WSIS was organized in order to “address the need to harness the potential of knowledge and technology for promoting the goals of the United Nations Millennium Declaration and to find effective and innovative ways to put this potential at the service of development for all.”

WSIS is an intergovernmental process with participation from a wide range of stakeholders. The Summit has been organized in two phases.

Phase I (Geneva, November 2003) – developed a Declaration of Principles and the Plan of Action, which raised awareness and structured a global vision on enhancing the importance of information and communications technologies (ICT) in support of development.

Phase II (Tunis, November 2005) - allowed stakeholders to assess progress made towards implementing the Plan of Action, and to document concrete steps taken towards creating a just and inclusive information society.

FAO’s input to WSIS includes:

• A Concept Paper in preparation for Phase I and Phase II that highlighted the work of FAO, and especially the World Agricultural Information Centre (WAICENT), in relation to the WSIS agenda;
  


• Advocacy to ensure that the importance of the “rural” dimension was highlighted in the principal
WSIS documents through participation in the High Level Summit Organizing Committee (HLSOC) and the Preparatory Committees (PrepComs) for Phases I and II;


• Promotion of the Programme and its activities and outputs associated through press releases, parallel events, and exhibition stands;
  


• Provision of evidence of the outputs of the Programme as part of the “Stocktaking” exercise related to the WSIS Action lines, specifically in the areas of (a) access to information and knowledge, (b) capacity building (c) ICT applications: benefits in all aspects of life (e-agriculture) and (d) cultural diversity and identity, linguistic diversity and local content.