COIN’s Dr Wal Taylor has recently returned from his invitational visits to two exciting world summits on the information society.

The first, World Summit on Cities and Local Authorities in the Information Society, was held in Lyon, France, and was attended by about 1700 delegates including elected mayors and presidents from more than 250 local governments from across the globe.

Dr Taylor presented a discussion address on ‘The role of education for local governance in the information society’ to one of the eight major theme sessions of the Summit.

While in Lyon he was a member of an invited delegation hosted by the Mayor of Lyon and the WSIS (World Summit on Information Society) Civil Society Bureau.

“This event reinforced for me the essential role and nature of local authorities in the emerging information society and one which provides large challenges for traditional views of local governance everywhere. It is pleasing to note the Faculty of Informatics and Communication at CQU and the Rockhampton City Council’s efforts with COIN are recognised in such international environments.”.

Dr Taylor was also a part of the official Australian delegation which represented and presented a statement from the Australian Civil Society at the United Nations hosted World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), staged in Geneva Switzerland last month.

The Summit was attended by more than 15 000 delegates including 60 heads of government.

“COIN was jointly funded (along with the Centre for Community Networking Research at Monash) by the Australian Government to coordinate the Australian Civil Society inputs to the WSIS processes. As a result of this effort, Australia was able to have a significant input into a number of agendas for civil society in the information society and achieved a high profile for our efforts including the social applications of ICT in indigenous communities.”.

Dr Taylor said the summit was also used to launch the Digital Inclusion Brand. This was developed with the assistance of corporate funding as one of the 21 global projects developed at the Salzburg Seminar on Digital Inclusion to which Dr Taylor was an invited Faculty member in September last year. The Digital Inclusion brand will be used to provide profile for the myriad of projects around the world which have the social appropriation of ICT as a core element.

Dr Taylor’s participation in these summits was funded by the Summit organisers and external grant funds.