United Nations Global Alliance Appoints OASIS CEO as High Level Advisor

["Carol Geyer" <carol.geyer@oasis-open.org>]

**Link to this press release at
http://www.oasis-open.org/news/oasis-news-2006-07-11.php.
_______________________________________________________________________

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; 11 July 2006 – 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/



Press contact

Carol Geyer
OASIS Director of Communications
carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
+1.978.667.5115 x209 (office)
+1.941.284.0403 (mobile)