Future development strategy / Proposals / Fund-raising

International Organization Information / Research: 2000 (Part #8)

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Strategic issues: The long-term strategic issues were discussed in a report to an earlier Council meeting (Reflections on a Possible UIA Information Strategy). What follows is an updated checklist:

A. Positive features

• 1. Healthy financial position, with prudent reserves
• 2. Maintaining sales level (surprisingly good, according to Saur) in a declining reference market
• 3. Good relations with principal distributor (Saur)
• 4. Solid core of dedicated personnel of proven capacity in producing complex information products of a professional quality on a continuing basis under improbable conditions
• 5. Solid well-financed, contracted projects (with others in the pipeline)
• 6. Strategically well-positioned for the emerging knowledge society
• 7. Solid computer base: paid-up hardware base (workstations, etc); appropriate software; good in-house expertise
• 8. Respected image amongst information users, web document readers, and participants at conferences where UIA personnel make presentations (often by invitation)
• 9. Respected relationship to professionals in the highly competitive meeting industry (Associate Members)
• 10. Substantial (11,000 pages), appreciated, well-visited (5,000 hits/day) website -- strategically designed in relation to dynamic page serving in test mode
• 11. Ready to roll on innovative interactive, participative relationship with user-suppliers of information over the web
• 12. Good track record of de-centralized computer work (significantly positioned for any transition to editorial teleworking)
• 13. Credible, cutting edge opportunities (consonant with EU Fifth Framework for Research and Technology Development now shifting to "research which focuses on the social and economic problems which face society today", and the like)
• 14. Operational implementation of innovative visual interfaces to respond the crises of meaning, overview and information overload characteristic of the information society and the UIA's information in particular
• 15. Core preoccupation with highlighting and enabling relationships (hyperlinks) between initiatives crossing category boundaries, and the manner in which such patterns can be more meaningfully comprehended, that is remarkably consistent with a 21st century interpretation of what might otherwise be understood as a completely outdated name: Prepared for Union of International Associations.
• 16. Demonstrated continuing ability to sustain the above, despite the challenges identified below

Challenging features The UIA is in good shape. There are indeed challenging features to its current strategic opportunities. These have been articulated in Annex 4. However a distinction should be made between:

• challenges to which a healthy organization should be expected to respond in a turbulent environment;
• challenges which are cause for reflection on the appropriateness of the current response; and
• challenges which call for a serious revision in the current approach.

Making these distinctions is itself a challenge to which reference is made in the American adage: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Evaluating future options: Within the above context, with its various positive and negative dimensions, the question is how to evaluate future proposals and projects. The response is strongly dependent on an understanding, or reframing, of the complex of roles through which the UIA is defined (as articulated in Annex 5 and its accompanying table).

A tentative framework, entitled Degrees of fulfilment of UIA operational and strategic objectives was prepared for an earlier discussion (see the two tables of Annex 6). In that Annex, Table 1 identifies a set of 11 criteria and 4 levels of achievement. In Table 2 these criteria are applied experimentally to a range of products and services.

Partly in the light of this document (Annex 6), a separate document on UIA Initiatives and services (Annex 7) has been prepared. This endeavours to highlight the essential strategic dilemmas to be faced in responding to new opportunities.

Implicit in all these documents is the challenge to the UIA of determining: 10 (a) what constitutes effective action in terms of its mandate; (b) the nature of its future unique significant contribution, in the light of its mandate; (c) when to avoid competing with other bodies that are motivated to provide services the UIA is able to supply; (d) what financial concessions it wishes to make, at what cost, to those it deems in need of information services or other assistance; (e) what posture to adopt with respect to sponsorship arrangements which run the risk of detracting from the UIA's image; (f) what effort to put into interacting with essentially indifferent IGOs operating short-term strategies insensitive to duplication of effort and wastage of scarce resources; (g) how to make best use of personnel, or to pay for additional personnel, in the light of a new pattern of requests.

UIA Title: As has been previously argued, it would seem that a prime clue to an appropriate response for the 21st century lies in a reinterpretation of the title of the "Union of International Associations". Implict in this title is a focus that the UIA has explored throughout its history.

• Union: In logic this term denotes a combination, or joining, of elements, or sets, in the most abstract and general sense. In its work, the UIA has traditionally emphasized the social and organizational interpretation of such combinations -- namely how organizations can coordinate and integrate their activities.
  
  However the work of the UIA has extensively covered unions of subjects, problems, disciplines, strategies, values and understandings of human development, in various explorations of the possibility of more fundamental integrative dimensions. This work therefore implies a deep and long-standing commitment to a much subtler and more abstract approach to union as a form of conceptual "keystone".
  
  The conceptual challenge of the nature of any such union, and of how it is to be understood and given form, is therefore a continuing one, rather than already determined and thus readily definable. The social or institutional emphasis is merely one specific and important aspect of this. It should emerge from new understandings of how seemingly incompatible perspectives and functions can be provided with a more dynamic integrative framework. This challenge is central to the problem of governance at this time – namely coherence in policy-making
  
  
• International: The UIA has long been sensitive to the many variant interpretations of "international", including possible contrasts between "transnational" and "international".
  
  Much emphasis has been placed on international as including inter-cultural, namely that which crosses not only geopolitical boundaries but also belief systems of different kinds.
  
  In effect the UIA has responded to the challenge of relationships between psychosocial territories or fiefdoms, seen as representing legitimate differences of perspective. Recognizing relationships and complementarities between such functional territories is essential to any response to social fragmentation.
  
  In understanding the challenge of international through its own historical development, UIA explorations have included: emphasizing internationally-constituted bodies; recognizing internationally-oriented bodies; the nature of transnational and transdisciplinary bodies; multi-sectoral entities (crossing boundaries of category or culture); functional complementarity; to understandings of how local is integrated into global, whether from a territorial or conceptual perspective. This may be summarized as transcendence of boundaries.
  
  
• Associations: In any discipline concerned with relationships, this term emphasizes patterns of relationships. In psychology and humanistic studies, an association is 11 indicative of connectedness going beyond any more obvious direct linkage.
  
  In its work, the UIA has invested heavily in documenting networks, namely the many types of relationship between organizations, between subjects, between values, between problems, between strategies, and the like – increasingly represented in an electronic environment by hyperlinks. It is also unique in exploring ways to document the linkages between such distinct classes of conceptual entities.
  
  The pattern of relationships between social groupings, which constitute an "association" or organization, is merely a specific social manifestation of such association.
  
  Recognizing such patterns is central to the problem of sustainable development.
  
  In understanding the challenge of associations, through its own historical development, UIA explorations have focused on: formal organization membership; organization activities; collective concerns and initiatives; mutual relevance; relationships; transfunctional linkages; patterns of relevance; to an understanding of relationships in their most general sense.
  
  The uniquely significant contribution of the UIA for the future might therefore be described in terms of deriving coherence from patterns of transboundary associations. This focus is consistent with its long-established documentation function -- but provides the vital context that is relevant to the new need of many for coherence in a turbulent world. It distances the UIA from the tunnel vision preoccupation of many well-resourced emerging information initiatives -- with which the UIA would be foolish to compete. The art for the UIA is to strike a balance between provision of coherence, for which there is little funding, and facilitating specialized uses of its information at appropriate rates in order to sustain its activity.

Proposals:

• CD and Paper publications Following a visit to SAUR in March, it has been tentatively agreed to initiate a historical series of publications on CD and/or paper. This is currently in process of evaluation. In addition to an earlier proposal for profiles of defunct organizations no longer published in the current Yearbook, these might include scanned versions of the following early UIA publications:
  • #2: Actes du congrès mondial des associations internationales. vol I: 830p, vol II: 415p (1912)
  • #3: Annuaire de la vie internationale. Tome I (1908) 1370p.
  • #46: Actes du Congres mondial des associations internationales (1914) 1264p.
  • #47: Annuaire de la vie Internationale 1910-1911 (1911) 2652 p.
  • #104: Code des voeux internationaux: codification generale des voeux et resolutions des organismes internationaux (1923) 940p.
  • Possibilities of a future edition of the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential on CD have been discussed with SAUR.
    
    
• Future publication on the World Wide Web The UIA is still in process of shifting from focus on the static server to a hybrid focus in which users of the static pages are referred to databases accessible from the dynamic server. This involves:
  • User authentication (password, etc) through which access to particular databases will be restricted according to a wide range of marketing, partnership, sponsorship and editorial needs.
  • Ability of a distant user to correct, supplement or criticize entries as a whole in any database, or any field in that entry
  • Ability to display back to the user all comments already received on an entry, by field (with the possibility of e-mail contact with other users supplying comments)
  • Ability to redisplay the entry with comments incorporated into the body of the description by field to provide an overview of the amended entry
  • Ability to qualify comments (eg "5-star", "3-star", "0-star") according to a system of accreditation
  • Ability for distant editors to edit particular entries. Further work is required on this facility but it is currently being tested through open access to numerous users (see statistics in Annex 1).
  As indicated above, SAUR has now agreed to subscription access to the Organizations database over the web. It is expected that this will be implemented in June 2000, possibly in conjunction with access to the Calendar database. These subscriptions will both be handled in a minimal e-commerce mode, namely by traditional invoicing for a password, rather than via credit card transactions. For all databases, experiments will continue on the degree of access offered to "Guests" vs to various categories of users (at various rates).
  
  Other sources of web income from database use:
  • Click-through revenue: Dynamic pages can be generated offering access to users to other web sites by clicking through. Where the facility then accessed by user offers revenue for such referral, the UIA can earn income from passing users on in this way. Typically this would be appropriate in the case bibliographical information (amazon.com) or web search engines (google.com). This is more appropriate when the facility does not require the use of special logos.
  • Banner advertising: A small experiment is being conducted with the use of banner advertising on a single static page. This is designed to generate income from advertisers when users access the page on which the advertisement is running. The issue here is the obtrusive nature of the banner and the relevance of the advertising.
    
    
• European Commission contract: Information Context for Biodiversity Conservation Work on this DG-XIII contract (January 1998-December 1999) proceeded satisfactorily with respect to development of the Problems and Strategies databases (see Annex 1 for further details). The contract was extended through to 30 April 2000 to permit completion of certain tasks and to enable use of unspent funds.
  
  Work on the web access facilities is proceeding satisfactorily, as noted above. A special web access address has been registered at www.ecolynx.org for this project. Work on the multi-media dimensions of this project is proceeding less rapidly, but the test interfaces already suggest dramatic new approaches to access to UIA data (see demo).
  
  
• Interactive Health Ecology Access Links (IHEAL) Project: The UIA was a subconsultant to the NGO UNED-UK, which had been funded by the European Commission (DG-XI) to support work in preparation for the June 1999 Conference of European Environment and Health Ministers. The UIA was responsible for the text content of a participative web database (extension of the Encyclopedia) ; others were responsible for a GIS (mapping) component and organization database.
  
  This was a pilot project solely to provide a demonstration at the Healthy Planet Forum, the NGO event which ran parallel to the Conference of Ministers in June 1999. The estimated total budget for the project is 63,888 EUR (£42,938), of which the 23,526 EUR was allocated to the development of UIA databases. No further funds were obtained for further development of the project.

Fund-raising and project initiatives:

• infoDev: Work on this project proposal to the World Bank was completed and submitted under the title: Interactive Contextual Environmental Planning Tool (InterCEPT) for developing countries. Amount requested: $250,000. After evaluation, the project was accepted in June 1999 as a "highly ranked proposal awaiting funding" and so listed on on the Bank‘s website. It was removed from the poll of such projects in March 2000 since no funds had been made available.
• Fifth Framework Call for Proposals: This new call was put out by the European Commission in March 1999. A number of possibilities, complementary to the UIA's INFO2000, infoDev and IHEAL initiatives, were considered for submission.
  • FET Open Short Proposals (EU Future and Emerging Technologies section of the Information Society Technologies programme of the EU Fifth Framework) : Cultivating Knowledge Ecosystems, in collaboration with 1 NGO and 2 SMEs; submitted 15 September 1999. Amount requested : 100,000 euros. This was rehjected in April 2000.
  • Rural Development Information: The UIA has continued its discussion with various groups associated with rural and community development projects (in Scotland, Palestine, India and Australia) concerning linkage (and distance learning) between a virtual community (Internet) and "real" local communities, using the development of one to support the development of another. This would be a further extension of the INFO2000 / infoDev initiatives. Less emphasis was given to these possibilities since June 1999.
  • EU-India Economic Cross-Cultural Programme: A project under this programme has been drafted together with Development Alternatives and offices of the Programme's offices in Brussels and New Delhi. The call for proposals on this matter has been postponed by the Commission.
  • MyTown: During her last visit to Australia, Nadia McLaren initiated discussions with the MyTown consortium based in Melbourne. MyTown is an online empowerment resource for local community development. It is currently in pilot planning phase, under the support of major corporate sponsors. Provisional access to the UIA databases is offered through the MyTown website.
  • TRACC: Tentative negotiations are underway to determine the feasibility of an Encyclopedia of Transnational Criminal Organization. This is a project of the Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (American University, Washington DC) introduced by UIA to SAUR, but which may offer the possibilities for a partnership using matrials from the UIA Encyclopedia.

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