In such cases, I generally try to avoid the usual showcase of “best practices” and go instead to what causes made possible those “best practices”. It’s a tougher option, as it often implies a trade-off from the “wow factor” towards the “what-is-this-guy-talking-about factor”. On the positive side, I pursue the trade-off from the “let’s-copy-these-actions” towards “I-know-why-they-worked-and-I-understand-how-to-design-them-myself”.

On the other hand, the representatives of the Spanish Red Cross were choosing their President and the members of the boards of directors of different regional levels. That was a very strong reason to shift towards more strategic issues instead of strictly practical and punctual applications of social media and nonprofit technology.

Thus, the structure of my presentation was explaining:

1. What caused the transition from an Industrial Society to an Information Society;
2. how people were leveraging their access to information and communication technologies for activism and self-organization;
3. what was being the impact like for institutions, especially those that represented people’s interests: governments, political parties and non-governmental organizations.

In a nutshell, the main message was that the Internet, cellphones, social networking sites, etc. are not a matter of how you inform your stakeholders, how you communicate with your volunteers or how you convince your donors, but a dire change of the game-board that requires serious strategic reflections and decisions in the very short term. Evidence shows that many institutions will either go through a deep process of transformation or will simply disappear, and NGOs are included in the set.

More information and downloads

• Browse the slides in Spanish.
• Download the slides in Spanish (, 20MB).
• Browse the slides in English.
• Download the slides in English (, 20MB).
• Bibliographic reference.

The posters are, actually, the usual poster and the corresponding academic paper explaining what the poster is picturing. Below can be found the two papers and the two posters for anyone to download. The posters are a set of 8 slides in A3 size plus a first slide that maps how to build the puzzle so it all ends up with the actual A0-size poster.

Paper:
Towards a comprehensive model of the digital economy

Poster:
Towards a comprehensive model of the digital economy

Paper:
Policy-making for digital development:
the role of the government

Poster:
Policy-making for digital development:
the role of the government

Gender Evaluation for Social Change
Chat Garcia Ramilo

Why gender evaluation? Evidence showed that ICT4D did not integrate gender considerations, though evidence also shows that effectiveness and impact of development projects increases if gender is integrated in design, planning and evaluation.

Gender Evaluation Methodology

Based on participatory action research.

• Testing and development of a gender evaluation tool for ICT4D projects: teleworking, ICT training projects, telecenters, etc.
• Capacity building in gender evaluation: telecenters, rural ICT projects, ICT policy processes and localization (of content)

Findings and challenges

• a gap in capacity for analysis and evaluation of gender-based inequalities
• weak focus on gender in project design, implementatoin and policy formulation
• how to develop evaluative thinking about gender and ICT4D, and use it to shape new gender practices within the ICT4D sector? how to make it in a participatory action research framework?

How gender makes a difference in ICT4D and access to the Information Society:

• Comparative access to infrastructures by women and men are determined by income levels
• Capacity affected by literacy and education levels
• Services affected by relevance of service, mobility, safety issues
• Governance affected by opportunities for participation in policy processes

These aspects have to be taken into consideration if one is to design an ICT4D project in a specific place. The design of this project will sensibly be different depending on how gender is affecting the former issues.

But gender is not only about “women issues”, but also about social and cultural variables, how do the interplay of these variables impact on women and men.

The Pallitathya model

The Pallitathya help line Blangladesh center is a help desk service which consists in five basic components:

• local content
• multiple channels of information and knowledge sharing
• intermediation or infomediation, human interface between information and knowledge-base
• ownership
• mobilisation and marketing

This project’s desing helped women with specific queries (related to gender) or with lower literacy rates to reach a knowledge that, had the ICt4D project been designed in a different way, they would most probably have missed.

Philippine Community e-Centers

Telecenters in peri-urban areas. Though in absolute terms there were not much difference in usage rates amongst women and men, difference could be seen in how the telecenters were used and what values they assigned to them. For instance, women used the telecenters as ways to meet people, as ways to socialize. There were also differences in patterns of access and utilization in relation to age, education and income.

Fantsuam’s Zittnet Service — Nigeria’s first Community Wireless Network

To increase female uptake of the Internet, especially in rural areas.

Coverage of signal was not the issue, but hardware and high costs of bandwidth. Still, even if coverage was good, women had to travel to the centers, and this was a barrier for uptake, as also was low literacy levels.

Maybe it’s not about a wireless network, but embedding this project into a wider one aimed to reduce poverty by supporting rural female farmers. Besides, there is a clear preference towards voice communication over written, and SMS over the Internet.

SOS SMS

In distressful situations, women can send an SMS that is received by 5 institutions. Besides reporting of harassment and direct action by the authorities, these messages can be aggregated and thus infer patterns and profiles where harassment and distress are more likely to happen.

Why ICT4D (for women)?

• ICTs can provide access to resources and contribution to income, knowledge, etc.
• Indirect impact of ICT4D and access to income, knowledge, education, etc. on self-confidence and self-esteem. ICT4Ds have an impact on empowerment, in changing relationships, in agency.
• Emergence of new roles (of women).
• Changes in relationships

Why gender evaluation in ICT4D?

• Evidence of change in gender roles and relations can be used for more gender sensitive policies and programmes.
• Evaluations contribute to developing benchmarks and indicators for gender equality in ICT
• Developing capacity in gender evaluation (and gender planning) is a key contributing factor in mainstreaming gender in ICT for development

Q & A

Q: What’s the general procedure for such projects? A: There are mentors that capacitate evaluation facilitators through workshops, and then an evaluation plan is developed together with all the members of the partnership working on the project. Online spaces are created (e.g. with Ning) to support interaction and network creation.

Assumpció Guasch: It’s easier to work about gender evaluation if the promoters — especially governments — of ICT4D projects already have some gender awareness. Another issue is knowing the ICT Sector and the Industry, what’s the legal framework they’re facing. And it is also important knowing what are the technological issues that are crucial in these projects.

Q: How important is the role of capacity building? How is sustainability dealt with in gender projects? A: To be able to have some impact, capacity has to be built. As part of the capacity building strategy, handbooks and toolkits are built so that a certain levels of capacity and impact can be achieved quickly. Empowerment is, arguably, a measure of sustainability, as the more empowered the people the more self-replicable the model. But projects are not that easy to translate from one place to another.

Cecilia Castaño: Besides direct, action and empowerment, a gender focus has also some other derivatives: a sense of listening to “unheard” people, creating community and raising awareness about gender.

Comment: mobiles vs. Internet? People like Barry Wellman state that mobile phones help strengthening the strong ties (e.g. family), while the Internet helps broadening your network of weak ties.

Ismael Peña-López: can the Gender Evaluation Methodology be transposed to other collectives (e.g. immigrants, lower income collectives, etc.) so that to better design ICT4D projects? I guess that in gender-based projects there is a part that is strictly related to gender, but another part that deals with identifying and managing inequality and difference. Inasmuch there is a “managing the difference” issue, I wonder whether some gender-based projects could be just slightly adapted to identify and improve other projects aimed to bride other “differences”: educational, income, etc. Methodology, handbooks and toolkits, etc. could be then split in two parts: identifying, managing and evaluating the differential factor; and then focusing in the specific differential factor: gender, education, age, income, disabilities…

A: Gender is not only man vs. men but is much more complex: education, income, etc. So, it really makes sense to address the gender issue in itself. A gender approach does not mean that the project is focused towards the e-development of women, but just trying to include a new variable in the project. And there’s gender everywhere, so it maybe does not make a lot of sense thinking about “taking gender out” of the equation.

Assumpció Guasch: some projects in Extremadura (Spain) have tried to apply gender methodologies into e.g. age issues. The difference between gender and other issues is the pervasiveness of the former.

More information

• Association for Progressive Communications’ Gender Evaluation Methodology
• The Pallitathya model
• Fantsuam Foundations community Wireless internet network access project called ZittNet
• Fantsuam Foundation
• Zittnet
• SOS SMS

So, is there no reason to be optimistic about mobiles in Africa, then? Well, it depends. Let’s bring some data in for the rescue:

Or, graphically:

Source: ITU ICT Eye

Data don’t clearly show the distinction between developing and developed countries, though it can be roughly inferred at least by (sorry for the rude simplification) looking at Africa and Asia (with mostly Low and Lower-middle income economies with very few exceptions — see the World Bank’s Country Classification). The big highlights are:

• Developing countries have less cellphones per capita than developed ones
• Most phones in developing countries are mobile and digital
• The compound annual growth rate of mobile telephony is higher the less saturated is the market

A logical comment about the last statement would be that it’s natural that less penetration leads to higher annual growth rates. Well, it is not that logical: on the one hand, there are countries with penetration rates above 150% (United Arab Emirates, Macao, Italy, Qatar or Hong Kong), so the concept of “saturation” is a tricky one; on the other hand, there are plenty of other commodities and capital goods (e.g. cars or washing machines) that not even dream of reaching these growth rates.

That said, one need to be cautious when stating that there are “many” cellphones in developing countries: this is true in absolute terms, but most untrue in relative ones. But reality shouts out loud that this is changing at an overwhelming speed and that innovation happens at a terrific pace.

The services are still unaffordable for many people in low-income economies, leaving them yet to realize the potential of ICT for economic and social development

This is quite evident by most data available, so my comment will be headed not on the fact of the digital divide, but on affordability itself.

According to my own research (again, more to come soon), after analysing 55 models that depict digital development and include more than 1,500 indicators, if we let aside the analogue indicators (e.g. GNP), 37% of the digital indicators were depicting the state of infrastructures, of which only one sixth were measuring affordability.

The rationale behind this argument is that not only most people cannot afford ICTs, but, according to what we measure, we can infer that most measuring tools — which are normally built to measure the impact of policies and strategies and projects — simply do not care or care little about affordability. If people cannot afford ICTs and policy-makers and decision-takers (amongst them development institutions) do not care about affordability, we’ve got a problem. A big one.

In developing economies innovative use of ICT services is changing people’s lives and providing new opportunities

Not that I disagree with this statement — have I already cited the Economic Benefits of ICTs? — but there is a shade of meaning to be made here. I increasingly think that ICTs are not a driver of inclusion but a driver of exclusion. In other words, people have to move (or develop digitally) to remain in the same place. ICTs actually do not create new opportunities, but the absence of ICTs or digital illiteracy do decrease the number of opportunities available to those on the wrong side of the digital divide.

See, for instance, the next figure that I presented — among other places — in my speech Digital students, analogue institutions, teachers in extinction and that is based on Manuel Castells’ Materials for an exploratory theory of the network society and Informationalism, Networks, And The Network Society: A Theoretical Blueprint:

Mobile phones have captured the market in developing economies [...] Seventy percent of mobile phone subscribers are in developing economies

The first part of this statement is absolutely true and people in developing countries — citizens or development agencies working in the terrain — know it perfectly. See, for instance, Mobile Web for Development or Innovative Uses of Mobile ICTs for Development.

But the second part is definitely misleading, as the next chart is:

Stating that 70% of the total mobile phone subscribers are in developing economies says little about the relative weight of such penetration. According to the World Bank itself, there are 6 billion people alive today: One billion people live in developed countries [while] the other 5 billion live in developing countries. Which is to say: 83.3% people live in developing countries. Compared with 70% of total cellphone subscribers, there still is a gap of 13.3% in favour of developed countries. And if we take into account international agencies, development organizations and tourists (…and troops) — that buy domestic SIM cards to have local prices — the unbalance is even worst.

I am not saying that news are bad — which are not —, but that they are not as good as they might seem at first sight.

More information

• World Development Indicators 2009: downloads
• World Development Indicators Provide Benchmark Amidst Crisis: press note
• World Development Indicators file at the ICT4D Wiki

Concerning Information and Communication Technologies, the report devotes 5 pages to comment the subject (see chapter 5, States and Markets, pp.265-269, 92.5 KB). The main statements of this section are as the following, which I’ll be commenting one by one.

ICTs used in e-government projects can reduce corruption

This is a statement I fully agree with. I already wrote about this in my article entitled The end of paper, open gates to on-time democracy (not about journalism) and there is plenty more evidence about what ICTs can do for transparency, accountability, democracy and human rights; and and efficiency and efficacy in the provision of public services.

Some ICTs, such as broadband, can contribute to economic growth

Again, see Economic Benefits of ICTs.

We must not, nevertheless, forget how broadband is unevenly adopted in the world:

The problem is not, actually, that broadband distribution is unbalanced, but that the trend seems to reinforce this fact. As the International Telecommunication Union report Measuring the Information Society – The ICT Development Index 2009 shows, the broadband divide in the World has increased and the irruption of the mobile broadband has only worsened this unequality:

Good government policies and regulations are creating competitive ICT markets, increasing access to ICT services for people everywhere [...] Many countries that have created a competitive market environment for ICTs have more people using ICT services

This is, to my understanding, where long term and broad impact ICT4D strategies should be headed. Thus, there is an urgent need to change the socioeconomic and political frameworks regarding ICTs and the Information Society in general.

My own research shows (more about this soon) that the role of the government has a huge impact in the probability (that is: it is a cause) of achieving higher levels of digital development. To be more specific, the following aspects highly determine digital development several orders of magnitude higher than other issues:

• Economic Incentive Regime
• Government prioritization of ICT
• Importance of ICT to the government vision of the future

The well known success of mobile telephony worldwide has been achieved through high demand, low-cost technologies, and market liberalization

Complementary to what has already been said, macro-level policies have to be accompanied by grassroots and micro-level strategies and projects. The first one that comes to my mind is the — in my opinion — successful FrontlineSMS:Medic, building on the acknowledged flagship of SMS for development projects Frontline SMS. In a recent — and most insightful — talk I had with the promoter of Kiwanja, Ken Banks, we both agreed that “scalability” in the developing world might not mean the same thing as in developed countries, which follow market-led rules, but could be closer to the concept of “copy-and-spread”. In his own words in Time to eat our own dog food?: we need to think about low-end, simple, appropriate mobile technology solutions which are easy to obtain, affordable, require as little technical expertise as possible, and are easy to copy and replicate.

(continues in World Development Indicators 2009: a commentary (part II))

Some info about the course:

• Website of the course, with more information about the speakers, fees, registration, etc.
• Facebook Event
• There will be translation to and from Spanish and English

PROGRAMME: NETWORK SOCIETY: SOCIAL CHANGES, ORGANIZATIONS AND CITIZENS

Day 1 – Wednesday 15 October

Introduction
09h00 – 09h30 : Opening
09h30 – 10h30 : Juan Freire – Presentation of the course
10h30 – 11h00 : Café

Citizenship in the Network Society
Chairs: Marc López
11h00 – 12h30 : Carol Darr
12h30 – 14h00 : Tom Steinberg
14h00 – 16h00 : Lunch

Organizations in the Network Society
Chairs: Genís Roca
16h00 – 17h30 : Miguel Cereceda
17h30 – 19h00 : David Weinberger

Day 2 – Thursday 16 October

09h00 – 09h30 : Juan Freire – Presentation of the day

Communication in the Network Society
Chairs: Antoni Gutiérrez-Rubí
09h30 – 11h00 : Andrew Rasiej
11h00 – 11h30 : Café
11h30 – 13h30 : Diálogo Josu Jon Imaz & Miquel Iceta
13h30 – 16h00 : Lunch
16h00 – 17h30 : Enrique Dans
17h30 – 19h00 : Gumersindo Lafuente

Day 3 – Viernes 17 October

Innovation in the Network Society
Chairs: Ismael Peña-López
09h00 – 10h30 : Carlos Domingo
10h30 – 12h00 : Ethan Zuckerman
12h00 – 12h30 : Coffee break

Closing
12h30 – 14h30 : Round Table: Freire, Darr, Steinberg, Weinberger, Lafuente, Domingo, Zuckerman, Dans
14h30 – 15h00 : Closing

e-STAS is a Symposium about the Technologies for the Social Action, with an international and multi-stakeholder nature, where all the agents implicated in the development and implementation of the ICT (NGO’s, Local authorities, Universities, Companies and Media) are appointed in an aim to promote, foster and adapt the use of the ICT for the social action.

Last reflections

It’s a pity that I couldn’t take notes on the last session of the event, where conclusions from the different round tables and workshops where read: I was on the stage and just had not the chance to type.

Summing up now is way too difficult. I can just say that this is one of the events you cannot miss, especially because “everyone” is there and the people you meet, their reflections, their insights, etc. are richest for your own knowledge development.

But there is a growing feeling that I have regarding how people look at ICTs. On one hand, there is more and more the consensus that users do have to be taken into account in the design of the projects, tools, initiatives, programs, etc. that are addressed to them. Whatever their origin. If it ever made sense, now it’s pretty clear for almost everyone that governments have to listen to the citizenship to build e-government, e-administration or e-democracy initiatives; that nonprofits do have to have the participation of their beneficiaries (and all other stakeholders such as volunteers) when spending their budgets in whatever; even that firms need to listen to the customer and the society at large and put them in the equation when engaging in any sort of project.

On the other hand, I worry about the ironically appearance of a new tier of actors in this ICT-adoption game. Thus, the usual donor-receiver or expert-beneficiary scheme has been altered this way:

• Late adopters: the ones that do not use and/or do not know about ICTs and their application
• Heavy adopters: the ones that use them intensively and try to replicate their own path elsewhere
• Digerati: the ones that are aware (or think so) of the potential benefits and costs of ICTs, and deeply reflect and think about the implications of ICT use and the impact of the Information Society in development and life in general

Surprisingly, heavy adopters and digerati — formerly the same thing — are not necessarily the same people. I’m progressively seeing heavy adopters that simply can not put themselves in the place of others or are not aware of the implications of what they are doing (teens vs. social networks, privacy or intellectual property rights is often put as a good example of this; developed countries’ users vs. developing countries’ potential users is another one). And, indeed, there is a growing plethora of digerati that can provide theoretical grounded evidence and advice but are not heavy users and, sometimes, not even users at all (yes, scholars and blogging is a pretty clear example; international development agencies vs. developing countries another one).

The problem is that they both need each other: heavy adopters need to take their time to think, “thinkers” can’t think of what they do not know by heart. And they all need to engage in the conversation with the goal of their thoughts and actions. Which leads me to the next question.

On access as a dependent variable

Dani Matielo asked on a comment about Raul Zambrano’s statement that we had to take access as a dependent variable and no longer as an independent one.

The rationale behind is the following: even if there still is a lot of work to do to provide access to billions of people, two aspects seem to have more relevance:

• Access for the sake of it has proved to be completely wrong. Only purpose-driven access (for what services, for what content) can succeed, so we need to first define what for, and then design how.
• But how access takes place (e.g. with a desktop, with a mobile phone) will also determine and be determined by the uses, the services… and the overall development of an Information Society

This is why access is no more an exogenous thing, an independent variable of the equation, but just a variable that depends on the addition of other ones (culture, the economy, labor, democracy, etc.) that define what the goal really should be: the development of the Information Society depending on each one’s framework.

• More efficacy, based on knowledge-intensive projects
• Usefulness must drive the implementation of ICTs, not hype
• ICTs for a better nonprofit performance and for better project results
• Learn from ICT adoption in developing countries and apply them in developed ones
• ICTs challenge the traditional design of the nonprofit sector
• Capacity building a must for nonprofits to benefit from ICTs
• Usability, accessibility, content, sustainability
• e-Governance to enhance citizen engagement

Networked cooperation

• A necessary response to the Network Society
• Shift from hierarchy to horizontal interaction
• Human networks boosted by technological networks
• Knowledge sharing
• Project-centered cooperation, enabling inclusion
• Multistakeholder partnerships
• Decentralized networks for collaboration, while keeping autonomy
• Centralized networks still useful for certain actions
• Networking requires (network) managing skills
• The network must be properly designed, in transparent ways, making its goals explicit, lead it through confidence
• Network design and building as investment in research, development and innovation

ICTs in the Spanish Development Cooperation

• Great advances in the last times that draw an optimistic future
• Networking to seek harmonization between organizations
• Quality fostering
• ICTs to achieve leadership/excellence in development cooperation
• Effort to share both experiences and capabilities

More info

• + Ideas para la Cooperación [more ideas for Development Cooperation]

Carlos Mataix: some reflections about the design and management of organizational networks in cooperation

• Networks are open and can help to reduce transaction costs between nodes, provided there are common standards, confidence, etc. in these transactions
• Networks are complex, but a good environment to help ideas grow
• From (classic) strategic planning towards a paradigm or leadership based on values, and networks should be lead by such values
• Generative networks have distributed power, then again challenging the traditional ways of leadership and organization government: the commitment to enter a network is both a commitment outwards and inwards.

Ana Moreno: ICTs in the organization

ICTs both integrated in daily work and integrated in projects.

Change management in the organization a must.

Lessons learned

• Shared designs
• Bottom-up
• Capacity building, competences

The emergence of networks offer a new role for firms to enter the world of development cooperation in brand new ways.

Martín Jerch

Strong commitment to open content, procedures, etc. within the Spanish International Development Cooperation Agency, of strategic importance when having 60 offices spread all over the world.

Eduardo Sánchez

• ICTs to drastically cut down costs of development cooperation
• We have achieved a somehow good level, in a quantitative point of view, of resources for development cooperation, now we have to build quality projects based on these available resources. Accountability, transparency
• Participation, engagement as part of this transparency and quality goals
• Nonprofits are means, not goals, and ICTs can help in this, in reinforcing the role of ICTs as canalizators

Paco Prieto

• The role of technological centers and telecenters as a node of the development cooperation network
• New ways to do projects
• New ways to assess projects.

Comments from the audience

What about North-North cooperation? Why not using ICTs to coordinate nonprofits in developed countries and/or help smaller nonprofits so they can achieve big successes just like big nonprofits do. [by someone at the CRUE]

Paula Uimonen & Manuel Acevedo: ICTs in development cooperation vs. ICT4D. The table agrees that, of course, there’s a difference and that probably the former should come first, then the latter, and to do so (to do the former), nonprofits have to knock at the politicians’/funders’ door so they put it in the development agenda (read budget). Well, I couldn’t agree less. I think newest ICTs, especially the ones that the Web 2.0 brought in, are challenging way more the organizations’ design, the (lack of) foresightedness of their leaders, and the commitment with real openness of their goals and functioning. And this is, by no means, dependent from highest policy making and even budgeting.

More Info

• Guía para la incorporación de las TIC en la Cooperación Española (339 Kb)
• 1@ + tú = 1€

The role of ICTs to educate about sexually transmitted diseases prevention, especially to educate educators.

An important aspect of such education is to ease the communication between the physicists and their patients.

Goals

• Train educators about these diseases… and how to educate about them
• Sensitize youngsters about prevention
• Mobilize policy makers

The main successes are, above all, the speed and spread of information and training, with a strong focus on prevention, which is where information can actually make a difference.

Tools: a platform with three axes (1) content (2) spaces for debate (3) online assistance

María Jesús Medina
Cybervolunteering at Iníci@te Programme

[note: in this session, cybervolunteer = ICT volunteer, not online volunteer. See my Online Volunteering Taxonomy for more details]

Volunteers experts in ICTs to help users in telecenters.

Volunteers are trained about attitudes, techniques, the environment they are going to work in, the target beneficiaries of the several activities, etc.

The public-private partnership between the regional administration (coordinating the project) and the local administrations and telecenters a must for success.

Olga Fernández Berrios
Reflections, tools and experiences about cooperation 2.0

Training for nonprofits about technology for nonprofits, with a strong use of Web 2.0 applications, such as feed aggregation, metablogs, wikis, instant messaging, VoIP, microblogging, online volunteering, etc.

Blogs in the field: use of blogs to raise advocacy and transparency by writing within and from a development project.

Blogs at the headquarters: same, but from the nonprofit headquarters (no need to be really there, but the focus)

Directories of projects and institutions.

Metablogs: Global Voices Online

Planets: feed aggregators, automatically updated once have been set up. The information comes to you.

Wikis: Where nonprofits share their information, handbooks, procedures… and with the possibility that this information can be updated/build collaboratively.

Caveat: some of these initiatives are not top-down, not institutional, but raised by individuals, sometimes as a personal answer (critique?) to the bureaucratic slowness and lack of flexible response of some organizations.

Social networks: some of them using richest media, such as The Hub.

We should shift from talking about technology to talking about the uses of it. The Web 2.0 allows this shift, as technological solutions come more and more irrelevant.

Free flow of information: RSS, copyleft or open licensing, syndication

Slides:

Vicente Carlos Domingo González
humania.tv

To enable media diffusion, especially video, for nonprofits and development issues.

Their role is to act as a new information agency to cover events, projects from nonprofits. It runs on a volunteering basis coming from the media sector + a technological platform to broadcast video.

The goal is not only to broadcast, but have audience too, thus the commitment with high-quality low-band requisites of the portal.

José Manrique López de la Fuente
Opportunities of Mobile Web in developing countries

Success bridging the digital divide

• The will, motivation to access the Net
• Material access
• Personal capacity, competences
• Access to advanced uses

The importance to generate local business possibilities based on ICTs.

Part of the material access and personal capacity interaction is about the ease of use, that should be kept clear in all ICT4D projects.

Mobile Solutions

• Specific applications for mobile phones: maximum integration with the device, but device diversity can generate incompatibilities
• Voice and/or SMS based solutions: simple and working, interoperability could be a pro or a con
• The Web as platform: rich, standards are mainstream

Mobile Web

• Advantage: Integration of existing solutions
• Advantage: Technologies based on open standards
• Problem: user experience, diversity and cost in some places
• Problem: low-tech devices that cannot access the web, mobile carriers not providing access

Carolina Moreno Asenjo
Global Networks and social engagement: ICT integration strategies at Entreculturas

Goals

• Improve quality in education, at a global level
• Foster advocacy through ICTs
• Fight the “loneliness” of the teacher in his classroom
• Cut down costs in training and knowledge sharing
• Create a link to catalyze network building

Leverage communities of practice and communities of learning with ICTs.

Challenges

• engagement of the beneficiaries
• funding
• logistics when setting up the hardware and technological platform
• motoring, coordination
• sustainability

Communication in Alegría Activity

Mobile (connected) classrooms.

Eduardo Pérez Gutiérrez
Geographic Information Systems in Educational Centers for Regional Development

Goals: Develop web-based GISs for diagnose and monitoring of educational centers for regional development.

To fight lack of education in remote, rural areas, governments supply these regions with instructors, that are not actually teachers but have a broader profile, socially speaking, but a lower profile as an educator. So, their social profile is good to interact with the community but the quality of teaching might not be as good as expected.

The GIS should help cross data about the reach of an instructor’s activity, the profile of the population reached by this instructor, etc. and then help the decision-making about the instructor, his activity, the way he spends his budget, etc.

Benefits: focused investments, allows centralized administration, transparency and monitoring, enables confidence, provides context and helps strategy design.

Ismael Peña-López: Introduction

see my position paper here

Paula Uimonen: Is development cooperation prepared?

No. The structure is too bureaucratic.
But the network logic is horizontal, cross-sectorial, transversal, non-hierarchical.
But it seems that the international arena is working for a more networked development cooperation sector.

Shafika Isaacs: Are organizations prepared to network?

It depends: they’re all in an evolutionary process.
There’re more and more organizations working in the field of ICT4D.
And a rising awareness on the issue.
Big leadership behind ICT4D fostering.
Common agenda that enabled collaboration and networking, especially withing the civil society, with an inflection point at the WSIS.

Vikas Nath: What is networking and how can this be achieved?

People join networks for two reasons: (1) more benefit than the cost of joining it and (2) multiplier effect that a network is increased by one member.
There’s no optimum design for a network: the network will shape itself according to its needsl.

Conclusions from my group (the four people above)

Objective facts

• Network culture assumes the character of the leading person/organization, of the dominant personalities
• Networking is about “we”, and ceases to exist when focused at the “I” — not a consensus on this part
• The Network Society is here, and is here to stay
• In developed countries — and their institutions and organizations — infrastructures is not the issue
• Big funding agents foster collaboration through compulsory partnerships
• Network participation implies engagement with the other (which might be different from you), boundary crossing

Criticism

• Where there is power there is resistance, and resistance is also organized in networks (Foucault)
• We lose to dream, we ain’t dreaming enough, we “think small”
• Lack of e-awareness
• Competition for funding

New concepts

• The contradiction that the network compromises the individual with the collective will
• Networks can bring disruptive creation
• I exist because I am on the Internet
• The Network is becoming more “real” than reality itself, we should think digital

Intutitions

• Network creates a more human society
• The power dynamics are designed by the network leaders
• The network is cold and has no emotions
• Big nonprofits will act as hubs, and distribute work to smallest nonprofits and individual online volunteers

Optimism

• The social and cultural aspects of ICTs will promote networking
• We have potential to make positive changes, because we are the network,and networks have potential to make significant changes
• Web 2.0 enabling more collaboration and bottom-up initiatives

Control

• Resistance, which leads to lack of change
• Endorsement, that leads to progress
• Impossibility to keep tight control
• Flexibilize organizations
• Focus on what value you are adding to the network
• Be a statue sometimes and not always the pigeon

General conclusions (from all groups)

• Networks are here and are powerful
• There’s evidence of change and shifting towards networking: in the society, in organizations. And there’s an evolving trend towards more networking
• Networks are catalysts, make things happen, have multiplier effects… but they have no essence on their own, they just mirror the good and bad things of the society, what works and what does not work, there’s nothing new under the (networked) sun but humans
• Strong need to enable individuals so they can work with ICTs, in networked frameworks
• Same with organizations: collective change, organizational change, reshaping according to networking needs
• We have to make networks explicit, design them, rule them, have common goals, a common agenda, managing confidence and leadership. Monitoring and network assessment is a must that comes along with network creation and maintenance.
• We should work towards inclusive networks, fostering capacities, networks that empower their nodes so they can still be a part of the network.
• The Web 2.0 is seen as a (potential) inclusion concept/philosophy/technology, an empowering one
• Caveat #1: all these conclusions are not axiomatic: there are shades, blurring edges, contradictions, etc.
• Caveat #2: this is how we see networks today, but we should also keep in mind that networks (and society) will evolve, so should these conclusions

Crisis of performance, effectiveness, results, etc. in development cooperation, despite the increasing amount of resources devoted to it.

Reasons

• Industrial way of thinking, not post-industrial. The actual development paradigm is old and not valid. We need a new, up-to-date paradigm.
• Focus on pilot projects that are not maintained after the pilot phase, so they die in the medium- or long-run.
• Short-sightedness of asymmetric internationalism: there’s more and more knowledge in the South about south issues than in the north, so don’t (you northern developed country) look at your local environment, because it does not mirror the southern reality.
• Money is an issue, but not the issue.

Solutions?

• Try a new networked, collaborative way of designing and implementing projects
• Forget about old ways of accountability and reporting mainly focused to satisfy the “needs” of the funding institution’s bureaucracy: instead, public accountability through the institutional web site, blogs, etc.
• Boost (local) leaders, people that can enable (social) changes. Horizontal leadership and social capital, again enhancing networks and (symmetric) networking

Development and ICT4D are blurring concepts that are becoming indivisible aspects of Development in general.

We’ve much focused in access to infrastructures that we didn’t realize that mobile telephony was closing the digital divide at our backs. So, how does the telecenter has to adapt to this trend and make of (a) the PC+Internet a (still) valuable tool and (b) the mobile phone a more powerful tool (as the PC+Internet is)

New cooperation models: from charity to collaborative business strategies where both partners (northern, southern) benefit/profit from ICT4D projects.

More on horizontal leadership

The assumption that you (the North) can change the world, with just one project, designed in the framework of your office, is absolutely wrong. It’s better to empower, boost the leaders that are already operating this change through their daily work, so they can have a wider and deeper reach and impact, so the social change truly happens and at a higher level.

It’s not that we have to forget about all we’ve learned through the years about development, but just forget about the asymmetry that now rules development cooperation.

Q: who’s to design ICT4D cooperation strategies?

Paula Uimonen: It makes lesser and lesser sense the North-to-South approach of knowledge and aid transfer. More and more the South is sovereign to define its own needs, and should be able to ask for help, resources and so to the North, but not to have to indiscriminately accept what comes from it.

Q: can I help you if you (country) don’t have a framework, an explicit policy to foster ICTs?

Shafika Isaacs states that in most Africa such policies do exist [focus in education], and the frameworks, even in an emergent state, they are already built and capable of processing/absorb any project or help that might come in the field of ICTs. Even more, the network to enable a knowledge exchange practice is already there, and this is the priority of Africa.

Q: can we set up ICT4D projects/agencies/development cooperation in the South?

Vikas Nath: Sure. There’s been lot of work already been done in the private sector arena, and now’s the turn for the civil society to lead the process, enabled/fostered by such cooperation. And this empowered society (private firms, nonprofits, etc.) are actually and already leading some interesting development projects, trends, paths, etc.

Q: what kind of action should design an international agency to work in Latin America to foster the Information Society?

Eiko Kawamura: first of all, have a clear map of what the local reality is like, specially describing the real needs of the beneficiaries, what do people need in communication related issues.

A huge problem in top-down initiatives is that they have embedded by default their own (success) indicators, most of them quantitative, while raising living standards, welfare, is most times a matter of qualitative perceptions… and indeed a long term issue, sometimes quite separated in time from the project itself. You might be measuring the irrelevant and forgetting the relevant.

Another problem is short-run, pilot projects that do not have time enough to (positively) effectively impact the community, while they generate financial dependences that do not take into account sustainability issues in the long run.

Random comments from the audience

• ICTs crucial for development (by a man from Angola’s government)
• The importance of capacity building and digital literacy when/besides “installing computers”
• Importance of top level commitment and policies to framework ICT4D projects
• Shift the focus from computers to education

Shafika Isaacs: right, there’s high penetration of mobile phones in Africa, way greater that computers/Internet, but removing out of the spotlight computers/Internet just because they have lesser penetration would be like throwing the baby out with the bath water. We have to work in how such different technologies can be integrated, and this means mobile phones + computers + Internet, but also radio, that has a huge penetration in Africa and is really popular.

Eiko Kawamura: Indeed, the problem with mobile phones is that they’re (still) expensive and (still) just used for text messaging, so she agrees with Shafika Isaacs about integrating different technologies so they fit different purposes.

Vikas Nath: we’re suffering a lock in syndrome in ICT4D. The lack of infrastructures and literacy does not let us think about effective uses/applications of ICTs for Development. A vicious circle. We have to break it and surely policies and government strategies is a good means to.

Manuel Acevedo: it’s important to use ICTs to do old things in a better way. But, what about trying to do new things?

Keynote speech: Manuel Acevedo
The challenges of the integration of ICTs in a networked cooperation

How do we integrate ICTs in Development Cooperation? What does “networked cooperation” exactly means?

Human Development and Network Society

Human Development according to Amartya Sen: not only “physical” development, possibilities, but also capabilities, entitlements.

Network Society according to Manuel Castells: everything (society) is structured in networks, which are indeed different from hierarchical, vertical structures.

ICTs for Development

Denning: we can describe knowledge ecosystems, using the metaphor of a garden: Knowledge cannot be extracted, we have to make it grow

Labelle: ICTs for Development:

• making access easy
• helping countries to reach knowledge economy
• enabling people

Digital Divide

• access
• capacity
• relevant content

Fostering the Information Society:

• Infrastructure
• Capacity
• Services
• Content
• Education
• Health
• Work
• Commerce
• e-Government
• Other Services
• Legal Framework
• Policies

Mainstreaming ICTs in Development Cooperation

Use it in each and every aspect of the daily work in a cooperation agency or nonprofit: design, planning, project implementation and management, communication, etc.

It, hence, implies and extensive adoption of ICTs within the organization.

Issues: special attention towards ICT integration, corporate strategies about ICT4D, specialized departments about ICT4D, ICT4D project funding, etc.

Reasons to: increase efficacy; more control about performance and autonomy; stimulator and catalytic effect, using the own organization as a sandbox; to share knowledge and good practices.

Networks for Development

1-D networks: much alike hierarchies

2-D networks: coordinated; norms very important; action is mostly planned; access to information is the priority

3-D networks: nodes are to dynamize the network; no coordinators; the functioning is ad-hoc; monitoring is periodic; knowledge creation is the priority

Development networks

• corporate
• about knowledge or thematic
• around projects
• networked projects
• open source
• created by “diaspora”

3-D networks, enabling networks, are the best fit for development cooperation

Development Cooperation needs a redesign in its architecture, shifting towards networked collaboration. And same stands for projects, not only for organizations. A shift towards putting knowledge at the center would be a must. It is important to state that the network creates a network capital, which emerges from the fact of the mere existence (and intensive use, of course) of the network.

More info

• Position paper by Ismael Peña-López
• Position paper by Carlos Guadián
• Breves ideas de Manuel Acevedo
• Slides by Carlos Guadián