November-December 2007


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Development Gateway Foundation Newsletter


November/December 2007

From the Foundation:

Events:
Country Gateway Network News:


FROM THE FOUNDATION

CEO of Development Gateway Foundation Participates in USAID Forum
Mark Fleeton, CEO of the Development Gateway Foundation, participated in the inaugural forum of the Global Development Commons (GDC) presented by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in Washington, D.C. on November 27. Convened by USAID Administrator Henrietta Fore, the forum brought together nearly 100 development specialists from both the public and private sectors to explore ways that stakeholders can use information technology to collaborate on a common platform to benefit global development. According to Administrator Fore who attended the meeting, the GDC ownership model envisioned by USAID is a shared one similar to Wikipedia. Mr. Fleeton led off the forum with a PowerPoint presentation about the Development Gateway’s web-based solutions for development effectiveness and lessons learnt since DGF was launched in 2000. Keynote speaker for the forum was Dr. James Billington, Librarian, U.S. Library of Congress, who discussed the World Digital Library Initiative. USAID plans to post on its GDC homepage portions of videotaped sessions from the forum and participant PowerPoints.

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Japan Commits $1 Million to the Foundation
The Japanese government will contribute $1 million to support the Development Gateway Foundation’s efforts to provide information and communications solutions for more effective aid and efficient governance in developing countries.  Read more...

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AMP Has Busiest Year Ever
The aid effectiveness team is wrapping up its busiest year yet. A wide range of new features have been added to the Aid Management Platform in 2007, including more robust project management capabilities and new monitoring and evaluation tools. Implementations are currently underway in seven countries on three continents.

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China Poverty Relief Forum to Add Chinese to dgCommunity Languages
Development Gateway Foundation looks forward to welcoming Chinese language readers soon to its new online resources portal, the China Poverty Relief Forum dgCommunity. The result of extensive localization of the dgCommunities platform by the China Development Gateway (CnDG) organization located in Beijing, the new portal offers a unique opportunity to link Chinese development practitioners and organizations with the wider international development community in fruitful exchange geared to improve development outcomes. CnDG will manage the community, which will provide an important venue for knowledge exchange and discussion on a host of development topics of particular interest to China such as health, environment, economic and social development. As with other dgCommunities, CnDG will also recruit expert advisors to moderate discussion forums on topics such as unemployment, microfinance, and training and capacity building.

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AiDA Database Expands to Include Activities Funded by Non-Traditional Donors
Accessible Information on Development Activities (AiDA), the largest online directory of information about international development activities, has broadened its database for the first time to include projects funded by a non-traditional donor organization. More than 3,800 listings from the publicly available database of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have recently been added to the database and are now accessible to the public. Because private philanthropic foundations account for an increasingly large share of total funding for development worldwide, disseminating information about privately-funded projects significantly enhances the value of AiDA as a one-stop source for information on development activities. The AiDA database now contains information on more than 500,000 development activities gathered from publicly-available data from a wide range of bilateral and multilateral donors.  Read more...

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E-Government Platform Partners with ePractice from European Commission
Development Gateway Foundation’s e-Government knowledge sharing platform is partnering with epractice.eu, an exchange scheme with a web portal, weekly newsletter, country factsheets, and other mechanisms for sharing “best practices” created by the European Commission for the professional community in eGovernment, e-Inclusion and eHealth. Involving practitioners from all 27 member states and EU-member candidate states, international members are warmly welcomed. The portal combines online activities with frequent offline exchanges, workshops, face-to-face meetings and public presentations.


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DgCommunities Special Policy Dialogues
dgCommunities members are invited to provide comments for "Guidelines for Relations Between U.S. Armed Forces and Non-Governmental Humanitarian Organizations" developed by the U.S. Institute of Peace. Guidelines for providing comments can be downloaded at http://www.usip.org/newsmedia/releases/2007/0807 guidelines.html. Comments of less than 1,000 words can be posted on discussion forums on the Afghanistan Reconstruction or Iraq Relief and Recovery dgCommunities at http://topics.developmentgateway.org/afghanistan/discussion/default/showDiscussion.do~id=5546 or http://topics.developmentgateway.org/iraq/discussion/default/showDiscussion.do~id=5547
Longer comments can be sent in pdf file format to dgContent@dgfoundation.org.



Events

Third Global Knowledge Conference, Malaysia, December 11-13
The Foundation hosted a booth at the Third Global Knowledge (GK3) Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, from December 11-13. Several Foundation representatives participated in the meeting, including board member Walter Fust; director of online communities Mike Pereira; and Asia Pacific regional coordinator Travis Harvey. GK3 was organized by the Global Knowledge Partnership, the world’s first multi-stakeholder network promoting innovation and advancement in knowledge for development and information and communication technologies for development. Its goal is to build partnership and share knowledge with civil society organization and those in the public and private sectors. http://www.dgfoundation.org/news-events/gk3-conference.html



Country Gateway Network News

LAC Regional Workshop, El Salvador, November 4-6
The Country Gateway Latin America-Caribbean Regional Workshop was held in El Salvador from November 4-6 sponsored by Asociación Infocentros (the host organization of the El Salvador Country Gateway) with the support of the Development Gateway Foundation. Infocentros managed the event, which included participation from 12 out of 13 active Country Gateways in the region: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Foundation participants included Francis Dogo, senior director of country operations; Jean-Marie Eklou, Country Gateway program manager; Cesar Yammal, LAC regional coordinator; and Denise Senmartin, business development specialist. CEO Mark Fleeton participated via video conference. The event was an important opportunity for all regional country gateways to collaborate with each other. One outcome of the meeting was the decision to revamp the regional network.

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Togo Joins Country Gateways Network
Africa Label, a network of development professionals whose mission is to improve the effectiveness of development initiatives in Africa, has partnered with the Foundation to launch a new Country Gateway for the West African nation of Togo. The Togo Development Gateway will have a two-prong focus: a web portal to facilitate the sharing of development information and the provision of professional ICT services. Africa Label has implemented an African Expert database and provides various IT and consultancy services in the areas of training, fundraising and project management.




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