THE WORLD SUMMIT ON THE INFORMATION SOCIETY SEEN FROM THE FIELD: DO WE ENTER THE PLAY OR DO WE CRITICIZE FROM OUTSIDE?

Daniel Pimienta

FUNREDES Director

http://funredes.org/

Facilitator of the MISTICA virtual community

http://funredes.org/mistica

Several years ago I was invited to a workshop at the United Nations University (UNU), in Maastricht, which had gathered some 80 executives of the South and the North, decision-makers of governments, academy and civil society. The topic was the building of networks in the South. Those were the heroic ages to create networks, when the leadership and the capacity of mobilization did more than the budgets; but, at the same moment, many telematic networks of the civil society were asphyxiated by lack of resources, in spite of the heroes.

At one point, the discussion got centered in how to initiate a research and development network in Burkina Faso. There were some colleagues from this African country who listened to the good advices coming from everyone, and of course, from the representatives of international organizations in the North. The discussion extended by more than one hour. I could read the perplexity that marked their faces and I could not prevent myself to think about the two networks that we were managing at that same moment (REDID in Dominican Republic and REHRED in Haiti), which had been made with very limited budgets and much tenacity. We dreamed about having a single support of 40KUS$ for each one, to assure theirs progresses and to have a glimpse of some sustainable form to grow. I certainly knew that with that amount the evolution of those projects would change radically. But we could not get that support (or we did not know how to get it).

"We do not have less capacity than those giving us advice", I thought to myself, "we did not need so many patronizing opinions, the South has as many people able to develop project as the North has: we only need the financial support and we will know what to do." Surely then, the experts of Burkina Faso, educated in France, were thinking something close to my thoughts. But they listened with patience.

I was getting frantic and to dissipate my discomfort I began to calculate the direct and indirect costs of that meeting to which I had been invited, in a "business class" flight, to spend one week in the pretty city of Maastricht. First, I calculated the average costs of tickets, hotels and per diems, I multiplied them by 80 and divided them by the number of hours of the meeting (direct costs). Then I computed one week of wage of the people there. I reached a direct cost per hour of the order of 20.000 US$ and an indirect cost of the order of 5.000 US$.

I asked the permission to speak and I declared something like:"I am a player from the field; I have created two national networks, with an investment inferior to 40.000 USS in both cases. With the same amount of money we could today transform those projects into a reality. I have calculated that the two hours of discussion which we used in search of helping the friends from Burkina Faso to construct their network cost 50.000 US$. I wonder if it would not have been more efficient to support them with that amount of money instead of inviting them to listen to our advices". My declaration left a very cold atmosphere in the room, some smiles hardly repressed in the (few) people from the field present and many hard faces. And I thought "This people will never invite me again".

It was natural that my intervention could seem as a bad taste provocation and, to be frank, much worse examples had occurred at that time, taking into account that the UNU is an academic instance and then not oriented towards the action. A perfect example was a meeting organized in the Caribbean at the same time where experts from international organizations were discussing the kind of networks required in that region without taking the annoyance to invite the people who were sweating hard, constructing networks in trenches, with their energy and faith as their unique resource.

Now, would you imagine how much is going to cost the World Summit on the Information Society, with his more than 20 preparatory meetings to arrive to the big meeting of Geneva and then Tunisia! It's not about mobilizing 80 people but many thousands instead! Imagine what the actors from the field could do with those resources. Or better do not imagine it...

In fact, I had suggested years ago a simple rule that could solve the apparent contradictions of that type of meetings, supposedly addressed to establish strategies for the action. Something very simple but revolutionary. To fix some sort of tax of the order of 10% of the amount of the direct costs of such meetings. The amount could go into at a common box which could be returned to the field actors corresponding to the thematic/region of the meeting, by means of an open and transparent contest. Perhaps with an additional 5% we could cover the cost of management and follow up of a contest of this nature. I have suggested this measure to the people of the Civil Society Secretary of the Summit and they seemed interested again. Let's hope they can put in practice that principle of justice and common sense.

Then, what to do? To participate or not to participate? To protest that the money is being invested in words instead of acts? To take the risk of serving as an alibi for decisions remote from our will? To fail to take advantage of the opportunity to impact the global, regional, national agendas on behalf of the importance of the local? To see the occasion to articulate the local with the global and showcase the progresses we have made in the field? To deal with this Summit as another typical event of the United Nations, where the civil society gains presence, after Rio (ecology) and Beijing (gender), and must organize itself to present a coordinated? Or, to insist that, by an elementary sense on coherence, it has to be conceived and acted with another paradigm, inspired on the power of the virtual communities, that has been allowed by the social appropriation of the ICT? Finally, can we imagine a meeting that is going to discuss the bases of a new society, leaving to the governments and the private sector the exclusive right to make proposals? What sense would have a debate on the new social paradigm without the actors of the civil society?

They are questions very difficult to answer individually, and even more collectively; so I do not try here to give the answers.

In fact, the NGO where I belong has accepted a limited budget, from IDRC, to catalyze a work of collective reflection in the MISTICA virtual community in relation with the Summit. By accepting, we have skipped the stage of answering to those questions and we got into the action, or rather in the research-action, which is our natural working atmosphere.

For that reason I participated in the first prepcom meeting in Geneva, accepted the unexpected and late invitation to occupy the chair reserved to the civil society in the inauguration table and could use the established 7 minutes with a communication, in Spanish (I was the only one of the table who did not made his/her speech in English) and presenting a vision from the field, in the South. The communication is available in the web site of the Summit in http://www.itu.int/wsis or on the Funredes web site.

Then, what we are going to do and how it is possible to be articulated with other initiatives?

The philosophy behind our intervention is coherent with our nature, vision, and perspective. Nature of facilitator and articulator within the experimentation of an appropriate and social minded use of the ICT; vision of the importance of respecting the plurality and the diversity of the civil society; perspective towards a participative democracy based on the new tools provided by ICT. The coherence principle leads us to acknowledge the importance of the quality of the participative process, above everything else. The same coherence forces us to try to maintain, within this plurality, articulation levels which include gateways towards other initiatives. If the civil society is able to show its knowledge in an integrated and plural manner , then it will demonstrated in this Summit that it has a greater capacity to design the society of tomorrow society than the representative' actors. Of course, this is not a small challenge.

Our intention is to facilitate, from the distance, the presence of the voice of the people who think and act collectively within MISTICA virtual community and who constitute a meaningful segment of the actors of the field of our region (academics and activists). The method will be the same we already used to create collectively with the members of this community (see for example, the last one named "Working the Internet with a social vision").

We are going to propose the construction of two documents with this method:

One short that tries to be an acid deconstruction of the fashionable concept of "digital divide";

Other, that would try to shape a vision, surely utopist, of a new society that we names "the utopist of the information", to play with the words.

I say "to propose" because, as you know, the virtual communities by themselves decide what they want or not to undertake. So Funredes will propose and MISTICA will decide.

If you have curiosity and you wish to know where is going to lead us this "utopia", or better if you want to participate in its construction, come along within the community, you are welcome.

To conclude, a possible answer for the dilemma of participation in the Summit could be to undertake actions within communities with the confidence that, finally, those actions can serve ourselves independantly of the possibilities that they could serve this Summit or that this Summit does not serve our interests.