Amongst others, there are four important issues that are guiding this reflection:

1. What has the impact been so far.
2. How has the techno-social scenario changed since they were initially born: increasing adoption of ICTs, importance of broadband, mobile Internet, etc.
3. How has the socio-economic scenario also changed, i.e. the economic and debt crisis in Europe.
4. According to the preceding points, what should be done in the future and how, that is, how public policies to foster the Information Society should be designed in matters of universal access/usage.

In this framework, the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) organized an Expert Workshop on Measuring the Impact of eInclusion Intermediaries in Europe: towards an impact assessment practice?, that took place in May 3-4 in Seville, Spain, and to which I was invited to participate and to contribute with a position paper.

My position paper should verse on the future of telecentres in Europe in 2020, and it was supposed to be what I call a “grounded opinion”: grounded, because it is based on both personal/professional experience and lots of readings; opinion, because, all in all, I was asked to provide my own point of view, what would I do was I to design the policy that would deal with e-Inclusion Intermediaries.

Position paper: eInclusion Intermediaries in Europe: horizon 2020

State of the development of the Information Society

I believe that the development of the Information Society has come not to a dead end, but near a point of stagnation:

• The industry and governments are most of the time still thinking in terms of infrastructures: how much, how are they managed, what is the regulation to bind them and what is they state of usage (usually in percent of saturation).
• Users only care about a huge supply of content and services (for whatever the use) and that these run on affordable infrastructures.

This is, of course, a simplification. But a peek at what governments are measuring and what media are broadcasting gives us an idea of the tremendous bias towards the preceding aspects of the Information Society.

The problem with this scenario is that it has no future, as policies centred in infrastructures are targeting an almost non-existent problem:

• In general terms, physical access is becoming a minor issue (remember: Europe 2020). It already is, especially if we do not take into account as an indicator “households with Internet access”, but “people covered by access to Internet”.
• The former point is due, in part, because many last mile issues have been solved (e.g. with mobile Internet, e.g. with public Internet access points such as telecentres, libraries, cybercafes, schools and many other venues).
• The supply of content and services is buoyant.

The missing gap: capacity building

On the other hand, the two growing problems remain unaddressed by public policies:

• A stable share of ‘refuseniks’, that choose not to use the Internet for several reasons.
• A growing share of citizens that do need digital skills and literacies that they lack or have to acquire when and if possible.

These two gaps have two main consequences:

• An ICT sector which a shortage of supply in terms of highly qualified workers and human capital in general.
• A quality of usage of the Internet characterized by inefficacy and inefficiency, and that many find will be (already is) the core of a second digital divide, deeper that the digital divide of access and more difficult to fix because of its (human) nature.

State of the question, the missing gap and e-Inclusion Intermediaries

How do e-Inclusion Intermediaries face the state of the question and the missing gap? In my own (grounded) opinion, either they change or they will perform badly.

1. Telecentres (understood as not-for-profit and for-development-aimed) will suffer from economic resources shortage, because of the economic crisis and because of Internet penetration. Cybercafes (understood as for-profit and comercially-aimed) will suffer from social sustainability shortage, because of the economic crisis (what solutions are you providing?) and also because of Internet penetration.
2. Most e-Inclusion Intermediaries have traditionally provided or recently began to provide services related to e-skills. The problem is that those skills are becoming much more complex than simple techonological skills and, indeed, it is a set of digital literacies and capacities that is required. Are eI2 responding to that?
3. In the same train of though of literacies, what we have found in our conversion from an Industrial Society to an Information Society is that we have done quite good in learning or appropriating technologies an to applying/adapting them to our usual processes. But we have definitely failed in improving most processes and socioeconomic transformation is but a good bunch of “good practices” that we all know but cannot replicate.

A forecast/proposal for e-Inclusion Intermediaries

• The telecentre should become an eCentre, a centre that is not a physical place, but a reference resource that can actually be located in a specific location, or embeded within an organization. Telecentres should be insourced in other institutions: in a firm, in a civic centre, in a library, in a government, in an NGO…
• Complementary to the former statement, many of the telecentre functions can and should be outsourced. There is evidence that the probability of survival of a telecentre is linked to it being part of a telecentre network: share knowledge, share resources, share contents and services. Outsourcing can take the shape of a core+franchises or a flat network. But reinventing the wheel should be forbidden.
• If we believe in the insourcing/outsourcing pair, partnerships come naturally: e-Inclusion Intermediaries should complement a shared project with their added value, while other partners should be left to do the same. Partnerships with governments in the field of sheer “for development” inclusion or fostering e-government; partnerships with the private sector to leverage the expertise in the field and sell it for the sake of economic sustainability; look out for firms to be included as targets of eI2.
• Of course, purity should be abandoned: no more either telecentre or cybercafe. It’s about e-Centres and it is about to provide knowledge. The function is what matters and not the means: the function is part of the mission, the means are part of the business/operating plan.
• But the function is not fostering ICTs, the function is Inclusion. The ICT centre has to become a Centre-on-ICT-steroids. It is the community — the target — what matters, it is about supporting neighbourhoods, schools, entrepreneurs, living labs… not about supporting ICTs. But we do it with ICTs because we believe in its huge potential.

Some bibliography

Based on my own experience

Bibliography on the impact of telecentres

Before entering the analysis, please note that the NTIA actually provided the reasons for not using broadband at home, while PIP measures the reasons for not using the Internet in general. As the difference between broadband and dial-up at that time (October 2009) was circa 5%, and now (August 2011) being 3%, we believe that comparisons, though inaccurate, do indeed provide good enough insights for a quick analysis.

The first chart shows the reasons that non-users state for not using the Internet, measured in percent of non-users. Thus, the chart pictures the share or weight that each reason has in relationship with other reasons for not using the Internet:

Bearing in mind the caveat on the slightly different variables measured by the indicators, we can easily see that the barriers to access (usually lack of infrastructure, affordability and personal disabilities or lack of appropriate/adapted infrastructure) have decreased drastically in less than two years (Oct 2009 to Aug 2011). Yes, there still is an important 30% of non-users that state that the reason for not using the Internet is infrastructures, but the reason has decreased. More competitive markets, the deployment of infrastructures in remote areas and public access points sure are the main causes for this decrease.

On the contrary, lack of skills has sky-rocketed and multiplied its weight by 13%. It is possible that this figure is not actually true, and that the 3% in 2009 is not gathering non-users because of capability reasons (this is most likely — more on that later).

The interesting thing to notice, though, are the steady “Lack of interest” and “Other” reasons, which almost add up to 50% of the people that do not use the Internet. Besides their high share, it is worth stressing their steadiness or even slight increase. There is a constant share of refuseniks that will not use the Internet whatever the government, the market or their peers do to convince them to do otherwise.

The second chart shows again the reasons that non-users state for not using the Internet, but this time measured in percent of the total of the population. Thus, the chart pictures the share or weight that each reason has in relationship with the whole, then giving us an idea of the aggregate number of people that state a specific reason for not using the Internet:

The good thing to note here is that most reasons are decreasing. This is just natural as the overall adoption of the Internet is increasing. So, by construction, one would expect just that.

The not so good thing to note is that the amount of people stating they are not skilled enough to use the Internet does increase. Even if this figure can be (or is) distorted by the different things that data are depicting, it is consistent with other data and observations around, namely (1) the increase of a second-level digital divide caused by different levels of digital skills and (2) the increase of the amount of people that access public access points (telecentres, libraries, cybercafes) not because of the infrastructures — which most have at home — but in seek of advice or help.

Before this scenario, which is not new, a change or shift of public policies to foster the Information Society should take place. Not that policies aimed at more, better and cheaper infrastructures should be abandoned (or yes, that is another debate), but the provision of digital competences to the citizens should be having an increased if not a major role in public policies.

And, of course, it is about much more than putting computers in the classroom.

Bibliography

• It is not a one-to-one laptop programme, but an inclusion through education programme. Laptops really come into the programme as a tool.
• The core of the programme is the community, the neighbourhood, the classroom, and not technology. It is social capital — and not technological capital ‐ what is built as a priority.
• They run a honest, thorough, yearly evaluation which highlights the best achievements, identifies the weaknesses and feeds the programme back with rich and useful information.

One of the main commitments of the programme is to create resources for the educators involved in it, including the yearly publication of a book. The latest edition of the “Ceibal book” has already been published as El modelo CEIBAL: Nuevas tendencias para el aprendizaje and I have contributed to the book with a chapter.

My chapter, Educación y Desarrollo en un mundo de redes (Education and development in a world of networks) is a reflection on how ICTs are radically changing what we understand by teachers, educational resources, and infrastructure. It actually is a slight adaptation of the homonymous materials that I had recently prepared for UNDP’s Virtual School.

The resulting chapter is the result of the contributions of some other people with which I am in much debt. Giovanni Guatibonza and Amagoia Salazar more than supervised the first edition for the UNDP, providing very good guidance and suggestions, which I all add to the text. Marion Ikwat is an astonishing editor and proofreader that did not rest until the final text was utterly spotless. Last, I want to thank Graciela Rabajoli not only for inviting me to be part of the book, but for all the information on the programme that she has always fed me with.

Downloads:

Peña-López, I. (2011).
Educación y Desarrollo en un mundo de redes.

Báez, M., García, J. M. & Rabajoli, G. (Comps.) (2011).
El modelo CEIBAL: Nuevas tendencias para el aprendizaje.

Bibliography used in Educación y Desarrollo en un mundo de redes

CEIBAL books

CEIBAL evaluation reports

Even more important, other institutions not specifically aimed at promoting ICT usage — firms, schools, universities, governments… — have set up “ICT spaces” to help with the adoption of ICTs within their walls.

Those ICT spaces are usually run by a person or a team with a singular collection of skills: they are managers, they are computer engineers, they are social workers, they are communicators, they are educators… all at the same time.

During much of year 2011 I had the luck to be working with the Catalan Government and its Institut Català de les Qualificacions Professionals (ICQP) [Catalan Institute for professional qualifications, part of the Catalan Ministry of Education] to try and define what were the competences, skills and, very important, training required to run an ICT space.

There were five of us on the team: two of us — Isidre Bermúdez Ferran, from Fundación Esplai, a major telecentre actor in Spain, and I — provided experience on the field, while three others — Xavier Delgado Alonso, from the Catalan Institute of Social Services, and Manuela Merino Alcántara and Bru Laín i Escandell, from ICQP — provided all the methodological background.

Working sessions were really intense and what was learnt from the whole process was incredible. Now, the result of our work has been made public for public scrutiny and can now be downloaded from the ICQP website, both in Catalan and Spanish. Comments are really welcome.

Qualificació professional Dinamització de l’Espai TIC
(266 KB)

Cualificación professional Dinamización del Espacio TIC
(440 KB)

Presentation: Javier Nadal, Executive Deputy Chairman of Fundación Telefónica

There are few technologies, if any, that have been so quickly adopted as Information and Communication Technologies, in general, and mobile telephony, in particular.

And it is very worth noting that this adoption has not happened in the same way around the globe. Different regions, cultures, communities have and are using mobile telephony in many and very different ways. Thus the need to do thorough research in this field, and see how mobile telephony can empower and develop communities and individuals.

Manuel Castells, sociologist, director of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and author of the book.

The three things people value the most are Health, Education and the ability to communicate. And if we consider Education as Communication, we can narrow the priorities to just Health and Communication.

That is why ICTs are such a powerful phenomenon, with pervasive and fast rates of penetration and adoption. And the more important is a phenomenon, the more the need to perform research on it, to analyse it, understand it and, if needed, affect its path.

The book is not a descriptive one, but an analytical one, taking data from Telefónica and CEPAL-ECLAC to be able to perform econometric regressions.

Main conclusions of the econometric analysis:

• There is a proven, statistically significant, systematic, positive effect of mobile phones upon economic growth, especially in poorest countries and especially in poorest regions.
• Inequality is neither increased nor decreased because of mobile technologies. Mainly because adoption rates are so high (circa 80% in general) that any strata of society does have access to mobile telephony.
• There is an impact of mobile phones decreasing poverty.

This last statement is especially proven by the qualitative analyses performed in the book (see below the case studies), which show:

• A positive impact on employment. As many people work autonomously, thanks to mobile phones they can get jobs/works done without the bounds of more rigid organizational structures.
• People find employment more quickly thanks to disintermediation of the job market.
• Increase in security — and the feeling of security — of people: distant communication reduces exposure to different kinds of violence and hazards.
• There is an increase in the autonomy of people, but at the same time increasing the connectivity amongst people and increasing the feeling of community, of a common identity. But not any autonomy, but “secure autonomy”.

If we take the context of schools, it is clear that the educational system is lagging behind the evolution of technology, and educators and policy-makers should definitely rethink their teaching strategies and leverage the power of mobile techonology and mobile (i.e. ubiquitous) access to knowledge [I personally disagree with Castells that laptops at school should be replaced with mobiles: I believe the problem is not the device, but the educational model].

Discussion

Ismael Peña-López: despite the high rates of adoption and, thus, the lack of impact in quantitative terms on inequality, what happens in qualitative terms? Are we witnessing evidence for the knowledge gap hypothesis? Castells: absolutely. What we see is that technology adoption is not affecting inequality, but social inequality does affect unequal technology adoption (e.g. poors not accessing broadband). Nevertheless, the inequality of mobile adoption, or the inequality in communications, is not as important as socio-economic inequalities, and that is a very important fact.

Q: how is it that people spend relatively so much in communications instead of “food”? Castells: the main reason is because it is worth it: mobile phones have an impact on employability, for instance, and very important too, on socialization, which, at its turn, has an impact on employability and inclusion in general. That’s why: communications are of crucial importance nowadays and do have an impact on each and every aspect of our lives.

Q: is there a different impact depending on e.g. gender? Castells: there is, but not because of the gender factor, but because the gender factor already made a difference in the “real” world. For instance, in the Peruvian Andes markets are set up by women. Thus, the impact of mobiles on those women was higher than on men, but not because of their gender, but because of their important role on the local economies.

Book Review

The book performs a thorough and deep analysis on how mobile technologies have had an impact on Latin America, both at the economic and social levels. After two initial chapters depicting the framework and context, the book goes on estimating the quantitative impact of mobile telephony on economic growth and poverty alleviation, then moving onto mobile usage in rural areas, social businesses for e-inclusion, technology appropriation and usage among youth.

The table of contents is as follows:

1. Introduction: Mobile communication and development in Latin America in the XXIst century; Roxana Barrantes Cáceres, Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol, Sebastián Ureta.
2. Socio-economic context and ICT diffusion in Latin America; Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol, Andrea Molinari, Javier Vázquez Grenno.
3. Estimation of the contribution of mobile telephony to growth and poverty alleviation; Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol, Javier Vázquez Grenno
4. Mobile telephony in rural areas: case study in Puno, Peru; Roxana Barrantes Cáceres, Aileen Agüero, Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol.
5. Mobile telephony and inclusive businesses: Proyecto SUMA in Argentina; Hernán Galperin, Andrea Molinari.
6. Appropriation and usage: case study in Brasil; François Bar, Francis Pisani, Carlos Seabra.
7. Mobile youth culture in an urban environmetn: case study in Santiago de Chile; Sebastián Ureta, Alejandro Artopoulos, Wilson Muñoz, Pamela Jorquera.
8. Synthesis of results and conclusions; Manuel Castells, Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol, Hernán Galperin.

More information

• El móvil ayuda a crecer en América
• La telefonía móvil contribuye más al desarrollo económico en América Latina que en los países de mayor PIB

My session was called Volunteering from home, the office or the train: online volunteering, social networking sites and smartphones and was preceded by an excellent conference by Luis Arancibia Tapia, where he described how society is changing and how this crisis we are suffering since 2008 is not your usual crisis, but most likely a point of no-return.

That very same point — change and dire transformation of the society — is the one I used to base my speech on. Instead of providing zillions of examples of online volunteering, I tried to explain why is now possible to volunteer online, how are people behaving on the Net and what is the (different) nature of online volunteering and online citizen action.

My conference had four parts:

1. The change of framework: what has been the impact from an industrial to a digital society.
2. The direct macro-impact of that change: how have some concepts and practices in development cooperation been radically transformed due to the digitization of information and communications.
3. The indirect micro-impact of that change: how have some personal practices in development cooperation, volunteering and citizen activism changed, especially in the nature of their contribution to charities and non-profit initiatives.
4. Some examples, a suggestion for a categorization and a comment on the Arab Spring.

Please see below my presentation. You can also visit my bibliographic file for Volunteering from home, the office or the train: online volunteering, social networking sites and smartphones (the original title) for downloads both in English and Spanish.

Knowing myself very little about quality standards, I was asked to provide the participants — mainly telecentre administrators and other related profiles — with a general framework where they could situate their own e-inclusion projects and, most especially, what was the importance and role of ICT skills in the whole scenario.

Keeping that in mind, and for something more than three hours, I began explaining what the digital revolution was about, that is, what was the outer framework, and went on zeroing in until I ended up talking about digital competence, e-portfolios and personal learning environments. The underlying idea — which almost became a mantra — was that it was not about e-inclusion, but about inclusion, inclusion in an always changing world that required the most valuable skill: being able to learn, to take control of one’s own learning process. And digital skills were there to help people in that.

The speech, Citizens in a Knowledge Society: rethinking education from scratch was structured as follows:

1. In The digital revolution: citizenship and inclusion in a post-industrial society I explained how digitization implied the shift from an industrial to an informational, knowledge-based, network society, and how in such a society institutions (and intermediators in general) have seen their roles and sheer nature radically transformed.
2. Policies for (e-)inclusion: from physical access to meaningful use depicted a comprehensive model of the digital economy and how each and every category of digital development was strongly related with other ones or with some indicators we generally use to measure development.
3. In Netizens: towards a set of digital competences I tried to exemplify how ICTs have become general purpose technologies and are now embedded in the core of our daily lives. Thus, e-inclusion is definitely about inclusion in a very much broader sense.
4. Lastly, New assessment frameworks for new skills provided a comprehensive definition of digital skills which I related, again, with daily experiences and, most especially, with the new ways of learning that Information and Communication Technologies have enabled.

The workshop provided me with two positive feelings.

The first one is that I got the sensation that there was an overall coherence and consistence in the work that I have been pursuing in the last years (I revisited and reused material of my own from, at least, the last four years). Thus, realizing that somehow you’ve been adding up or building around a core idea (and not just producing splattered thoughts) is pleasantly comforting.

The second one is that, at least, most of the theory I handle (of my own and, most of it, by third parties) seems to be having strong strings attached to reality and being ready to provide advice for policy making and project designing. The more feedback I get from people from the terrain, the more I think we’re going parallel (or converging) paths, which, again, is absolutely a good thing to be aware of.

Please see below the slides that I used.

Slides:
Citizens in a Knowledge Society:
rethinking education from scratch.
Part 1: The digital revolution:
citizenship and inclusion in a post-industrial society

Slides:
Citizens in a Knowledge Society:
rethinking education from scratch.
Part 2: Policies for (e-)inclusion:
from physical access to meaningful use

Slides:
Citizens in a Knowledge Society:
rethinking education from scratch.
Part 3: Netizens:
towards a set of digital competences

Slides:
Citizens in a Knowledge Society:
rethinking education from scratch.
Part 4:
New assessment frameworks for new skills

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.

This is a two-part article on the power relationships and distribution in the Information Society. It first presents, in Empowerment and Governance in the Information Society (I): the hourglass of information power, some concepts as power, empowerment and governance, and how they have been distributed amongst citizens and institutions along ages. The second one, Empowerment and Governance in the Information Society (II): digerati, goverati and the role of ICT4D, reflects on how the quality of democracy is decreasing precisely because of an increase of citizen empowerment.

In Empowerment and Governance in the Information Society (I): the hourglass of information power we described a way to look at power, empowerment and governance, and ended up facing an odd distribution of power in the Information Society. A close up to that distribution may look like the following image:

Distribution of power in the Information Society [click to enlarge]

This image aims at visualizing how power is distributed along all the strata of nowadays structure of society.

The lower part is a hat tip to cyberutopianism, at least on what concerns individual empowerment: I believe there is enough evidence to strongly state that Information and Communication Technologies (the Internet and mobile phones and all the applications and appliances were unimaginable without them) have radically changed the degree up to which a human being can (potentially) manage their own life. Getting their own information (much more information, and on a very wide array of quality sources) and communicating with others at lowest costs and with no barriers of time and space have changed the way we can socialize and become more empowered citizens; and being able to access very low cost production tools and being able to create from scratch is an empowerment leap compared to an industrial society where capital (as a production factor) was out of reach for most people.

The upper part, though, is a frontal opposition to the “now people rule the world” thesis. While people are absolutely more free/empowered to act within the system, the strings that manage and can actually change that system are way beyond the control of the e-empowered crowds. Indeed — and as recent economic and political events have proven — the ability to manage and change the system of the world is even beyond the control of the representatives of those crowds, that is, national governments and parliaments.

I believe that there is a deep democratic gap between the increasingly empowered citizens and the increasingly independent, non-transparent and non-accountable forces that rule the economic and political systems from the top. Traditional institutions — parties, governments, elected representatives — fail both in upwards transmitting the citizens’ claims to shape a system according to their needs and wills, and both in top-down transmitting the need for some transformations that this system requires after the world has been made totally global, spaceless, timeless.

The good goverati, the bad digerati and the ugly outcome

Taking the place of those weakened democratic institutions, two new agents arise.

On the one hand we have bad digerati (bad not necessarily meaning evil, though their actions — consciously or unconsciously — do harm democracy as it is now designed), digitally literate elites that leverage their knowledge and the power provided by ICTs to reshape the state of things in their own benefit. These bad digerati understand the changes in society due to ICTs, the huge lag in Law to catch up with the pace of change, the digital illiteracy of governments, politicians and citizens, and succeed in circumventing democratic institutions. Incumbent telecom operators, digital media corporations, news conglomerates, a-legal or plainly i(l)-legal businesses operating in the very verge of written law (some P2P network facilitators, some piracy-related firms, etc.), banks and financial services, etc. Many of them are but the local/national branch of supra-national institutions and organizations that fully scape the reach of governments jurisdictions and, thus, act totally out of control.

Good goverati aim just precisely at the opposite of bad digerati: correct and fix the democratic misadjustments that the Information Society brought with it. Knowledgeable and savvy both in digital and political matters, they leverage the power ICTs granted the citizenry to promote a more direct and committed involvement in public affairs: e-democracy and direct democracy, open government and open data, e-government and government 2.0, e-participation and hacktivism, etc. are some of the many initiatives that non-governmental organizations, government institutions, citizen collectives and individuals are fostering. In my opinion, though, they are quite often too helping to circumvent democratic institutions and contributing in their weakening. But the upper levels of power may actually be far too high.

Thus, the ugly outcome is a complete wreckage of the democratic transmission chain, a democratic gap that both (bad) digerati and (good) goverati are but widening. Hence, the distance between the freely empowered citizen is also increasing, resulting in a democratic paradox: empowerment is not accompanied with better governance, but just the opposite. And in absence of a legitimate transmission chain, representative, plurally elected, we find different individuals and organizations (sometimes anonymous) that no one chose and that many times no one deeply knows their interests or their backing powers.

The role Goverati and the role of Information and Communication Technologies for (democratic) Development (ICT4D)

When talking about the intersection of Information and Communication Technologies and Development (see, for instance ICTs, Development, disciplines and acronyms) it is very common to focus on empowerment or the empowering factor of ICTs.

Indeed, after years of cultural imperialism through development cooperation policies, development agents (especially development policies’ beneficiaries or “developees”) have developed certain allergies against anything that might sound as imposing a certain political system.

But if our approach proves to be right, empowerment is nowadays becoming but the XXIst century version of bread and circus: let the hamster spin the wheel at will, but don’t it dare to open the cage.

ICTs focused only in empowerment are beginning to look like development policies focused only in humanitarian aid and relief, but with no sight on the far horizon: effective in the short term, a vicious spiral towards black hole in the long run.

In my opinion, ICT4D have also and always include a governance factor in their design, as development policies have to focus on sustainable development.

At their turn, goverati should refrain from weakening or even attacking their democratic institutions. We have seen some of these, and this does not mean that institutions and their people should not be totally transformed, but I think the only way to leverage empowerment for governance is, precisely, through democratic institutions, because I think they are, most times, the only legitimate bridge towards real change, towards real power.

This is a two-part article on the power relationships and distribution in the Information Society. It first presents, in Empowerment and Governance in the Information Society (I): the hourglass of information power, some concepts as power, empowerment and governance, and how they have been distributed amongst citizens and institutions along ages. The second one, Empowerment and Governance in the Information Society (II): digerati, goverati and the role of ICT4D, reflects on how the quality of democracy is decreasing precisely because of an increase of citizen empowerment.

Recently — in the most recent years, but especially in recent months — the debate whether Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) empower or disempower, democratize a society or increase control over the citizen has been fuelled, both in the literature after appropriate research, and on newspapers, due to several events that have been read as turning points or milestones in the road towards the Information Society.

As it is usual in almost any debate around the impact of ICTs on the society, equidistant opinions are rare and extremes are much more abundant. In this case, it is my personal opinion that both extremes apply, that is, that there seem to be two divergent but simultaneous trends towards empowerment and towards a decrease in the quality of democracy or, as I will be putting it, a decrease in the quality of democracy (understood as a loss of control over governance by the citizen).

In the (sometimes difficult to avoid) trade-off between rigour and pedagogy, I have consciously chosen the latter in what follows. Many definitions are not very orthodox and most labels (and charts) are absolutely made up. I ask the reader for benevolence, forgiveness and, why not, the references that back (or refute) my arguments and that I was too lazy to look for.

Let us (re)define power as: Power = Empowerment + Governance

Where:

• Empowerment: the capability to freely act and develop oneself within the system (very much in the line of Amartya Sen, 1980).
• Governance: the capability to rule and especially change the system itself (the institutional dimension of human development that, when in hands of the citizen, leads to effective democracy as described by Welzel, Inglehart & Klingemann; 2003).

According to these definitions, we can describe, even in a very rough manner, how power distribution has been like during history. The image below pictures an approximation of this power distribution.

Pyramids of power along time [click to enlarge]

We can consider than in very primitive societies, the individual held all the power. As social organizations became more complex, the need for a minimal coordination comes evident: tribes got their chieftains to guide the collective. An organized procedure to choose the chieftain is what ended up in Greek Democracy. So far, the idea is that both empowerment and governance remain in the individuals’ hands.

The growth of communities and the need to strengthen coordination — especially against the “threat” of other communities — imply (amongst other factors) the militarization of a society and, sooner or later, the seizure of power by the military chaste. Warlords and absolute kings (and also Pharaohs, etc.) do not only rule but also reduce the degree of freedom of their subjects: governance shifts upwards while empowerment is drastically reduced. It is the ideas behind the Enlightenment and of modern democracy that pretend to give some power back to the citizen while keeping governance (increasingly important) in the hands of nation-wide institutions.

It is within this framework that capital becomes more important as industrialization deploys over all aspects of life. Gradually, economic elites gain more power with two parallel effects: on the one hand, what Marx called the alienation of the working class, now reduced to a mere production factor; on the other hand, the possibility to directly or indirectly affect all matters related to politics and the public sphere so to shape it for their own purposes. Again, the pendulum swung back and the Welfare State came to correct both the loss of freedom (and protection) of the citizen and to take some control of the public arena by keeping for itself the management of the Economy (Communist states pretend to be doing that too). New at this stage, supranational governmental organizations are created to coordinate what goes beyond the national powers: a new layer of power is born.

The strengthening of trend towards internationalization — ending up in sheer globalization — of the Economy has brought us in the past decades to a re-edition of industrialization, with the predominance of Neoliberalism setting the path of the Economy. Like industrialization, power shifts towards economic elites, but now split in two stages: the local and the global levels.

Many claim that the Information Society is empowering back individuals, and it well may definitely be true: never before as now can people or people have the potential to freely act, create, speak, reach out… within the given system. But it may also true that, never before as now is governance — as the power to change the system — so far from the citizens’ reach… even of their direct representatives, which are controlled by higher powers, most of them out of anyone’s jurisdiction. Like in an hourglass, the distribution of power is shifted to the (upper and lower) edges, the question being: who is playing the role of the transmission chain between these two edges?

Continues in: Empowerment and Governance in the Information Society (II): digerati, goverati and the role of ICT4D.

Closing Panel: Donor Voices
Chairs: Tim Unwin

Patrick Kalas, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation

SCD is moving out of ICT4D strictly speaking: there is a need to focus on the ‘D’.

We have to speak to the specialist and the non-specialist, to stress on diffusing the word of what we are doing, how and why.

Let us not focus only in one technoogy (e.g. mobiles) and dismiss other technologies that have proven to be valuable: community radio, etc.

We have to put more effort on impact research.

Christine Qiang, The World Bank

Mobile networks are transformative in many ways: reaching population, intensifying relationships, etc. Mobile applications have a strong leapfrogging nature.

ICT as a general purpose technology, is both a blessing and a curse. It empowers people, but also poses a major challenge in terms of capability. We must not invest in bubbles of expectations: evaluation should be always in everyone’s mind.

We need to be realistic on what technologies can or cannot achieve. There are issues of complementary infrastructure, human capacity, etc.

Please see the World Bank ICT Strategy open for public consultation.

Pierre Lucante, German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)

Importance of digital capabilities.

We have to mainstream ICT in other disciplines.

Laurent Elder, IDRC-CRDI

There is many people working in ICTs and development, despite they do not calling it ICT4D (or ICTD). on the other hand.

It is important that practitioners and researchers/academics come together and work side by side. Everything should be rooted in development theory.

Under resource constraints, will you choose sustainability over scalability? How do we measure impact? How should we better assess projects and their impact? These are very difficult questions. And, somewhat, they should not put that much pressure upon projects and/or the people and institutions behind them.

Don’t be critical, don’t be cynical: try to make a difference. It is much more easy to criticise and destroy than to act and build.

Discussion

Q: What is the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in development? Lucante: it is important, but it would be desirable to be involved in a broader way that just CSR. Kalas: CSR is not the way to establish private-public partnerships, as it is a too narrow way of collaboration. Partnerships are also about sharing risks

Q: how do we encourage research in developing countries? Qiang: investing in local application or technology development (e.g. mobiles) is a way to encourage local researchers to be able to participate in topics that are of their total concern. Elder: another way to do it is that they can actually collaborate with other colleagues with more researching experience but with a genuine interest and knowledge of/in the field.

Q: Why multi-stakeholder partnerships in ICTs? Kalas: Governments alone cannot make a huge impact, there is a need to bring the private sector in. The problem is how to. Elder: ICT are not only about technologies, but also about social impact.

Q: Are funding open standards and open source enough? Elder: We need to invest in the ‘open’ because we need to know how things work, not only the outcome. On the other hand, if research/projects are paid with public funds, they should result in publicly available goods.

Personal note

A huge thank you to the organization for putting together such a great conference. Thank you very much.

More information

• Tim Unwin’s blog posts on the ICTD2010 Conference.
• Videos for the First Day, by ICT4D.at.
• Videos for the Second Day, by ICT4D.at.

South to North: A fishbowl on the transferability of ICTs in income-poor countries to income-rich countries (debating applicability, methods, policies)
Chair: Chris Coward, Karen Fisher

Have some innovations created in resource-constrained environments been actually applied in other (developed) countries (e.g. microfinance)? How has that happened? Under what conditions transferability worked?

To what extent low-cost solutions are designed for the South? counterexamples?

Which ICTD innovatoins have already spread from the South?

What characteristics have North and South innovations in common?

Which contextual factors influence transferability?

What transfer methodologies have been used? What are their characteristics?

Discussion

There are several examples of usages of FrontlineSMS that could be applied in the North, where mobile penetration is usually over 100% and almost everyone is texting messages and that are currently being used: small interventions on vulnerable people, letting a collective (e.g. customers) know that you are in the neighbourhood, etc.

Networks to support customers are operated in many places by outsourced/networked companies. These networks can be shared by operators, are decentralized, and are very very cheap and quick to be set.

One thing that surprisingly has not been transferred to the North is mobile banking. The (grassroots) innovation was appropriated by operators and spread as an industrialized commodity in Southern countries, but it has not been transferred to the North.

One of the reasons for innovation transferability might be that it is made by people that see themselves as equals.

Many innovations are not transferable because the constraints have already been addressed with some other solutions. E.g. mobile banking is more difficult to be transferred to the North because there already is a banking system that, despite its flaws, it does work. Affordability just adds to this issue of already existing competition in a specific field.

Is innovation to improve some people’s lives or to ‘milk’ consumers?

If we look at the resources, in the North labour is relatively cheap and technology relatively expensive, while in the South it is just the opposite. Thus, the solutions must have this different balances into account.

Social movements in the South have expanded technology in the South much more than in the North. The way they have used technology, media, has been much more intensive and transformative than elsewhere. So it is many times more about people and usage, rather than technology itself.

When it comes to design, there are several aspects that can be addressed through ‘universal design’ and that create benefits for everyone, independently of the original intended target (e.g. low side-walks that allow pass for wheelchairs, strollers, etc.). This design is expensive if done retroactively, but it does not add an cost when done at the very first steps of the design process.

More information

I think it is worth revisiting here Ethan Zuckerman’s Innovation Test, which evaluates innovations according to the following points:

1. Does the innovation come from constraint?
2. Does it fight culture?
3. Does it embrace market mechanisms?
4. Does it innovate on existing platforms?
5. Does it come from close observation of the target environment?
6. Does it focus more on what you have more that what you lack?
7. Is it based on a “infrastructure begets infrastructure” basis?

Publishing ICT4D Research
Chairs: G. Harindranath

Geoff Walsham
Reflections on ICT4D research publishing after a Cape Town workshop.

Where to publish:

• Go for a portfolio approach — conferences plus a range of journals.
• Choose your journal with care — read back issues, etc.
• Consider co-authoring some of your papers with a more experienced author.
• Probably avoid the so-called top journals in early career.
• Cover (slightly) different topics and different approaches for different audiences.
• When co-authoring, let the expert in the field of the journal lead the article, and keep your leadership for the topics/subjects/journals you’re an expert on.

The review process:

• Key initial goal: get your paper past the SE/AE screen and about to the reviewers.
• Cover every point made by the reviewers and say how you have responded.
• You can disagree with particular points made by the reviewers but you need to say why.
• Focus on the key critical points which are being raised by the reviewers and editors.

What to do with a ‘reject’?

• Consider carefully the reasons for rejection.
• In most cases, revise the paper and submit it elsewhere.
• Don’t give up, academic careers are marathons not sprints.

Planning for future writing:

• Geenrate a realistic annual work plan.
• Think about support mechanisms: colleagues, conferences, seminar groups, etc.
• Try out your material on others: take every possible opportunity to do this.

Discussion

Q: What about social networks an open publishing? A: This is a good approach to broaden your portfolio, but it should not be your only strategy. Indeed, still most places select or evaluate on a mainly a publishing-basis.

Cathy Urquhart
Publishing ICT4D research in the Information Systems area. Future themes in ICT4D research in Information Systems.

Collaboration with senior peers is beneficial, and you can offer the senior colleague something in exchange too (fresh ideas, more time, etc.)

You can’t put your eggs into just one basket.

Publishing ICT4D in Information Systems:

• In Business Schools, increasing pressure to publish to the Association of Business Schools (ABS) journal rankings — many candidate journals for ICT4D not listed.
• On the plus side, there are some mainstream Information Systems journals open to ICT4D research.
• If we only publish in Information Systems journals, what does that do for our relationships with other areas, e.g. development studies, in what is a multidisciplinary field?
• In a field that aims for impact, what is the consequence of only publishing in Information Systems academic journals?

Future themes in ICT4D research in information Systems:

• Theorising ICT for Development — call for Papers in Information Systems journal: we need more theory.

The politics of ICT4D — call for papers in the International Journal of e-Politics: we need more policy.

Discussion

Q: We are talking about publishing only in terms of academic careers. Notwithstanding, we might have other interests, as reaching the practitioner or, over all, making an impact at the policy-level. Maybe it is more important to publish in newspapers or write policy-briefs.

Shirin Madon
Publishing ICT4D Research… some personal reflections.

ICT4D is no more a ‘niche’ area. But this makes it more important to have a strategy, to know when to publish during your project, whether your article will be career-focused or impact-aimed. What kind of strategy?

Some considerations are due on whether to publish on open or closed journals, or to self-archive and to find ways to circumvent the ‘closeness’ of the system.

We should try and publish in outlets that make sense for the audiences that read them. Sometimes this includes NGO newsletters, newspapers, etc.

Tim Unwin

Nobody reads academic papers.

• Journal papers are form or professional exclusivity. Because of the need to publish, there is a wide range of bad literature being published. The publishing norms are Anglo-Saxon-made. Peer review is not naive, it is about gate-keeping.
• Know the rules of the place you want to be published in. Get in touch with the referees.
• If we want to share of ideas, the Internet is the platform. Blogs get hundreds of times more read than academic papers. How do we actually fund publication? There still is a huge value in the traditional role of editors.
• There is a conspiracy to create an ICT4D field. Do not constrain your ideas, change happen at the edges. Everyone is in their silos and do not read each others’ papers.
• Books are hugely important. Books allow more room to include and expand ideas.
• Never add your supervisors in your papers, unless they definitely wrote and/or contributed significantly to the paper.
• We have to find more places where research can happen. We have to move out of the US/Europe and find innovation where it is happening.

Discussion

Geoff Walsham: we have to differentiate research with dissemination. The latter includes writing in practitioner papers, newspapers, doing consultancy, etc.

Q: How do funders dictate the research agenda? Shirin Madon: It is a good thing that funders ask for a multidisciplinary approach, as this forces researchers to join forces. Tim Unwin: researchers always have the choice to refuse funding if it does not go in line with what ethics in research suggest.

More information

• Live recording of the session.
• On publishing in ICT4D, by Tim Unwin.

(NOTE: most energetic session, full of non-reportable debate).

Revi Sterling, Heather Underwood
Technology ‘Teach-In’

Weigel and Waldurger (2004)
Unwin (2008)

Three possible classifications that should help in choosing the appropriate technology:

• Hi vs. low cost of access.
• Individual use vs. communal use.
• Ease or difficulty of use.

What are you trying to do? Who are you trying to reach? What are your limitations? What is the community baseline? What is acceptable to the community? What is legal? What is already there? What are the climate conditions like?

(The session included a simulation role-game where different scenarios were presented and there was a discussion on how the different needs could be approached with the appropriate technology… or without it).

More information

Weigel, G. & Waldburger, D. (Eds.) (2004). ICT4D – Connecting People For A Better World. Lessons, Innovations and Perspectives of Information and Communication Technologies in Development.

Unwin, T. (Ed.) (2009). ICT4D: Information and Communication Technology for Development.

Katie Willis, David Simon
Development Theory ‘Teach-In’

Development can be understood as employment, human rights and freedom, environment conservation, education, consumption, etc.

The ‘resources cost hypothesis‘: if your country finds a valuable resource for the rest of the world (e.g. oil, diamonds, gold, etc.) your country may be exploited, screwed and turned into ruins. Indeed, slavery and other related practices have traditionally been the way to either get rich or get exploited, depending on the side you are in.

• What does development include?
• How should it be achieved?
• Where should development take place?
• At what scale should development take place?
• Who should decide what development it and how it should be achieved?

Modernisation Theory

The idea that development is about progress, innovation, modernization. Coined in a post-World War II and Cold War geopolitical context.

Walt W. Rostow (1960). The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-communist Manifesto.

It is normally characterized by a top-down approach, based on the more economically developed countries and the Global North experience and led by governments or large international agencies. One size fits all. “Do the right thing and you will end up where we are”.

Dependency Theory

Developed in the 1960s and 1970s, it is based on the experience of less economically developed countries. It analyses the glogal economic systems and its relationships of dependence of poorer people to the economic elites.

Andre Gunder Frank (1967). Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America.

It triggered several policy responses, like greate4re protectionism, policies of import substitution to help domestic industrialization, revolutions and the implementation of communist forms of economic and political organization.

It is a very deterministic approach and takes a an approach that looks at reality/economies as a very static thing.

Neoliberalism

Stated 1980s onwards (now mainstream in international development thinking), it stresses on the role of the market rather than the state.

The key policy dimensions focus on privatisation, reduction of state expenditure, currency devaluation, opening up of domestic economy to foreign investment, etc. It is usually implemented through structural adjustment policies (SAPs) and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRPSPs).

Normally, these plans come with strings attached: if a government does not apply certain measures, it will not get more aid for development, commerce agreements, and other kind of conditionings.

Bottom-up / Grassroots Development

It comes as a response to preceived failure of top-down development from 1980s onwards. It features a rise of NGOs as key actors in development.

In some ways, some see it related with Neoliberalism, as it is NGOs, at the micro level, the ones addressing the problems of the population, instead of the State, at the macro level, the one doing it. It is local people the ones that drive change, that are champions of change, that leverage social capital, through participatory mechanisms, etc.

Grassroots development’s features are small-scale, it recognises diversity of developmetn goals, highly efficient, empowering, environmentally sustainable, many times having a very slow path because it requires consensus, etc.

Postcolonialism

After colonialism there is a recovery of ‘lost’ / subordinated identities

Thus, some conceptions of development go in the line of recovering, on the one hand, tradition and cultural heritage; but, on the other hand, also the productive practices that where abandoned but that might still be applicable and even beneficial and sustainable in its usual context.

Its critics state that it is driven by a fundamentally anti-Eurocentric feeling, that it is inherently post-modern, supposedly empowering, yet often exclusive and even elitist too.

Anti- and Post-Development

Anti-Development: rejecting development as corporate, capitalist, neocolonial perversion/betrayal. Emerged in the mid 1990s. We have to find a new vocabulary for development, find new resources (other than merely economic). More a critique and a call to start over again, rather than “anti-”.

Post-Development: moving beyond conventional development, rethinking/reinventing alternative visions of development. Leveraging local skills while introducing external input, like technology.

Technologies in Development

Not neutral in terms of applications and implications. Impacts often diverse by scale and social group, and with intended and unintended consequences. The technology itself might be neutral, but it is not once it is applied.

Socially contingent: winners and losers, cultural norms and values, progressives vs. conservatives. Quite usually richer people are amongst the winners, and poorer amongst the losers, often a matter of affordability.

How sustainable? Financially, technically, socially, politically.

The coevolutionary process: there are multiple relationships amongst values, the organization, the environment, knowledge and technology.

Discussion

Some state that Amartya Sen’s capabilities is but part of a neoliberalist approach, as it focuses on the freedom of choice and on empowering the individual.

We have seen that in recent decades the discussion has gone from the macro- to the micro-level, but ICTs are sort of being able to think again not only at the macro-level but, actually, at both levels at the same time, as many solutions are more or less equally applicable at the domestic and at the state level, or have an impact at both levels.