ICT Knowledge Exchanges under South-South Exchange Program
In 2011, the World Bank’s ICT Unit organized the India-Moldova-Tajikistan ICT Knowledge Exchange funded through the South-South Exchange Program. The exchange was aimed at sharing expertise in the area of eGovernance and IT industry, establishing knowledge partnerships and peer-to-peer networks. As part of this initiative, the ICT Unit organized a number of knowledge sharing and learning events as described below:
January 2011: Launch of the knowledge exchange between the e-Gov practitioners from India and Moldova
A 3-hour video conference was organized to exchange information on e-government and e-transformation agendas in both countries. Senior representatives from Department of Information Technology, Government of India, National e-Governance Division and the experts from industry talked about the key features of India’s National e-Governance Plan and the lessons from its deployment, as well as about mobile governance, HR strategies for e-governance implementations, concept of shared platforms for e-government and other relevant issues.
May 2011: Visit of Indian experts to Moldova
The Founding Member of the Society for Promotion of e-Governance Vikas Kanungo and the Director of the National e-Governance Division at the Government of India Krishnan visited Moldova to participate in Moldova ICT Forum and to deliver a face-to-face workshop on Indian e-Government Experience. This visit was also used to better understand the priorities and learning objectives for the Study Tour to India planned for August 2011.
June 2011: Visit of the Indian and World Bank experts to Tajikistan
In June 2011, a World Bank ICT mission visited Dushanbe to launch a South-South exchange program between Tajikistan–India–Moldova and deliver an e-government knowledge sharing workshop. Vikas Kanungo delivered a presentation on the approach to e-government development in India; Oleg Petrov delivered a presentation on “Gov 2.0: A new stage of e-government development and the role of the World Bank”. The team also organized a videoconference between Washington DC, Moldova, Singapore and Tajikistan where Sebastian Foo, until recently with IDA International, delivered a presentation on the key aspects of Singapore’s transformation success story and Dona Scola, Deputy Minister of ICT, shared insights from Moldova. The video conference was attended by a number of Tajik representatives from government, private sector, and NGOs.
August 2011: Study Tour to India
The World Bank ICT Unit organized a study tour to Acra, Delhi, and Bangalore for 13 senior government officials from Moldova and four from Tajikistan to learn about India’s experience in harnessing ICT to deliver public services to citizens and businesses. A Study Tour Briefing Book was prepared for the delegates before the visit.
Meetings with the Central Government in Delhi: In Delhi, the delegates met separately with representatives from the Department of IT (Mr. Shankar Aggarwal, Additional Secretary IT and many other DIT colleagues), including with representatives from the National e-Governance Division.
The delegates learned about the National e-Governance Plan and specific examples of the e-services developed under this plan including through a PPP approach. Additionally, the Moldovan delegation had a separate meeting with Mr. Sachin Pilot, the Minister of State for ICT. Discussions on the agreements on cooperation with Indian counterparts were initiated.
Meetings at the World Bank Office: While in Delhi, the team also organized special sessions for the Moldovan and Tajik delegates at the World Bank so that the delegates could learn about the WB’s portfolio in India, especially in the area of ICT and e-governance and share their feedback about the visit.
Participation in the eWorld Forum 2011: The delegates participated in the eWorld Forum and had two speaking engagements. Mr. Bodiu, Secretary General of the Government, was one of the speakers at the opening plenary session, while Mrs. Dona Scola, Deputy ICT Minister, chaired a session “ICT Leaders Enclave” where Oleg Petrov presented on the latest e-government trends.
Special session on Moldova during eWorld conference: The team raised awareness of Moldova in the wider Indian ICT community through a special Moldova session where the eGC team presented the eTransformation Roadmap, key components of the GeT project, with a focus on plans for Government Cloud infrastructure and e-services delivery and progress on the open data work. The session was attended by representatives from Indian companies and government agencies who demonstrated considerable interest by asking numerous questions and staying for one-on-one conversations.
The Study Tour presented a unique training opportunity for both Moldovan and Tajik delegations. The delegates were able to establish numerous contacts with their counterparts in India who are also working on cloud, e-procurement and e-services delivery.
December 2011: Global Dialogue on Opening Up Development between Moldova, Macedonia, Kenya and 7 other countries
How to open up data, what to start with, how to stimulate job creation and economic activity using public data and how to cope with dataphobia - were some the key questions addressed at the Global Dialogue on “Opening Up Development: How Can Countries Start and Run Open Data Ecosystems?” hosted by the World Bank on December 14, 2011 as part of the South South Knowledge Exchnage initiative.
Openedby Sanjay Pradhan, World Bank Institute Vice President, the event featured personal reflections from leaders in Kenya, Moldova and FYR Macedonia. Following these reflections, a vivid discussion took place on the importance of developing Open Government Data Ecosystems for the success of Open Government initiatives with participants in Washington DC (about 60 participants) and worldwide via video conference (about 100 in 10 other cities), live webcast (220 online viewers) and Twitter (over 600 tweets). See details here.
How to Participate
If you are a government official from one of the World Bank client countries and are interested in participating in the South-South exchange program on ICT related subjects, please send your request to Oleg Petrov, ICT Knowledge Coordinator at opetrov@worldbank.org
What is the South-South Exchange Program?
The South-South Experience Exchange Trust Fund provides funding for developing countries to share their knowledge and expertise by drawing directly upon the accumulated expertise of our partner countries.
The main objectives of the Multi-Donor Trust Fund (MDTF) for the South-South Experience Exchange between practitioners are to:
1. Meet the immediate practical operational knowledge gaps by catalyzing the sharing of country experiences between practitioners. 2. Document and disseminate lessons learned through a knowledge exchange library. 3. Mainstream South-South knowledge exchanges into Bank financed operations
Moldova - India ICT Forum on Linkedin Moldova - India ICT collaboration Forum ” aims to promote and support specific set of coordinated initiatives between top e-Governance professionals and ITES organizations/experts in the India and Moldova. Initiated under South - South Exchange initiative of The World Bank, the objective of the forum is to support the enhancement of ITES and good e-Governance practices in both the countries through close cooperation between them, thereby contributing to the socio-economic and cultural development of both countries as well as to closer ties between them.
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