The Internet and related technologies are having a profound effect on social, economic and political institutions and processes worldwide -and this effect has consequences for democracies and democratic development. Examples abound of uses of the Internet in the democratic context from assisting in overthrowing or circumventing autocratic regimes to promoting advocacy, government transparency, and accountability in existing or emerging democracies. Citizens, politicians, civil servants, civil and non-governmental organizations, companies, institutions of all types, and large state and private sector bureaucracies are employing technologies and the Internet to communicate, provide and access information, and become more efficient-often resulting in enhanced and strengthened democratic processes and more effective governance. Strengthening and encouraging the use of such technologies in democratic development has thus become an imperative spanning a broad range programming areas for NDI.

In fact, everywhere that NDI works democracy practitioners and activists are using new technologies to improve their access to information across borders and issue areas, enhancing their efficiency and effectiveness by deploying a range of computer and ICT-related systems that support their work.

Increasingly, in response to the needs and requests of our partners NDI has been implementing programs with information and communications technology (ICT) components that support our programs, target democratic institutions and/or support democrats in general. In 2001 NDI created a new division within the Institute that formally incorporated ICTs as a tool for NDI's democracy programming.

Examples of the types of ICT programs that NDI typically conducts in emerging democratic countries include developing legislative tracking systems and interactive websites for parliaments or NGO partners, creating Internet-connected parliament research and training centers, providing IT strategic planning and infrastructure rollout assistance to partner institutions, building databases to support election observation missions and forecast election results, and constructing general network and communications systems in the local government, legislative and civil society areas. NDI has also conducted a range of programs with ICT components including web-based collaborative networks and on-line databases of democratic development material such as NDI's Access Democracy database.