Mission Statement

1. In March 2001, the Economic and Social Council requested the Secretary-General to establish an Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Task Force. This initiative is intended to lend a truly global dimension to the multitude of efforts to bridge the global digital divide, foster digital opportunity and thus firmly put ICT at the service of development for all. The Task Force is supported by the Heads of State and Government of all UN Member States who endorsed the ECOSOC Ministerial Declaration at the Millennium Summit in September 2000.
2. The objective of the Task Force is to “provide overall leadership to the United Nations role in helping to formulate strategies for the development of information and communication technologies and putting those technologies at the service of development and, on the basis of consultations with all stakeholders and Member States, forging a strategic partnership between the United Nations system, private industry and financing trusts and foundations, donors, programme countries and other relevant stakeholders in accordance with relevant United Nations resolutions.
3. The Ministerial Declaration adopted by ECOSOC in July 2000 formulated a broad array of policies and actions, at national and international levels and on the part of the United Nations system, that are needed to harness the development potential of ICT. The present Plan of Action of the ICT Task Force identifies, within the broad framework set by ECOSOC, a set of prioritized deliverables to be achieved, through existing and emerging mechanisms.
4. The Task Force will not develop operational or implementing capacity but rather seeks to build upon existing, emerging and new initiatives and activities and focuses on adding value to them by helping to coalesce and scale up these efforts and by facilitating and supporting coordination and collaboration among all stakeholders. The ICT Task Force can add value in a number of strategically important ICT related areas. Specifically, this will include achieving greater coherence among existing and emerging implementation mechanisms: global advocacy services; catalytic interventions on ICT related policies; stakeholder consultations; innovative partnerships among various stakeholders; comprehensive awareness campaigns; development of participatory and inclusive governance arrangements; the full integration of ICT in development portfolios; monitoring and reassessment of what is involved in bridging the digital divide; collecting and sharing best practices and lessons learned, including on regulatory environment and facilitating better formulation of programmes and projects; helping remove bottlenecks; promoting transitional mechanisms; and streamlining the mobilization of resource flows, thus bringing additional vigor and coherence to this global endeavor. A High level Panel of Advisors composed of a roster of ICT leaders and experts to serve as resource persons, will be maintained, and will be called upon by the Task Force to assist with specific goals and programmes, in particular in monitoring technology developments, identifying the resultant needs and suggesting policy options to deal with these new issues.
5. Within this general framework, the ICT Task Force will seek to advance the broad, internationally agreed development goals and targets of the United Nations, in particular those set up by the Millennium Declaration. Eradication of poverty and the special needs of the least developed and low-income countries and Africa will constitute the principal focus and benchmark for all activities of the Task Force. To this end, the Task Force will seek to promote the creation “of an environment – at the national and global levels alike – which is conducive to development and to elimination of poverty”1 through strategic policy advice and awareness raising. The aim of the Task Force is to avoid duplicating other efforts and serve as a catalyst. To this end, the present Plan of Action draws upon recent initiatives such as the Dot Force process and others, for some of its goals which will be pursued in collaboration with these initiatives.
6. The potential of ICT to contribute to human development, including elimination of gender disparities, is currently compromised by unevenness in the pace and spread of these technologies and in the differential effect that their rapid diffusion produces across social structures. The Task Force will promote urgent action at both the national and international levels to ensure that ICT produce their optimal benefits on the basis of fairness.
7. The Task Force will work to harmonize economic and profit motives of the private sector with the human development oriented goals, in order to ensure sustainable results and the harmonious development of a global network society. In this respect, the Task Force can make a tangible difference in such priority areas as the regulatory environment, low-cost access, human resources development and capacity building and entrepreneurship. It will provide a platform to analyze how programmes for promoting education, combating diseases, promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women, and those targeting youth, the disabled and people living in poverty in general can be leveraged and enhanced with ICT. The relevant initiatives of the Secretary General (including, HIV/AIDS, UNITeS, Health InterNetwork, education of the girl-child and youth employment,) should receive an early and tangible impetus from the work of the Task Force. In this respect the Task Force will draw upon the work of the existing UN development and specialized agencies. It should also contribute to the preparations for the World Summit on Information Society to be held in 2003 and 2005.
8. To achieve these goals, the Task Force will give high priority to the needs of developing countries and draw upon their experience, and collaborate with governments, multilateral institutions, the private sector, non-profit organizations, the academic community, and civil society/NGO community to help accomplish some short-term results during the first year of its operation within the framework of medium-term and long-term objectives. The Task Force will continually monitor and reassess the issues related to ICT for development and will make recommendations on its mandate before the end of its initial three-year term. The aim is to develop a well-structured approach with multi stakeholder participation, encompassing advocacy and awareness creation through helping to organize national seminars for policy-makers, facilitating the development and promotion of national e-strategies, human and institutional capacity-building, enhancement of resource mobilization, investment promotion and socially responsible market development with seed funding.

Drawing upon and working with and through existing institutions and initiatives, the Task Force will help develop broad-based awareness-raising programmes:

- Objective: to promote awareness and commitment of the political leadership for ICT-for-development by organizing national seminars/high-level dialogues for Heads of State and Government, Cabinet-level government officials and other policy-makers on the potential of ICT for eradicating poverty and for promoting other development goals, including education, health, gender equality, e-government, and e-commerce, and the need to mobilize resources for these purposes. These programmes would seek to identify national demands and needs and use the framework provided by national Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers of the IMF/the World Bank, where applicable.
- Structure: Seminar module will include content on available experience and lessons learned, on policies and actions that worked, and on policies to attract investments in infrastructure and capacity building.
- Process and Action: The ICT Task Force will work with developing countries and transition economy countries to help organize Leader Awareness Programmes to developing countries, with the expectation that approximately fifteen to twenty will take part in the programme every year. UN agencies, non-profit organizations and the private sector will be invited to work with the ICT Task Force and its High-Level Panel of Advisors, to help organize and participate in the programmes. Regional conferences, such as the African Union meetings, and other information and telecommunication-related events will be used as spring boards to raise awareness about the programmes. The Task Force will draw upon expertise and mechanisms from within the UN system and from private and non-profit sectors, leaders of regional frameworks, the transnational communications industry, and others to carryout the programmes, with support from the ICT Task Force secretariat.
- This programme module may include content on setting ICT policies to attract investments in infrastructure and training, and using ICT for education, health and development of local content and flag the gender dimension of these issues. This module will also encourage leaders to take an active role in e-governance issues at the national and international level, will raise awareness about the role of ICT in preventing and combating HIV-AIDS, and other infectious diseases. It will incorporate relevant content on the empowerment of women and the training of youth and children as effective ways of combating poverty, hunger and disease.

- Objective: The ICT Task Force will have a web presence for visibility and to carry out its outreach and policy objectives. Its own recommendations, policies and programs will be part of the database; all other information will be provided via hyperlinks to other development and ICT organizations. The Task Force will avoid replicating other organizations’ content or applications except as necessary to make its website viable and effective. The website will:

• Provide a global inventory of activities and relevant ICT for development programmes, projects and best practices, provide links to other websites, including websites of UN agencies, and serve as a platform for developing a forum for sharing lessons learned and best practices, and provide local content responsive to local needs.
• Post ICT Task Force policy recommendations;
• Provide information on the data and processes related to the ICT Task Force activities
  • Best case inventory of country-level ICT strategy development and critique
  • Compendium of initiatives with a view to a resource bank of experts
  • Processes to obtain ICT Task Force and existing initiative support for mobilizing resources for strategy and related programmes.
• Provide a search engine tailored to fetch information and links related to the ICT Task Force objectives.
• Provide hyperlinks to UN and other development agencies of national or regional level government websites. One-stop shop for this type of information;
• Provide hyperlinks to all interested NGOs and private industry programmes involved in ICT for development.
• Provide hyperlinks to research and academic sites involved in ICT for development policies.
• Provide services for exchange of experience on innovative technical solutions at global, regional and sub-regional levels.

- Structure: Content development will be coordinated by the Task Force Secretariat. Exact translations of the text in many languages, based on the contributions of regional nodes and companies in each region and with ‘donation of translation services’ where possible. Website hosted by the ICT Task Force secretariat. Links to other websites and their content do not imply that the content is endorsed by the ICT Task Force.
- Process and Action: Begin with passive approach (pull only) but progress toward more interactive capability through traffic cop and “chat” approach. With an open source approach in mind, the following will be undertaken:

• Equipment donation of 1-4 servers, along with PCs to support
• Software donation (website server, tools, etc)
• Website maintenance (24/7) and content development/maintenance
• Communications services
• Translation of content into many languages through donation of translation services
• Attention will be given as well to dissemination of information about the activities of the ICT Task Force through non-internet based, traditional methods of communication.

a) Objective: foster the active participation of stakeholders at the global, regional, subregional and national levels, in particular in developing countries and transition economic countries in ICT activities, particularly those focused on 'bridging the digital divide' and serve as a bridge between ICT and development communities.
- Structure: Drawing upon existing networks, develop networks of public, private and non-profit sector stakeholders interested in participation in and contributing to ICT for development activities.
- Process and Action: As a first step, the ICT Task Force will develop a network of stakeholders and ask regional and subregional groups to appoint ICT panels made up of recognized ICT leaders from that region. These regional and subregional panels would be invited to hold strategy-setting meetings at established venues such as, for example, the ECOWAS meeting of West African States, and would be encouraged to support regional and subregional ICT projects and undertake projects and programmes for the ICT Task Force. Each regional and subregional group will be invited to post successes and lessons learned on the ICT Task Force website, so that different regions can learn from each other's successes and failures.

b) Objective: to enhance the mobilization of resources and garner stakeholder support for the activities of the Task Force
- Structure: stakeholder campaigns aimed at the private sector, foundations, Member States, academic institutions, NGO's, and media related organizations in each region
- Process and Actions: "road shows"
- Participants: ICT Task Force members to constitute teams and develop themes for the campaigns.

c) Objective: To promote coherence and complementarities leading to greater synergy among existing initiatives and programmes and to give fresh impetus where possible, by bringing in new players, particularly from developing countries, to enhance overall development impact of ICT projects and programmes. To this end, the Task Force will develop links with existing initiatives such as those of UNDP, ITU, WSIS, UNESCO, ILO, UNCTAD, UNICEF, UNU, ESCWA, ECA, UNFIP, e-ASEAN, EU, OECD, GIIC, GBDe, WEF, ICC, Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization, Africa Connection, African Information Society Initiative, ITCA, WCN, World Bank’s InfoDev, the Development Gateway, and GKP, G15’s ICT Task Force, G8 DOT Force, and others.
- Structure: Build web-based links, develop modalities for sponsorship and other cooperative arrangements.
- Process: The Task Force secretariat will undertake a systematic effort to build web-based and broad linkages with other initiatives and programmes and develop modalities for cooperation among them and report to the ICT Task Force biannually on progress achieved.

- Objective: To mobilize global public support for the goals of the ICT Task Force by communicating and developing its ‘brand’ for bridging the ‘digital divide and turning it into a digital opportunity’.
- Structure: Optimum use of stakeholder capacities and resources for developing a media and communications strategy as part of the campaigns to advance the goals of the Task Force.
- Process: The Task Force Secretariat will identify the opportunities and innovative modalities for ‘brand’ development for the Task Force within a comprehensive media strategy. The goal is to cater to regional and local news organizations to highlight regional efforts, and to occasionally promote major stories to the global press. The UN Secretary General has appointed several Messengers of Peace, who have successfully assisted in promoting the values of the United Nations. The ICT Task Force may build on these successes by designating well-known ICT leaders and entrepreneurs, entertainers, musicians and athletes as ICT Ambassadors to help raise global awareness and enhance mobilization of resources for ICT- for-development by participating in the ICT Task Force awareness and resource mobilization campaigns.

- Objective: Explore and develop innovative funding arrangements and mechanisms that bring together existing and new resources, both financial and other, of public, private and non-profit stakeholders for ICT-for-development programmes aimed at poverty eradication.
- Process and Action: The Task Force will work through its members, networks and regional nodes as well as civil society, to develop partnerships for mobilizing and combining resources around specific objectives and programmes, and for providing information about the relevant opportunities. Specifically, it will support and draw upon new and existing financial instruments such as the UNDP ICT Thematic Trust Fund, the World Bank’s InfoDev, the ITU’s Development Bureau, regional development Banks and others for the implementation and scaling up of programmes. Priority attention will be given to the Secretary-General’s and the Task Force’s initiatives. It may also launch public campaigns for this purpose. The resource mobilization campaign will be managed by interested members of the ICT Task Force and its secretariat, who will travel to each region to rally financial and other support for the ICT Task Force from Member States, the private sector, foundations, NGO's, international institutions, and the academic community. The secretariat will report on the status of the mobilization campaigns at the ICT Task Force biannual meetings.

- Objective: As a global policy advocacy body reflecting the views and interests of both national governments and other stakeholders from the various sectors of society, the ICT Task Force will be poised to play a strategic role in bringing together and scaling up efforts by existing institutions aimed at fostering and promoting the design of national and regional ICT strategies including the regulatory framework while, at the same time, raising the awareness among key decision makers and donors on their strategic importance for addressing critical development and poverty eradication goals in innovative and effective ways. The Task Force will be mindful of the specific needs and circumstances of different nations and help create an integrated framework setting out the respective roles of national efforts, multilateral organizations, bilateral donors and private sector in fulfilling those needs. In going so, the Task Force will point out factors that restrict women’s equal participation in the ICT sector, and identify policy interventions for overcoming constraints and for the promotion of gender equality.
- Structure: Specifically, the ICT Task Force will help develop partnerships and modalities, including among and through existing and emerging mechanisms to:

• provide assistance in the formulation of national ICT strategies in coordination with other development partners and specialized agencies;
• support the work of planned or ongoing initiatives for national ICT strategies from such entities as the DOT Force, UN agencies and others;
• offer assistance on the issues of global ICT policies and governance as they relate to national ICT strategies;
• promote the sharing of experiences through the creation of various networks at the global regional and sub-regional levels for best practices and lessons learned
• promote national ICT strategies as a priority among the LDCs and other low-income countries to help them harness the ICT benefits in the short run and attract the resources and expertise required for quick implementation
• help ensure that innovative upstream ICT and e-strategy policies are matched with bottom-up initiative for the promotion of equitable ICT access and participation for all

- The ICT Task Force will help develop a network of stakeholders dedicated to helping nations design ICT strategies that will attract financial and infrastructure investment.
- Process and Action: At the request of developing countries and transition economies seeking assistance for funding or technical support, the Task Force will work with existing institutions and through its networks and regional nodes to help form multi-stakeholder teams consisting of national and international representatives from Government, civil society, academic institutions, the private sector multilateral development institutions, interested donors and private and non-profit entities. The Task Force will ensure a neutral and transparent mechanism for the processing of assistance requests with the involvement of all relevant stakeholders.

- Objective: Promote an open dialogue and effectiveparticipation of developing countries in international policy fora that address ICT policies and standards.
- Structure: While the Task Force is not designed to define or to agree upon ICT policy and regulatory issues, it should contribute to creatinga participatory enabling environment so that developing country stakeholders can participate effectivelyin the emerging global policy debate. . Questions that may be addressed include: the barriers to developing country participation in international communications and information policy fora; how to improve participatory mechanisms within new and established decision-making bodies; how to achieve an increased awareness and understanding among developing countries of Internet policy issues by mobilizing enhanced assistance and support, and enable full representation at often-complex policy formulation meetings; and how to promote consideration of issues relating to the introduction of and access to wireless and IP-based technologies in developing countries.
- Process and Action: In order to be effective and successful, this participation must be based upon open consultation, true partnership and common understanding. Relevant international policy and technical fora (within and outside the UN context), its member organizations and countries, governments, private industries, NPOs, citizens and other stakeholders from the developing and developed world need to work together within the context of the Task Force to frame an agenda of support for developing countries in participating in new international policy and technical issues raised by ICT and the Internet and policies to stimulate, advance and support ICT adoption and growth, and to jointly address those priorities with identified resources and determined efforts.
- An agenda to increase developing country participation and its effectiveness in addressing ICT policy issues could include a variety of complementary activities and initiatives, in particular:

• Helping develop improved and inclusive participatory mechanisms within and by global policy and technical forums and organizations addressing Internet and ICT issues. It also includes promoting attendance of and access by developing country stakeholders at venues and meetings where Internet policies are crafted.
• Promoting awareness of Internet policy issues that could potentially have an impact on developing countriescapacity building programmes that enhance the necessary knowledge-base for meaningful participation in Internet Policy formulation including training, outreach and exchange;
• Encouraging development of technical assistance projects around specific Internet policy issues, upon request;
• Helping to create communications and monitoring networks that identify and translate developing country specific and other concerns into meaningful representation and participation;
• Work with developing countries, ICANN, IETF, ITU, WIPO, WTO, the World Bank and GBDE and other relevant organizations, to ensure that viewpoints from all regions are taken into consideration in the decision making process.
• Will help contribute, through appropriate and relevant fora, to policy debate on new international policy and technical issues raised by ICT and the Internet.

- Objective:Promote access, including through community access points, to ICT, particularly wireless communications and the Internet, to the majority of the world’s population.
- Structure: Advocacy with regard to the policies, regulatory framework environment, transfer of technologies and the public and/or private sector roles with particular attention to best practice models, especially those that not only provide access, but create job opportunities in the process, i.e. with the highest level of development impact.
- Process and Action: support establishment of community access points, promote both access and training; exchange best practices through networking; encourage providing access for under-served areas in developing countries; support transfer of new and appropriate technologies and development and adaptation of lower cost technologies suitable for conditions prevailing in developing countries, including open source software and hardware and the use of alternative energy sources.

- Objective: Help make Internet and other ICT relevant to the lives of the majority of the planet’s population, including the poor and the illiterate, and empower them.
- Structure: Working with software/applications developers, the open source community, manufacturers and vendors to provide content and applications relevant for and usable in developing countries.
- Process and Action: Working with local actors of content creation and provision such as universities, research institutions, cultural institutions, entrepreneurs and software developers, help develop applications relevant to developing countries and transition economies, localize software applications; promote local health, education, food and agriculture, industrial, business and employment, disaster prevention and mitigation and infrastructure application development in developing countries; support national and international programmes for digitizing and putting public content online, focusing on multilingual applications and local heritage; expanding support for participation by local stakeholders in setting technical standards for incorporating local languages in ICT applications; encourage networking of bodies that acquire, adapt and distribute content on a non-commercial basis, while respecting copyrights; take account of the prevailing technical/communications infrastructure and educational capacity, better use of radio and TV, in combination with Internet.

- Objective: Help lay the foundation for future universal participation in the global information society; short-term: enable more people to benefit from ICT, via training, education, and institutional capacity building. The Task Force will promote the use of ICT for capacity-building and human resource development and for the effective implementation of PRSPs where these exist. A key priority will be to harness ICT for education for all as well as on higher education and training, with particular attention to overcoming existing disparities in educational and training opportunities and achievements between girls/women and boys/men.
- Structure: work closely with relevant UN agencies and other partners, together with educators and researchers in both developed and developing countries, develop consortia, alliances and twinning arrangements among universities, and research institutions, and encourage and support the training of trainers and other capacity building projects.
- Process and Action: The ICT Task Force will support leading training institutions and universities in each region that have strong ICT degree programmes and technician training programmes to produce more ICT technicians and engineers, and to supply volunteers to UNITeS for the expanded training programs. As part of this effort, the universities and training institutions will be encouraged to launch credit-bearing service learning courses where students would be able to earn credit while offering ICT training as part of the UNITeS volunteer corps. The ICT Task Force would encourage the universities and UNITeS to join in a collaborative partnership to scale up volunteer training programmes. Volunteers who come from the South will be encouraged to offer training to other countries in the South. These South-to-South service projects would be showcased on the ICT Task Force Web site as models for other universities in each region to follow. Equal participation of women in all aspects of this effort will be actively encouraged.
Partners would be brought in by the UNITeS and university teams as appropriate. For example, BBC has offered to create an educational series adapted to each region, for broadcast on its airwaves, and for distribution by UNITeS and university partners. This potential three-way partnership could help channel regional content to rural areas through portable resources such as laptops. A partnership with a provider of solar equipment could ensure the ICT infrastructure is powered even in areas without electricity.
- Promote and support ICT dissemination among the children of the developing world, with special attention paid to girls; enhance the training of teachers on ICT and the “digital literacy” of pupils; expand opportunities for training/education for people living in under-served areas through distance learning; give special attention to disenfranchised, disabled and illiterate people through innovative partnerships to disseminate knowledge using ICT; interconnect education and research networks of developing and industrialized countries; support university-based “networked centers of excellence” focusing on research and learning at the intersection between ICT and development, twinning of these centers in developing and developed countries.

- Objective: Support development and application of ICT’s to strengthen health care systems and infrastructures to combat diseases such as HIV/AIDS, TB, Hepatitis, cholera, diarrhea, malaria, etc. in support of the Secretary-General’s global initiative to combat HIV/AIDS and the establishment of the Health InterNetwork. The Task Force will, where applicable, use the national Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers and the United Nations Development Assistance Framework, for pursuing this objective.
- In support of the Secretary General’s global initiative to combat HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases, provide leadership and support for the development and deployment of ICT as a key component of national plans, multi-sectoral responses and multi-stakeholder approaches that address prevention in all of its dimensions, in combination with measures to enhance treatment, care and address the impact of the pandemic and other communicable diseases and, in this regard, explicitly address gender dimensions.
- Structure: working with and through WHO, UNAIDS and UNDP as well as community, state, national, and international partners, the ICT Task Force will help to raise awareness, leverage support and foster public-private partnerships to address needs identified at the national and regional levels to scale up or introduce new initiatives and mechanisms using ICT in management and prevention efforts, research and development, treatment, logistics in distribution, monitoring, training and care.
- Process and Action: Support for an assessment of current deployment of ICT to enhance response to HIV/AIDS and others, with a view to creating awareness and fostering an understanding of how ICT can help address prevention, treatment, and social support for communities decimated by HIV/AIDS as well policy formulation, coordination and implementation by governments.
- Where applicable and necessary, provide support for the creation of Internet-based database resources regarding each of the following aspects of HIV/ AIDS prevention: Fostering the development and deployment of ICT to enhance treatment and the effectiveness of the healthcare systems, including but not restricted to online solutions to provide training, assist in monitoring and logistics critical to making drug treatments more affordable and accessible in affected developing countries. Strategies also include supporting WHO, UNAIDS efforts in mobilizing partner support for prevention and control of other infectious diseases, particularly via the use of the Health InterNetwork, by promoting the use of ICT platforms to meet infrastructure and information needs and for telemedicine and online links in the hospitals and experts in developed countries.
- Support for strengthening South-South and North-South networking and sharing of good practices.
- Assist in providing support for scaling-up and replicating good practices as well as fostering innovation and awareness of potential through a series of pilot demonstration initiatives/strategies/projects.

The ICT Task Force will promote working closely with relevant UN agencies and other partners, the use of ICT as an instrument and an opportunity to foster entrepreneurship and business development in particular, help remove obstacles to the participation of developing countries in international e-commerce, and the development of small and medium size enterprises. The website of the ICT Task Force could be used to exchange experience on ICT for entrepreneurship and job creation. The following are two examples of such activities:

a) Female entrepreneurship
- Objective: Generating sustainable livelihood opportunities for women, especially in rural areas of developing countries, through promoting technologically dynamic business models, products and services that rely on female entrepreneurship
- Structure: Assessment of existing programmes and projects, developing matrix of what works, scaling up and replication of best practices.
- Process and Action: As just one example, female entrepreneurship could be spawned in the dynamic demand spaces. Quite a few of these demand spaces are active users of information and communications technologies. Similarly, female entrepreneurship could be rendered into the basis for enterprise development involving IT-enabled services (for instance, Internet kiosks that sell a combination of mobile and fixed-line telephony, photocopying, Internet access, and other value-added services).
Strategy will involve working closely with UN agencies as well as other partners, to develop and enhance projects and programmes for leveraging ICT for enterprise development.

b) Youth employment
- Objective: to promote generating livelihood and employment opportunities for young women and men by spearheading the mainstreaming of ICT into meeting head-on the challenge of creating marketable skills among young men and women in developing countries
- Structure: Assessment of existing programmes and projects and development, scaling up and replication of best practices.
- Process and Action: In his report to the Millennium Assembly, the Secretary-General proposed to convene “a high-level policy network on youth employment – drawing on the most creative leaders in private industry, civil society and economic policy to explore imaginative approaches to this difficult challenge.” The UN Secretary General also proposed that the “policy network propose a set of recommendations that can convey to world leaders within a year”. In July 2002, ILO convened a high-level panel for this purpose. Imaginative integration of ICT in the corpus of formal and informal education, training and skill-building is highly imperative today so that the skills and capabilities of young people can be transformed to the point of making a difference to their lives and their communities.
Strategy will involve working closely with ILO to develop and enhance programmes and projects for the implementation of recommendations of the policy network on youth employment.

The ICT Task Force will serve as an advisor on ICT to the UN Secretary-General. As part of this effort, the Task Force will work with the Administrative Committee on Coordination (Chief Executives Board for Coordination) of the UN system and help integrate its strategic commitments related to ICT with those of the ICT Task Force, to maximize synergies. The aim will be to further integrate ICTs in development assistance portfolios and programmes, and enhance the coordination of multilateral initiatives. The Task Force will also serve as an important mechanism to provide inputs to and help prepare for the World Summit for Information Society to be held in 2003 and 2005 with the ITU taking a leading role in its preparations.
The ICT Task Force will encourage and support the use of new technologies to strengthen the UN, and to help make the UN more efficient and improve its interaction with the rest of the world. As a first deliverable, the ICT Task Force will offer its Global Leaders Policy Programme to Permanent Representatives of the Member States to the United Nations, and will offer a one-day training programme for Member State delegations to ECOSOC.

It is proposed that the ICT Task Force meet, at the principals’ level, no more than twice a year for one day, either at New York, or at the invitation of Member States in various regions or in conjunction with major international events. Members of the ICT Task Force will designate focal points for working level meetings. The ICT Task Force may establish working groups to undertake specific tasks or studies.

The work of the ICT Task Force will need to be supported by core funding estimated at $5,000,000 for the first three years after the launch of the Task Force. This will cover funding for such activities as network building at the global and regional levels, travel related expenses for the meetings of the ICT Task Force and its regional nodes, as well as for the core secretariat. A detailed project proposal for raising the necessary funding for launching the Task Force in September 2001 has been developed and submitted separately to the ICT Task Force members and donors.
The ICT Task Force will work with its partners and stakeholder networks such as the UNDP ICT Thematic Trust Fund, the World Bank’s InfoDev, the ITU Development Bureau, regional development Banks, international donors and non-profit organizations to help enhance the mobilization of resources to a maximum of $ 50,000,000(both as finance and in kind contributions) around specific programmes and initiatives aimed at advancing the goals and strategies of this Plan of Action during the first three years after the launch of the Task Force. The Task Force itself will not be directly involved in implementing these programmes, but will work through existing institutions and mechanisms as well as help facilitate the creation of new partnerships.

In the preparatory phase, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs has provided an Interim Secretariat to manage the preparation and launching of the ICT Task Force.
Following the approval of the budgetary estimates and Secretariat arrangements for the ICT Task Force, at its inaugural meeting convened by the UN Secretary-General on 19-20 November, a small core Secretariat will be set up in the beginning of 2002, as an autonomous project linked with the Division for ECOSOC Support and Coordination in the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. The project will function in accordance with the financial and administrative rules and regulations of the United Nations for technical cooperation projects. The Secretariat will provide substantive and administrative support to the Task Force and will coordinate the implementation of its decisions in the follow-up of the Plan of Action.