This year more than 100 participants attended Development Gateway Forum from 39 countries on June 27 to 28 at the Petersberg center outside of Bonn, Germany.


The Development Gateway, an independent not-for-profit organisation launched by the World Bank, issued a progress report on action items in last year’s Petersberg Declaration. In answer to the call to “prioritise local partnerships and applications,” for instance, the Development Gateway’s research center in India has advanced 12 applications, including multilingual web searches and low-bandwidth information exchanges. In response to the mandate to link ICT to the Millennium Development Goals, a platform has been developed to allow countries to monitor policies and actions aimed at achieving the MDGs. On the global Development Gateway portal, a network of more than 100,000 development practitioners from around the world are now sharing information, collaborating to improve development effectiveness, and building local capacity and enterprise.

Each year, the Development Gateway Foundation gathers input for the Call to Action at its Development Gateway Forum. The Petersberg Call to Action focuses on improving the use of ICT to enhance development effectiveness, increase transparency in public sector procurement, and help build the local capacity of institutions and individuals to become agents of change. Each year, the elements of this Call to Action are gathered at the forum to help the Development Gateway refine its strategy as it also helps define priorities for the larger ICT community. Some action items, which came out of this year’s forum, are as follows:

Development effectiveness
There is a need to improve the information and tools used to achieve development effectiveness. To provide information that is comprehensive, but at the same time useful, in order to avoid information overload and waste. Information has to be “handy” so people can use it easily.

Apply ICT to the Millenium Development Goals
To this end, the Development Gateway has been developing Millennium Development Goals monitoring platforms that is hoped to bring it into use both globally and locally.

Scaling the use of information technologies for public procurement
$1 trillion is spent each year on public goods and services in developing countries – and it is important that dgMarket is used as an element to increase competition in public procurement. Development Gateway can make major contributions to fight corruption by putting this information online and lessons can be drawn from doing this.

Local content/local language
There is an urgency to overcome the “English first and only” bias on the Internet and in information gathering and dissemination. A strong focus on local content and local languages is required. The Development Gateway’s Country Gateways are tools to overcome this bias. Its research and training centers can play a positive role for more multilingual applications and content on the Internet.

Catalyse ICT
While the Development Gateway can use its Petersberg Prize to catalyse ICT innovation, others can play a more prominent role in the popularisation of technology. To act as a catalyst, we need to reach out to new candidates for the next prize and share the lessons learned from Grameen Bank, the winner.

The Development Gateway Portal of development information
An element which was not stressed enough involves the Development Gateway’s portal of development information. This is important because it should be capable of conveying information on the social, economic, and cultural side of development. It is important that there is a pluralistic way of bringing information into the Development Gateway. In that sense, it needs an arm’s length relationship to very big organisations, to give others a chance to participate in information sharing.

The Development Gateway also issued its “Progress Report – Petersberg Declaration 2003” at the Forum. To read forum papers and for other Forum information, please visit http://www.devforum.org.