Statement of Mark Malloch Brown, presented by Anne Birgitte Albrectson, Chef de Cabinet

Stockholm, Sweden
June 27, 2001

Mr. Chairman, honoured guests, ladies and gentlemen,

Whatever stock markets' verdict today, as citizens and consumers, politicians and public figures, business and civil society, ICT has already changed the way we work, the way we shop, the way we learn and the way we communicate. Now it is starting to change the way we relate to governments. And nowhere is that potential impact greater than in the developing world, where it is increasingly intersecting with another, equally powerful revolution in democracy and democratic governance.

In a way what we are seeing is analogous to how the spread of knowledge triggered by Gutenberg's printing press both helped drive and was supported by dramatic political currents that were reshaping sixteenth century Europe. Technology found its market: a continent-wide rivalry of religious ideas as intense and profound as today's spread of democracy. For five hundred years later the internet has become both the fuel and the vehicle for a dramatic spread in democracy and citizen-to-citizen communication across national boundaries, intensifying demand for and supporting the spread of genuinely transparent and participatory and much more efficient systems of government at both the national and global levels.

But even as the number of democracies worldwide has doubled in little more than a decade, it is far too soon to declare victory. In too many countries, institutions remain fragile, services are weak, officials unaccountable. And the lack of a democratic dividend - in terms of jobs and better services - has been undermining public faith in these new systems of government, particularly among the poor. I believe ICT offers real hope in all these areas, both through the direct impact it can have on strengthening elections and other institutions and processes, particularly citizen input into decision-making, and by indirectly providing real opportunities and better services to citizens everywhere.

Creating an Enabling Environment

But before spelling out that vision in a little more detail, let me first take a step back and emphasize the obvious. And that is the fact that there is little point talking about the impact of ICT on democracy and development in countries where ICT barely exists.

We all know about the digital divide, but it is worth remembering just how wide it is: OECD countries have 40 times as many computers, 110 times as many mobile phones and 1600 times as many internet hosts as their sub-Saharan counterparts. Monthly access charges in countries like Uganda exceed average per capita income. And just 0.4% of Africans and south Asians have used the internet, compared to over half of North Americans.

So the first challenge in harnessing e-Government and e-democracy in an environment of unlimited hype but limited resources is to identify the strategic levers of change that best help countries to boost the spread and application of ICT. Consider Estonia's project - code-named Tiger Leap - to wire the country, which UNDP supported. The strategic levers were school and public access. The awareness raising and skill development programmes and creation of community net centres worked not only to lure Estonians to the Web, they also acted as a catalyst for regional economic and skill development, and provided access points for the delivery of an extensive range of public services.

But there are other options as well and the paths taken will depend upon national conditions and possibilities. And here we are ready for some fresh thinking. The debate over ICT for development has for too long remained stuck between market fundamentalists who argue the private sector will solve everything in the right policy environment and nay-sayers warning that the kind of investments needed in infrastructure, connectivity and other areas to provide a meaningful platform for ICT are simply prohibitive for most developing countries.

But as our new Human Development Report, which will be launched in Mexico in a few weeks, argues, while we tend to think of development as largely social and economic progress and technology as something rather instrumental, in practice there is a real middle road that combines the two. In the case of ICT in particular, what is needed is where strategic incubation and support from Government in key areas can leverage an enormous dynamic response from the private sector and civil society and where public-private partnerships can demonstrate creative ways of addressing market failures.

In practice, that means governments need both to put in place a supportive enabling environment while encouraging, or where necessary, itself making key, but focused investments in hardware and tertiary education to improve their own services and capacity. If that is done strategically and bottlenecks are addressed, the process can quickly take off with positive knock-on effects for the rest of the economy. Look at India, where from small beginnings, more than 2000 private institutes have now sprung up to train 70,000 students every year and provide real momentum to the rapidly growing high-tech industry there. NIIT, earlier the National Institute of Information Technology, and one of the key players, has now become transnational and is working with other national governments to help them setup similar training institutions.

That is also one of the real lessons of another forthcoming report of ours - the Digital Opportunity Initiative study UNDP recently undertook with Accenture and the Markle Foundation - which uses detailed case studies to show the need for developing countries to put in place comprehensive national e-strategies that create a framework to tackle strategic bottlenecks, are conducive to enterprise and community development and address issues such as culture, connectivity, regulatory environment and human capacity. And helping countries do just that will be a central feature of our Global Network Readiness and Resource initiative that we will be rolling out in Bolivia, Romania and Tanzania in the near future.

Democracy and Governance

So we are seeing real progress in the spread and use of ICT worldwide. And I think it will only accelerate as more countries are able to take advantage of these lessons. But what are the implications for democracy and governance?

Most obvious perhaps is the impact ICT is already having on popular mobilization. From Zimbabwe to the Philippines, we have seen over the past year how ICT ranging from cell-phones to email have been used to help share information, gather supporters and spread ideas across grassroots and global networks with dramatic effect. By facilitating communication across borders, what appear to be local issues can receive global attention and solidarity. A women's group in Mexico City, for example, used email to ask sympathizers in California to do research on the textile factory where they worked. When the women's jobs were threatened, they came to management armed with information on the company, its profits and its ownership to negotiate better conditions and more secure tenure.

It is also proving a vital tool in helping link together new forms of civil society networks around key issues, ranging from global warming, women's empowerment and struggles for equity to attempts to make globalization more responsive to the needs of developing countries and the poor. And it is a dynamic new way to help inform and connect national publics better to their own governments: when the new Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi launched a regular email newsletter this month 1.35m people, a full 20% of the country's internet users, signed up within days.

More recently there has also been a lot of talk about the impact of the internet on direct democracy, with experiments going on with regards to voting online from the US to the Netherlands. And although in practice lack of connectivity means these kinds of applications will have only limited impact on most developing countries in the foreseeable future, there is a lot of very practical information on best practices for running and managing elections that can be shared. And it is work we at UNDP have increasingly done, from South Africa's historic 1994 elections to Indonesia's 1998 poll, helping establish voters rolls, counting systems and so on to ensure matters went as smoothly as possible during very complex and difficult transitions to democracy.

That is also the underlying principle of one of most fruitful partnerships with IDEA: the Administration and Cost of Elections, or ACE, project where, together with UN partners and International Foundation for Elections Systems we have set up a much-used database on options, procedures and cost implications associated with elections. More recently, we have also been working together on the Election Process Information Collection project, to serve as a resource for data on electoral systems, laws, and management. We have also been collaborating directly in a number of on-the-ground initiatives from Nigeria to Guatemala to Indonesia.

But while democratic governance may start with elections and participation, it must become much more: strong, accountable institutions, a culture of participation and democratic respect and openness. And the spontaneous easily accessible (at least when affordable) internet can contribute to all of these goals, from being a platform for a new investigative media to increasing direct participation. Nevertheless, here I want to focus on its contribution as e-governance, streamlining and improving government services and institutions by making them cheaper, more efficient and more accessible.

At its most mundane level, this is administrative. It is estimated for example that the US could save as much as 2% of GDP through e-government solutions on procurement and taxes. Developing countries like Chile and Brazil already have successful experiments underway in these areas, while parts of India are showing how providing government licenses online can cut through traditionally tortuous bureaucracies with real benefits for entrepreneurs and others who have long been stifled.

In Peru, UNDP helped to create Latin America's first automated online registry when it provided design, implementation and catalytic funding to Oficina Registral de Lima y Callao (ORLC). Not only are users happier, those running the registry have noticed important changes both in the way ORLC employees do their job and in the certificates they give out. "The organization has improved, from management to services." More concretely, when I visited Egypt recently I heard of a plan to open local government offices after hours - Egyptian civil servants go home early - so local people can access the internet. For once, governance working for them!

The point is this basic concept - providing people with information as a route to demanding better services and accountability - can be pursued in a wide range of areas. UNDP, for example, is involved in a number of pioneering initiatives from work in Belarus that uses the web to help make legal systems more transparent and easily accessible to the public, to support in Bhutan that supports the government in data and information collections on governance issues, particularly for decentralization efforts that bring services closer to the poor, to a new initiative in Botswana that has linked all legislators online and allows citizens to follow parliamentary proceedings on the internet, to a major initiative in Bulgaria that brings NGOs and municipalities together across a common network in a new anti-corruption effort.

These are small initiatives with big ripple effects. They do not require a computer in every house - just a focus on content relevant to the public and public access that can be developed through private, public or public-private initiatives. And by streamlining systems of governance, increasing popular participation, countries can improve accountability, boost participation and save money.

Because the fact is freedom cannot flourish amidst poverty and corruption. The surge of democracy and the new global commitment to a human-rights based vision of human development is real but fragile. We must consolidate it. And ICT is helping us do that. Not just through encouraging the flow of ideas and information, not just by transforming how states deliver services from schools to security and hospitals to highways, but by supplying the most important democratic dividend of all: a real say combined with choices and opportunities, particularly for the poor.

Thank you