Open Forum aims to use the democratic potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to promote sustainable development and human rights in the region. Organization works on strategically positioning ICT tools – Internet, TV, mobile, telephones and community radio – to:

•	Develop knowledge connectivity through traditional and emerging media.
•	Build ICT assisted communication opportunities and capacities at grassroots.
•	Create ICT based information services and products for development interventions.
•	The purpose is to voice the concerns of the poor and marginalised and help improve their quality of life while impacting pro-poor policies.

Open Forum believes that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) present an inter-related holistic framework to sustainable development and here civil society has a critical role to play in building communication opportunities and enhancing capacities of communities. Towards this end Open Forum has pursued a concerted MDG-focused programme through its offline and online platforms, policy recommendations, knowledge sharing, and capacity building strategies with multiple stakeholders and partners. Translating the Open Forum’s overall mission of harnessing the democratic potential of the internet to promote human rights and sustainable development into its current strategy, Open Forum spells out its mission as “Voicing the voiceless”. Open Forum’s new operational strategy is to position ICTs strategically to advocate for inclusive and pro-poor ICT policy; enhance partners’ capacity to communicate and advocate for affirmative policy change and public action; voice the voiceless through grassroots communication; and, channelise communication for development.

Open Forum’s programme in the first five years has indeed contributed to the growth of development content on the web. Open Forum’s efforts were only comparable with the World Bank’s development gateway that had by 2003 initiated country gateways in all five south Asian countries. Open Forum’s partnership model proved to be very limiting as one of the criterion for recruiting partners was based on their online presence. The efforts to graduate many key development NGOs online through Open Forum’s training programmes also faced limited success rate as only a handful out of the 986 and odd NGOs trained on ICT tools have constantly produced online content. On the whole, OWSA’s existence in the first four year’s of its existence proved very successful in its visibility among the NGO groups. However, Open Forum was also successful to bring up major policy change in the country on the basis of its advocacy model.