Background

The Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (APDIP) organized a workshop entitled "UNDP ICT for Development in Asia-Pacific: Programme Officers/Focal Points Workshop", in Kuala Lumpur between the 9th and 13th of December 2002.

APDIP organized the workshop with financial support from the UNDP ASIA-PAC/South East Asia & Pacific Division. The workshop received in-kind support from the Bureau for Development Policy (BDP), the Regional Bureau for Asia-Pacific (RBAP), UNDP Malaysia, Asia-Pacific SURF offices in Bangkok and Kathmandu, and Regional Information Managers of Asia-Pacific, the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), and the UNDP Special Unit for Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries (TCDC).

Nineteen (19) out of a total of twenty-five (25) UNDP Country Offices within Asia-Pacific participated in the workshop. A total of thirty-nine (39) participants, including ICT focal points from Country Offices, and internal and external resource persons, met for five days and discussed issues and topics relating to UNDP Corporate ICT for Development policies, the ICT for Development Thematic Trust Fund, Country Office level programming and reporting, communications strategies, mechanisms for networking and coordinating information among Country Offices and ICT regional programmes, and a variety of topical ICT for Development trends.

[Click here to go the POW I website]

The general consensus among participants is that the workshop proved to be very useful for their work - sharing experiences and the discussions on internal UNDP ICT frameworks and reporting helped to clarify roles and responsibilities; while the opportunity to meet and discuss with regional programmes and peers allowed for new linkages.

Building the Community

One of the key outcomes of the first workshop has been the building of community among ICT4D Programme Officers and focal points in the Asia-Pacific region. Exchanges throughout the past year on the pow@apdip.net mailing list, which is hosted and maintained by UNDP-APDIP, show an increase in interaction between ICT4D POs as they share queries, information, and advice. The cooperation and hardware exchange between UNDP Cambodia and UNDP Korea is testimony to positive networking resulting from the first POW.