In June 2020, the Secretary-General of the United Nations published a "Roadmap for Digtal Cooperation." In this report, he expanded on recommendations made a year before, calling on all actors, including the Member States, the United Nations system, the private sector, and others, to promote digital public goods. He says to realize the benefits of increased internet connectivity, open source projects in the form of digital public goods must be at the center. While the term "digital public good" appears as early as April 2017, this report offers the first broadly accepted definition of digital public goods...The Digital Public Goods Alliance (DGPA) translated that definition into a nine-indicator open standard that we hope will serve as a comprehensive, shared definition to promote the discovery, development, use of, and investment in digital public goods for a more equitable world.
United Nations (UN)
See the following -
New UN-Backed Open-Source Tool Will Support Community Resilience-Building
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Programme (FAO) is teaming up with a coalition of partner agencies to develop a new data crunching tool to help national governments, development and relief organizations in their efforts to prevent and respond to crises such as animal diseases, plant pests and even conflict...
- Login to post comments
Nigeria Government Confirms Ebola Case In Megacity Of Lagos
A Liberian man who died in Nigeria's commercial capital Lagos on Friday tested positive for the deadly Ebola virus, Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said. Patrick Sawyer, a consultant for the Liberian finance ministry in his 40s, collapsed on Sunday after flying into Lagos, a city of 21 million people, and was taken from the airport and put in isolation in a local hospital...
- Login to post comments
Nobel Laureates’ Publications Made Open Access In SPIE Digital Library
Nobel Prizes announced this week in Physics and Chemistry demonstrate photonics as a “powerful, enabling technology that drives innovation and discovery and stimulates new fields,” noted leaders of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics. The society is making research papers by the six recipients published in the SPIE Digital Library freely accessible through the end of 2014...
- Login to post comments
Open Source for Humanitarian Action
In the days following the Jan. 10, 2010, earthquake in Haiti, chaos prevailed. Transportation was limited, if not impossible. Lines of communication were broken. A few radio stations continued to broadcast, but the disaster’s scale was overwhelming. Only one form of mass communication remained relatively intact: cellular phones. Even before the disaster, there had been only 108,000 landbased telephone lines in the country, compared with 3.5 million mobile phones. After the earthquake, mobile communications, particularly text messages, were one of the few means by which people could report their needs and location...
- Login to post comments
Open Source Powers The United Nations' Sustainability Goals
Although the United Nations (UN) has previously spoken well of open source development, several recent events show the UN taking definitive actions to introduce the entire world to the open source way. In July, the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) adopted a draft resolution introduced by the representative of Pakistan titled Open source technologies for sustainable development. ECOSOC noted the availability of open source technologies that can contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The council invited the Secretary-General to “develop specific proposals on ways to better leverage open source technologies for sustainable development based on inputs from interested Member States and other stakeholders.”
- Login to post comments
Personal Connected Health Alliance To Bring mHealth Worldwide
The Personal Connected Health Alliance (PCHA), a collaboration between HIMSS, Continua Health Alliance, and the mHealth Summit, officially launched this week with a mission to bring wearable health tracking devices, mHealth apps, mobile sensors, and other personal technologies to as wide an audience of patient-consumers as possible. The Alliance hopes to promote the adoption, standardization, and necessary regulation of mHealth technologies, while empowering individuals to take charge of their own health.
- Login to post comments
Refusing To Share: How The West Created BRICS New Development Bank
...The recent creation of the New Development Bank by the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), which will compete with the IMF and World Bank, is yet another example of how international control is skittering away from those nations that are failing to adapt to a changing world...
- Login to post comments
Rethink the School of Tomorrow: Africa as the Starting Hypothesis
With 200 million inhabitants between the ages of 15 and 24, Africa is today the youngest continent on the planet. These young Africans will be the future leaders and the driving force of the continent’s economic, social and cultural development. A well-functioning inclusive educational system is thus essential to tackle tomorrow’s challenges. For several years, governments and large institutions on the planet, have attempted to implement an educational system relevant to the continent’s challenges. Considerable efforts have been made to catch up on an accumulated backlog in this crucial sector, allowing to tremendously enhance access to primary education...
- Login to post comments
Revealed: The World's Most & Least Advanced Countries
UNTIL recently, the popular way to compare the progress of one country relative to another was to use the size of their economies. America had the biggest GDP (and almost the biggest per capita GDP), so it stood to reason it was the most advanced country in the world.
- Login to post comments
Senate Panel Approves Internet Freedom Resolution
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday unanimously approved a resolution calling on the United States to prevent the United Nations from having a greater role in governing the Internet. Read More »
- Login to post comments
Setting A Standard For Digital Public Goods
- Login to post comments
Sharing knowledge: VIPS on exclusive UN list for open source digital goods - Nibio
A new international initiative the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA), endorsed by the UN, aims to accelerate attainment of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in low- and middle-income countries by investing and sharing openly licensed technologies. This includes open source software, data, AI models, standards and content that adhere to privacy and other applicable best practices. VIPS, an open online free of charge forecast and information service for decision support in integrated management of pests, diseases and weeds - created by the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research, NIBIO, is one of 22 technologies chosen from almost 500 nominees for the registry. The MET Norway Weather API also made the list from Norway.
- Login to post comments
Slow Ebola Response Blamed On False Assumptions About Its Course
Health experts and humanitarian organizations waging war against the deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa hope plans announced Tuesday by the Obama Administration to send additional aid to affected regions will encourage more philanthropic support and health worker recruitment. Both money and volunteers have come in at a slower pace in this crisis than in past disasters...
- Login to post comments
South Asia floods: Appeals for Help as Monsoon Rains Cause Havoc in India, Nepal, Bangladesh
Oxfam said its Bangladesh staff reported two-thirds of the country was under water and in some areas the flooding was the worst since 1988, creating an urgent demand for humanitarian supplies. Widescale flooding in an arc stretching across the Himalayan foothills caused landslides and washed away tens of thousands of homes and vast swathes of farmland. The UN said about 40 million had been affected...
- Login to post comments
Special Report - The World Health Organization's Critical Challenge: Healing Itself
For years the WHO has talked about streamlining its complex structure, governance and financing to make it more efficient. Critics say the organisation needs deep reforms to allow it to show clear leadership in promoting health and to respond decisively to disease emergencies that may span many countries. But progress has been painfully slow...
- Login to post comments