United Nations Global Alliance Appoints OASIS CEO as High Level Advisor; Patrick Gannon Represents Open Standards Community at New International Initiative for Information and Communication Technologies and Development.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of the OASIS international standards consortium, has been appointed to the high level Advisory Board of the Global Alliance for ICT and Development (GAID). GAID is a new initiative of United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, to promote strategic, intensive, widespread and innovative use of Information Communications Technologies (ICT) in governmental development policies and programmes.

The project was initiated in support of growing awareness that, in order for ICT to positively foster development, it must be employed where relevant, appropriate, and effective and in a manner that builds local capacities and provokes opportunities for sustainable business models for small and medium enterprise (SMEs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). As stressed by the 2005 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), ICT must be effectively integrated into development activities if the internationally agreed development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals, are to be achieved within the agreed time frame. In that respect the mission of the GAID will be to facilitate and promote such integration by providing a platform for an open, inclusive, multi-stakeholder policy dialogue. It will thus contribute to linking the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society with the broader United Nations development agenda.

As a high level advisor, Gannon will reinforce the value of open standards in helping achieve the themes of sustainability and international scalability in the Global Alliance programmes.

"By focusing on adoption of international, open standards for content and information interchange, individual economic development programmes will be able to achieve longer term sustainability of applications and portability of data, as well as broader international scalability," said Gannon. "This is essential if investment into developing countries for ICT is to produce the necessary economic development results. OASIS is proud to be a part of this international effort to promote the value of open standards within recommended best practices for ICT."

Top on the GAID agenda are programmes for applying ICT in health, education, and entrepreneurship. Gannon is expected to play a significant role in assisting the team as it identifies best practices for increasing the development and dissemination of standards and templates for successful ICT-for-Development programmes and projects.

In addition to his executive duties at OASIS, Gannon also served as chair of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe's Internet Enterprise Development Project from 2000-2005, which developed best practices recommendations for implementing ICT in countries with transitioning economies.

About OASIS

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. The consortium produces open standards for Web services, security, e-business, and standardization efforts in the public sector and for application-specific markets. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 5,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. Approved OASIS Standards include AVDL, BCM, CAP, DITA, DocBook, DSML, ebXML CPPA, ebXML Messaging, ebXML Registry, EDXL-DE, EML, OpenDocument, SAML, SPML, UBL, UDDI, WSDM, WS-Reliability, WSRF, WSRP, WS-Security, XACML, XCBF, and XML Catalogs. http://www.oasis-open.org

Additional information

Global Alliance for ICT and Development

http://www.un-gaid.org/