Dr.
PETER KNIGHT PhD., B.A.
Peter Knight is an economist, training strategist, and e-government specialist with broad international experience in distance education, e-government, telecommunications reform, electronic media, training strategy/evaluation, international banking, foundation work, teaching, and research. He has extensive high-level contacts in Africa (especially South Africa), Latin America (especially Brazil and Peru), and Eastern Europe and Asia (especially Russia).
He holds a Ph.D. in Economics
from Stanford University and undergraduate degrees in Politics, Philosophy and
Economics from Oxford University (UK) and Government from Dartmouth College
(US). Before
joining the private sector, Dr. Knight led the Electronic Media Center at the
World Bank from (June 1994-February 1997), and before that for six years was
Chief of the National Economic Management Division in the Bank's Economic
Development Institute (EDI), now called the World Bank Institute. His World
Bank career spanned over 20 years, with more than eight devoted exclusively to
work on Brazil. He became the World Bank¹s Lead Economist for Brazil in 1987.
Before joining the World Bank in 1976 he held positions at Cornell University,
the Ford Foundation (based in Lima, Peru) and the Brookings Institution (where
he worked on studies of Latin American economic integration in collaboration
with research institutes in most Latin American countries, including Brazil and
Peru). His dissertation research was conducted in Brazil. In 1997 he co-founded
Knight-Moore Telematics for Education and Development (www.knight-moore.com).
In 2001, Dr. Knight founded and a
Brazilian IT corporation, Telematica e Desenvolvimento Ltda. (www.tedbr.com)
in Rio de Janiero, and within
seven months was named to the Telecommunications and Information Technology
Council of the Associacao Comercial do Rio de Janeiro. He has worked and lived in
Brazil for many years beginning in 1967-68 when he did his dissertation
research on export expansion, import substitution and technological change in
Brazilian agriculture and taught macroeconomics at the Brazilian Center for
Training in Economic Development (CENDEC).
His work on Brazil for the World Bank included leading pioneering studies on
poverty and basic needs, macroeconomic analysis of financial systems, and
economic stabilization (the Cruzado Plan). All resulted in reports published by
the World Bank, and two were translated into Portuguese and published as books
in Brazil by Brazilian publishers. His latest book, coauthored with
three Brazilians, e-gov.br a proxima revolucao brasileira was published by Financial Times Prentice
Hall/Pearson Education do Brasil (Sao Paulo) in 2004 in Portuguese.
Translations of key parts of the book are available at www.tedbr.com/projetos/e-dem.br/e-gov.br-english.htm.
This is perhaps the most comprehensive study of e-government at the national,
state, and municipal levels for any country. Dr. Knight also writes regularly
in Portuguese for the Brazilian financial sector magazine Banco Hoje, mainly on topics linking information and
communications technology with economic and social development. He has
consulted on e-government and distance education for the state governments of
Rio de Janeiro and Paraná and conducted lectures on these topics at academic,
research, and business institutions in Sao Paulo.
Dr. Knight has also lived and worked in Peru, where he was responsible for developing and monitoring programs of the Lima office of the Ford Foundation in economics and in agriculture (1971-74). There he conducted research on new forms of economic organization developing in Peru and on technology adoption in rural areas by small farmers in Cajamarca. In 2000 he and his partner Prof. Michael Moore worked with a team in Peru's Ministry of Education and with World Bank staff to help prepare the Second Peruvian Education Quality Improvement Project (MECEP II). The rural distance education component had two sub-components. The largest and most technologically complex component provided for secondary education with the support of video and print materials (in the pilot phase), with an increasing use of satellite delivery of video over the next three years, starting with standard analog video, and moving toward an increasing use of digital television signals with return feed of telephony, fax, and data (Internet) using VSAT terminals beginning in the year 2001. The use of a VSAT hub at the Ministry of Education and VSAT terminals around the country in what is called the Huascarán Program finally began in 2004.
His most recent work in Peru, conducted in March-April 2004, was leading a multinational team of six e-government and telecommunications specialists (including three Brazilians) that prepared a major report entitled Improving Government Capabilities in Peru through Enhanced e-Government and Broadband Connectivity for the National Office for Electronic Government and Informatics in the Office of the President of the Council of Ministers (ONGEI/PCM). The report made findings as to how ONGEI/PCM could best promote and regulate government agencies to broaden and deepen the range of e-government services they offer, extend broadband connectivity to the district level at the lowest possible cost by July 2006, and suggestions for leadership and consensus formation to implement the recommendations of the e-government and connectivity assessments if they were accepted by ONGEI/PCM.
Dr. Knight has conducted two studies for the UNDP. In 2001 he led a 3-man team conducting a feasibility study for Pakistan's Virtual University, which is now operational (www.vu.edu.pk). Most recently, in November/December 2004 he conducted a feasibility study for an e-learning system for Bahrain's Civil Service Bureau.
Dr. Knight has published extensively in various languages, including Portuguese and Spanish (see attached full CV for a complete list of publications). He is a member of the Board of the Journal of E-Government, and has extensive contacts in the e-government circles, especially in Brazil, where he was a speaker at the last Public Informatics Congress (CONIP) in June 2004 (he participated in the previous two CONIPs), and Peru. He is also a non-Bank member of the World Bank's e-Development Services Thematic Group, participating in and organizing videoconferences and other events in this field.
Dr. Knight's clients include The World Bank; Inter-American Development Bank; International Monetary Fund; EzGov; Science Applications International Corporation; Stanford Research Institute/National Science Foundation; US Department of State; UNDP, Pakistan; UNDP, Bahrain; Presidencia del Consejo de Ministros del Peru (via USAID-financed Proyecto Crecer contracted to Nathan & Associates); and several Brazilian government agencies and private organizations. His World Bank experience, in addition to his extensive work on Brazil, includes producing 15 documentary television programs/videos, helping develop the infoDev program and manage some of its first projects, and developing economics training programs in Africa and transitional socialist countries. He also participated in the team writing the 1980 World Development Report and held several positions in central policy units and. One of them involved reviewing all Bank work on Brazil, Mexico and a group of West African countries.
Dr. Knight speaks French, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, and English and is a US national with a Brazilian permanent resident visa
Copyright 1998-2008 Hellerstein & Associates
Please send your questions or comments to judith at jhellerstein.com Hellerstein & Associates.