Update - what's in a name?

A long time without posting - but the site was specially set up for events in the WUF in Vancouver in 2006. Since then, the issue has not gone away. Unfortunately in many cases a major impediment is the willingness or ability of governmental institutions to pay staff sufficiently to attract and keep good staff.

In the meantime, the terminology has moved on in some circles. "Capacity Development" is the term favored by UNDP, who have been doing a lot of work in the area. The difference in concept is explained as "capacity development" assumes that there is existing capacity to be built on, while "capacity building" does not. This is rather an artificial difference, because most of the use of "capacity building" is in contexts of working with existing capacity. What matters is that useful information can be found under both headings.

http://capacity.org/ is still a very useful site.