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The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) - which range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, all by the target date of 2015 - form a blueprint agreed to by all the world's countries and all the world's leading development institutions. The Millennium Development Goals, together with the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS ) have paved the way to a number of Capacity Building (CB) projects related to ICT in developing countries. Satcom technology and knowledge can contribute to achieving education worldwide, especially in area or regions that have no or a bad infrastructure. For ESA, this study activity has the underlying goal to identify how to federate and catalyse a major line of actions to be undertaken with the participation of 3rd party institutions in line with the action plan proposed by the UN. The goal of this project is to define and validate a reference model for CB projects using satellite communications (Satcom). 
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The technical work is subdivided in 5 work areas (WA): WA1000 Identification and Selection of Potential CB Sectors
WA2000 Characterization of the CB sectors
WA3000 Definition of Reference Model for Capacity Building Projects
WA4000 Application and Assessment of the Reference Model
WA5000 Review and Finalisation of the Reference Model, and Recommendations for Future Actions on Capacity Building WA1000, WA2000, WA3000, WA4000, and WA5000 correspond to Task1, Task2, Task3, Task4, and Task5 respectively. These WAs are complemented by a WA9000 Project management.
The picture below shows a flow chart for the technical WAs. - In WA1000, we will identify and select the potential CB sectors.
- In WA2000, the sectors selected in WA1000 will be further detailed, and a database of CB projects will be created.
- In WA3000, using two projects described in WA2000 and the consortium experience, a reference model will be defined for CB projects.
- In WPA000, four projects described in WA2000 will be pre-selected. Using two of these pre-selected projects, the reference model defined in WA3000 will be applied and assessed.
- In WA5000, the reference model defined in WA3000 will be updated with regard to the lessons learned when applying it in WA4000. Recommendations towards an action plan for CB will be drawn upon activities carried out in WA1000, WA2000, WA3000, and WA4000.
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T0 (start of the project is 5th March 2008). The planning below is in months: - Identification and Selection of Potential CB Sectors: i.e. User Needs, Applications and Utilisation Scenarios
Timeline: T0 till T0+2 - Characterisation of the Selected Sectors
Timeline: T0+2 till T0+5 - Definition of Reference Model for Capacity Building Projects
Timeline: T0+5 till T0+9 - Application and Assessment of the Reference Model (for 2 projects in parallel.
Timeline: T0+9 till T0+21 - Review and Finalisation of the Reference Model, and Recommendations for Future Actions on Capacity Building
Timeline: T0+20 till TO+22
In order to create this reference model, 5 challenges have been identified and further refined: - What are the sectors that can benefit from capacity building projects through ICT?
- In which one(s), could Satcom be an added value?
- What is the holistic description of these sectors?
- Is there a reference model for successful capacity building projects using Satcom?
- How to validate the reference model?
Our consortium explicitly recognises the added value of producing a reference model; as we ourselves have all found out (through successful and unsuccessful experiences) that such a model is critical for the success of sustainable CB projects. Furthermore we also are enthusiastic about bringing Satcom technology through a holistic and well-defined reference model to the people in developing countries in this project, allowing them to benefit from this tender in a direct way as well. Satcom technology and knowledge can contribute to achieving education worldwide, especially in area or regions that have no or a bad infrastructure. With regard to the MDGs, Capacity Building (CB) is primarily about the empowerment of organizations and people. CB entails the strengthening of individual, organisational and institutional competencies of the local partners. It is a broad definition and in its essence, capacitating people and organisations is a component of the core strategy of empowerment of people and partner organisations. Empowering people and organisations relates to the strengthening of knowledge, skills and attitudes so that people and organisations are capable of taking their development in their own hands. In practical terms it means that at every stage of a project, people have to acquire different skills and knowledge.
Achievements:
Task 5 has been success fully completed and a list of final activities has been agreed with ESA. Version 3.1 of the Reference model has been delivered. On 15th December 2009 there was the 4th Round table session for the Business model (CCN 1). For this CCN1 we have done the following sub-tasks:
1.1 Who is the group of users?
1.2 Who are their beneficiaries?
1.4 What sectors have this problem specifically and to what extent?
2.1 Produce an inventory of service offerings (satellites / operators / coverage). Work currently in progress:
For CCN1 we are focusing on the following sub-tasks:
1.3 What is the potential size of the problem?
1.5 What applications are required or desired?
1.6 Describing the use cases – what are the bandwidth demand requirements/characteristics?
1.7 Investigate the regulatory constraints for a selection of different developing countries.
1.8 How many users are required for a sustainable service versus predicted demand and availability of service? Maybe in a later state.
1.9 What are the differences and the pro’s and con’s between a local operator and the services that can be offered by ESA.
2.2 Which services can be combined or leveraged?
2.3 Describe the current options, including an indication of the price, as offered by satellite communications providers for developing countries.
2.4 Investigate the state of the art. What other related initiatives are there and how effective are these at delivering services for the user community / applications in question?
2.5 Investigate the potential need by NGO’s and willigness to share a connection.
2.6 Identify and characterise possible operating entities for provision of services for capacity building projects and their follow-on exploitation is willing and able to fulfil the role of Satcom provider for shared usage, including the regulatory aspects of it. Activities about to start:
Combine the results of these sub tasks into the first draft of the Business model. To be delivered in early March 2010.
Last Update: 02 Feb 2010
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