally-phrased to get a good, quick, range of signatures. ** Please sign by the afternoon of Tuesday 19 September. Send signatures (with name and affiliated organisation, where appropriate) to: <[email protected]> Please forward to others who might sign, too. Apologies if you receive this more than once. The final letter, plus signatories, will be posted on the Bretton Woods Project website next week and circulated at the Prague meetings.** FURTHER INFO/LINKS For official information about the Gateway plans, see: www.worldbank.org/gateway For a civil society discussion on the Gateway (where many of the letter's points are discussed), see: www.bellanet.org/gdgprinciples Throughout October the Bank will hold an electronic consultation on the Gateway on: www.worldbank.org/devforum Alex Wilks, Bretton Woods Project, UK [The Bretton Woods Project works with NGOs and researchers to monitor the World Bank and IMF. See: www.brettonwoodsproject.org] Open joint letter of concern about the Global Development Gateway 19 September 2000 Dear Mr Wolfensohn, The Bank, under your direction, is developing a major new internet initiative which aims to become "the premier web entry point for information about poverty and sustainable development". To achieve this it would need to include all shades of opinion and be a broad, multi-stakeholder initiative, including civil society. Many civil society groups, including the undersigned, have held discussions with the Bank and among themselves about the Gateway. We are writing to inform you that many of the major issues we have raised have not been addressed. It seems, especially from the report "Global Development Gateway Issues Identified During Consultations" recently produced by the Bank's Gateway team, that you and the Bank's Board may have been misinformed about the extent and nature of civil society concerns and our disappointment in the Bank's response. These concerns are not only serious in how they relate to the missed opportunity of the Gateway, but also because they have the potential to confuse potential funders, people asked to be Topic Guides, site visitors, and many others. It is not the case that, as hinted in the above report of the consultations, that these views are only held by opponents of the World Bank or groups based in Europe. In fact a wide range of NGOs, academics and also officials are extremely sceptical about the initiative. Among the key problems identified with the Bank's Gateway plans are: 1) insufficient independence of Gateway governance. The Gateway global and national governance structures do not adequately protect civil society interests. Whilst an independent foundation has been established, the constitution of the Board and Advisory Committee do not give grounds for confidence that the Gateway will be truly independent of the Bank, national governments and big business. Particular concerns are the role of the Bank in making appointments relating to the Global Gateway, governments' leading roles in Country Gateways and companies's ability to buy Gateway Board membership (and "co-branding" opportunities) with annual payments of a million dollars. Creating a nominally independent entity has thus not solved the acute accountability issues around the Gateway, issues which are very sensitive in portal development, essentially an editorial activity similar to publishing newspapers. 2) alternative design options rejected. Very early in discussions about the Gateway a number of civil society groups suggested an alternative design approach which would use the latest spidering software to allow distributed, user-driven topic aggregation. This would overcome the difficulties of the chosen Gateway design which gives power and impossible judgements to individual editors, and empower groups across the world to post and group information according to their needs. Yet the Gateway still favours a vertical, edited approach which will cause many problems of credibility and useability. 3) communication/consultation insufficient. Whilst there have been a number of consultation exercises, it appears that the Bank has overemphasised the production of pilot sites and fundraising rather than communicating with diverse audiences about the GDG's intentions and what might best meet their needs. Many important groups still know nothing about the Gateway and many who do have tabled questions which have not been answered. 4) overambition and unfair competition; The Gateway, whilst based on good intentions to increase coordination of web activity, is too ambitious and cannot meet all of its goals. At the same time its huge budget (60 million dollars over three years) and marketing reach are likely to have huge opportunity costs for the many existing and planned portal ventures in this area. It is not appropriate for the heavily subsidized Gateway to compete with these (for profit and non-profit) initiatives, including in many of the "pilot" countries. This approach clearly contradicts normal World Bank policy advice. At present, because of the above concerns and others, it is unlikely that a Civil Society Committee for the Gateway will be formed soon, despite two months of discussion about it. In fact a large number of civil society groups are likely to continue with independent initiatives to improve electronic information coordination rather than join the Gateway. We ask you to provide full responses to the above points as soon as possible. Yours sincerely, INITIAL SIGNATORIES Alex Wilks, Bretton Woods Project, UK Lawrence Surendra, environmental economist, India, formerly Director, Asian Regional Exchange for New Alternatives Roberto Bissio, Executive Director, Third World Institute, Uruguay Mark Lynas, UK Editor, Oneworld.net OTHER SIGNATORIES (e-mail name, position and organisation to: <[email protected]>. Note organisation is for identification purposes only, not implying an organisational view. Reply by Tues 19th September.) ** CHANGE OF ADDRESS, PHONE AND FAX NUMBERS ** ____________________________________________________________ The Bretton Woods Project works on World Bank and IMF issues with a network of UK non-government organisations. >> NEW CONTACT DETAILS <<: >From 18th July, 2000 the Project is moving to: c/o Action Aid, Hamlyn House, Macdonald Road, Archway, London N19 5PG Tel: + 44 (0)20 7561-7546, Fax: + 44 (0)20 7281 5146 Main e-mail (still): [email protected] >> SUBSCRIBE ONLINE << Bretton Woods Update, a digest of information and action on World Bank and IMF issues (6 issues per year): www.brettonwoodsproject.org/sub.html # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [email protected] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected]