Overall Objective

The overall objective of the project is to contribute to the social and economic development of the Caribbean region by strengthening the capacity of local stakeholders for regional collaborative action on critical ICT4D issues/initiatives in the Caribbean. Towards this end, the project will be aimed at setting the basis and developing a work plan for consolidating the Caribbean ICT Virtual Community (CIVIC, http://dgroups.idrc.ca/groups/icacaribbean ) as a regional mechanism to promote knowledge exchange, capacity building and collaboration among Caribbean ICT stakeholders.

Specific objectives

(a) To facilitative the participative development of a 2 year Strategic Work Plan aimed at consolidating CIVIC as a regional catalyst for ICT4D networking in the region. The proposed strategic work plan will consist of a coherent set of collaborative actions in different thematic areas (i.e. ICT for education, health, civil society, democratic participation and governance, economic competitiveness, applied research, among others.) and transversal components (i.e. peer-to-peer/multistakeholder networking, collaborative project design, effective use of information sharing tools, policy design and advocacy).

(b) To strengthen the capacity of ICT actors in the Caribbean to lead and promote online collaboration, dialogue and consensus building using enhanced ICT tools (such as wikis, blogs, RSS/Atom feeds, workflow engines), through the provision of online moderation training and the formation of online thematic working groups led by local practitioners on key ICT issues. These working groups will be aimed at developing policies, position papers, best practices documents for knowledge sharing or for publication in relevant forums on a case by case basis. This training will be permanently available and managed by the CARISNET consortium. The online thematic working groups will be initiated by CIVIC and/or local practitioners, and the topics will depend on the members interests. There are some suggestions for certain topics such as telecoms reform, Open Source software topics, Internet Governance, e-Governance, etc. This list is not exhaustive.

(c) To design an improved online platform for CIVIC 2.0, offering flexibility, interoperability, and new participatory and security features, among others, that contribute to a more interactive online presence.

(d) To design and launch a monitoring and evaluation methodology for CIVIC (based on outcome mapping) with the aim of measuring and documenting the impact that the network has in key aspects such as policy influence, capacity building, regional networking and articulation of ICT4D efforts, among others.

(e) To coordinate and implement a face-to-face regional meeting of CIVIC members (Caribbean ICT stakeholders current members of the online community), aimed at gathering feedback and validating the 2 year strategic work plan mentioned above, strengthen network activities, and promote the further engagement of French and Spanish speaking members.