Sustainable Development
The Global Dialogues on Sustainable Development (GDSD) features a series of seminars and panel discussions on issues related to the Johannesburg 2002 Summit. The GDSD seeks to involve a worldwide, broad-based audience with an interest and stake in the Summit. The GDSD events were held at the World Bank headquarters in Washington, DC and connected via videoconference to selected sites around the world for real-time interaction with experts from developing countries.

Frontiers in Infrastructure Finance
Training focuses on key learning areas, capacity building, and knowledge of financing new private infrastructure projects, as well as the privatization of existing public utilities in the power and transport sectors. This course provides a forum for sharing knowledge and expertise on such fronts. The course's specific objectives include giving participants an awareness of how infrastructure projects are procured, negotiated, and managed; the best practices and partnerships in concession rights awards, contract design, and negotiation; and an examination of the links between sectoral reforms, technological characteristics and regulatory frameworks.

The topics covered in these sessions are Global Perspectives and Issues; InterGen/Enka Transaction: An International Lender's Perspective; Introduction to Ras Gas Case Study; Fundamentals of Project Finance; Regulating Infrastructure Concessions; Financing through Global Capital Markets, Using World Bank Group Instruments; Structuring Credit Enhancements for Infrastructure Projects (ECA, PRI); Designing Contractual Frameworks for Infrastructure Projects, and others.

Transparency in Infrastructure Concessions
Course participants examined the contribution of transparency and good governance to the creation of a sound investment climate as a prerequisite for successful private participation in infrastructure. Working together, participants and the training team shared knowledge in the fields of transparency and infrastructure concessions on building institutional capacity and discussed how to achieve growth while minimizing the impact on the poorest segments of society. The participants also discussed the procurement procedures for large scale infrastructure projects and ways to improve the process through competitive bidding, transparency of documentation, project analysis, and compliance with international norms and standards. Participants worked together to present their local country experiences and engaged the training team on issues of particular local relevance.

The five-week program consisted of ten live videoconference sessions. Following the sessions, participants had an opportunity to interact with the resource team through the Internet.

Executive Leadership Seminar
The Executive Leadership Seminar is a four-hour program designed to introduce senior government officials to the logic and rationale of a results-based approach to public sector management. Best practices and lessons from both developed and developing countries are used to emphasize key points. The seminar used presentation, discussion, question and answer, and small group methodologies, as well as self-assessment tools and a ten-step process for moving towards the design and construction of a results-based system.

Anti-Corruption
The International Consortium on Governmental Financial Management and the Americas' Accountability Anti-Corruption Project together with the World Bank and other partners were part of the International Anti-Corruption Summit 2000. This was a worldwide summit with a significant and influential gathering of leaders in the field from around the globe for the debate of anti-corruption efforts. The conference attracted over 2000 government officials, executive and civil and professional leaders from throughout the world.

The conference covered topics related to USAID's concerns about corruption's effect on development; money laundering, the international financial system, and the fight against corruption; hemispheric action against corruption; and unbundling corruption: new empiric on 'state capture', bribery and kickbacks and their implications for governance reforms, among others.

Telemedicine Primer
The workshop was held between Egypt and the Center of Excellence for Remote and Medically Under-Served Areas (CERMUSA) in the US. The workshop was designed to discuss clinical applications of telemedicine technology and to identify the various levels of technology for telecommunication. Participants discussed topics related to applications for bandwidth technology, including rehabilitation, dermatology, ENT, ophthalmology, orthopedics, emergency medicine, psychiatry/mental health, and continuing education.

Reproductive Health
Interactive Health, a London based non-profit organization, and the World Bank Institute are working to bring this series using online technologies to address health inequities. The focus of this series is on the role of evidence-based medicine in reproductive health in developing countries. An expert panel will participate from the distance learning facilities at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. The topics covered in this session will be the importance of evidence based medicine in developing countries; the challenges of evidence based research and clinical practice in reproductive health in developing countries; the challenges facing health workers in developing countries; and an overview of worldwide efforts for evidence based solutions for reproductive health in developing countries, among many other topics.

ABCDE Conference
The 3rd Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics (ABCDE) Europe 2001 took place online in a live video format. The ABCDE conference was designed to expand the flow of ideas between development thinkers and policy makers. The original Washington-based conference and the ABCDE Europe were organized as major events in the development field, where many of the world's finest thinkers in development presented new ideas and perspectives. Egypt participated in the conference online through RITSEC's GDLC website.

MENA Development Debates
The goal of the development debates workshop was to raise the participants' awareness of the gravity of the region's poverty situation and to initiate a process of learning from others' experiences in how to redirect social and economic policy to the poorer segments of society. The workshop initiated a structured series of debates on some of the key issues and then disseminated the results of the debate. The first series were held online in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Morocco.

The World Youth Forum
The 4th session of the World Youth Forum was held on June 26, 2001, with Egypt, Senegal, and the UK. In its mandate, the World Youth Forum is designed to open up an effective channel of communication between non-governmental youth organizations and the United Nations system, seen as essential for dialog and consultation on the situation of the world's youth.

E-Government
The e-government workshop was designed to present and discuss conference papers and studies distantly for the conference held in Qatar and to allow for Egyptian participants and speakers to participate distantly from Cairo. Four studies were presented from RITSEC's GDLC covering legal matters in e-government, IT applications for e-government, and solutions from Microsoft.

E-Commerce
The e-commerce workshops served to introduce participants to e-commerce and to enable participants to understand e-commerce strategies. The topics covered in these sessions included e-commerce strategy; characteristics of successful strategies; globalization and international strategies; intellectual property (IP) law, copyright and other legal issues; trademark, patents, trade secrets and online privacy; and many other issues.

Strategic Approach to E-Learning
TTSAsia.com and the Institute of Public Administration and Management organized an exciting forum as part of the Singapore Learning Festival. Designed to bring together experts from renowned organizations to share their knowledge and experience, the forum discussed e-learning experiences at IDA in Singapore and INSEAD in France and in the financial services sector and allowed participants the opportunity to network with other e-learning professionals.

Building a Virtual Library
"Building a virtual library" is a collaborative exercise to build an electronic library in which globally dispersed groups create a framework model for a "library on the desktop. Discussions will explore the definition of "electronic library," and a framework based on the resulting definition will then be created jointly and populated with resources or resource types. Each participant will create a model framework specific for the local needs and begin the process of populating the framework. At the completion, each participant will be able to define what a virtual library is and be able to structure and populate one.

The Digital Divide
The project aims at sharing the children's work between Egypt and their counterparts all over the world. The project demonstrates how IT has prepared children to one day play a leading role in the global economy. Moreover, the project illustrates the opportunities which have been created for the children to express their own thoughts and ideas. The RITSEC presentation focuses on maximizing the number of children users, reducing the digital divide and helping Egypt's growing Internet community.

Data Warehousing and Data Dissemination
The Data Warehousing and Data Dissemination course explores how those interested in warehousing information and disseminating data to a wide audience can choose among possible strategies and select the appropriate ones using a set of principles and guidelines. Participants learn how to determine when data warehousing is appropriate and how to select the best media for dissemination of their data, based on the target audience for maximum impact. Where possible, participants see a demonstration of the World Development Indicators (WDI) CD-ROM and the World Bank's web-based WDI external data query system as examples of appropriate media.

Knowledge Learning and Sustainable Development
The first public session of the conference "Global Focus," organized by the World Bank, is designed to provide an opportunity for focused debate among a group of prominent international figures who have particular insight into and experience with the challenge of building learning societies and harnessing the key issues and priorities at a global level in addressing this challenge, while at the same time bringing to light the concerns, needs and distinctive experiences of the poor and disadvantaged. The online session was held with Egypt, Germany, the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Uganda, and the World Bank offices in Washington and Paris.

Knowledge for Development Framework (K4D)
The K4D workshop was held online with Egypt, China, and Washington to discuss increasing reliance on knowledge, technology, and information in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa. The workshop discussed the action required in different sectors of society, including the regulatory and institutional framework, education and skills, ICT, and innovation and entrepreneurship.

Management Simulation
The management challenge simulation was designed as an introduction to management for non-specialists and new managers with a particular emphasis on sales force management, financial concepts, and cost accounting. It is intended to help participants understand the inter-relationships between the different functional areas in an organization as well as enhance their knowledge of how to operate in these areas.

Learning objectives include understanding the basic financial management techniques, the importance of cost control and unit marginal costing principles, the impact of different forms of cost allocation on the performance of profit centers, and the importance of the marketing mix concept.