6:57 AM May 7, 1997

CSTD TO DISCUSS ROLE OF ICTS FOR SOUTH

Geneva, May 7 (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- The role of information and communication technologies for development, and policies that countries should adopt in this area, are among the subjects to be discussed at the Third Session of the Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD) here 12-16 May.

Also to be addressed by the Commission is the issue of Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (STIP) country-reviews.

An issue that may or may not be the subject of open debates, is the future of the CSTD. It is now a subject of discussions in the context of the ongoing restructuring exercise at the UN in New York, and will be a decision for governments - where developing countries will be weighing in the balance, the usefulness of a body dealing generically with science and technology issues, and the problems of one that seems to be accountable to no one.

In theory, the CSTD reports to the ECOSOC, and thus to the General Assembly. But in practice, the ECOSOC does no more than take note of such reports, and there is no overall policy debate and conclusions.

This of course is not the fault of the CSTD, but the way the ECOSOC role has developed and has been functioning.

The CSTD is an intergovernmental body, a functional commission of the UN Economic and Social Council, with member countries elected by the ECOSOC, and with governments nominating experts to the Commission meetings.

Perhaps in its favour, is that to the extent the CSTD has in fact experts from the hard sciences, it has been able to bring an element of scepticism to some of the economic and social theories spewing forth under the neo-liberal agenda that everything can be left to the market.

This arrangement about the CSTD emerged as part of the restructuring exercise within the UN in 1992/1993.

The 1979 UN Vienna Conference on Science and Technology for Development laid emphasis on new institutional arrangements within the UN system on science and technology and this resulted in the establishment of a high level intergovernmental committee - the Intergovernmental Committee on Science and Technology for Development - to replace the earlier ECOSOC body of 1972, 'the Committee on Science and Technology for Development'.

The new committee, open to all UN members was to report to the UN General Assembly, and was mandated to perform a number of functions under the Vienna Programme of Action. An earlier body, Advisory Committee on Application of Science and Technology to Development (ACAST), set up as a result of the 1963 Geneva Conference on Application of Science and Technology, and reporting to the UN Secretary-General, had its terms of reference modified and to report to the Intergovernmental body.

As a result of the 1992 reforms for the restructuring and revitalization of the UN in the economic, social and related fields, the intergovernmental committee and the advisory committees were transformed into a functional commission of the ECOSOC, the current CSTD, but with no clear functions assigned by the Assembly.

The CSTD thus became an amalgam of the old intergovernmental committee and the ACAST. Under the secretariat reorganization, the UNCTAD secretariat was made responsible for implementation of the relevant portions of activities of the former Centre for Science and Technology for Development (the secretariat that backed up the old intergovernmental committee).

The fact that the science and technology programmes survived and did not get the chop was due to the stand of the developing countries.

Subsequently, while the range of activities and focus of the CSTD has been criticised by the developed countries, the developing countries are not sure whether the purpose they had in mind is being served. There are also complaints about the lack of transparency as a result of the new work style of the CSTD.

Under this new style, the UNCTAD secretariat has no role or initiative, and the five-member bureau of the CSTD functions effectively as its own secretariat, assisted by outside consultants it engages, and paid out of extra-budgetary resources, mainly contributions from the Dutch and the Canadian IDRC.

The entire program and activities of the CSTD has left the impression of its being driven by donor-contributions, with no clear budgetary and other controls by the UN secretariat or over its programmes by any intergovernmental authority.

And any reorganization may lose the extra-budgetary funding.

But extra-budgetary funding is not "new and additional resources", merely funds coming out of the overall aid budgets and assigned to particular projects or programmes. Anything garnered by the CSTD is at the cost of something else.

The CSTD has a regular budget of $365,000 for the period 1 Aug 1995 to 31 Dec 1997 -- which goes to meet the travel cost of participants at the CSTD sessions (once in two years) and for the meetings of panels on different subjects set up by the CSTD.

Among the uses of the extra-budgetary funding of $1,129,298 has been the holding of bureau meetings, five held in the period (two in Netherlands paid by the Dutch, one in Islamabad, one in Bucharest and one in Bombay) -- with travel costs coming from the Dutch funds.

This style of functioning has resulted for e.g. in a panel meeting, one on a commission vision for the future (panellists are from the members) being convened 30 April to 2 May, at a seaside resort in Jamaica, Caribbean. But since the same members have to travel to Geneva, for the CSTD meeting just a week later, a meeting in Geneva just prior to the CSTD would have saved some travel costs.

But the Caribbean, at the end of severe winters in Europe and North America, is perhaps more conducive to serious thinking on the future than Geneva and its environs.

The Dutch funds are also used for STIPs, and the information technology activities including meetings in Glasgow and Sussex and hiring consultants to prepare a synthesis volume.

The current chair of the CSTD is Dutch, Prof. Waardenburg. The members of the bureau are from Jamaica, Togo, Pakistan, and the UK.

The functioning of the CSTD, including its socalled new work style where the bureau has taken over the normal functions of a secretariat for such bodies, and admittedly a costlier way of doing things, and how it is to fit into the UN's restructuring/reform exercise is one that has become a subject of discussions among developing country delegations here and in New York.

The chair of the commission, and the bureau, would prefer maintaining the present status quo of the CSTD as an ECOSOC functional commission, with perhaps a smaller membership of 24, and maintain its present working style. A second option, described as the "second best", but "which could still be acceptable to the Bureau, and the chair" is to make it a technical committee of the ECOSOC.

In either event, the CSTD chair and bureau, want to shift the "secretariat" and the CSTD back to New York, where it can function at the centre (of UN activities), rather than at Geneva and UNCTAD.

Making the CSTD part of the UNCTAD bodies, and making it responsible to the TDB, is not something favoured by the CSTD. But doing so, would need changes to the UNCTAD bodies.

[At UNCTAD, in the post-Midrand mandate, technology is part of the work done in the investment division and the CSTD rightly notes that science and technology as generic issues have got downgraded. There is an evident desire on the part of some key UNCTAD staff not to touch the 'hot potato' of technology and intellectual property issues (since it would arouse the wrath of the US.

[If the CSTD is to be made part of UNCTAD's work and intergovernmental bodies, either a new commission has to be created, or its role subsumed in that of the Commission on investment and technology, with the secretariat bias so far seen as one favouring the TNCs.]

Under either of the options favoured by them, the chair and bureau of CSTD want to continue with their current work style, including ad hoc working groups. This, a note by the bureau for the ECOSOC restructuring exercise, concedes involves "more costs" than if the secretariat itself undertakes, but argues that the outcome ensures a "ownership" (by the bureau and the CSTD members).

This 'ownership' concept -- like the ones that the IMF and the World Bank now try to use for SAPs (which though are still drawn up by their staff) -- for the outcome of the bureau's handiwork in the preparation of reports and documents, it suggests ensures its adoption and implementation. It is not very clear what this last means -- since governments have to implement, and not the expert members.

But in any normal intergovernmental process, the secretariat's handiwork is subject to scrutiny by the intergovernmental body, and this provides its own checks and balances. But the bureau's working style and concept of ownership means the entire process -- choice of issues and agendas, preparation of documentation and recommendations and their adoption -- has no checks and balances and is in the hands of the bureau.

This may produce some benefits, but also some negative outcomes.

The plea of the chair, to the ECOSOC, for continuance of the present status, and the critical view of its being brought under UNCTAD, ifficult to square with the recommendation of the working group on information technology.

This group's report asks that the UNCTAD secretariat should study and report to the next session of the commission on the implications of new forms of revenue generation, focusing on those involving ICTs (information-communication-technologies) to support social and economic development priorities. The UNCTAD secretariat, it says, should report on implications for developing countries and transition economies of the ongoing discussions and studies on a "bit tax" (a global tax on movement of information, bits, via cyberspace.

Why a body that sees great merit in the bureau and consultants producing their own reports should ask the UNCTAD secretariat to take on this job is not clear.

But if the secretariat had had a hand in the preparation of this report, the "bits tax" issue would have been avoided like the plague -- given the sharp reactions from Washington and Capital Hill to the earlier efforts at the UN in New York during Mr. Boutros-Ghali's tenure as Secretary-General and the present incumbent's efforts to propitiate the biggest contributor.