• Digital Divide, Government and ICTs for Education

Digital Literacy

• Towards a comprehensive
  definition of digital skills

e-Readiness

• ITU’s new ICT Development Index

Open Access

• Access to knowledge and digital divide
• I+C+i. Liberty, equality and P2P (part I)
• I+C+i. Liberty, equality and P2P (part II)

Monograph: e-STAS 2009

• e-STAS 2009 (I). Interview to Carlos Argüello
• e-STAS 2009 (II). Empowerment for Social Innovation
• e-STAS 2009 (III). Battle of experiences between Ken Banks and Christian Kreutz
• e-STAS 2009 (IV). Round Table: Luis Millán Vázquez, Bárbara Navarro, Fernando Bothelo & Martin Alee Konzett
• e-STAS 2009 (V). Round Table: Jorge de la Hidalga, Millán Berzosa, Jorge Pascua, Óscar Espritusanto, Pedro Cluster
• e-STAS 2009 (VI). Workshop: The hurdle track from ICT to Human Development
• e-STAS 2009 (VII). Round Table: John LeSieur, Vivek Vaidyanathan, Raul Zambrano
• e-STAS 2009 (VIII). Conclusions
• e-STAS 2009 (IX). Interview to Jack Dorsey

The book is called Innovación para el empoderamiento de la ciudadanía a través de las TIC (Innovation for the empowerment of the citizenry through ICTs) and features an article of mine entitled La red de las personas: cómo Internet puede empoderar a la ciudadanía (The Network of people: how can the Internet empower the citizenry).

The paper is a slightly evolved — a generalized — version of a former reflection, Cooperation for Development 2.0, that then became a position paper for the first edition of Development Cooperation 2.0: Reticulando la Cooperación — hacia la Cooperación Red: Materiales para un debate (Networking Cooperation — towards a networked cooperation: materials for a debate), and that also served as a kick off point for the second edition of Development Cooperation 2.0.

The abstract reads:

La acción ciudadana depende, en gran medida, de la concurrencia de dos factores. Por una parte, la identificación y difusión de una necesidad de amplio interés y, en la medida de lo posible, en poder reclutar apoyo para dar respuesta a dicha necesidad. Por otra parte, por la capacidad para acceder a los recursos necesarios para cubrir, de forma efectiva, dicha necesidad. En la medida que la información y la comunicación juegan un papel cada vez más importante en ambas cuestiones, las nuevas tecnologías se posicionan como la herramienta por excelencia para el empoderamiento de la ciudadanía.

More information and downloads

• La red de las personas: cómo Internet puede empoderar a la ciudadanía (bibliographic information)
• La red de las personas: cómo Internet puede empoderar a la ciudadanía (download, 155 KB)
• Innovación para el empoderamiento de la ciudadanía a través de las TIC

Interview to Jack Dorsey, Twitter, by Sebastián Muriel

Technologies like twitter are little demanding, the concept is simple, there is no need for abstraction. It’s use is pretty straightforward. We’re seeing that applications are becoming more transparent.

And not also technically, but personally: new tools are more transparent also in letting see who’s behind a certain tool (i.e. who’s the person behind a username).

Q: How do we extract knowledge from tools? A: Being aware of all technologies can be overwhelming, but you always have the possibility to turn some of your communication platforms off. Correct usage — or usage that benefits you — must be learned

We have to focus on the content, not on the tool.

Q: is it possible to override mass media through things like Twitter? A: The journalism industry is fed by professionals, providing factual reports, properly crafted. This is difficult to be overridden by casual citizen journalists. Sometimes you don’t want just news, but stories, full stories well built by professionals that gather more information and point you even to more information.

Q: Twitter and geolocalization? A: There’s a big difference between twittering “I’m having coffee”, which gives context to your live, and “I’m having coffee at this place in this city”, which is kind of an invitation to join. We should let the user the freedom to decide exactly what he is meaning to say. Besides, there are matters of privacy that you cannot take for granted… or simply forget about them.

You can’t empower people: you have to build tools so that people can empower themselves. But, the goal is that people stops talking about the tools they’re using, and begin talking about what’s going on life.

Twitter is not a social network, but a broadcast mechanism. In social networks you end up not interacting with a specific person, but with whole his network — which might be your initial goal, but also an inconvenient. In Twitter, we kept the conversation (not the network) as the goal, and this enables commercial uses and businesses entering the platform without having to bother about networking and many-to-many engagement. Twitter did not came up with Yammer in part because of this: Twitter’s aim is to be kept simple. If you have groups, you “think” your message, and this is not immediate and ends up not being simple to just write a message.

Twitter allows for real time enrichment of information.

Conclusions session, conducted by Francisco Pizarro, Centro de Iniciativas Emprendedoras, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

ICTs bring new ways of relationship, of production, of socialization. There’s a change of paradigm, an opportunity to innovate. We must empower not to worsen.

Empowerment begins with one self: if you want to change the world, begin with yourself. Get empowered to empower others.

We empower to innovate, or it is the empowered that innovates?

Empowerment for social change, for independence, for freedom, for democracy. For the local leaders, for the excluded ones.

We have to generate a technological culture, to raise awareness of new ways to engage, to participate. Though keeping in mind that technology is but a means.

ICTs opened windows to raise voices, to get funding.

A new society based on I+I: Information+Imagination.

Summing up:

• Change of paradigm: the paradigm 2.0
• Change of paradigm can bring changes
• We need leaders to foster empowerment
• And empower leaders so that they can empower others
• A need for a digital culture, to keep on working towards universal access

Round Table, conducted by Ismael Peña-López, Open University of Catalonia

John LeSieur, People CD

It’s out of question that technology connects people in very powerful ways. The question is how we make sure that the end user provides a good delivery for them.

The Asperger syndrome is part of autism and implies poor or none interaction with the other. An autistic child — LeSieur’s grandson — was introduced to technology, but refused to use it after minor browsing. Order was a must for autistic people. Communication must be picture-like. Browsers just do not work this way. This was the birth of the ZAC browser, a browser specifically designed for autistic people, that allows browsing through icons and minimum clicks.

The ZAC browser was not part of a business plan, or project management plan, but a personal commitment, done on an trial-and-error basis. It was after a first success, that it was decided to share it for others.

There is 1 out of 150 autistic children worldwide. So it made sense to share it worldwide.

Some parents have reported notable improvements in the lives of their children — and their families’ — after having used the ZAC browser. The ZAC browser is used by 750,000 people worldwide.

Now People CD is focusing in technologies widely used, but that are not really designed for a broad range of end users, i.e. paralyzed people. And this software comes out free to be used.

Vivek Vaidyanathan, ICT4D Consultant

He formerly worked at IT for Change to help organizations work in their own domain without bothering about technology. IT for Change promoted the use of ICT applications in development projects. He is now working in “poverty mapping”, using Geographic Information Systems to show impact of projects in developing countries.

In India the debate is not about FaceBook or Twitter, but about issues of connectivity or content in local language. And even if there is a growing ICT Sector, it is not aimed towards the local user, or local development, at least not directly.

The government is now planning to provide universal connectivity though an ambitious telecenter plan. But, nevertheless, it is again a plan to develop more an ICT Sector or Industry rather than providing more and better services to the citizens in a most efficient way. Nevertheless, some interesting e-Government issues started to happen and, hopefully, they will pull other clever uses of ICTs, specially because it’s public information and in your local language.

There is a problem with the sustainability of these telecenters and their services: they all began as a citizen service, which was free, and now trying to turn the citizen into a customer has made of financial sustainability a big challenge. You cannot ask them to pay for what was free.

Besides financial sustainability, social sustainability has also to be taken into account. Many people are left out of the ICT revolution because serving them is just not profitable, entering a vicious circle of exclusion.

Last, technology people should not lead the change, but people that do know the real needs of the end user… but of course work with technologists to know what tools to apply.

Raul Zambrano, UNDP

Freedom as development: development deals with people having the options to do with their lives whatever they want (Armartya Sen).

In 1992 the UNDP decided to begin distributing information (part of the Agenda 21 agreed in Rio de Janeiro in 1991) by e-mail, instead of fax or postal mail. This cut down costs dramatically… provided the receiver had e-mail too.

People do not need technology, but have basic needs: water, food, a roof… How can we connect these basic needs with ICTs? There’s a big divide in the application of ICT4D: there’s people that would “rather buy rice and not computers” and other people that would install computers before knowing the real needs of the population. How to merge these two approaches in a middle ground?

“I don’t want this or that technology. I want education. With quality, low cost”. If we can bring this education through ICTs, then that’s good ICT4D. Why don’t we benchmark or do market studies to supply public services? “Would you be using this or that public service? Supplied to you this ir that way?”

Empowerment is also about sharing or distributing power. Public administrations have to share their power with the citizenry. ICT’s enable networking and clustering people around common problems. ICTs enable exchange, communication. ICTs should not replace human networks, but to empower them.

Democracy is that the civil society and governments work together. Thinking of them as opposite powers is either sick or sad (depending on how true it is).

By the way, there’s more technology that ICTs.

Q & A

Q: It’s true that ICT are means (not goals), but how do we design the methodologies, indicators, etc. without mastering them before? Zambrano: impact is usually measured by number of accesses (to technology), not effective usage; it measures quantity of use, not social impact. There’s a need for public policies to foster change, with investment, with regulation. Technology does not change human development, is the supply of services. Vaidyanathan: people want to copy models they see everywhere, but what they actually want is not telecenters, but what people are doing with them (e.g. accessing public services, connecting with their relatives). Is the government focusing on telecenters or in providing these services?

Ignacio Martín: if the democracy is shared power, is it power finite? is it not about creating “more” power and not sharing or distributing it? Zambrano: power, in a democracy, is representative. And there’s a divide between the elected (to whom I transferred my power) and the citizen. This “sharing” of the power is about bridging this gap, of having some feedback of the power I lent to my representative. If democracy impoverishes me, democracy is clearly not working. Some technologies enable if not a direct democracy, at least a mediated representative democracy.

Q: We use technology in a social environment. Does technology unify diversity? Is there a cultural imperialism embedded in the use of technology? Zambrano: It depends of your intentions. You can use technology to impose your culture, but you can use it too to preserve and even recover cultures in risk of extinction.

Ismael Peña-López: Agreed ICTs are tools. But how do we learn to apply them cleverly if we do not dedicate some time at learning or developing new tools just for the sake of it? LeSieur: the Wikipedia approach is a good one where a couple represented by service+technology was issued at the same time and a brand new ecosystem (i.e. wiki enhanced encyclopedia) came out of the blue. Vaidyanathan: the challenge is to start somewhere, just to start. And solve it on the run. Zambrano: It depends on the place. In developed worlds, the divide is mainly digital, so it’s relevant to do R+D on ICTs. But in developing countries, the divide is social and the digital divide becomes trivial. Then, it does not make any sense to think about technologies for the sake of them. And sometimes, it is even the contrary: people do have technology (e.g. mobile phones) but have no rights: it is pretty straightforward to use the existing technology to solve a social issue, a fundamental need.

Funredes: The hurdle track from ICT to Human Development

Results from a project for UN-GAID.

ICTs are but a tool. But there are some barriers to them:

• Physical access
• Financial access, affordability
• Sustainability
• Functional basic literacy (read and write)
• Content in local language
• Effective usage
• Technology appropriation, technological literacy
• Use with sense, informational literacy
• Social appropriation, content creation with sense for my community
• Empowerment
• Human Development

Needs:

• Education and culture: about networking, about information, about processes
• Ethics: about networking, about information, about processes
• Engagement, multistakeholder, committed, along the whole process

See also

• The hurdle track from ICT to Human Development
• La pista de obstáculos desde las TIC hasta el desarrollo humano

Round Table, conducted by Nuria Castejón, Observatorio de Cooperación Universitaria al Desarrollo

Millán Berzosa, Comunitae

Comunitae is a microcredit community, to enable people that would never have the possibility to borrow (or lend) money to be able to.

Jorge Pascua, Bubok

Bubok lets you publish everything you’ve written as a book. Publishing it’s not about technology, but also a cultural issue which Bubok aims at bridging.

Jorge de la Hidalga, Infoprision

There was a lot of misinformation about the life of people in jail, which caused refusal and exclusion. To bridge this problem, he issued Infoprision, as a guide for families with relatives in jail to look for information, guidelines, resources, etc. on how to behave, how to support relatives, where to ask for information, etc. It’s a virtual community too where people share their experiences and findings.

Óscar Espritusanto, Periodismo Ciudadano

Periodismo Ciudadano looks for best practices, translates documents, etc. so than the citizenry can set up their own citizen journalism projects. Periodismo Ciudadano is not a citizen journalism project, but a project for citizen journalism projects, a how to initiative.

Q & A

Espiritusanto: it’s not only about empowerment, but about the democratization of the channel, of the platform.

(Pedro Cluster, from indigencia, joins the round table and explains his experience with his blog about being homeless)

Ismael Peña-López: these empowerment projects, do they have an embedded criticism within? should they criticised the systems they are replicating or substituting? Pascua: there’s no substitution, it’s complementary; thus, no criticism intended. De la Hidalga: these projects are just citizen watchmen that remind the system — that generally works well — that there are some imperfections that need being polished, and that there are control devices that the citizenry is using. Berzosa: there’s both a complementarity and a criticism in these experiences; they are new models that both represent a criticism but that, at the same time, they provide alternative ways of doing things that the Internet just made possible. Espiritusanto: these models represent evolutions of existing systems; they are pioneers that go one step ahead of the rest of the system. Cluster: these empowerment projects defy the concept of the expert, which is the one that the “system” is based on.

Q: Is there a market that differentiates what is good from bad on the Internet? Pascua & Espiritusanto: it’s important that we have a sufficient level of digital literacy so that digerati oligarchies dominate not the debate or the digital tools. Then the “crowd” will be able to decide wisely.

Francisco Pizarro: How do we replicate our innovations? How do we go from pilot to mainstream, specially in social innovations? Berzosa: Competence is good, so being copied is a way to spread your ideas. De la Hidalga: a literate citizen will be able to tell good from bad and resonate the good things and mute bad ones. Espiritusanto: collaborating with your competence is getting more common every day, there are synergies in doing it and some projects even rely on this for success.

Espiritusanto: the most amazing thing is that the Internet has disclosed brand new ways of doing things, or doing things that we’d never thought before of. For instance Spot.us.

Pascua: the Internet is a mirror of real life, where some people succeed and some do not. The difference is that probability of being heard and sustainability are much higher. Ideas can be enabled and fostered as never before.

Marta Pastor: we’re investing in a medium (the Internet) that we do not control, but that is controlled by carriers, telecoms, etc. What if net neutrality is lost? Berzosa: net neutrality won’t be lost, it’s too important to allow it. Espiritusanto: alternatives would rise instantly, so no wonder about it.

Round Table, conducted by Idelfonso Mayorgas

Martín Alee Konzett, ICT4D.at

ICT4D are enablers of empowerment and, most important, enablers of self-empowerment. We have to work towards a decentralized empowerment.

Bárbara Navarro, Google.es

ICTs have brought us (a) lots of information and (b) a voice to communicate.

Luis Millán Vázquez, FUNDECYT and expert at UN-GAID

We need to develop tools for the imagination, the Imagination Society. Most times, the problem is not doing things, but imagining them, thinking they are possible.

Fernando Bothelo, Literacy Bridge

We have to enable decentralization and taking ownership of the devices of control.

Q & A

Mayorgas: how to deal with control? Navarro: through open standards. Open standards provide confidence and make it possible improvement by third parties. Botelho: open standards have to apply to the whole process of information and communication, and think about it as an ecosystem.

Mayorgas: is cloud computing a solution to access ICTs? Konzett: a good thing about the “cloud” is that anyone can build their own “cloud”, with no need of being maintained or taken care of.

Mayorgas: IT for the people, or people for ITs? Vázquez: IT for the people, but not as a collective, but for the individual persons. We have to empower the individual beyond empowering communities. And universities have to bridge the knowledge divide.

Mayorgas: do we have to empower too the employees at firms (e.g. Google’s employees dedicating 20% of their times to their own projects)? Navarro: many interesting projects come from providing people with tools to enhance creativity. Botelho: Indeed, the processes are as important as the final results. The way things are done do matter and do determine the final results. And the methodology free software is being created and distributed is most valuable.

Luis Millán Vázquez: the Imagination Society — or the Information Revolution — links us through ideas, while the Industrial Revolution liked us through our common needs.

Marta Pastor: how do we actually bridge the digital divide? Fernando Botelho: when we take human rights seriously, everything else (i.e. access to ICTs) will be taken for granted. Luis Millán Vázquez: networks, technological literacy and ability to choose. Navarro: access to networks, open standards, declaration of access to technology and information as a universal service. Konzett: accessibility will most probably be not an issue, thus we should focus on education and open standards that enable decentralized innovation.

Battle of experiences between Ken Banks and Christian Kreutz, conducted by Jaime Estévez

Ken Banks, Kiwanja, frontlineSMS.com

The best way to understand what’s happening in a developing country is to go there. In Nigeria, he set up a project using mobile phones, or better said, how mobile phones could be used on the ground in developing countries.

With Kiwanja software it is possible to use SMS to get information and to create conversations by means of SMSs.

Christian Kreutz, ICT4D Consultant

After working for GTZ, now he’s a consultant in helping organizations to use ICTs in development issues.

There is a lot of unrealized potential — or even unknown actual applications — in ICT4D. Lots of people use ICTs for activism, or for development cooperation, and don’t even “know” they’re doing it. The question, hence, is not “what can be done” but to be aware of “what is being done”.

In this train of thought, an important challenge is to make people and organizations to think beyond their (narrow) scope and see what others are doing in same or similar issues. Putting people in contact so that they share innovation is as important as raw innovation.

Q & A

Jaime Estévez: ICT4Ds for democracy? Kreutz: the more data that is published, the more transparency, hence more democracy. Banks: communication (through mobile phones, voice or SMS) is also a good symptom that we’re moving towards democracy, and this is happening in Africa more and more every time. Every citizen’s ability to monitor and report elections brings a lot of transparency to the whole process.

Estévez: how do ICTs transform participation? Kreutz: how do you combine top-down organizations with peer-to-peer collaboration? The pressure that organizations have to be open and horizontal is huge and most likely to be unstoppable. Banks: There’s a huge potential for people participation, the big challenge being bringing access to these people.

Estévez: how will ICTs impact organizations? Kreutz: it is very likely that ICTs will promote openness in organizations. Banks: Indeed, some top-down processes still have to be top-down (e.g. SMS banking services, because of regulations, etc.). The thing is how do create an environment for people to interact, but not necessarily imply the top-down debate.

Q: How can ICTs reduce violence in Africa? Banks: Public exposition (because everyone is monitoring and everyone reporting) has been crucial for actually reducing violence in the whole continent.

Q: Why helping “others” if we have problems “home”? Banks: this is a globalized world. There’s no more “others” or “home”. Indeed, the projects that work abroad will work too home.

Estévez: where do you get funding for your activities from? Kreutz: Most times you start with your own time and commitment. Banks: after a threshold (of time, and success) is reached, it is possible to raise money to keep on with the project and make it reach a wider scope. But the real stuff happens when people contribute on their own interest, in a decentralized way, and the project is supported by the community (of users) itself because the project matters. Kreutz: the case of Nabuur is just that: exchange of expertise, nothing to do with money or funding, and perfectly possible through the Internet.

Q: what approach should we take on ICT4D? Banks: (a) speak of target communities as yet another community, not “developing countries” and other condescending terms (b) benefit from the already existing knowledge in the places you want to work with. Kreutz: connecting people the most important thing to do.

Q: how to assess impact? Banks: it’s very difficult to measure the number of users of a technology or tool, what do they use them foor, etc.. A proxy for measuring impact can be to go and search for feedback on that impact. If you’re able to find (e.g. in a forum) feedback of an end user having actively adopted a technology or used a tool, that’s really useful for the promoter of that project.

Empowerment for Social Innovation, introduction by Ignacio Martín Maruri, Adaptive.

What’s empowerment? Why does not “empoderamiento” exist in Spanish? What’s the relationship between empowerment and innovation? Is it innovation just technological innovation? Or can we innovate in the field of citizenship? Is innovation good for empowerment… or bad, because it makes people comfortable and lazy? Or is it just the seek for comfort that makes people look for empowering innovations?

Empowerment? What for? Freedom? Progress?

Group work

Fernando Botelho: a main issue in empowerment is control. Empowerment without control — or with tools which are under the control of third parties — is not real empowerment. Open systems contribute to providing control (over the tools) to the empowered ones.

Roland Traumuller: Advances have to be taken in steps, steps that can be followed. Technology provides simple steps towards progress, towards empowerment.

Christian Kreutz: In the line of control, does empowerment makes sense within walled gardens?

Ismael Peña-López: empowerment is not about outputs, but about processes, which includes the selection of the (re)sources that are going to feed your processes.

Pierre L. Carrolaggi: Is it possible full control? Isn’t it an illusion? Not even in the free software field can you control everything.

Fernando Botelho: Absolute independence might not be possible or even desirable. Which does not mean that open protocols enhance interaction and interdependence — quite different from dependence.

Wilhem Lappe: Open protocols open the door for collaboration. And even if they’re not under one’s control, they make it possible to act and interact.

Christian Kreutz: There’s a difference between being empowered and potentially being able to be empowered. We might not be aware that there’s been a huge advance in the possibilities of empowerment, even if it has not materialized. This is why output is also very important, as it realizes the possibilities of some advancements towards empowerment.

Summing up:

• control (of the tools, of the environment) is important for empowerment
• processes matter more than output
• though successful output raises awareness and shows reachable goals
• control (of the tools) can be substituted by openness (e.g. open protocols) so that interaction happens freely without the need of control
• the creation of potential empowerment (vs. real achieved empowerment) has to be brought under the spotlight as it is a successful achievement too

Interview to Carlos Argüello, Studio C., by Jaime Estévez

Founder and director of Studio C, Carlos Argüello has over 20 years of experience in graphic and digital design. Has stood for excellence as a creative and artistic director in the world of renowned companies such as Walt Disney Features, Cinesite (Kodak), Synthetic Video and PDI (Pacific Data Images). One year later, in 2001, he returned to his homeland, Guatemala, and created Studio C. His aim was to work with local talent offering their design and production experience in the fields of architecture, audiovisual production and graphic design.

Carlos explains how he began working as a waitress and accessing computers at random, learning their usage and focusing in multimedia edition. He then travelled to the US and began to work with Hollywood, which represented quite a personal leap in his career (working for Terminator II, Michael Jackson’s “Black or White” videoclip, Armaggedon, SpaceJam, Waterworld, etc.).

At the sweetest peak of his career, he used to come back to Guatemala (his homeland) but saw it through the eyes of a tourist. Then a plane crashed in front of his own eyes while waiting to take a plane in Cuba. And felt the need for a personal change, a change that could bring change to other people. And thought about doing something in Antigua, Guatemala that was beyond the typical local wish to emigrate to the US.

He created a team of geeky kids and teens that already played with computers, and taught them to create products for the media industry in Guatemala. The project grew and they moved the office to the capital. One of their flagship projects, working with “The Chronicles of Narnia“, which was a national event. Not only the technical output was high quality, but the “moral” output was: putting on the map a developing country in the arena of hi-tech media productions.

Besides these more commercial projects, they are also producing educational projects for minorities (e.g. the Maya community).

Now the project’s become a regional one, not only working in/for Guatemala, but also Mexico, almost all Central America and part of South America. The good point (or bad, depending on how you look at it) is taht there’s never been public funding to create the offices, which means the project is absolutely sustainable. All the resources come from the private sector. Which does not mean that the project is looking for wider support to enlarge its reach.

Q & A

Q: what’s the priority: the Economy, Education or Politics? A: They are interdependent. It is difficult to state whether a solution in one particular issue can come without the other two changing too.

Javier Estévez: is technology the solution to poverty or to inclusion? A: No, it’s not, but it’s a very powerful enabler and catalyst. ICTs are creating new paths of development. And, most important, paving them for any kind of people, whatever is their origin (e.g. indigenous people).

Q: Is this project a personal one? Would it survive would the leader (i.e. Carlos Argüello) quit it? A: Yes, it would. There’s been a deep empowerment of the people involved in the project, which have made of them independent and responsible people, and leaders at their time of their own local communities. On the other hand, they are no more stuck to their homelands, but have become citizens of the world and have established their own networks.

Q: Is this project a new example of “cognitive neocolonialism”? Will these trained people emigrate to other places where they’d be better paid? Is the project favouring brain drain? A: Most people involved in the project do not want to go and live and work abroad. If given good conditions at the local level, people have no reasons to emigrate. The key is local development at large, not developing a minority that, of course, would most likely emigrate.

Jaime Estévez proposes a headline: Carlos Argüello went to the US and came back to make Latinamerica less dependent from the US.

NOTES: the post cannot reflect neither the richness of Carlos Argüello’s talk nor how well conducted the interview was by Jaime Estévez. Thank you both!

Last year’s edition featured a interesting collection of international speakers from the Development Cooperation and the Information Society world that rarely come together. This year’s pool of speakers lists an equally impressive range of personalities from which to learn — and debate with: Stéphane Boyera, Ken Banks, Ana Moreno, Vikas Nath, John Dryden, Eduardo Sánchez, Alexander Widmer, Carolina Figueres, Merryl Ford and Najat Rochdi.

The central topic of the conference will be Innovation in ICT for Human Development, with threethree associated thematic axis, namely:

• ICT and Quality in Development Cooperation
• ICT and Mobility for Development
• Development Cooperation Networks

Being interested in ICT4D and Development Cooperation, this is one of the two events taking place in Spain that you dont want to miss — the other one being e-STAS: Symposium de las Tecnologías para la Acción Social (more information to come).

More info

• Official Website
• Call for open participation
• The tag of the event will be cooperacion2.0

• Internet Access in Schools and Quality of the Educational System
• e-Readiness in post-conflict and developing countries: a reflection (part I)
• e-Readiness in post-conflict and developing countries: a reflection (part II)

Knowledge Management

• Content Assessment Systems
• Seminar: The Personal Research Portal: The Virtual Faculty or the Net behind the Classroom

Online Volunteering

• Understanding online volunteering: microvoluntarios.org

ICT4D Monograph: e-STAS Conference

• e-STAS 2008 (I). Raul Zambrano: ICTs, Digital Divide and Social Inclusion
• e-STAS 2008 (II). Round Table: The role of the Third Sector to achieve the Socio-Digital Inclusion
• e-STAS 2008 (III). Round Table: The role of the Public Sector to achieve the Socio-Digital Inclusion
• e-STAS 2008 (IV). Round Table: The role of Enterprises to achieve the Socio-Digital Inclusion
• e-STAS 2008 (V). Workshop: web programmes and content
• e-STAS 2008 (VI). Communications
• e-STAS 2008 (VII). Round Table: The role of Social Networks and Citizenry to achieve Socio-Digital Inclusion
• e-STAS 2008 (VIII). Last reflections. On access as a dependent variable.

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.

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.

Here come my notes for session VII (notes at random, grouped by speaker, but not necessarily in chronological order)

Left to right: Fabio Nascimbeni, Susana Finquelievich, Georgina Cisquella (moderator), Enrique Varela, Julio Andrade

Susana Finquelieveich, Links

There’s always been social networks. But now, thanks to the Internet, they can have a wider reach.

It’s important that sponsors and international agencies understand the usefulness of social networks and support them, both politically and economically.

Fabio Nascimbeni, Vit@lis

Some social networks have been born on the Internet. They are not “bone and flesh” networks gone digital, but digitally born.

The network is making possible that things that wouldn’t happen can actually take place, or that people that would never meet can now work together.

Networks have to be independent from the financial sources and political pressures.

Enrique Varela

Social networks have enabled conversations between different actors with different roles, e.g. nonprofits and sponsors.

We don’t have to think around technologies, but what is the problem we are facing and how should the solution look like.

Partnerships between nonprofits and firms are difficult and hard to manage, but the results are usually great if the institutions succeed at weaving the network.

Julio Andrade, City Council of Málaga

Local administrations do need to use (digital) social networks to interact with the civil society, learn from each other, work together, etc.