Monday, November 21, 2005
Return from World Summit on the Information Society
It was all about how the internet should be managed, and about finding ways to get more people to benefit from the latest information technologies.
The whole process began some seven years ago - culminating in the two phase summit meeting - the first phase in Geneva in 2003 and the second phase last week in the Tunisian capital.
So, I hear you ask... we know what it was supposed to achieve - but what difference is it going to make - really?
The easy answer is: not much - or we could elaborate and say that the Tunis phase produced two documents - a political Tunis Commitment and a plan of action entitled the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society.
Not much of an action plan because it does not say who must do what and by what deadline - nor does it say who is going to pay for the actions.
As a journalist - I was very concerned about Tunisia' human rights record and particularly about the way it treated journalists.
There was no need to fear on a personal level because we were actually working within a United Nations precinct, and we were accredited by the UN.
It seemed that the security guys were instructed to restrain themselves and to be really nice to all these foreign journalists. Sometimes they slipped a little. - There were security people walking up and down the media room all the time, and one of them even tried to remove a press release from my desk - but by and large they were friendly.
However, the most impressive aspect of the summit to me was how well the technology worked in the media centre. At a rough guess, there were about two hundred desk tops and maybe another eighty network points for laptops. During the day, they were all used all the time - and yet the bandwidth never faltered - download speeds were lightening fast - considerably quicker than I've ever seen in any other major meeting.
The system never ever went down. My laptop connected to the network instantly without fiddling around with any settings - but if ever you did have a query - all you had to do was raise your hand or even just wear a worried expression and suddenly three or four volunteers - all highly competent university students rushed towards your station to resolve your problem. They were good.
Then to put the cherry on the Tunisian IT cake. When we arrived back at the airport, we found that they had laid on free wireless access all through the airport. Once again - no fiddling about with settings - I just turned on the machine and I was instantly connected - good bandwidth absolutely free.
If there was any tangible outcome of the summit it was that Tunisia showed the world that they can do IT - really.
Why, oh why, can't we do the same?
Why are we still paying exorbitant prices for poor services?
Why are we still fiddling about with IT?
Why don't we have a massive IT education program in the country?
A small country on the other end of our African continent is doing all of the above so well.
And so we come to the end of this week's edition of Cybersurf - and don't forget to tune in again next week for more on the best of the web.
