ICTlogy

Last May 14th 2009 I imparted a seminar entitled Measuring digital development for policy-making: Models, stages, characteristics and causes. The role of the government in the framework of the Internet, Law and Political science research seminar series that take place at the School of Law and Political Science, Open University of Catalonia (Barcelona, Spain)

Though I had previously presented part of my phd research in public, this is officially the first time that I present final results.

The presentation only shows a brief introduction to Part II (quantitative analysis) and partial highlights from Part III (quantitative/statistical analysis), which makes most slides quite cryptic without a speaker (more cryptic, I mean).

Put short — very short —, after defining a conceptual framework (the 360º digital framework) the research draws 4 stages of digital development (after cluster analysis), the three of which are but different levels of a similar digital development path, and the fourth of them a completely different digital development model: leapfroggers.

These stages of digital development are characterized (a profile for each of them is described), and some determinants (causes) for this digital development (or underdevelopment) are calculated by means of logistic regressions.

Main ideas/findings

The research shows the huge importance of governments in framing and fostering digital development, which is more important and should be more direct the less digitally developed is a specific economy.

It is important to note that government action should be, firstly, focused in framing and give incentives to the real economy, entrepreneurship and innovation; and secondly, to foster the digital economy by means of providing it with an appropriate policy and regulatory framework but also by means of “pull” strategies.

Thus said, the findings show that digital development is compatible with both liberal and Keynesian policies, and that supply-side policies and direct intervention are only worth applying below a minimum threshold of infrastructures. After some infrastructure is installed, policies should especially focus to trigger demand (not to increase the aggregate demand, which is a completely different thing).

This goes against the belief that the government should subsidise computers or content; but it also goes against the belief that the government should just care for the regulatory framework: public policies are a determinant of digital development.

What policies then? Fostering digital services, both private supplied as public e-services, as these services will pull de demand more effectively than other kind of policies.

Two caveats:

• Basic development (income, health, education, equality) accompanies any other kind of digital development, which means that it has to be addressed first hand and, indeed, be the target itself where to apply the benefits of digital development.
• Leapfroggers show that another model from the previous one is possible. It is my concern, nevertheless, how a model based in a powerful ICT Sector aimed towards international trade will impact the domestic economy beyond an eminently direct level. In other words, policies fostering a domestic digital development will have both direct and indirect multiplier effects, the latter being the most powerful ones and, maybe, absent in a leapfrogger model.

Citation and downloads

The reflection around digital competences that I drafted in Towards a comprehensive definition of digital skills has evolved into the course Competencias digitales: conocimientos, habilidades y actitudes para la Sociedad Red (Digital competences: Knowledge, skills and attitudes for the Network Society), a joint project with RocaSalvatella — especially with Olga Herrero and Genís Roca — who are doing an most valuable work in raising awareness and building capacity in the private and public sectors on e-competences.

The general idea of the course is as follows:

The Information Society implies numerous changes at all levels in our daily life: how we access and exchange information, how we work and stablish cooperation relationships, or how we communicate and interact with individuals and institutions.

These changes have as a consequence new demands for the individual: learning, being a professional or being a citizen in the XXIst century requires some competences qualitatively different from the ones taken for granted just a decade ago. The Information Society requires new knowledge, new skills and, especially, new attitudes that can be grouped under the denomination of digital competence.

“Digital competences. Knowledge, skills and attitudes for the Network Society” will bring access to the most recent approaches to the concept of digital competence according to different social dimensions, including a set of practical experiences of development, application and evaluation of these competences in several spheres of society.

Putting together the course has been an incredible effort because we really wanted to place it in between “Using MS Word to write a job application” and “New competences for the upcoming millennium in a post-structural and post-modern world under the light of the approach of the Habermasian interpretation of McLuhan”.

That said, we convinced — our sincerest gratitude — Cristóbal Cobo, Boris Mir, José Manuel Pérez Tornero, Ismael Peña-López (this one was easy to convince), Howard Rheingold, Joan Torrent, Telefónica I+D (speaker TBC), Laura Rosillo and Gerard Vélez to speak theory and practice of digital literacy from several points of view: education, government, enterprise and civic action.

The aim of the course is to reflect about digital skills and competences, but also to be able to apply that reflection in our daily lives, be it at the personal or at the professional level.

More information

• Competencias digitales: conocimientos, habilidades y actitudes para la Sociedad Red, official website of the course (in Spanish) (NOTA: para matricularse hay que ir a http://www.cuimpb.es/, click en “cursos de verano” y seleccionar el curso — si no, no funciona el javascript del formulario de matrícula)
• Towards a comprehensive definition of digital skills, by Ismael Peña-López, with a conceptual framework of the course
• Habilitats i competències digitals, podcast (radio interview) with Genís Roca on digital skills and competences (in Catalan), and stating practical reasons why the subject is becoming more and more important.
• Cristóbal Cobo: e-competence in the European Framework: 21st century literacies
• Howard Rheingold: Online Social Networks

Live notes at the eResearch seminar by Antonio Lafuente (CSIC) and Ismael Peña-López (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) entitled e-Research: oportunidades y desafíos para las ciencias sociales (e-Research: opportunities and challenges for social sciences). Citilab, Cornellà de Llobregat (Barcelona), Spain, May 14th, 2009.

See also e-research tag.

Open Science and expanded authority
Antonio Lafuente

Open Science

What is open science? Can science not be open? Are we the product of the scientific revolution or is it the scientific revolution a product of the modern era?

The scientific revolution during the XVII and XVIII centuries was not about a dire change in methodology, but opening the process and results of science, making them public and transparent, opening knowledge to many. And it does seem now that we’re revisiting that era again, threatened by the menace of a closure of science.

During these centuries, a new character appears in science: the fact. And, with it, quantification and measurement of phenomena. But then the possibility appears too to register and appropriate knowledge through intellectual property rights. This leads to a process of privatization of knowledge (and universities…).

Threatening knowledge

We live in a Damoclesian era (Moran), scared masses are easier to lead/manage.

On the one hand, there are increasingly powerful lobbying activities that include positioning “experts” in supposedly independent scientific committees, with manifest conflict of interests. Neutrality, thus, is at stake.

Second, secrecy is a growing practice of which there’s evidence to be dragging the efficiency of the practice of science.

The crisis of peer review, affecting the “market” of scientific reputation, which, at its turn, affects tenures, prizes, grants… and indeed most policy-making and decision-taking depends on expertise and reputation.

Endogamy of citation procedures creates a resonance where most articles state the same discoveries but rely, aggregately, in just a few of them. Thus, there is few practice and experimentation and most (vague) citation and repetition of preceding literature, reinforcing — instead of testing or refuting — ungrounded (or poorly grounded) discoveries.

The speed of times also plays havoc on the slow path that science needs.

Uncertainty — or risk, according to Ulrich Beck — also requires more open and collaborative science, as the complex is too difficult to handle by few scientist working together.

Examples of Open Science

Innocentive: a community “to broadcast problems”. Innocentive has put into practice disperse and multidisciplinary talent.

Scott Page: The Difference, with examples of “why 1+1 is not 2”, or how to join efforts in solving problems.

The US Patent System: Not only the system has to grant patents, but research the prior art of the submitted patent application. But the prior art is so huge, that it just cannot be tracked. To solve this, a peer-to-patent project has been created: when a patent is submitted, it is published and whoever is affected by it (i.e. has some prior rights to what the patent claims) can object to that new patent application.

Electrosensibilidad: 13,000,000 Europeans state being electrosensible, meaning that electrostatic waves disable people to work and even live comfortably. But this “disease” is not acknowledged as so. A citizen platform has been created continent wide to share knowledge in order to define the symptoms, the consequences and force governments to acknowledge this disease.

Open Access: is a claim from scientist to recover an image of people working for the common good. The idea is that all knowledge publicly funded should be made public — and not transferred to private hands by giving away intellectual property rights e.g. to publishers. Besides moral issues, open access pays back both economically and scientifically (in citations, publishing impact, etc.).

How can eResearch contribute to enhance Research?
Ismael Peña-López

Please see How can eResearch contribute to enhance Research?

Q & A

Adolfo Estalella: It is an acknowledged truth that most collaborative projects (e.g. Wikipedia, Linux) are run by minorities, though there might be a huge community around them. Is it a problem of values? or what? Antonio Lafuente: Yes, it is a matter of values. Another issue is that authority cannot be automatized and requires curation. In an open review system, there’ll be more transparency and less probability to trick. And technology can enable this. On the other hand, there are several evidences where multitudes can produce quality.

Adolfo Estallella: but, will everyone review everything they read? how can we engage readers of open content to review, without explicit incentives, e.g. the papers they read? Antonio Lafuente: Maybe we should acknowledge and accredit comments and reviews, so that there is an incentive making them.

Live notes at the research seminar Gender Evaluation for Social Change by Chat Garcia Ramilo, Coordinator of the Association for Progressive Communications Women’s Networking Support Programme, Manila (Philippines). Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, Castelldefels (Barcelona), Spain, May 12th, 2009.

Gender Evaluation for Social Change
Chat Garcia Ramilo

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

Gender Evaluation Methodology

Based on participatory action research.

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

Findings and challenges

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

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

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

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

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

The Pallitathya model

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

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

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

Philippine Community e-Centers

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

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

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

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

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

SOS SMS

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

Why ICT4D (for women)?

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

Why gender evaluation in ICT4D?

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

Q & A

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More information

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

On Wednesday 13th May 2009, 17:30, I will be speaking at the 4th session of the seminar series e-Research: oportunidades y desafíos para las ciencias sociales (e-Research: opportunities and challenges for social sciences), side by side with Antonio Lafuente.

My part of the seminar will give a practical insight into eResearch — or Enhanced Research —, a concept that meets in the same crossroads as Open Science, Science 2.0 and e-Science do. Unlike what is generally believed, I don’t think about eResearch or Science 2.0 (the two more neighbouring approaches) as opposite to “traditional” science, but as a complement, as a next step, as an enhancement as the name itself implies. Of course, the more an enhancement is mainstreamed, the more it is likely not to enhance but to transform the enhanced subject. Thus, I believe that the Internet brings an inflexion in the practice of Science (and all knowledge-related practices — dozens of them), and that it is only a matter of time to see how new literacies are a must to keep on with such practices.

That said, the presentation begins with a (very) simplified scheme of a researcher’s timeline — again, the extrapolation into other knowledge-based jobs is almost immediate —, from having an idea to seeing it published on a peer reviewed academic journal, and including (some of) the steps the researcher usually goes through.

The timeline is then complemented — enhanced — by some “2.0” practices that can potentially help the researcher (the knowledge worker) in their work. One of the key points to stress here is that for this potential to (a) materialize and (b) have a positive return of investment, it is strictly necessary to mainstream the “2.0” practices in the researcher’s everyday life. At least in a higher degree (e.g. 80%).

For instance: this post is but my own guidelines to impart the seminar, which exist not in paper;the presentation that follows is the one I will be using; and the reference to my bibliographic manager feeds the database with the bibliographies I work with, the online repository of my works and my online CV; hence the only “added” effort is uploading the zipped file of the presentation.

More information

• Citation information and downloads of the presentation
• e-Research: oportunidades y desafíos para las ciencias sociales, official website of the seminar series
• The personal research portal, collection of works (of mine) in the field of eResearch
• Research Blogs and Blogging for Science Diffusion, (non comprehensive) collection of works (by several authors) in the field of blogging and science in particular, and eResearch in general
• This event in Facebook

I want to thank Adolfo Estalella, Elisenda Ardèvol and all the Mediacciones research group for the idea of setting up this series of seminars — thanking (or blaming) them for inviting me, this falls on the audience.

NOTE: to comfortably browse the presentation in Prezi.com, open it in a new window, click once in the presentation, and use Page Up and Page Down to move along “slides”.

During the e-STAS: Symposium on Technologies for Social Action, Fundación Cibervoluntarios edited a book which gathered small articles by several people around the subject of empowerment.

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