The broad roles of the partner organisations in the joint INFO2000/infoDev activities are that UIA, DA, WCMC provide the information content, communications technology and management expertise; AIDE /IEEP and NMS are advisors in their specialist areas of expertise. The project partners are all established institutions and have been in existence for a minimum of 14 years. Their regular sources of funding vary, but are reliable and reasonably predictable in the medium-term.

The infoDev components of the activity will be carried out by staff of the UIA and DA, with necessary support (funded by other means) from the other working partners in the INFO2000 consortium (WCMC, NSM and AIDE). The activities are a natural extension of both organisations’ current programme areas and staff competencies; project activities will interface smoothly with their normal operations. Experienced and appropriately qualified personnel are available. The activities are coordinated by UIA, overall responsibility resting with its Assistant Secretary-General, Anthony Judge. Senior staff responsible for management of work are Nadia McLaren (Environmental Consultant and Editor of Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential) for UIA and George Varughese (sident) for DA.

Between two to four supplementary staff will be employed, either as supervised trainees or expert consultants, for certain portions of the work. The table on the following page summarises principal staff roles/expertise and personnel.

Non-infoDev funded partners:

AIDE / IEEP will provide advice on environmental policy, the requirements of the project from the viewpoint of professional users, and a "professional end-user" test site for interactive editing.

NMS provides research and advice on electronic publishing, product design and marketing.

WCMC provides its substantial experience in collating and managing major databases on the conservation of species, ecosystems and protected areas.

infoDev funded partners:

The UIA is the initiator and coordinator of the INFO2000 project "Conservation" and will maintain this role with infoDev’s INTERCEPT project. It has for over two decades integrated and managed information, provided by international organisations of all concerns and colours, on global problems and the actions society is taking to alleviate these problems. Its wider competence is as a clearinghouse for information on international associations and their activities worldwide. UIA contributes these data, management expertise and further research. It also provides CD-ROM capability and its competence with virtual reality structures for complex networks.

DA fosters the new relationship between people, technology and environment interactions needed to attain the goal of sustainable development in a developing country context. DA’s specific competencies to be contributed to this project are transdisciplinary research (notably through off-site interactive editing of UIA data), technology development and application and developing country experience. Through its DAINET programme, DA is currently developing full email service provision to the independent sector in India with the following characteristics:

• Incremental upgrading of clients from snail mail and e-mail to full Internet connectivity;
• Providing hands on training to users;
• Providing a seamless link between the non automated, conventional communications and automated (Internet and e-mail) users;
• Providing facilities of search and retrieval for the databases on development and environment;
• Assisting participation on various newsgroups through the listserv hosted at DA headquarters;
• Linking to major libraries in the country.