Dr. Alleyne's address to the I Regional Coordination Meeting , November 30th - December 3rd 1999, Washington D.C. USA
Transcription

Dr. George A. O. Alleyne

Thank you very much.

Let me add my words of welcome to those given by Dr. Packer, Dr. Casas and Dr. Roses. It is a great pleasure to have you here in Washington.

As Dr. Casas said this meeting has a double significance. It is the First Meeting of the Regional Coordination of the Virtual Health Library, and the Seventh Meeting of the Latin American System for Information on Health Sciences. I am pleased to see so many of you here, and such a large representation bears witness to the importance of the topic to all of you. I expect that this indicates interest that the Virtual Health Library be a truly participatory exercise, and it can only flourish if it really is a participatory effort. It is important that we thank the Government of Brazil formally. Our Organization has been fortunate in having a partner such as the Government of Brazil that has contributed so much to having our Library maintained in São Paulo. I would like you to give a round of applause for the support of the Government of Brazil to BIREME. (applause)

I think it is important to recognize also the Federal University of São Paulo / Paulista School of Medicine, which has given tremendous support to the Center, especially when it went through difficult times.

This will be a week full of activities and time for reflection on the technical cooperation that you have received or you would like to receive from PAHO with respect to the establishment of the Virtual Health Library in your countries. I know this has been an intensive program for the past year, with many visits from Mr. Abel Packer and his colleagues to the countries. I also know that many of you will claim that much more needs to be done in the year 2000.

I am sure that you will focus your discussion in large part on the document that BIREME has prepared as a guide for the Virtual Health Library. And this, of course, is a modification of the original proposal in 1998. I hope that those of you who were in Costa Rica in 1998 will recognize the modifications and the advances that have been made. This Virtual Health Library, although in embryonic form, is already in place in several of the countries where the emphasis is on the participation of a wide variety of actors. The idea of having a constitutive committee or consultative group, in each country where there is a Virtual Library is an essential step to the success of such an endeavor.

When the idea was presented to me a couple of years ago, I had to be clear, and to convince myself that this approach was consistent, not only with the work of the Organization, but beyond that, was consistent with the basic values and principles that sustain PAHO. As Dr. Casas has mentioned, these two values are equity and the Pan-American approach will be reflected in some of the work and ideas that will be presented to you.

I have spoken to you more than once, with varying degrees of passion and hopefully with varying degrees of persuasion about the importance of information. When I have spoken, I've adopted a mainly utilitarian instrumental approach, affirming that information is a major tool for your activities.

I will not go into details, because these are topics that merit a lot more discussion, but I'd like to leave with you two important concepts and perhaps there will be another opportunity for me to go into them more fully.

When we speak of the information revolution, we should go back to fifty years ago. Yesterday, we went to a restaurant called the Sea Catch, in Georgetown where the first computer was built in this country. It just was about fifty years ago that the information revolution really started, and over the course of these fifty years, possibly up to ten or fifteen years ago-information has been useful in terms of processes, if you wish-and a computer, which has been the trigger of information revolution was important in terms of these processes. Computers are in your cars. If you wish to tune your car, it is done by computers; your watches, in fact, have mini computers. The technology of the information revolution has been instrumental in terms of the processes it has favored; it has allowed humankind to do things more efficiently.

But recently, the information revolution has perhaps shifted to a much higher, different, plane. The Internet has indeed eliminated time and space as Martin Luther King would say, and infinite possibilities of networks of networks of networks will change the way we see the world. What is important for us, is that we will start to examine social institutions of the information revolution in the same way that we appreciated the social institutions of the industrial revolution. The organization and development of these new social institutions will be as important for development of our society as were the social institutions of the industrial revolution. The factory, for example, was a social institution that developed from the industrial revolution, the steam engine was its first major development. I believe that these social institutions, these new institutions that develop from the information revolution, will be forms of virtual arrangements. You will see virtual arrangements in the social institutions that develop as a result of the information revolution. I will predict that these virtual arrangements will arise around specific themes in the same way that the social institutions arose specific forms of production of the industrial revolution. You will find that this approach, this development of the virtual institutions will be one in which there are different relationships between the producers and the users. I accepted the idea that the Virtual Library is genuinely an innovation, not only in terms of the hardware, but in terms of concept, because I believe it is at the edge of the development of these kinds of social institutions that will result from the information revolution. You must not confound the information revolution with computers, we must look beyond the information revolution in terms of institutions that will develop as a consequence of it.

The second issue that has occupied my thinking and has to do with my acceptance of the Virtual Library is the concept of information being a global public good, and the need for the systems to insure equity in the availability of global public goods. Nations, by definition are not the guardians of global public goods, and it is the interconnectedness of the virtual marketplace for information that may guarantee the preservation of equitable distribution of such public goods. Nations are not competent to guarantee the availability of global public goods, so we have to look at different institutions to do so.

Many of the institutions that have been set up to guarantee the availability of global public goods are under threat. Those who have read what is happening in Seattle now will understand the threat under which these institutions are being put. I am predicting that these social institutions such as the Internet, through its interconnectedness will turn out to be the real guardians of global public goods. A friend of mine, Ilona Kickbush, used to present the idea of health being a global commons, and I have said elsewhere that institutions, with the concept of the Virtual Library are akin to the global commons. Those here who are sociologists will remember Harding's theory of the commons, which simply put says that if you have a commons to feed cattle, the persons who originally put their cattle there derive the original and maximum benefits. As more people come into the commons, then there is decreasing individual benefit, and the problem is how to preserve a global commons without having it deteriorate to the extent that everybody, then, is at a disadvantage. One of the problems of the commons, which applies to the Virtual Library, is to guarantee that it is beneficial to all. The critical issues are communication and information. Research has shown that to the extent that there is good information among all the possible actors, then there is a possibility of the global commons serving all. And that is why we have this meeting. We have this meeting so that those of you who participate in the global commons, share information about the virtual space. Those of you have a stake in it will participate such that is mutual benefit to all. We have called this coordination meeting so that both users and producers of the information can be involved. The only way to guarantee that this Virtual Library is going to ensure equitable access to that global public good that is scientific technical information; is through participation and sharing among the persons involved. That is the critical issue.

I wish to persuade you with all the force that I have that you are on an exciting enterprise and you must redouble your efforts to understand what is involved in the establishment and maintenance of this Virtual Library. You must understand the challenges that are involved in the Virtual Library. It is only through understanding, dialogue and interchange that we are going to have the sustainability of this commons which I think is so critical for all of us, not only now, but in the future. Let me, again, say thank you very much for coming. Let me welcome you once again, and declare the conference officially open.