The main emphasis of National ICT strategies should
be governance with the people (based on public/private sector
and community partnerships) and not government of the people.
It was proposed that a small facilitating agency
be set to help small islands and states to set up and develop
ICT policies and strategies. It was agreed that it would be useful
to have such a catalytic function, providing services and making
use of UNESCO’s policy-making tools, by adding a specific
component for small island states. It was proposed that the Malta
Council for Science and Technology could offer a small base for
this function/unit to be set up. UNESCO could support this in
terms of information and input and funding could be made available
through UNESCO’s Participation Programme.
It was agreed that all the inputs from the workshop
would be integrated into one document, to be forwarded to all
participants and then published on UNESCO’s website.
It was agreed that UNESCO and COMNET-IT would
initiate joint action with infoDev in the development of tool
kits and with SIDSNET for developing sensitisation material for
influencing policy-makers.
It was proposed that the information policy development
initiative could be promoted as an infoDev flagship project, with
the objective of developing in a cooperative way best practice
guidelines for policies for small islands and states.
It was agreed that insofar as advocacy for politicians
and senior policy-makers is concerned, rather than organizing
regional and sub-regional workshops, the aim would be to utilize
existing fora to promote the work being done. This would avoid
duplication of efforts and could help to secure other champions
of the process such as Caricom.
SIDSNET offered to support small initiatives like
setting up websites and moderating dicsussion groups through limited
funding.
It was agreed that efforts should be made to open
up the discussion process and promote the use of the material
generated for educational purposes.
It was agreed that an international task force
be set up to take the initiative forward, made up of :
