When USAID announced the Supply Chain Management System (SCMS) program in October 2004, it was slated to be the largest AIDS program ($7 billion) in the world. USAID finally awarded the contract in September 2005 to a consortium headed by JSI and MSH. What information is now available online about this enormous effort?

• A Google search on "SCMS" lists one reference in the top 100 results;
• A search on "SCMS" at USAID returns one document, the September press release;
• There is a program web site that looks to have been last updated five months ago (the award press release);
• No outside web sites link to the program site according to Google.

USAID promised full public transparency for SCMS. How is it possible than a huge, vital effort involving 15 major partners is essentially invisible?

The Global Fund has launched a new online forum area to promote global dialogue about AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. The forum, called "Global Fund Partnership Forum", has ambitiously launched in four languages and seeks partner input in Global Fund priorities and policies prior to meetings in Durban in July.

Online forums offer an obvious and efficient vehicle for stakeholder feedback. Kudos to the Global Fund for launching this initiative.

The World Community Grid, a network of volunteers that donate their computers' processing power when not in use, has announced a new project to search for an AIDS vaccine. Based on the successful SETI@Home project, the FightAIDS@Home initiative will screen through drugs to find those with the right shape to block HIV protease. In order to participate, volunteers download a customized screensaver which accesses and processes data while the computer is not in use.

The website also offers an active forum area in which participants discuss the project.

First noted in coverage by CNET.

Kudos to President Clinton and the Clinton Global Initiative for completing earlier this month a series of meetings culminating in $1.25 billion dollars of commitments from governments, non-commercial groups and businesses to combat poverty. The Initiative takes the excellent step of requiring participants to make written pledges that will be reviewed in one year.

It is puzzling that the Initiative apparently doesn't make these commitments public. While press releases trumpet the $1.25 billion figure, the Initiative web site lists only a small number of commitments to date. With transparency comes accountability. The hope is that the Initiative will become more transparent soon around these commendable commitments.

We've commended previously the IAS for the Future Directions Project, an online consultancy seeking global input into the design of the 2006 International AIDS Conference in Toronto. Since launch, the project has gathered about 75 public suggestions on conference design, most thoughtfully presented, representing voices from many countries. The IAS should distill good ideas from this feedback. What would be useful would be feedback from the IAS itself. The Project is currently unidirectional, with participants providing ideas. There is no public comment from the IAS, nor an idea of timelines, nor next steps. The "e-mail update" facility doesn't appear to have been used. A site blog with periodic updates could turn a public monologue into a true dialogue, make the exercise even more effective, and serve as an early model of the interactivity the IAS seeks to promote in its conferences.

After posting the previous note about PEPFAR restrictions I received a correspondence from a knowledgeable colleague who felt my link to the PEPFAR web site was pointing to the wrong place. She suggested that I should in fact point to the site of the Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator.

On that site, they link to a PEPFAR information page. I, however, have always assumed that the main PEPFAR page is the USAID page titled "The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief" (although USAID is only a part of PEPFAR). A Google search on PEPFAR will take most people to a different PEPFAR Fact Sheets page at USAID (or to the South African Embassy page on PEPFAR).

Perhaps it is time to simply build a useful site at http://www.PEPFAR.gov?

The International AIDS Society has launched an online consultation program in connection with the 2006 Toronto conference. The Future Directions Project seeks participant input regarding priorities and changes for future international AIDS conferences.

The Project is commendable for two reasons. First, few public sector organizations seek input through online forums of this nature, although there are many reasons to do so. Second, the IAS' web efforts in Bangkok were not impressive, in part due to lack of interactivity. The use of online forums now signals that the IAS is bringing more sophistication to its efforts.

We commented in September on the hours and effort required to establish a policy blog such as AIDS Matters. At that stage we had about 800 monthly visitors from 40 countries. At this point those numbers have grown to approximately 4500 monthly visitors from 80 countries. Linking web sites have grown from 16 ot 75. The site still requires several hours per week of attention.

Based on these numbers, are policy blogs worth it? Assuming AIDS Matters indeed reaches thousands of people, and assuming it continues to grow, it seems hard to argue against the investment.

For groups considering policy blogs, I'd again point to the excellent vaccine blog maintained by Owen Barder at the Center for Global Development as a good example. Also feel free to contact us about policy blogs if you are considering one for your organization.

Information technology plays a huge role in targeting education and treatment for HIV-positive people. Unfortunately, only a minority of those people has access to medical professionals that can provide case-specific advice. There may be an important intermediary, however, that can facilitate communications: the cell phone.

Cell phone usage in developing countries is growing quickly. 90% of South Africa, for example, has sufficient coverage, with a quickly growing subscriber base. Individuals or health professionals with cell phones can interact, via text messaging, with sophisticated databases that can guide treatment, prompt compliance, or provide surveillance capabilities. One "open source" effort in South Africa is described in Wired News. Other commercial efforts are also underway, such as those by Voxiva. It is easy to imagine a future when the most important communications technologies combatting AIDS are effected via the cell phone.

Yahoo Groups is the largest community site online, with tens of millions of users each month.  What is being said in Yahoo Groups about global AIDS?  A search returns 105 groups, 15 of which have more than 100 members.  The majority of the communities are used for organizing AIDS programs, although the largest communities are information-focused.  The 15 largest Yahoo Groups addressing global AIDS are:

stopglobalAIDS (1207 members)
This list is the national newsletter and forum for the Student Global AIDS Campaign.

art4development (1078 members)
Art4Development.Net(Arts For Global Development Network) is an online initiative that forms a worldwide network of individuals and organizations who use or advocate the use of arts to address social, economic and educational development issues collaboratively. You may find more information about this initiative at www.art4development.net. The Art4Development.Net E-Community became active in May 2003 and since then the forum provides digests with news, discussion topics, and announcements on arts ... more

Aids-Africa (647 members)
Aids-Africa brings together a multisectoral community of Africans and other countries to raise and jointly address health-related issues, particularly HIV/AIDS in Africa. When 2,500,000 people in Africa will die of Aids this year, we are not talking about a “cause” — we are talking about an emergency, a global humanitarian emergency. The facts about Aids blow your mind. They also break your heart. Imagine if a third of the kids at your local primary school were Aids orphans. That's a reality in ... more

We have complimented the Global Fund in the past on efforts at transparency. Two new offerings provide further examples of these efforts.

First, the Global Fund has instituted a "Price Reporting Mechanism" in which grant recipients post purchase prices of various products (including drug purchase prices). The Aidspan site offers a nice summary of this new offering. We're not aware of other donor agencies providing this sort of data.

Second, Aidspan reports that the Global Fund will be launching an "early warning system" describing grants that are unlikely to be renewed without corrective action. The hope is that publicizing difficulties will provide motivation to correct problems. Again, we're not aware of any other donor agency providing this sort of information (the more common approach is to hide problem grants).

What do NPR, CARE and Medscape have in common? They care enough about the AIDS debate to advertise their information on Overture or Google, the two leading "pay for keyword" services online. Unfortunately, not many groups share their passion. Only 24 groups advertise on Overture for the word "AIDS". This compares to 68 for "diabetes" or 89 for "acne". The top "bid" for "aids" is $.50, compared to $2.79 for "diabetes" or $3.00 for "acne". Without pushing this analysis too far, it is fair to say that there are relatively few organizations trying to increase their influence in the global AIDS debate with any sort of aggression -- or else we'd see more advertising. It's perplexing given that global AIDS is in great part an "information problem" (policy formulation, education, prevention efforts, monitoring & evaluation, etc.), yet organizations aren't turning to the web as actively as we would hope.

The largest global AIDS program by far, the US "President's Emergency Program for AIDS Relief", represents $15 billion over the next five years, but currently has almost no information online. The best PEPFAR site today -- limited mostly to fact sheets and press releases -- is a subsite at the Department of State.

Presumably the leadership of PEPFAR at the Department of State is creating a new Web presence. (Hint: check the Global Fund site which does a reasonable job.) In addition to the normal fare ("about", "media", "resources"), here are six items that would be highly valuable on a new PEPFAR site:

• Grants to date: bits and pieces of this information are available now online, but there is no comprehensive list. PEPFAR officials in Bangkok frequently cited totals, but could we see breakdowns?


• RFPs and prospective grants: Just today, for example, applications were due for a $150 million "twinning" program which will be funded principally through PEPFAR. These are significant efforts meriting publicity.


• Small grants: Many PEPFAR contractors will run small grant programs of their own -- a comprehensive list would be terrific.


• Contact information: Where and Who is PEPFAR?


• Blog: It would be nice to have a running Web log from an articulate, senior PEPFAR official (such as Mark Dybul -- I'd link to him, but there isn't much online -- here is Google). PEPFAR needs a "voice", and a blog would assist.


• Feedback forum: PEPFAR has a major PR challenge (as anyone in Bangkok will testify). One strategy is to ignore the problem, another is to attack it. Allowing user feedback that can be responded to in a public online forum would help greatly in identifying issues, addressing them, and demonstrating transparency.

I've spent enough time in DC to know that this list is politically difficult -- but if other grantmaking organizations can provide information of this sort, why not PEPFAR?

Although Technorati now tracks nearly 3.5 million blogs, there is relatively little discussion of global AIDS in "blogspace". Here are five blogs that discuss global AIDS issues:

JID News: covering AIDS policy and treatment issues in Asia;
World Economic Forum: policy updates from the WEF, many involving AIDS;
Keep a Child Alive: a campaign site involving ARV treatments for children
Radio Left: a politically involved site commenting on AIDS policy;
Health Policy Special Interest Group of the System Dynamics Society (name change?): a "best resources" site involving AIDS and other health topics.

This list really should be 50 items long, or 500 (and I hope soon will be). If anyone has additional resources to list, please post comments here.

The recent XVth International AIDS Conference in Bangkok represented a remarkable aggregation of the best and most current information on AIDS: keynote presentations, nearly 200 sessions, 100 satellite sessions, hundreds of exhibitions, 2000 posters, community activities, workshops, off-site events, and much more.

Some useful information from the conference has made it online. The IAS (with Medscape) has posted a search tool for abstracts, there are two sources of news (newsletter and Kaiser reports), and there are summary rapporteur's reports (that are quite nicely presented). (I'm sorry to not link to these resources: the IAS throws up both technical and legal barriers to linking for some unexplainable reason.)

Nearly all of the conference information, however, is not online and apparently never will be. This is a great loss. The conference represents tens of millions of dollars of cost to hold, the IAS has most of these materials already in electronic form, and much of it would be easy to post. Posting materials involves getting permissions (which most will readily give) and covering costs (which should be easy) and the incentive to better serve conference participants and a larger global community (which apparently isn't there at this stage).

My recommendations to the IAS for 2006 would be to do two things: first plan for the first "electronic conference" that seeks to put as much as possible online (through the main conference site). Second I'd choose a vendor to build a parallel site in which participants and exhibitors can post and discuss conference issues as they see fit. This parallel space could potentially grow to be as important as the conference itself with proper planning, some resources, and necessary dedication.