Executive Summary

Global communications have expanded rapidly in recent years, but there still are at least two billion people that have major unmet needs in education, health care, and water supply, sanitation, and nutrition. Many of these people are located in remote rural areas, with limited or no access to formal educational systems, health care, potable water, electricity, or jobs related to the new information economy. These deficiencies are at the core of what has been described as the “digital divide.”

Information and communications technologies cannot replace the need for teachers and health care professionals, but they can expand and magnify conventional capabilities in powerful ways. As a result of the G-8 meetings held in Okinawa, Japan, in July 2000, important initiatives have been started, and this proposal falls clearly within the suggestions for action in the Okinawa Charter on Global Information Society.

Although many countries (including some developing countries) are now geared to establish broadband Internet, their initiatives are mainly domestic. There is no international organization that provides such a network across national boundaries, oceans, and continents for the use by non-profit organizations, e.g., tele-education, tele-healthcare, libraries, and local governments. This international gap is now a major cause of network congestion, and there is an urgent need to close it in a rapidly globalizing world society.

What is needed is both high quality audio/video delivery and high quality interactivity. Although these terms will be understood and applied differently in various parts of the world, the objective of increasing quality, interactivity, and system throughput can be seen as a global objective for improving tele-education and tele-health services. A true revolution in distance learning and telemedicine requires high-speed access to the World Wide Web, and the flexibility to offer a variety of media. These might include two-way audio, full-motion video-conferencing up to MPEG 2 quality, television-quality netcasting, and high-resolution image transfer for tele-medicine. Such capabilities require medium to broad bandwidth. Developing countries need broadband Internet via international satellite and fiber-optic cable.

The Global Service Trust Fund (GSTF)[i] will address the digital divide by making available broad bandwidth free or at below market prices for qualifying education and health projects in developing countries. Ideally, funding would be sufficient to eliminate or greatly reduce the telecommunications cost for qualified education and healthcare applications. This might be done by a voluntary international mechanism akin to the “E-Rate” now benefiting schools in the United States. In fact, most developed countries have used public policy tools of some kind to create a less-than-market rate for education, health, and/or other priority applications. Another option could be to begin with free bandwidth for qualifying education and health applications, but raise it toward (expected to be declining) market prices in gradual steps.

The fund would come from two donor sources: telecommunications companies with underutilized bandwidth (transponder space, fiber capacity) and organizations possessing financial resources (foundations; multinational corporations, international organizations, individual donors, etc.). Funds would be allocated as grants to qualifying projects and as in-kind assistance with connections; bandwidth would be allocated in-kind through an auction-like applications process. The GSTF could function as a bandwidth aggregator itself or could work with commercial and non-profit aggregators through business arrangements to be established.

By qualifying projects we mean there would be some policy conditionality (telecommunications, education, health). This conditionality will be established in a participatory fashion by working groups convened by ITU, UNESCO, and WHO. Major stakeholders – nations, international organizations, private companies, NGOs, etc. – would be invited to help determine the minimum acceptable policy framework intended to create an enabling environment for the development of both broad bandwidth infrastructure and applications of this infrastructure to meet development needs. The Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Telecommunications and Information (CITI) will conduct preparatory work, for which funding is being sought. A minimum infrastructure is required for running the fund. One possibility is that the World Bank would provide the secretariat, making use of the same legal infrastructure established for the Information and Development Program (infoDev). The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) is another possible host, and others could be envisioned e.g., an independent neutral entity under the auspices of UNESCO, WHO, ITU, World Bank, UNDP, etc.

Annexes detail a series of pilot projects that might apply for GSTF funding, and the budget for the current proposal.

Introduction

Global communications have expanded rapidly in recent years, and the spread of the World Wide Web has been nothing short of amazing. But there are still at least two billion people out of a global population of six billion that have major unmet needs in education, health care, and water supply, sanitation, and nutrition. Many of these people are located in remote rural areas, with limited or no access to formal educational systems, health care, potable water, electricity, or jobs related to the new information economy. Even in urban areas, many people lack access to the Internet and its great potential to improve education and health. These deficiencies are core to what has been described as the “digital divide.”

Conventional approaches to these issues such as trying to train new teachers and doctors cannot possibly meet the needs. In fact, there are more people to be educated in the next fifty years than have been educated up to this point in human history. Information and communications technologies cannot replace the need for teachers and health care professionals, but they can expand and magnify conventional capabilities in powerful ways that are only now beginning to be studied and understood.

As a result of the G-8 meetings held in Okinawa, Japan, in July 2000, important initiatives have been started to address these great needs. The Okinawa Charter on Global Information Society provides an important framework statement calling on G-8 governments to “foster an appropriate policy and regulatory environment to stimulate competition and innovation, ensure economic and financial stability, advance stakeholder collaboration to optimize global networks, fight abuses that undermine the integrity of the network, bridge the digital divide, invest in people, and promote global access and participation” and called on “all, within both the public and private sectors to bridge the international information and knowledge divide….” The current proposal falls clearly within this framework.

The satellite industry that has the technology that can most easily reach the isolated populations should seek to do its share to address this problem with innovative answers. INTELSAT has undertaken its Project Share and Project Access programs over the last 15 years. WorldSpace has set up a Foundation to support health and education activities. EUTELSAT, ASIASAT, INSAT, the Chinese National Television University have provided important new satellite-based capabilities.

Most recently several satellite companies have agreed, in principle to support the new Global Services Trust Fund (GSTF) initiative that has been proposed by the Clarke Institute for Telecommunications and Information (CITI) and the Global University System (GUS). This proposal seeks funding for CITI to move GSTF toward implementation over the coming year.

Objective

Education and healthcare are basic needs, fundamental for human development. The main goal of the proposed GSTF Coalition of companies, government agencies, foundations, and international agencies is to expand educational opportunities and improve health in developing countries. In particular, the goal of the GSTF Coalition is to:

• Make full use of electronic distance education and telemedicine in developing and transitional countries by working with local educational and health care organizations and supporting their development goals.
  
• Participate actively and fully in data-intensive and media-intensive exchanges with both developed countries and other developing countries to accomplish improved delivery and production capabilities. The prime objective is to encourage educational programming to be locally produced and to employ local languages wherever possible while upgrading information delivery systems.

To do this, steps must be taken to:

• Reduce substantially the cost of broadband connectivity to education and health service providers in poor countries.
  
• Foster telecommunications policy and regulatory frameworks conducive to the development of sustainable distance education and telemedicine.
  
• Establish high-quality education and health telecommunications applications in sufficient developing and transitional country sites to demonstrate technical feasibility, increase demand, and build support for more extensive use of such technologies.
  
• Participate interactively and fully in joint research, professional development, and knowledge-building activities with educational, health care, telecommunications and information delivery institutions and organizations.

Ideally all countries would have access to free or low-cost broadband connectivity and would have the technical capacity to make use of it for improving education and healthcare. This requires a number of favorable economic outcomes as well as changes in policy and regulatory environments supporting the effective use of these technologies.

The near-term GSTF objective is to make available sufficient broad bandwidth as well as user terminals at free or highly reduced cost to enable a significant number of developing countries to undertake major new initiatives in distance learning and telemedicine. The fund might also seek to aid in the support of tele-education and tele-health programming. But this activity would be encouraged on the basis of developing many sources of programming in many different languages rather than seeking a single source of supply.

Background and Rationale

The Internet, with its rapidly expanding and improving infrastructure, will be the main telecommunication media of tomorrow. It has been extended to most countries, albeit with slow-to-medium speed in most developing countries, even in large parts of the developed world. But the full potential for achieving revolutionary advances in education and healthcare in developing countries cannot be realized with the currently available information infrastructure and at currently prevailing market prices.

Improved distance education requires much better ways of presenting information and of enabling learners to interact with facilitators to enable the learners to process that information into personal knowledge.

At present most electronic distance learning takes place by one of two equally primitive programming and delivery modes. On the one hand, much instruction is primarily text and simple graphics delivered over the web and/or through email and its derivatives (electronic fora, bulletin boards, chatrooms). On the other, there is “room-based” or desktop-based videoconferencing, usually with relatively small groups involved and low production values so far as the video and audio are concerned. Both techniques allow significant interaction, but the quality of instruction suffers from the lack of high-quality audio and video.

High-quality instruction is possible by broadcast television, with multi-million dollar production budgets having been deployed to good effect in some countries – for example Annenberg/CBP in the US, BBC/Open University in the UK, The Roberto Marinho Foundation’s Telecurso 2000 and Canal Futura in Brazil, and SCS and MINCS-UH in Japan. There have also been reasonably high quality and effective programming produced in newly industrializing countries by the Ministry of Education and Central China Television for the Chinese National TV University, by the Indonesia tele-education training center for the PALAPA satellite system, as well as high quality audio tele-courses produced by the University of the West Indies and the University of the South Pacific.

Today narrow bandwidth systems and high telecommunications costs will not allow the use of streaming video and audio on a large scale in developing countries. Often telecommunications pipes get clogged even with heavy net use of more conventional kinds. Ironically, many audiences, even in developing countries, are “spoiled” by commercial television with high production values when it comes to attempts to promote tele-education course delivery. Thus audiences, even in developing countries, do not easily accept jerky movement, small windows, failing connections, and low production values. The quality of tele-lectures, video inserts and the like has to approximate that of high-quality commercial television. Nevertheless high quality online courses at lower bit rate transmissions are also increasingly in production and every more pervasively available.

As for telemedicine, there is a proven need for high-definition moving images, or at least extremely high-resolution still images. Even with low-cost or free broadband connectivity between nations, the cost and pricing structure of telecommunications in many developing countries keep the cost of access to the Internet at prohibitive levels, and inappropriate policy and regulatory frameworks do not encourage efficient use of those public resources devoted to education and healthcare.

Although many countries (including some developing countries) are now geared to establish broadband Internet, their initiatives are mainly domestic. There is no international organization that provides such a network across national boundaries, oceans, and continents for the use by non-profit organizations, e.g., tele-education, tele-healthcare, libraries, and local governments. This international gap is now a major cause of network congestion, and there is an urgent need to close it in a rapidly globalizing world society.

In sum, what is needed is both high quality audio/video delivery and high quality interactivity. Although these terms will be understood and applied differently in various parts of the world, the objective of increasing quality, interactivity, and system throughput can be seen as a global objective for improving tele-education and tele-health services. A true revolution in distance learning and telemedicine requires high-speed access to the World Wide Web, and the flexibility to offer a variety of media. These might include two-way audio, full-motion video-conferencing up to MPEG 2 quality, television-quality netcasting, and high-resolution image transfer for tele-medicine. Such capabilities require medium to broad bandwidth. Developing countries need broadband Internet via international satellite and fiber-optic cable.

The revolution in education and healthcare in developing countries also requires a more favorable policy environment – not just for telecommunications but also for education and healthcare. A key to bringing down prices to affordable levels is to establish national and international competition or at least flexibility in the provision of telecommunications, education, and healthcare services. Also rapid transfer of knowledge from developed to developing countries need to be actively encouraged along with support for higher quality local educational program development.

Finance and Organization

Expansion of high-speed broad bandwidth connections for education and health applications in developing countries would be financed by the GSTF. Funding should be sufficient to eliminate or greatly reduce the telecommunications cost for qualified education and healthcare applications in a significant number of countries and number of applications. This might be done by a voluntary international mechanism akin to the “E-Rate” now benefiting schools in the United States. In fact, most developed countries have used public policy tools of some kind to create a less-than-market rate for education, health, and/or other priority applications. Another option could be to begin with free bandwidth for qualifying education and health applications, but raise it toward (expected to be declining) market prices in gradual steps.

Under the current model of the GSTF two separate contribution “funds” or “sources” would be established – an in-kind bandwidth transmission source and a financial assistance source. The Coalition supporting the GSTF would include commercial and non-profit sources. These should include key international organizations such as the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the United Nations Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), and the World Health Organization (WHO). Multilateral development banks (The World Bank and the regional development banks for Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Europe and Central Asia). The Coalition would also include bilateral aid agencies, foundations, and companies contributing to the Fund as well as organizations contributing education and healthcare knowledge. The Fund could be administered in a variety of ways, but it should have a credible, well-organized, and financially scrupulous entity of significant international standing in charge in the disbursement of funds.

The proposed Fund would be financed from a variety of public and private sources, which could include:

• Overseas Development Assistance funds of countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
  
• Cash contributions from the profits of international financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the regional development banks.
  
• Cash contributions from foundations and companies.
  
• Contributions in kind from companies owning underused satellite transponders and/or fiber optic cable – for these companies, the marginal cost of making available underused existing bandwidth is near zero, but providing it may build future markets for sale at (declining) commercial prices.

The Fund’s bandwidth source might be allocated through a variety of means that might include an auction process to organizers of distance education and telemedicine projects in qualifying countries. The GSTF could function as a bandwidth aggregator itself or could work with commercial and non-profit aggregators through business arrangements to be established.

The cash source might be used for grants to such projects, with rules favoring poorer countries and end beneficiaries, assuring a certain geographical distribution of benefits between regions, encouraging national initiatives to increase internet access and encourage competitive provision of bandwidth, and so forth. Grants might also favor international knowledge sharing. All grants would be made through open competitive process. The cash source could also be used to purchase additional bandwidth from companies providing free bandwidth, giving an additional incentive for these countries to make in-kind contributions.

These are only some preliminary ideas. The details, including the establishment of a pilot version of the Fund to test operational principles, need to be worked out during the next stage in proposal development.

Criteria for Policy Conditionality

Some means of limiting and focusing the application of GSTF resources is needed, for three main reasons:

1. The essential justification for the GSTF is that important public goods objectives (development objectives) are going unmet because of lack of access to affordable broadband and related technology services. Support for the overall initiative requires that the resources be focused on entities meeting the public goods criteria.
   
2. Financial resources will not be adequate, at least initially, to meet all needs. Unless some means is found to ensure resources are used for high priority and high quality applications they may be viewed as undesirable subsidies for less cost-effective applications without the public good characteristics meeting local allocation criteria for scarce public financial resources.
   
3. Technology and bandwidth resources will not be made available by providers at the scale or the prices necessary to have a significant impact if there is not some assurance that:
   1. The resources will be put to good use on high priority public goods applications.
      
   2. The demonstration projects will be sufficiently well identified that they can be monitored and assessed.
      
   3. The GSTF approach is not so open-ended that it precludes the development of new commercial-rate markets for ICT technology and services.

At the same time, it is undesirable to burden the GSTF mechanism with complex conditionality criteria requiring substantial review and judgment by a board or governing body or with such detailed analysis and reporting processes that the mechanism becomes a policy-setting, standard-setting or technical assistance entity. To the maximum extent possible it is desirable to:

1. Set criteria that meet bright line eligibility standards.
   
2. Limit criteria to those essential to GSTF allocation.
   
3. Set standards can be determined by entities other than GSTF.

Essential Criteria

1. Which types and categories of education, health, research and museum or library entities should be eligible? Initially, it may be desirable to limit participation to degree-granting tertiary education, medical research facilities with international affiliation and museums or libraries accredited as national institutions.
   
2. What public participation or certification should be required? Initially, it may be desirable to limit participation to public entities. Some determination will have to be made for parastatal entities and for public-private partnerships.
   
3. How specific should the criteria be? For example, should eligibility be determined case by case or for whole systems such as a university system or linked medical facilities? Initially, it may be sufficient to identify a national entity or Ministry that could provide approval or certification and take fiduciary responsibility for the end-user obligations.
   
4. What geographic criteria are needed? Some means of targeting eligible countries will be needed. This should be a positive list of countries determined by the World Bank, UNDP or ITU as eligible for concessional assistance, e.g., low-income countries qualifying for International Development Association (IDA, concessional lending arm of the World Bank Group) assistance, plus individual countries and special cases to be added through application to GSTF.

1. Each eligible entity will have to exist as a legal entity or charter, with the authority to make commitments and with necessary fiduciary and governance responsibilities under local law.
   
2. Alternatively, it may be necessary to identify a local intermediary (Ministry, University, Foundation, organization or institute) with the necessary legal personality and ability to take responsibility for the end-user entity.

1. Non-commercial.
   
2. Access as open and non-restrictive as possible.
   
3. Mainly for pre-determined public goods uses.

The above criteria may be developed in the form of a set of guidelines for the initial set of applicants, perhaps as a written certification or agreement, with modification over time as a result of peer review by other GSTF participants.

1. The initial criteria should be limited in number, possibly the three suggested above criteria: categories of public goods; legal status; ethical and fair use certification.
   
2. Over time, the criteria may be refined and restated as needed, with substantial participation in this process by the participants in the initial set of GSTF applications.
   
3. Some criterion or commitment for self-assessment and reporting of results might be considered. This would help both to increase learning and demonstration effects and to refine the GSTF approach over time.
   
4. No criterion is suggested for efficacy of the end-use or for other criteria of success such as solvency or program growth of the end-user. Instead, it is expected that the arrangements for initial bandwidth will be time-limited leases or contracts and that any problems arising in the course of the initial commitment can be addressed at the time of renewal and extension.

Arrangements for Developing Criteria

A major effort will be needed to refine the above criteria and to develop feasible arrangements for screening the applicants. Confidence in the relevance of the criteria, the technical validity of the criteria and the arms-length neutrality in establishing eligibility is essential. Participation by the G-8 Digital Opportunity Task Force (dot force), UNESCO, WHO and ITU as well as representatives of the technology providers and relevant specialized NGOs will be needed.

1. As early as possible upon securing the necessary funding, a working group should be established of four to six members designated by the above organizations to meet with GSTF organizers in a workshop to draft initial criteria. This could be either in North America (NY or Washington) or in Europe (Paris, Geneva, other) and should be at least two full working days.
   
2. Following the completion of draft criteria, each participant should vet the materials as necessary within their respective organization and with key officials in the focus countries. The purpose of this exercise is to refine the criteria, not to revise the GSTF mechanism or proposal. This process should be relatively short, perhaps one month, maximum two months.
   
3. During this same period, GSTF organizers will need to begin preparation of necessary materials for dissemination and for application. It should be possible during this period to complete the graphics and the work plan for duplication and dissemination.
   
4. At an agreed date, say two months after the initial workshop, an additional workshop and decision meeting will be needed to reach agreement on the final set of criteria and the dissemination package for the initial set of GSTF applications. This will require an additional workday, perhaps two days, at a site to be determined as mutually convenient to the working group.

In addition to its sectoral expertise and convening mandates with respect to standard-setting for education, for scientific research and for museums and libraries, UNESCO also may wish to consider roles involving the UNESCO National Commissions in the processes of disseminating information and determining eligibility for GSTF at the country level. WHO and ITU may also have roles both in setting criteria and in coordinating GSTF activities at the country level.

1. UNESCO should be asked to convene a joint meeting of representatives of the specialized organizations immediately concerned with the GSTF as well as of UNDP and the regional entities concerned with coordination at the country and sub-regional levels.
   
2. The major product of this consultation should be agreement on the appropriate means of disseminating information and coordinating applications at the country level.

GSTF Launching Event with Global Leaders

The creation of the GSTF requires a focused, high-profile event to launch this effort in such a way that a number of world leaders and media can participate in the creation and implementation of the fund. A sustained effort is needed to build the fund and diversify the level and nature of participation. The formal launch of the GSTF in a very public way will help to accelerate this process. This needs to be when the planning and recruitment of support and the development of policy conditionality have reached a level sufficient to make early projects possible and sufficient resources available to make these early projects credible.

This event would be organized by an international invitations committee under the auspices of the Sir Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Telecommunications and Information (CITI) and its worldwide affiliates and partners (including GLOSAS, the Global University System, VITA, the University of Surrey) as well as others to be agreed such as WorldSpace, INTELSAT, Japan US Telecommunications Research Institute (JUSTRI), the Japan US Science Technology and Space Application Program (JUSTSAP).

Preparation of Background Document for GSTF Launching Event

Much more information needs to be assembled to describe the available technology and service capabilities of existing and planned systems. Also further efforts are needed to seek expressions of support or commitments from satellite service providers, ground terminal equipment providers, submarine fiber optic cable operators, and user computer and telecommunications equipment. There is also a need to complete an inventory of needs and organizations around the world that would seek to use the resources of a GSTF. This would include both a market assessment and an effort to obtain specific commitments from organizations to support the effort in terms of in-kind and financial support for tele-education, tele-health or related programs.

Preliminary Concept of Format for the GSTF Launching Event

The meeting would last no more than 90 minutes and include no more than 30 to
40 participants. The format would be highly scripted. There would be a multi-media presentation on the purpose, goals, and five-year objectives of the GSTF. Organizations that have made commitments to support the GSTF would be highlighted in this presentation. These would include satellite service and submarine cable providers that had committed to making one to five percent of their capacity available to support the GSTF, equipment suppliers that had made substantial commitments to supply free of charge or at highly discounted prices (earth stations antennas, transceivers, satellite radio receivers, computers, monitors, digital telephones, etc.), foundations and/or international organizations, and tele-education and tele-health experts of national and international aid organizations that had made substantial commitments to participate in and use the resources of the GSTF (including their own pledge of resources or in-kind participation).

There would then be presentations from the key organizations that have made the most important commitments. There would be vision speeches that address where we might go from here. These speeches might be made by such individuals as Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, Kofi Anan, Sir Arthur C. Clarke etc.

The meeting would be followed by a high profile press conference that would announce the formation and nature of the GSTF. Arthur C. Clarke might be invited to participate in the press conference via satellite relay to talk about his initial vision of the "electronic tutor" and how the GSTF might be able to accomplish some of the goals he had envisioned some 2 decades ago.

Pilot Projects

The organizers have already identified a number of potential pilot projects for the GSTF. These include several projects of the Global University System (Annex 1); the Millennium Satellite System for the Digital Divide (Annex 2); the Biosphere Project (Annex 3); Canal Futura Africano – A 24-Hour-a-Day Portuguese Language Educational Television Service for Africa (Annex 4); Conversion of Zimbabwe Open University to Decentralized Web-Based Learning (Annex 5) and Satellite Web-Based Delivery for the South Institute of Information Technology (Annex 6). These projects are already in a relatively advanced state of preparation and could be implemented rapidly as GSTF funding becomes available.

Deliverables

1. Final document on GSTF with conditionality statements that will be disseminated at the GSTF launching event with global leaders.
   
2. Successful program development for the GSTF launching event with global leaders.
   
3. Further development of pilot projects so that they will be ready for immediate funding following the GSTF launching event with global leaders.
   
4. Identification of additional projects that meet GSTF criteria.
   
5. Event with global leaders to launch the GSTF.

Duration of This Project

The project should be completed one year from the start.

Biodata on the GSTF Organizing Team

• Peter T. Knight, Ph.D. is Partner in Knight-Moore Telematics for Education and Development (www.knight-moore.com), which he founded in March 1997 together with Professor Michael G. Moore of Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Knight’s clients include The World Bank; Inter-American Development Bank; International Monetary Fund; Science Applications International Corporation; SRI International/National Science Foundation; US Department of State; United Nations Development Programme, Pakistan; and Secretariat of Education, Paraná State, Brazil. He was Chief of the Electronic Media Center at the World Bank from June 1994 through February 1997, and before that, Division Chief of the National Economic Management Division in the Bank's Economic Development Institute (EDI), now known as the World Bank Institute (WBI). Of his over 20 years in the World Bank, he worked eight exclusively on Brazil, most recently as Lead Economist for Brazil (1987-88). Before joining the World Bank in 1976 he held positions at Cornell University, the Ford Foundation and the Brookings Institution. Dr. Knight's received his Ph.D in economics from Stanford University, a B.A. in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford University, and an A.B. from Dartmouth College (major in government). He is sole, principal, or contributing author of 11 published World Bank studies; author of books on new forms of economic organization in Peru (1975) and Brazilian agricultural technology and trade (1971); and over 30 published articles, book chapters, and numerous unpublished reports and papers. He was executive producer of 12 videos/TV programs dealing with telematics, distance learning, and sustainable development and Internet development in Africa (see www.knight-moore.com for recent papers, projects). He speaks French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian as well as his native English.
  
  
• Francis Method is an educator with extensive international experience with social sector planning, assessment and service delivery in developing country contexts. Since 1998 he has been the Washington-based education advisor to UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). From1981 through1996, he was Senior Education Advisor at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). He also worked independently on higher education and technical training, with the Ford Foundation on education assistance strategy and language policy, and as a Peace Corps teacher and staff member in Nigeria. His interests include the processes of education policy development, education technology and media, early childhood development, lifelong learning, and new understandings of learning, learning organizations and strategies for functioning more effectively in open learning environments. He is an advisor to Techknowlogia (www.techknowlogia.org), the online magazine on education and technology, and is a member of several working groups on strategic planning for prevention of conflict. This includes helping communities to use education and communications media to reduce isolation and explore new scenarios.
  
  
• Joesph Pelton, Ph.D. is currently a Research Professor with the Institute for Applied Space Research at the George Washington University (www.seas.gwu.edu/~iasr) as well as Director of the Accelerated M.S. Program in Telecommunications and Computers. He also holds concurrent appointments as a Member of the College of Teachers at the International Space University of Strasbourg, France and as Professor of Telecommunications at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is also the founder and Acting Director of the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Telecommunications and Information (CITI [www.clarkeinstitute.com]) as well as Chairman of the Board of Triana Worldcast Corporation. Currently he heads several international research projects in space communications and frequency allocation at the Institute of Applied Space Research. During 1996/7, he is served as Vice President of Academic Programs and Dean of the experimental global virtual university known as the International Space University. This project, with backing from 400 organizations around the world and most of the world's space agencies, has a central campus in Strasbourg, France and 24 affiliate campuses worldwide. The ISU is also represented on the Space Agency Forum, a group representing NASA, ESA and 35 other space agencies from around the world, and in this role has been requested to develop a model space education program for global implementation. From 1989 to 1996, during the period of his directorship of the Interdisciplinary Telecommunications Program at the University of Colorado, this program grew from just over 100 graduate students all on campus to a program of nearly 500 graduate students, some 230 on campus, 140 in distance learning programs from the U.S. and 20 other countries and a special intensive Masters program for 100 students from AT&T and Lucent Technologies. Its research laboratories during the same period of time grew from an estimated value of $1 million to $5 million. Dr. Pelton holds degrees from the University of Tulsa (B.S. 1965), New York University, (M.A. 1967) and Georgetown University (Ph.D. 1971).
  
  
• Takeshi Utsumi Ph.D., P.E., is Chairman of GLObal Systems Analysis and Simulation Association in the USA (GLOSAS/USA) and Vice President for Technology and Coordination of Global University System (GUS) (see website at www.friends-partners.org/GLOSAS). He is the 1994 Laureate of Lord Perry Award for the Excellence in Distance Education. His public services have included political work for deregulation of global telecommunications and the use of e-mail through ARPANET, Telenet and Internet; helping extend American university courses to the Third World; the conduct of innovative distance teaching trials with "Global Lecture Hall" multipoint-to-multipoint multimedia interactive videoconferences using hybrid technologies; as well as lectures, consultation, and research in process control, management science, systems science and engineering at the University of Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania, M.I.T. and many universities, governmental agencies, and large firms in Japan and other countries. Among more than 150 related scientific papers and books are presentations to the Summer Computer Simulation Conferences (which he created and named) and the Society for Computer Simulation International. He is a member of various scientific and professional groups, including the Chemists Club (New York, NY); Columbia University Seminar on Computer, Man and Society (New York, NY); Fulbright Association (Washington, D.C.); International Center for Integrative Studies (ICIS) (New York, NY); and Society of Satellite Professionals International (Washington, D.C.). Dr. Utsumi received his Ph.D. Ch.E. from Polytechnic University in New York, M.S.Ch.E. from Montana State University, after study at the University of Nebraska on a Fulbright scholarship. His professional experiences in simulation and optimization of petrochemical and refinery processes were at Mitsubishi Research Institute, Tokyo; Stone & Webster Engineering Corp., Boston; Mobil Oil Corporation and Shell Chemical Company, New York; Asahi Chemical Industry, Inc., Tokyo.

Funding Requirements

To date organization work over a period of almost three years has been carried out on a voluntary basis by the organizing team, and travel has been undertaken either at the organizers’ personal expense or using other sources of funding not earmarked for the GSTF. To move the GSTF to the launch stage over the coming year a major effort is envisaged, as spelled out above.

While some additional in-kind funding can be expected from participants coming from international organizations and private sector companies, we now seek formal grant finance totaling US$235,000. This includes $40,000 for two workshops to set policy conditionality; $30,000 for local meetings and consultations with partner organizations; $50,000 for the GSTF launching event with global leaders; and a total of $100,000 for administrative expenses; organizer honoraria, and organizer travel.

Summary and Next Steps

Establishing the GSTF requires a critical mass of global support. The ability to mobilize financial and in-kind resources for the GSTF depends on the credibility of the membership of its supporting Coalition. That credibility would be furthered by early support from such key international institutions as ITU, UNESCO, WHO, the World Bank Group (including the International Finance Corporation), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and the regional development banks – the African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and Inter-American Development Bank. Early support from prestigious private foundations and corporations committed to addressing the digital divide issue would be a great asset. No legitimate agency of standing would be excluded from participating in the Coalition.

Over the past three years a good deal of thought has been given to the idea of creating the GSTF. The authors – who represent the Clarke Institute for Telecommunications and Information, the Global University System, and GLOSAS – and a growing number of other organizations that support the GSTF Coalition recommend that the following actions be undertaken:

1. Continue to consult with interested organizations and officials around the world with regard to the creation of the GSTF and various pilot projects.
   
2. Enlist the support of the leadership of the key national and international institutions, foundations, NGOs, and governments around the world. This will seek to facilitate and mobilize the support for the GSTF concept among aid agencies, foundations, international organizations, multinational corporations, NGOs, and others.
   
3. Create working groups on telecommunications policy conditionality, education policy conditionality, healthcare policy conditionality, and operational aspects of the Fund and the Coalition. These working groups would include representatives of interested international organizations, bilateral aid agencies, companies, foundations, and NGOs, as well as of relevant information and telecommunications industry organizations, e.g., the Global Information Infrastructure Commission.
   
4. Hold workshops of policy conditionality working groups to establish policy conditionality.
   
5. Strive to expand the quality of the GSTF concept and the breadth of the GSTF Coalition. In this respect it is hoped that providers of satellite or fiber optic system capacity would be willing to join in further working group discussions to shape the framework for the “pilot version” of the GSTF for tele-education and tele-health.
   
6. Hold GSTF Launching Event with Global Leaders.

PKnight/FMethod/JPelton/TUtsumi: 25/02/01

[i] The first draft of this proposal was developed by Dr. Takeshi Utsumi, Chairman of the GLOSAS/USA with Dr. Salah Mandil of World Health Organization (WHO) and presented at the International Workshop and Conference on Emerging Global Electronic Distance Learning (EGEDL'99) held August 9th - 13th, 1999 at the University of Tampere, Finland. EGEDL was sponsored by Alprint, the British Council, Finnair, Finnish Broadcasting Company, Foundation for The Support of The United Nations (FSUN), Japanese Medical Society of America, Ministry of Education Finland, Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), PictureTel, Sonera, Soros Foundation/Open Society Institute, United States Information Agency (USIA), United States National Science Foundation, and the Information and Development Program (infoDev) administered by the World Bank. The conference conclusions included a recommendation to work for the establishment of the Fund and the Coalition.

Subsequently a working group was formed at a meeting held at the Pan American Health Organization in December 1999 to further develop the proposal and include policy conditionality. That working group presented its proposal at the inaugural meeting of the Arthur C. Clark Institute for Telecommunications and Information (CITI), held at INTELSAT headquarters in Washington, DC on 5 February 2000. A later version was presented at a TechNet seminar held at the World Bank on 19 October 2000.

The present proposal was prepared by Peter Knight (Knight-Moore Telematics/CDI), Frank Method (UNESCO), Joe Pelton (Institute for Applied Space Research, George Washington University and CITI), and Takeshi Utsumi (GLOSAS). Helpful comments on earlier versions of the proposal were received from Carlos Braga, Michael Moore, Bruce Ross-Larson, and Lane Smith.