What is the vision of the DG Foundation? What are your new programme initiatives?
We can help improve people’s lives, and act as a catalyst for developing countries. We promote partnership, and work to increase access to development information and resources, especially to those who would most benefit by this knowledge. We also work to increase the effectiveness of development efforts by providing appropriate knowledge and expertise, and we share and collaborate. We are a very small organisation with a big vision and we build and deploy systems for organisations and for organisations in turn to work in partnership with other organisations to build this gateway. Development Gateway Foundation is a facilitator of knowledge sharing and we enable organisations to share their knowledge and expertise with others. We have an eminent Board of Directors with 20 members, and chaired by Mr. Mamphela Ramphele.

The small Secretariat is responsible for day-to-day management of the Development Gateway Foundation. The Secretariat will devise a monitoring and evaluation system, and will report regularly (at least quarterly) to the Development Gateway Foundation Board. The Secretariat will, in addition, mobilise funds under the guidance of the Board Chairperson, design and propose detailed policies and appraisal criteria, and approve grants and investments in accordance with limits set by the Board and the Executive Committee. The objectives and programmes are as follows:

• Improve public sector transparency (through dgMarket and the E-Government Program)
• Enhance development effectiveness (through the AiDA directory and the Development Gateway portal)
• Increase knowledge sharing (through the Topic Pages of the Development Gateway portal, the annual Development Gateway Forum)
• Build local capacity to empower communities (through the network of Country Gateways, the Development Gateway portal, dgMarket, the Research and Training Network)

How do you see the Forum emerging as a leading platform for high-level policy impact on ICTs for development?

Through the Development Gateway portal, we envisage several partners, especially in developing countries, to act as information and knowledge providers and we hope to see the Forum emerging as a leading platform for high-level policy impact on ICT4D. We are very pleased that this year’s Forum was especially focused on recognising the valuable and innovative project in Bangladesh. This project uses communica-tions technology for development and has won the Petersburg Prize. This recognition is critical to celebrate good work.

Does the Development Gateway envisage all the countries to join in and how do you see the service being catered to for local language requirements?
Development Gateway deliberates and works with various partners in many countries, and they organise as independent country networks,