World Summit on the Information Society
The Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD) is one of the UN bodies that took up the follow up of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). This is APC’s contribution to a CSTD meeting meeting dealing with development-oriented policies for a social-economic inclusive information society, including access, infrastructure and an enabling environment, that took place on May 2007 in Geneva, as part of a series of WSIS follow-up meetings.
The Civil Society Statement on WSIS concluded that: “The broad mandate for WSIS was to address the long-standing issues in economic and social development from the newly emerging perspectives of the opportunities and risks posed by the revolution in Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs). The summit was expected to identify and articulate new development possibilities and paradigms being made possible in the Information Society, and to evolve public policy options for enabling a...
The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) has been roundly criticised in the past and this new study from APC concludes that the summit “is not the best starting point for new action.” So, what is the point of looking at how developing country delegations and civil society fared at the summit? Because, says the author “it is always important to learn from experience – particula...
Organised in two stages, and lasting four years, WSIS certainly consumed a great deal of time and resources – both financial and human. But was it worth it? What did WSIS actually achieve? What did developing countries and civil society organisations (CSOs) gain from it? And, perhaps more importantly, did these gains outweigh the costs associated with participation? These are just some of the...
APCNews interview with David Souter, author of ‘Whose Summit? Whose Information Society? Developing countries and civil society at the World Summit on the Information Society’.
A cluster of World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) implementation meetings is taking place in Geneva from May 14 to 25. Part of the APC crew is there, ensuring that “the strong development orientation” promised by organising agencies goes beyond paper. Read APC input to the informal consultation between the International Communication Union and civil society on the participation of...
A cluster of World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) implementation meetings is taking place in Geneva from May 14 to 25. Part of the APC crew is there, ensuring that “the strong development orientation” promised by organising agencies goes beyond paper. Themes and action lines stemming from agreed-upon documents are being discussed. Read APC’s input to three action lines that took...
The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) process culminated with the Tunis Summit in November 2005 and we are now five months into the post-WSIS implementation phase. … But what does that mean in practice? What are the post-WSIS implementation processes, what actors are involved, when and where are they taking place and how can you get involved? The following ten-page overview s...
IT for change, an NGO figthing alongside APC during the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) has published "WSIS: The beginning of a global information society discourse" on March 11 in the Economic and Political Weekly. The piece attempts to place WSIS in the present geopolitical context and discusses its outcomes. It concludes that "WSIS may need to be judged more from the processes...
The interventions of civil society activists made a material difference to the outcomes of WSIS in Tunis, contents Willie Currie, the ICT (Information and Communication Technology) Policy Manager with the Association for Progressive Communications (APC).

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