• The birth of the IPALCA Network
• The first life: Activities and disappointments
• POPIN re-appears to embrace the Web

• The rebirth of IPALCA

The birth of the IPALCA Network

In July 1987, PROLAP and CELADE held the first major regional seminar on "Population Information for Development" with funding from International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the UNFPA, the Canadian Agency for International Development (CIDA) and institutions financing PROLAP activities. Analytical documents, national presentations and the conclusions and recommendations were presented in the book Información sobre Población para el Desarrollo en America Latina y el Caribe (Information on Population for Development in Latin America and the Caribbean), CELADE, Santiago (Series E, No.33, LG/DEM/G.71) edited by PROLAP and CELADE. The initial chapter is the "design of an information strategy for the next decade", which served as the basis for seminar discussions and the last chapter (in English as well as Spanish) has the Conclusions and Recommendations agreed upon by the participants. Among the latter was the creation of a "decentralized regional network" with PROLAP and CELADE taking the leadership. The easiest first step was the design of the logo seen at the top of this page.

The first life: Activities and disappointments

Of necessity, like the POPIN network in its early days, the IPALCA Network was highly informal; a center that wished to be a member, was a member.  The Network participants, when feasible, used MicroISIS and the ECLAC bibliographic methodology with the POPIN Thesaurus and the PROLAP Bulletin for making the work known. Over the years from its birth until around 1993, funds were available, through a larger project of CELADE funded by CIDA and some funding obtained by PROLAP, for more or less yearly meetings and some regional level activities, but very few resources were found for work in the countries.

In collaboration with other institutions and networks (particularly the Network of Networks financed by IDRC), various "IPALCA" CD-ROMs were made with the CELADE-DOCPAL database and various national databases for searching with MicroISIS, the latest of which (1996) was produced in collaboration with the University of Colima, Mexico. However, the technology of the late 1980's and early 1990's in the region did not facilitate easy communications by email and, of course, the World Wide Web did not exist; consequently, population information activities in the region tended to remain centralized in CELADE/DOCPAL and, in some countries, in one or two dominant institutions in the field of population. Furthermore, with funding increasingly scarce, the ambitious plans for cooperation elaborated at each yearly IPALCA meeting evaporated in time for the next one.

POPIN re-appears to embrace the Web

The spread of the Internet around the mid-1990's and the re-creation of the United Nations Global POPIN around 1993 gave an impetus to population information activities. While POPIN during the late part of the 1980's and early 1990's had ceased to have significant functions, under the new leadership in 1993 it boldly hooked itself to the Internet via the Golpher in time for the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, and now conducts POPIN efforts mainly through the Web.

The last meeting of IPALCA was held in 1993 in Santiago by PROLAP and CELADE to discuss the new Internet-based technologies and CD-ROM in light of the then incipient efforts of the reborn POPIN. The recommendations included the sending of population information produced in the region in the national centres to Global POPIN for placement on its Golpher, work which was to be coordinated by the information center, CIMAL, in Santiago of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Again no funding was found and the early state of the technology limited the effectiveness of this effort. A few years later, small grants by POPIN to a few Latin American population information centers helped them with the creation of their own Web sites (e.g., PCP, CENEP, Alternativa and CELADE). However, these and other Latin American and Caribbean Web sites were individual efforts, although some identified themselves with the memory of IPALCA.

The rebirth of IPALCA

In 1998 another opportunity arose for a reincarnation of the IPALCA Network.  With UNFPA funding from Global POPIN, CELADE held 3 Workshops for population information producer institutions without Web sites to train them to design and create Web sites for their own centres using simple What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) software (Microsoft Front Page98) so that substantive professionals can create and maintain a simple site with little or no knowledge of the HTML language. The results of the Workshop, in effect, constructed the framework for the IPALCA Network to rise again, this time with technology in its favor. It was agreed to:

• Work towards an IPALCA information system (distributed database). Even if each producer places their information on the Web, it will not be easy to locate specific Latin American and Caribbean population information through the world-level search engines, since the number of hits is usually large. Therefore, it was agreed in principle that there should eventually be a "meta-site" which would index all the materials on the cooperating sites and permit searches of the distributed database. The vocabulary used might be taken from the POPIN thesaurus or the POPIN Dictionary of Demographic and Reproductive Health Terminology, with the later more probable since only the French version of the thesaurus seems to be available on the Web.

IPALCA home page

Latin American and Caribbean Demographic Center (CELADE)
Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC)
Casilla 179-D, Santiago Chile
Fax: (562) 208-0252  Tel: (562) 210-2002
email: djaspers@eclac.cl