(This invitation may be of interest here as well... MG -------------------------- I've been noticing an interesting trend recently which is the increasing inclusion of bottom up, often community or telecentre (and by inference Community Informatics (CI)) based strategies and approaches being included as part of national ICT policies. In many cases these are part of an overall inclusion of ICT for Development (ICT4D) elements in the respective national policies while in other cases they are linked to national commitments concerning e-government/e-participation or local economic development or other special thematic areas. Among the countries where such developments seem to be occurring are Brazil, India, Hungary, Jordan, New Zealand, Nepal, South Africa, and I'm sure there are many many others. In this context the Journal of Community Informatics http://ci-journal.net has received interesting papers documenting CI developments in several of these countries. My thought is that it would be very useful to have a wider collection of this information compiled in one place as for example, in a special issue of JoCI. So what I'm looking for at the moment are indications of interest in preparing papers for publication in JoCI looking at the implementation of Community Informatics or Community Informatics friendly national policies/programmes or alternatively assessments of national programs/policies from a CI perspective. As well if there are specific documents or reports that deal with these issues (hopefully not more than one or two years old) perhaps it would be possible to link to these along with commentaries from CI folks with experience in those countries. Also, critiques of national programmes/policies from a CI perspective would be useful in this context (anyone in Australia, Canada or the US want to do a paper talking about the retreat from community friendly national ICT support programmes or anyone want to do CI based critiques of any of the top down national ICT4D strategies that the "e-readiness movement" has spawned)? I'm seeing that the papers could be formally academic ones (for peer review) or structured as more practice oriented Notes from the Field or even Points of View. Since JoCI is an electronic journal there is no length or number restriction, so the more the merrier. Let me know privately off list if this is of interest to you and feel free to pass this along as well. Best, MG Michael Gurstein, Ph.D. Editor in Chief: Journal of Community Informatics http://ci-journal.net