UN Chronicle - Volume 48, Issue 3, 2011

The United Nations plays a key role in overcoming one of the major challenges and harnessing one of the greatest opportunities facing humankind today—bridging the digital divide, both among and within countries.

At the beginning of 2011, there were 5.4 billion mobile cellular subscriptions worldwide, meaning that we have effectively achieved the goal of bringing all of the world’s people within reach of the benefits of information and communication technology (ICT). It is a good time for us to take stock, therefore, with just four years left before the 2015 deadline set to achieve the targets set by the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), in combination with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Change is accelerating in the Asia-Pacific region, including in rural areas, as it becomes the global economy’s growth driver. In 2010, the region’s developing countries grew at an impressive rate of 8.8 per cent compared to 2.7 per cent for the world’s developed economies. With growth in developed countries expected to continue to sputter at around 2.5 per cent for the greater part of this decade, a new development paradigm is in the making. The “made in Asia, consumed in the West” development model that served it so well in the past is giving way to economic growth that is more inclusive and sustainable, and thus increasingly sourced from within the region. Digital innovation has emerged as a key contributor to this paradigm shift, holding much promise that all peoples will be empowered to contribute more meaningfully to the emerging knowledge society. Three aspects of this digital revolution give us much hope for the future: the promises of the mobile miracle, the broadband revolution, and the social media. The Mobile Mirac le In less than five years, the number of mobile telephone subscriptions in the region more than doubled, rising from around 1.08 billion to 2.53 billion. In East Asia, for example, 83 per cent of people living in rural areas have a mobile phone. This was accompanied by a rise in home-grown mobile phone manufacturers and operators that can now claim to rival the West’s incumbents. Their business model is built on reaching out to the low spending, but huge, consumer base of the region. The result is that, for the first time, we have affordable and truly inclusive mobile telephony reaching all: poor and wealthy, rural and urban dwellers, women and men, youth and the aged.

Information and communications technology (ICT) holds the promise of making the world a fairer place. Indeed, in many countries, increased information access and social networking are giving citizens a larger voice in local, national, and regional affairs. While the individual and social transformational capacity of information and communications technology is immense, it is often those who already have a voice in national agendas that benefit from the amplifying effect of the technology. The many millions of desperately poor people in remote rural areas who have traditionally had the least voice in government affairs and whose needs are perhaps least understood are also those who have, thus far, benefited the least from the technology.

Sustainable development is a critical issue in the management of global survival and environmental preservation. Increasingly, it is extending its reach across a broad multidisciplinary policy canvas, impacting economic, social, and cultural spheres aimed at securing an improved quality of life for the international community.

Information and communication technology is deeply woven into the fabric of society and is integral to the way we do business, entertain ourselves, talk to each other, learn about the world, and even feed ourselves. With nearly five billion mobile phones worldwide, the reach of ICT is increasingly global. However, even with this near ubiquity, the benefits of ICT remain uneven—access to the “world information society” does not immediately grant membership.

The impact of information and communication technology is not limited to the sector in which it is produced, but rather it spreads to all sectors of production and consumption. This is also valid for mobile telephony.

With these words, in an opening address to the World Summit on the Information Society in 2003, former United Nations Secretary- General Kofi Annan captured the promise of information and communication technology. Building on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), this compelling vision opened the door to new commitment, new investment and, most of all, to creativity and the drive to push the boundaries of technology far beyond anything ever dreamed. Today, it is thanks to those pioneers determined to experiment with new technologies in new settings—often a challenging and risky enterprise—that many can take for granted the benefits that ICT brings to health. For too many others, that promise is still unfulfilled.

Over the past decade, there has been a remarkable growth in the use of information and communication technology across the world. Writing in 1999, Geoffrey Kirkman commented that half of the world’s population had never made a telephone call. By 2011 this has changed dramatically, with mobile cellular networks covering over 90 per cent of the world’s population, and there is the expectation that more than half of the world’s population will be using mobile phones by 2015. Despite the persistence of widespread poverty, the use of mobile telephony in African countries in the last few years has grown more rapidly than in any other region in the world. There are now an estimated 500 million mobile phone subscribers across the continent compared to 246 million in 2008. By late 2010, Africa exceeded Western Europe in terms of the number of mobile connections. Further, although Africa lags in terms of other forms of ICT usage with an estimated 100 million Internet users, between 2000 and 2011 the growth of Internet usage exceeded 2,000 per cent, which is more than five times that for the rest of the world.

How do we respond? How do we know when to respond? Two fundamental questions drive not only humanitarian relief and aid work, but also all responses to a wider range of emergencies and crises that the United Nations system is geared to prevent, mitigate and help recover from. The underlying principle of all UN operations is to help save lives, prevent unnecessary deaths and, in cases where mass scale atrocities have been committed, hold perpetrators accountable for their actions. As we move into the second decade of the twenty-first century, we realize that knowing implies having access to and leveraging information and communications technology (ICT), ranging from the web and the Internet through personal computers, to the mobile web through smartphones and Short Message Service (SMS). The human condition is now inextricably entwined with the availability of information online, from basic services to personal shopping, from banking and commerce to education and healthcare. Nations with better ICT infrastructure invariably show better human development indicators and stronger economic prosperity. At the same time, the recent riots in London (fanned by the use of web-based social media and ICT), the growing instances of cybercrime, online hate speeches, identity theft, data loss, surveillance by repressive regimes, and propaganda through digital media are but a few aspects of the flip side of our networked societies.

Ever since I attended the May 2011 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum, I keep thinking about one of the trends in e-government that was debated there: namely, that the development of e-services is directly linked to the active involvement of citizens and the private sector in the delivery of public services. Consequently, there is a need to increase the level and depth of all stakeholders’ participation in decision making and in the process of implementing e-governance. This, together with international, national, and individual cooperation, could help address the issue of achieving an all-inclusive Information Society. On the other hand, the heterogeneity of e-government models and the great gap between knowledge-based and rudimentary societies are the biggest impediments to overcome. In this context, we need to discern what influence and role e-governance plays in bridging the digital divide.