Was WSIS worth it, what did it achieve, what did developing countries and civil service organisations gain and did these gains outweigh the costs associated with participation are the main questions asked in a new book, “Whose Summit? Whose Information Society?” by David Souter, and commissioned by APC. “The study concludes that WSIS had only limited success and ‘is not the best starting point for new action on ICTs or ICD [information and communications for development] today.’ WSIS had many flaws. Organised by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a technical agency, rather than the UN centrally, WSIS was dominated by the ICT sector, with limited participation of development practitioners. This explains why some interviewees believe ‘that WSIS was more a meeting of ICT specialists than a meeting of minds between such specialists and the wider development community.’”
http://apc.org/english/news/index.shtml?x=5202193Download the full book here [in English; pdf format]:
http://rights.apc.org/documents/whose_summit_EN.pdf
Interview with David Souter: Learning from the WSIS Experience
APCNews interview with David Souter, author of ‘Whose Summit? Whose Information Society? Developing countries and civil society at the World Summit on the Information Society’
http://apc.org/english/news/index.shtml?x=5202194
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