The World Bank will launch its Development Gateway internet initiative on 23 July. This site is being presented as a helpful store of data, links and analysis on virtually all global issues. Unlike the Bank's own website, this one claims that all opinions are welcome and that it will be decentralised and independent. The quotes in the box accompanying this article, from a leaked World Bank External Relations Department document, expose what may be the truer Bank agenda: reaching more people with its perspectives and thereby countering the backlash against corporate globalisation.

The Bank has hired a marketing company ~ Third Level Data ~ to help promote its site. This short article explains that many of the claims made about the Gateway are misleading, and argues for a sustained anti-marketing campaign to contest it while continuing to build up independent and diverse sites on these issues.

The Bank claims the Gateway will be independent. In fact the Bank is taking most of the major decisions on the Gateway itself, before the independent Foundation charged with administering it is in place. The Bank, companies and governments have bought places on the Board for five million dollars each. The acting CEO of this "independent" body is Richard Stern, who until December was the BankÕs Vice President for Human Resources.

The Bank claims the Gateway will carry diverse perspectives, enabling all types of individuals and organisations to improve communication with one another. In fact the Gateway's structure reflects an official development worldview and downplays many issues dear to activists' hearts. You will not find site sections on inequality, climate change or transnational corporations, for example.

The Bank claims site content will be added and approved in a decentralised manner by a range of organisations. It is true that anyone who logs on can post material to the site, but the Bank is appointing the Topic Guides who can then take it off again. The Bank says these editors will be widely "trusted" individuals or institutions who will decide what material to post on the basis of its "quality." But as development is full of deep conflicts and diverse interpretations it is impossible to establish a quality threshold which is widely agreed on. Different views on what constitutes a "quality" article can be seen, for example, by comparing the World BankÕs Civil Society Engagement

Newsletter with Economic Justice News. As clear criteria cannot be found for the broad audiences the Bank seeks to reach, it seems that decisions will just reflect editors’ experiences and biases. Some very progressive people or organisations may be approached to be editors, but the benefits of contributing their talents to the Gateway rather than focused, independent sites are very unclear.

If this was to be just another bad website, it would not matter. But many people fear that this multi-million dollar initiative will compete unfairly with other sites dealing with similar issues and countries. The Gateway is trying to raise 50 million dollars and has a staff of 25, with at least double that number acting as part-time Topic Guides. Actions under discussion by various organizations include mass e-mails to the Bank and concerted lobbying of the World Bank's Board ahead of its 19 July meeting on the Gateway, as well as a "dear colleagues" letter circulating among independent researchers.

As the Bank looks reluctant to change its mind, however, the most important actions may be an anti-marketing campaign to counteract the Gateway's promotion efforts. Readers of this article can help by sending it (or a link to it) to ten of your contacts, and urging them to do the same. This is in the spirit of the internet's original intention: to facilitate horizontal communications, not knowledge hierarchies.

These issues are covered in more depth in "A Tower of Babel on the Internet: The World Bank's Development Gateway," Bretton Woods Project, April 2001, which can be found on the web at <www.brettonwoodsproject.org/topic/knowledgebank/index.html>.

See also: "The Global Development Gateway: The World Bank’s Internet `Land-Grab,’" Economic Justice News, December 2000 - <www.50years.org/ejn/v3n4/wb.html>.

The official Development Gateway site is at: <www.developmentgateway.com>.

"The External Relations Department aims to keep the Bank current by adopting cyber-campaigning approaches using the Internet and mass electronic mail responses to reply to critics and constituencies that are already doing their advocacy work online. The Global Development Gateway offers an opportunity for a quantum leap in the development community’s ability to network online, and engage with new audiences. External Relations is also exploring ways to play a more active role on the web sites of Bank critics."

"In both rich and poor countries, the intense reaction to globalization on university campuses has challenged the World Bank to find effective ways to respond to a huge new audience."

"External Affairs is developing cost-efficient ways to make World Bank knowledge central to the international academic debate about globalization and development and to raise the positive profile of the Bank. The Development Gateway will facilitate increased dissemination to, and dialogue with this community."

- from Strategic Directions for External Affairs: Facing Challenges, Defining New Opportunities, World Bank, 26 January, 2001, p. 12, p. 9