• to strengthen the focus on the pro-poor ICT dimensions at the policy level
• to enhance the capacity of policy makers to engage with and implement a combination of interrelated policies that can greatly contribute to realizing these ends - ICT for development (e.g. e-strategies, licensing), poverty reduction strategies and/or other relevant strategies (e.g. rural development, decentralization and strengthening of local government), and financing of ICT (e.g. universal access funds, local resource mobilization strategies, e-strategy/poverty reduction strategy)
• to create the space for and strengthen the linkages with more downstream pro-poor access and community-based initiatives.
  

The approach taken by this initiative will be an integrated one with a view to contributing to building a community of practice across a range of stakeholders and development partners by:

1. enabling knowledge sharing, evidence-based and participatory assessments of what works and identification of innovative policy approaches (e.g. open access) through open knowledge processes
2. catalyzing policy innovation by focusing on working with a selected group of interested countries via consortium partners and strengthening capacities and strategies to engage in policy-level processes, ‘translating’ and making more accessible technical assessments and strategies to facilitate participation and implementation;
3. focusing specifically on strengthening capacities and the focus on community-driven infrastructure and publicly facilitated open-access infrastructure options in the context of evidence-based research and policy options to complement the more pro-poor market driven approaches.

1. Universal Access and Effective Use of ICTs

Universal access and effective use of ICTs is a goal at national level, and globally in the context of the WSIS. Access is growing especially to mobile telephony, but many poor areas remain beyond reach for the foreseeable future. The ITU currently estimates that 800,000 villages, 30% of all villages worldwide, still lack even a basic telephony service.  And access to telephony, in itself, is not enough. Many development needs require ICTs beyond the capabilities of current forms of mobile telephony, and indeed telephony could itself be provided more cost-effectively in some instances through taking advantage of convergence, open access approaches and community-driven infrastructure models. Many international organisations, governments and other institutions now see a key role for ICTs in poverty alleviation and development, and affordable access is a key component of scaling-up a focus on ICT for development.

Dynamic though the private sector is, the scale of the challenge is immense. Under-served and poor communities could benefit from the implementation of novel approaches, tailored to their circumstances, taking advantage of innovations in technology and regulation and, crucially, leveraging local resources and supporting local institution and capacity building.  Emerging research also points to models for building infrastructure, creating and delivering services, and empowering local communities that complement private sector efforts. They can be supported through the use of universal access funds, smart subsidies, licensing schemes and targeted regulatory/policy measures.

2.  Current Innovative Approaches

Some innovation is underway: Creative licensing policies, minimum cost subsidies, the formulation of new types of business models focusing on serving the poor profitably, “coalitions of the concerned” and multi-stakeholder partnerships such as Mission 2007 are all active.  Yet many promising avenues that go beyond a focus on individual local initiatives and that fall outside the pro-poor market-driven approach have yet to attain wide recognition. These include:

• The potential of community-driven infrastructure , often combining local enterprise with development driven goals, has been widely proven in sectors such as water provision, irrigation, electricity and banking  - but also in rural ICT networks in the USA and recently in places as diverse as Poland and Argentina . By minimising costs and maximising community inputs, new enterprise and development models can be economically sustainable and responsive to real local needs.  Further, such approaches are often concerned with catalyzing and using ICT to meet communication and development needs more generally.
  
  
• Participatory approaches to service design and delivery are widely applied to development practices generally, but only recently, with some success, to ICT as a critical component of development actions. Experience from India to Chile indicates that a determining role for communities in open content development and delivery is critical to success of local ICTD-based projects and services.
  
  
• The new wave of wireless and related technologies, for which there is already widespread interest, offers a significant boost to the viability and applicability of both the above, but especially to community-driven infrastructure enterprises and local government development efforts which have the potential to be more sustainable and effective, when enabled by interactive cost-effective ICTs. These technologies, increasingly using open-source software, alter the economics of network development, greatly reducing the importance of economies of scale. They are low-cost, scalable, easy to maintain, and readily configured to serve the needs a community defines for itself.
  
  
• To facilitate and complement this focus, the role of the public sector is being revisited, for instance in facilitating ‘open access’ network development in under-served parts of cities, municipalities and poorly connected regions.   Suitably implemented in national and regional backbone infrastructure, ‘open access’ means that locally-owned networks could readily plug into the backbone at transparent and reasonable costs – in effect, encouraging bottom-up rural network growth. The ‘last mile’ becomes the ‘first mile’, as local enterprises, driven by local needs, build low-cost tailored networks to plug into an open-access backbone.
  

• Experience and research in these areas are dispersed and focused on specific modalities and approaches, although interactions and sharing are improving thanks to various initiatives underway.
• Financing and support instruments both nationally and internationally, are often not geared towards the emergence and/or development of locally-owned/locally-driven ICT enterprises or bandwidth models;
• In many developing countries, the model of policy and regulatory reform deployed as well as capacity and experience limitations can leave little space for options that address local needs;
• The emphasis on access is often divorced from a focus on effective use and deployment that could more fully leverage the development potential of ICT.

The premise of this initiative is that interested actors and experts, each with their specific competencies and roles but working in collaboration, can potentially overcome these blockages and also expand options for poor and under-served communities to secure access and use ICTs in support of development.

Several organisations are already active in promoting pro-poor ICTs, ranging across pilot local-service development, knowledge exchange and networks, partnership development, policy support and some financing.  The question is whether and how this collaborative effort can strengthen these, build on the WSIS-generated momentum and achieve a critical mass for a self sustaining dynamic for ICTs in poor communities. We believe this initiative can help by:

• Strengthening research, learning and capacity building in specific areas with a view to identifying and devising innovations in policy, financing and implementation of ICT for the poor, and for supporting key roles for the community itself in enterprise and service development;
• Adopting a concerted, targeted and collaborative approach to addressing bottlenecks, for advocacy and for the application of resources needed to build a critical mass in selected areas: simultaneously testing and proving the concepts on the ground, building the capacity for mainstreaming and replication, and devising and supporting national and international instruments to finance and support these developments.

4. Based on the above considerations, this initiative will:

• Focus on ICT as though the poor and development mattered: To critically assess and exploit innovations in ICT policy, regulation, technology and institution-building as ‘enablers’ of development in poor communities, cultivating strategies that include community-driven networks, participatory service development, low-cost wireless technologies, open access backbones, and other promising solutions.
• Focus on ICT-enabled development: To identify priorities, build capacities and contribute to facilitating the integration of ICT into poverty reduction and related development strategies and selected local government/community level initiatives.

A key challenge is to bridge the gap between global level research foci, national level policies and concrete developments on the ground.