Call for Participation

A New Listserv on Public-Private Partnerships in ICT

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This is an invitation to join a new listserv that focuses on
public-private partnership initiatives in the field of information
and communication technologies (ICTs), with a particular emphasis on
the economic and political dynamic usually referred to as
'development'.

Following the growth of private-sector involvement in public
infrastructure projects across the globe, corporate investments often
have become a substitute for public funding formerly provided by
intergovernmental agencies, international aid organizations, and
governments. Usually considered in terms of a pooling of private and
public resources, public-private partnerships aim at a cooperative
provision of services and products to exploit synergy effects
although they take many forms and adopt a variety of organizational,
funding and governance structures. Through this process, public
institutions are expected to become more 'proactive' in terms of
their engagement with private actors, and the development process is
projected as being, altogether, more equitable and sustainable.

Such official pronouncements aside, assessments from the ground tend
to view the relatively new tool of PPP with much more ambivalence.
While major info-corporations are indeed offering themselves as
'partners in development' and support ICT development as vehicles for
'effective service delivery' and 'e-governance', they also take
advantage of the newfound enthusiasm for Public-Private Partnerships
to stake out their own commercial claims, crowd out public-sector
alternatives, and actively discourage alternative forms of
development cooperation. Questions concerning the motivations
particularly implicit in relation to these initiatives include the
gaining of inter-company competitive advantages, pole positions in
standard setting (and pushing aside technological alternatives),
influencing procurement strategies, and so on.

Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships (MSPs) are offered as an alternative
form of development cooperation. Unlike PPPs, which are based on the
primacy of an ambiguous private/public distinction, MSPs focus on
whoever has a stake in a given process. Because the position and
identities of 'stakeholders' are largely self-defined, MSPs, at least
theoretically, are open to individual and collective actors that may
be left out of PPP processes that involve only state and private
sector actors. Beyond the contractual relationship of PPPs, in
principle MSPs prioritize overlapping interests, emphasize trust and
transparency, and could also play an important role in the
development of new accountability mechanisms. More generally,
perhaps, MSPs affirm that the idea of 'partnerships' is itself in
flux and open to contestation.

The idea to launch a project committed exclusively to PPP-in-ICT
arose during a two-day conference, Incommunicado 05: From
Info-Development to Info-Politics, held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands
in June 2005. Incommunicado 05 attempted to offer a critical survey
of the current state of 'info-development', generally known by its
catchy acronym 'ICT4D' (Information and Communication Technologies
for Development) but also created an interest in more focused
follow-up projects that would engage specific dimensions of the
info-development process. Public-private partnerships in ICT became a
topic of debate during the conference, with discussions concerning,
for example, the role of Cisco and Cisco Academies in their
partnership with the UN Development Program, the on-going role of
Microsoft in its Unlimited Potential program and its recent
partnership with Canada's International Development Research Centre,
and the role of WSIS in the evolving landscape of similar
info-development alliances.

What we envision is a lively exchange of research, critical
discussions and reports from the ground, a sharing of experiences
both via a mailing list and - later on - a collaborative weblog.
Given that PPPs in ICT involve a complex set of actors - including
intergovernmental institutions, states, local authorities,
transnational corporations, small- and medium-sized enterprises
(SMEs), and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) - the scope is both
specific - PPP in ICT - and broad enough to address related
developments and processes.

To be taken up at a later time, we also propose the joint development
of a code of conduct for PPP that addresses the specificity of ICT.

A great deal of research is done outside the institutional loops of
the academy, research labs, or development consulting, so we hope
that the framing of this topic will be of interest to those who wish
to engage in a substantial PPP-in-ICT exchange, regardless of whether
or not they consider themselves researchers, community and/or media
activists, etc.

On PPP-in-ICT and PPP-Watch

The domain currently used for this project is pppwatch.org. In the
context of software, 'pppwatch' refers to a small demon used to
monitor the PPP connection. In the more general context of
info-political efforts, the idea of a 'watch' also suggests common
cause with other 'watch' projects that attempt to create a modicum of
transparency and accountability in development processes - regardless
of whether they involve public or private actors - where there is
none. Both offer apt descriptors for a project that intends to keep
an eye on the evolving dynamic of 'partnerships' in the field of ICT.

We are hoping that you will participate in this project. The listserv
will 'go live' once an initial threshold of 50 subscribers has been
reached. Online subscription will be enabled once this number has
been reached. To subscribe, please contact Soenke Zehle
([log in to unmask]) or Lisa McLaughlin ([log in to unmask]). The site
and list are currently maintained by kein.org.
_______________________________________________
--
Lisa McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Mass Communication & Women's Studies
Editor, Feminist Media Studies
Director of Graduate Studies, M.A. Program in Mass Communication
Union for Democratic Communications Representative,
World Summit on the Information Society

Mass Communication
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