On 17-19 May Saint Petersburg held an International Conference “UNESCO between Two Phases of the World Summit on the Information Society”. Konstantinovsky Palace, sea-side residence of the President of the Russian Federation, hosted over 450 delegates from 50 countries representing all continents.

This conference was the largest UNESCO event in preparation to the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society to be conducted in Tunis on 16-18 November 2005.

The Saint Petersburg conference was preceded by three thematic meetings conducted by UNESCO in preparation to the Summit:

• Freedom of Expression in Cyberspace (3-4 February, Paris),
• Multilingualism for Cultural Diversity and Participation of All in Cyberspace (5-6 May 2005, Bamako, Mali),
• ICT for Capacity-Building: Critical Success Factors (11-13 May 2005, Paris).

Unlike the above thematic meetings, the Saint Petersburg conference covered all dimensions of UNESCO activity: culture, science, education, communications and information, while its main aim, according to the UNESCO Director General Koïchiro Matsuura, was discussion of further steps and principal decisions to be taken by UNESCO in the sphere of transition to the global Information Society.

By forwarding the initiative to conduct this conference and organising it Russia carried out an outstanding international event, claiming to be an initiator of integration of UNESCO, Russian and world intellectual elite efforts for the aim of influencing the future world order.

Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, specially emphasised that Russia supports UNESCO efforts aimed to attract attention of the global community to humanitarian aspects of the Information Society development, its ethic, legal and socio-cultural problems.

The conference participants were welcomed by Alexander Sokolov, Minister of Culture and Mass Communications of Russian Federation; Leonid Reiman, Minister of Information Technologies and Communications of Russian Federation; Françoise Rivière, ADG/ODG, UNESCO; Yoshio Utsumi, Secretary-General of the International Telecommunications Union; Valentina Matvienko, Governor of Saint Petersburg; Grigori Ordzhonikidze, Executive Secretary of the Commission of the Russian Federation for UNESCO; Mohamed Bellagi, Ambassador of Tunis in Russian Federation.

The key presentation were delivered by Françoise Rivière, ADG/ODG, UNESCO; Yuri Grin, Member of the UN ICT Task Force; Chairman of the Working Group on the World Summit on the Information Society, International Telecommunication Union; Director of Department of International Cooperation, Russian Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications; Adama Samassékou, President of the African Academy of Languages; President of WSIS Preparatory Committee for Geneva Phase; Former Minister of Education of Mali; Evgeny Kuzmin, Chairman of the Russian Committee and Member of Intergovernmental Council of the UNESCO Information for All Programme, Head of the Department of Archives and Libraries of the Russian Ministry of Culture and Mass Communications; Vladimir Tikhomirov, Rector, Moscow State University for Economics, Statistics and Informatics.

Leading experts, well-known scholars and politicians discussed a wide range of topics in Saint Petersburg:

1. Building the Information and Knowledge Societies: Concepts, Strategies, Programs.
2. Human Capacity Building for Knowledge Societies. Personal Information Culture.
3. Education in Knowledge Societies.
4. Science and Innovations in Knowledge Societies.
5. Cultural Diversity in Knowledge Societies.
6. Universal Access to Public Domain Information.
7. Development of Communications and Freedom of Expression.
8. Stakeholders’ Partnership and Cooperation to Foster Information Society Development.
9. Business Environment for Knowledge Societies.
10. Information Society Technologies and Infrastructure for the Knowledge Societies.
11. Policies of Cultural and Scientific Heritage Digitization and Preservation.

Each of these topics was discussed at a special section, and their results were transformed by the participants into corresponding recommendations, which will be published in Russian and English in early June. After summarizing the results of the three-day-conference it became evident that recommendations drafted during the conference can and should be presented for discussion at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis not only by UNESCO, but by national delegations of countries participating in the preparation to the Summit as well. Moreover, they can use these recommendations in development of their national strategies.

The conference provided a timely and fruitful dialogue, a sort of “brainstorming” which was attended by heads and representatives of Russian and foreign public authorities and non-governmental organizations, private sector, research and educational community, cultural sector, authoritative experts, scholars that are shaping, sharing and putting to life high human ideals of UNESCO.

Evgeniy Kuzmin, direct initiator of the conference and chairman of its program committee, said that “global Information Society is a new phase and at the same time a new paradigm of human civilization development. For those who experience “information poverty” global Information Society is still an abstraction today. For others, information-rich ones, it is already a reality of the present day, sometimes even yesterday’s one. It should also be mentioned that new technologies that resolve some problems are at the same time creating many others. The most crucial of them is increasing divide in access to vital knowledge, that is widening gap of incomprehension between information-rich and information-challenged people. This leads to increase in social marginalization within countries; on the global scale this excludes entire countries and even regions from the process of global development”.

The main organizers of the conference were Ministry of Culture and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications of the Russian Federation, Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography, UNESCO, Commission of the Russian Federation for UNESCO, Russian Committee of the UNESCO Program "Information for All", Institute of the Information Society, Centre of Informatization in the Sphere of Culture.

This conference became possible owing to financial support of the Ministry of Culture and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation, Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography, UNESCO, Global Knowledge Partnership, CROC company, information and legal consortium "Kodeks". Information sponsors of the conference are: RosBusinessConsulting, Boss magazine, RIA-Novosti (general information sponsors); and Ostankino.ru Portal and Information Society magazine.

IIS made a considerable contribution to this important event:

1. Organized five of eleven sections of the conference: “Building the Information and Knowledge Societies: Concepts, Strategies, Programs”, “Human Capacity Building for Knowledge Societies. Personal Information Culture”, “Science and Innovations in Knowledge Societies”, “Stakeholders’ Partnership and Cooperation to Foster Information Society Development”, “Business Environment for Knowledge Societies”.
2. Organized, in cooperation with the Non-commercial Partnership “PRIOR North-West” and Information Society of Ukraine Foundation, a Central and Eastern Europe Regional Working Meeting of the Global Knowledge Partnership, where participants discussed ways of cooperation in implementing multi-stakeholder projects aimed at Knowledge Society development within GKP framework.
3. Several IIS representatives were members of the conference Organizing or/and Program committees:

• Tatiana Ershova (IIS General Director and Head of Directorate of Russian e-Development Partnership) - member of the conference Organizing Committee
• Alexander Evtiushkin (Head of IIS Directorate of Innovative and Investment Projects) - member of the conference Program Committee
• Yuri Hohlov (Chairman of IIS Board of Directors and Head of Directorate of Regional Programs) - Deputy Chairman of the conference Program Committee, member of the conference Organizing Committee
• Sergei Shaposhnik (Head of Directorate of Monitoring Information Society Development) - member of the conference Program Committee
• Olga Vershinskaya (Head of IIS Directorate of Informational Socio-Economic Programs) - member of the conference Program Committee.

For more information about the conference please visit http://confifap.cpic.ru/conf2005/eng/info/.