Join Digistan and hundreds of individuals from across the globe in signing The Hague Declaration on Free and Open Standards. The Digital Standards Organization (Digistan) was founded by a group of open standards professionals in 2007 with the goal of promoting customer choice, vendor competition, and overall growth in the global digital economy through the understanding, development, and adoption of open digital standards.

The Digistan definition of a free and open standard is based on the 'European Interoperability Framework for pan-European eGovernment Services' (EIF v1 ) definition of "open standard" which defines free and open standard as follows:

    * The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit organization, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties.

    * The standard has been published and the standard specification document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy, distribute, and use it freely.

    * The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.

    * There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.

In his closing remarks at the end of the Second Annual African e-Gov Forum 2008, Hon. Dr Ham Mukasa-Mulira, Minister of ICT, identified a gender-responsive ICT enabling environment as a key issue that will need to be addressed by the Ministry in its ICT policy priorities and in implementing eGovernment in Uganda.

The Second Annual African e-Gov Forum 2008 was held from 4 - 6 March 2008 at the Serena Hotel in Kampala. The event was organised by the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO) in collaboration with the Ministry of ICT and the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC). Following on from the successful inaugural event in Accra, Ghana, in March 2007, which was attended by 150 key ICT decision makers from both the Private and Public Sector, the CTO is building support for this vital conference.

The Swedish Program for ICT in Developing Regions (SPIDER) together with the Sida Gender Helpdesk at Stockholm University organized a  workshop on ''Access, Influence and Empowerment'', the First Swedish Workshop on ICT, Gender and Development. The workshop took place in Stockholm, Sweden, on March 6, 2008.

The aim of the workshop was to get an overview of (potential) actors and activities in Sweden in the area of ICT and gender with bearing on development countries issues, and to find areas where ICT could promote and create equality among women and men. The one day workshop gathered participants from a wide variety of organisations such as universities, authorities, NGOs and private enterprises. WOUGNET was invited to share experiences on our work in the area of Gender and ICTs from the perspective of a developing country.