Conclusions and Way Forward

ELSA ESTEVEZ; TOMASZ JANOWSKI; VANESSA GRAY

Final WSIS Targets Review Achievements, Challenges and the Way Froward

International Telecommunications Union (ITU)

Lugar: Ginebra; Año: 2014; p. 377 - 408

The adoption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the high-level political agenda includes the statements by the United Nations (UN) Administrative Committee on Coordination in 1997, the UN Economic and Social Council in 2000 and the G8 group in 2000, recognizing the importance of ICTs to sustainable development and to the development of global knowledge-based society and economy. These paved the way to the UN Millennium Declaration calling that the benefits of ICTs should be available to all, and to the endorsement of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) by the UN General Assembly in 2002. Subsequent to the Geneva and Tunis Summits, and the agreement on the vision - to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society - and 11 action lines to realize the vision, annual WSIS forums have been conducted to discuss the lessons learnt in pursuing ICT for Development (ICT4D). In particular, the 2013 WSIS Forum issued a joint statement by the United Nations Group on the Information Society (UNGIS) on the potential of ICTs to support the Post-2015 Development Agenda.The high rate of failure of ICT4D initiatives and the difficulties in transferring successful initiatives between contexts emphasise the need for ICT4D decision-making to more rely on research. This in turn created favourable conditions for the growth of ICT4D as a vibrant field of applied research. The field experienced a 39 per cent average annual growth in the volume of publications produced between 1999 and 2008. The research identified two stages in the development of the ICT4D domain: ICT4D 1.0 focused on replicating off-the-shelf solutions in developing countries and addressing the readiness and availability of ICT, considering the poor as primarily passive consumers; and ICT4D 2.0 focused on the uptake and impact created by ICTs, designed around existing needs and capabilities of the poor as producers of digital content and services. While ICT4D research attracted criticism for its focus on action over knowledge and insufficient analysis, the quality and rigour of ICT4D research, and therefore its reliability, has improved over the years.In order to apply research findings to carry out accurate, context-specific analysis and enable evidence-based decision-making, the performance and impact of ICT4D initiatives must be measured. While we will still know little about the impact of ICTs on development, there is a growing evidence of impact of ICTs in different sectors. In economy, 10 per cent increases in broadband, Internet and mobile phone penetration were shown to cause 1.38, 1.12 and 0.81 increases in percentage points of per capita growth respectively, although questions remain about the reliability of such estimates. In education, there is evidence that the use of specific ICTs has positive impact on student performance, particularly in mathematics, but no consistent relationship was established between the availability and use of ICTs at schools and educational attainment. In health, there is evidence that the average costs versus benefits of electronic health records is distributed: at 2 versus 17 per cent for citizens, 11 versus 17 per cent for health practitioners, and 80 versus 61 per cent for health care providers. In environment, ICTs have been shown to have both positive impact through, e.g. dematerialization, online delivery and reduction in transport, and negative impact through, e.g. energy use in production of ICT equipment, short product life-cycles and e-waste. Concerning the final quantitative assessment review of the WSIS targets carried out in this report, the assessment shows that while extensive growth in ICT networks, services, applications and content has driven the global information society in the decade following the WSIS Summits, ICT access and use is far from equally distributed. Large parts of the world's population have limited access to ICTs and cannot fully benefit from their potential. Concerning specific targets: 1) Target 1: Unequal progress has been observed for all three indicators defined for this target: mobile coverage is on track, good progress was made with access to phones, but Internet access and use are unlikely to be achieved by 2015. 2) Target 2: Great variations exist between and among developed and developing countries across all four indicators defined for this target: the use of radios and television for educational purposes, as well as learner-to-computer ratio and schools connected to the Internet. 3) Target 3: While significant progress has been observed across all three indicators defined for this target: connectivity of scientific and research centres with broadband Internet, number of National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) and connecting NRENs with broadband Internet; the target is not achieved by all countries. 4) Target 4: Mixed progress has been made across all 11 indicators defined for this target: broadband Internet access, provision of public Internet access and web presence by public libraries; broadband Internet access and web presence in museums; broadband Internet access and provision of public Internet access in post offices; broadband Internet access and web presence in national archives; and digitization and online availability of national archives. 5) Target 5: Good progress has been observed for the first indicator defined for this target - connecting hospitals to the Internet, less progress for the second indicator - connecting health centres, and no data was available to assess the third indicator - the level of use of computers and the Internet to manage patient information. 6) Target 6: Routine use of computers and the Internet by government employees are generally high, local area network coverage for central government organizations is almost complete, intranet presence by central government organizations is high in developed and limited developing countries, all countries have a central government web presence but only half of them link to the websites run by lower levels of government, and the provision of information and transactional services on government portals is growing but mixed among countries. 7) Target 7: The review of this target has seen mixed progress across all indicators: the percentage of the national teaching workforce trained to teach basic computer skills is generally low, the proportion of teachers trained to teach using ICT varies substantially between and among developed and developing countries, and Computer-Assisted Instruction and Internet-Assisted Instruction are common in high-income countries but uncommon in many developing countries. 8) Target 8: While household access to radio and TV is widespread globally, the target for TV remains largely unmet in Africa and the least developed countries, while the adoption of multichannel television has been growing rapidly to slightly more than half of all households. 9) Target 9: There is no reliable data for calculating the proportion of Internet users by language although the proportion of English speakers among those online has been notably decreasing in favour of Chinese in particular. There is also no satisfactory source to measure the proportion of webpages by language, although we can observe growing linguistic diversity in web. The Internet is dominated by content providers from Europe and the Americas. While the number of Wikipedia articles rose rapidly, the proportion of articles written in English declined threefold and the articles in languages other than the ten most-used languages doubled. 10) Target 10: Significant progress has been made towards achieving this target across all five indicators: mobile-cellular subscriptions have grown to almost one subscription for every person; more than half of all households have a telephone; at least half of the inhabitants use mobile phones in all countries; and almost 40 per cent of the world's population and a similar percentage of households use the Internet, slightly below the 50 per cent target. 11) Target 11: In selected countries for which data are available, about half of the enterprises use computers, business fixed broadband access is unequal among countries, and mobile connection to the Internet was allowed by almost all large enterprises and less than half of small enterprises. In addition to the mixed results in terms of achieving the WSIS targets, this report points to the difficulties in monitoring them. Defined in 2005, the targets largely focused on bringing connectivity and access to various groups, and reflect the situation of ICTs uptake at the time, when relatively few people and organizations were connected. However, no formal monitoring process was put in place to carry out global assessment of the WSIS Action Lines or targets until 2010. In addition, data availability is low for the majority of indicators that were identified to help track the targets. While the Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development developed a core list of ICT indicators to track and compare international ICT developments, the WSIS targets cover subjects that are challenging to capture in quantitative terms, and to compare at the international level. A number of lessons can be learnt for identifying and monitoring the targets. A key benefit of identifying targets is to bring global attention to ICT development challenges, and to stimulate ICT investments. These benefits were not fully realized for WSIS due to the low level of awareness amongst policy-makers until 2010. Relatively little attention was paid to the WSIS targets, which remained unmonitored and it is not entirely clear how the WSIS targets were set and why they focused on certain policy areas and not others, including why all except one target emphasize physical access to ICTs. Concerning methodological criteria, while the WSIS targets were time-bound, the targets were vague, which in turn hampered the identification of indicators. Also, the availability and quality of data remain a challenge, highlighting the lack of coordination between policy-makers and the statistical community, and lack of statistical capacity at the national level. The review of the WSIS targets and indicators has shown that revisions are necessary: data for some targets are not available, others are no longer relevant. In addition, capturing the impact of ICTs is becoming more important than just capturing the rapid development of ICTs. The impact includes the role of ICTs as a development enabler to help achieve other development goals, including MDGs, and future goals of the post-2015 agenda. A number of recommendations were made for future ICT target-setting: high-level endorsement and awareness building among policy-makers; open consultation process to identify the targets; targets should be time-bound, concrete and measurable to be able to track progress; they should be also ambitious but realistic and achievable, based on the assessment of historical and current trends of progress; indicators should be clear and easy to understand for policy-makers and other stakeholders, and relevant to policy intervention; where possible, they should be based on internationally-agreed statistical standards; etc. The preparations for the post-2015 UN development agenda were initiated by the UN Secretary General who established the UN System Task Team (UNSTT) and appointed the High Level Panel (HLP), and by three levels of global consultations facilitated by the United Nations Development Group (UNDG): 88 national consultations, 11 thematic consultations and global online conversation. The process produced three main reports: "Realizing the Future We Want for All" produced by UNSTT, "A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies through Sustainable Development2 produced by HLP, and "A Million Voices: The World We Want" produced by UNDG. Following the first phase of the process, which focused on the goals and issues to be included in the agenda, the second phase is focused on the implementation issues including localizing the agenda, strengthening capacities and institutions, monitoring and accountability, and others. In parallel to the post-2015 process, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development initiated a process aimed at developing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a successor of the MDGs. The development is carried out through the inter-governmental Open Working Group (OWG) of the UN General Assembly (UNGA), to which UNSTT was assigned as the Technical Support Team. Two more important contributors to the post-2015 process are: Sustainable Development Solutions Network which mobilizes scientists and the United Nations Global Compact which mobilizes companies.ICTs have been introduced into the post-2015 process by UNSTT through its thematic think piece "Science, Technology and Innovation and Intellectual Property Rights: The Vision for Development" and partly through the "Realizing the Future We Want for All" report, which refers to ICTs as an enabler to human, social and economic development and environmental protection. ICTs have been also addressed in the context of the post-2015 agenda through the Expert Group Meeting on "Governance, Public Administration and Information and Communication Technology for the Post-2015 Development" organized by the UN Department for Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) and the United Nations University (UNU), and by the high-level event "Contributions of North-South, South-South, Triangular Cooperation, and ICT for Development to the implementation of the Post-201S Development Agenda" organized by the UNGA in order to mobilize political commitment for implementing the agenda. In the stream of work contributing to the SDGs, the UNDP report "ICTs and Participation: Learning from the Sustainable Development Networking Programme" explores how ICTs can broaden stakeholder participation in local decision-making processes. A specific effort related to ICTs and the post-2015 agenda is the final review of the WSIS outcomes and the development of a new proposal for WSIS beyond 2015, organized around the high-level event called WSIS+10 to take place in June 2014. The WSIS+10 event follows an Open Consultation Process with five input documents: "WSIS+10 Visioning Challenge", "Identifying Emerging Trends and a Vision Beyond 2015", "WSIS Forum 2013 Outcome Document", "Towards Knowledge Societies for Peace and Sustainable Development: Final Statement" and "Measuring the Information Society Report 2013"; and two outcome documents expected from the process: "WSIS+10 Statement on the Implementation of WSIS Outcomes" and "WSIS+10 Vision for WSIS Beyond 2015". This report adds to the inputs produced by the Open Consultation Process in terms of quantitative assessment of the WSIS targets and the recommendations for measuring WSIS+10 post-2015, both formulated within target-specific chapters. The report also highlights a number of recommendations with regards to measuring ICTs in a post-2015 agenda, including that any future ICT monitoring framework should be closely linked to and help achieve the agenda.