2017 ICT4D Conference

The Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) was asked to take over stewardship and operationalization of the Principles for Digital Development in 2016. In order to facilitate the operationalization of the Principles to make them useful for the global community, it is critical that actionable, impactful and relevant tools and resources are created.

To date, much of the Principles socialization process has focused on implementers at HQ level and donors. It will be critical to build upon the recommendations of the year-long consulting process to develop tools and guidance with the community that implementers can use, and to also focus on a dedicated effort to embed the Principles firmly where they need to be adopted – in countries.

For all stakeholder groups, the Principles encourage collective, integrated, aggregated action instead of singular, one-off programs in order to build sustainable technology solutions. The Principles have been widely embraced by the digital development community but many are struggling with how to turn them into concrete and simple “go do” steps that all can follow. The community has required that the next phase of development of the Principles be for organizations like DIAL and others to gather, curate, and create – where needed – new guidance for implementers, countries and donors on “how” to implement and institutionalize the Principles in their digital development efforts.

This session will be a soft launch of the implementer toolkit to garner feedback from the digital development community to ensure that it is useful and relevant for them.