Round Table. Research for Development. Where is it heading in the ICT context?
Javier Simó, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (Spain)
Not theories, but practice: research should be aimed at creating an impact, at appliying into reality what has been researched and the outcomes of that research, such as in Health.
ICTs should be a tool to reach higher levels of efficiency and efficacy. And they should not deal with avant-garde and state-of-the-art technology, but on what are the best tools available to make a change in developing countries.
Identify the needs
Invest in R+D
Deployment, management and maintenance strategies
Strategy of sustainability
Thus why wireless technologies are a priority in ICT4D research.
Jordi Aguiló, Scientific Coordinator of the Latinamerican Science & Technology Development Programme
Strategic lines: Free software and applications in general, micro- and nano-technologies…
Topics: food technology, health, industrial development, etc.
Applied case: measuring IOP by a contact lens (with embedded nano-technology) to prevent glaucoma.
We tend to create new technologies and then look for the problem that they can solve. We should proceed inversely: first find the problem, then look for the solution.
Manuel de Oliveira Duarte, Universidade de Aveiro (Portugal)
Besides technologies, competence in their usage is critical: we should not forget to train the people that are to use the technologies that are going to be applied.
The relationship between technological infrastructures and development is not automatic. Things to do:
Beatriz Novales, Spanish Agency for International Cooperation for Development AECID (Spain)
ICTs can be very helpful to development cooperation agencies, especially in the following areas:
Decentralization, creating cooperation networks.
New management of human resources, in more and better training.
Procedures and organizational strategies.
Transparency and accountability.
Harmonization of a complex system.
Discussion
Arturo Velasco (ESF): How should we measure research in ICT4D? Ismael Peña-López: Richad Heeks has been reflecting on ICT4D research in its very worth reading him. We surely have to move from “impact” (as usually measured) towards citations and “usefulness” of that research as assessed by both researchers and practitioners. Javier Simó: We have to change the ways we assess research and certify it, so that “cool topics” are not rated over less trendy topics (i.e. development). Manuel de Oliveira: we should not only assess what is “publishable”, but what is interesting.
Valentín Villarroel: what are the priority projects? how to foster them? Manuel de Oliveira: the role of the scholar has to be reinvented. Business models are a priority in developing countries.
Q: what is the flexibility between doing research to advance a discipline and to advance people? Jordi Aguiló: we should do one thing at a time, we are either researchers or practitioners; we do research in top-research or we do innovation for development. But we cannot play both games [I absolutely disagree with this point of view].
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I International Workshop on Research in ICT for Human Development (2010)
In the recent months, a debate has re-gained momentum on whether the field Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) is a discipline or not, what topics should it cover and what approaches and methodologies would be the most appropriate. The topic is not new and there already is a growing collection of interesting literature about it. On the other hand, Richard Heeks has performed a most useful reflection on researching ICT4D, providing insights on where and how to plublish (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) also providing some insights to the debate.
Though I agree with the topics within these categories, I would reshape/rephrase them a little bit, like this:
Infrastructures: including most of the “Post-conflict computing” category to gather not only post-conflict or emergencies, but all kind of infrastructures.
HCI4D: as is in Michael Best’s terms, that is, the part of the user, their competences, their personal needs and characteristics, etc.
Appliances: again, as is in Michael Best’s terms, though also including content and all the ways it can be delivered, software and applications, etc. In other words, the user’s end of technology.
I think sustainability has to be embedded in the former categories: if it is technological or environmental, most probably in the first one, as part of the infrastructures; if it is financial, probably as part of the design of services and appliances.
The social sciences approach
Independent, completely orthogonal to the previous approach — i.e. not better, not worse, just different — would be my own conception of ICT4D research. My approach goes relies heavily on the philosophies and reflections of people like Sen and Freire or the findings characterizations of development of Welzel and Inglehart.
The focus of a social sciences approach is not technologies themselves — as is the case of the technological approach — but where are they applied. Thus, revisiting the values and rights based approach that we drafted in Three approaches of ICTs in development and an alert on leapfrogging, we can make evolve that model picturing, on the far right, the four key areas where ICTs should be applied for development:
Note that Health would include all aspects related to personal well-being, from physical health strictly speaking to psychological health, including food and nutrition. Education includes all kind of intellectual and ethical emancipation. Governance goes from the exercise of free will to engagement and participation in public matters.
The convergence of social sciences and technology approaches
Is it possible to cope with both approaches? Of course it is. I here below try to pick some examples in the crossroads of the different categories for each approach. The table is, by no means, a comprehensive representation of all the “sub-fields” or “applications” of ICT4D whatever the approach:
Infrastructures
HCI4D
Appliances
Health
Hardware for disabled people
Telediagnosis devices
Second level digital divide
Knowledge gap in education
e-Learning for Development
FLOSSE
Open Access
Open Educational Resources
Governance
e-ID
RFID
Profile of the refusenik
Knowledge gap in politics
Electronic voting systems
Open databases
e-Government: G2C, G2B…
A last reflection on multidisciplinarity
I personally do not think that a pure multidisciplinary approach is possible, though sometimes we will see transdisciplinary researches that travel from one discipline to another one to provide several points of view at once, or provide several analyses with several methodologies to cover the same topic. Sometimes either the knowledge of the researcher (even of the research team) or the intended audience of a specific research will shift the focus towards social sciences — and within them towards anthropology, sociology, economics, political sciences… — and sometimes the focus will be shifted towards technology — and within technology towards hardware, software, user experience, networks… —; and most of the times it will be both, personal background and intended audience, the pushing forces towards a specific discipline.
While the later is most of the times unavoidable and even desirable for the sake of clarity and focus, ignoring the adjacent disciplines will, in my opinion, become less of an option.
I would personally mistrust an ICT4D economist that cannot tell the difference between Wi-Fi and WiMAX, as I would mistrust an ethnography of the blogosphere by someone without a blog. Of course you do not need to know all the technical specificities, but at least the rough differences and the different fields of application.
On the other hand, I would mistrust an ICT4D software engineer working in education that knows not the main research trends in digital literacy or the main criticisms against Seymour Papert.
In other words, our hands are limited and we cannot play all the keys, but our ears have to be able listen to all musics. At once.
What will be the content of the EDem Conference 2020?
Find below the video and, after, short answers to the previous questions:
5 Words to eDemocracy?
eDemocracy is not about making democracy “electronic” (i.e. to use digital devices to perform our usual democratic participation), but how Information and Communication Technologies have transformed democratic institutions — mainly parties and governments — and what will be the role of such institutions and the role of the citizens because of the introduction of these ICTs, digital content, and the Information Society as a whole.
The future of eDemocracy in a nutshell?
The future of eDemocracy is about how to mainstream Democracy in people’s lives. It is usually said that (a) people are not interested in politics and/or that (b) people have other problems more important than democratic participation.
I think that we should be able to “embed” democratic participation in people’s daily lives so that participating (being informed, deliberation, voting, etc.) could be part of your daily “routines”, mainstreamed in your daily activity.
A simplistic though illustrative example of this mainstreaming — helped by ICTs and out of the democratic arena — is what Amazon does with your online behaviour and recommendations: you do not need to take any especial activity besides buying to build your profile upon which Amazon recommends books for you. Is that possible in political preferences?
Your favourite eDemocracy project?
One eDemocracy project that I know of and that I really like is Parlament 2.0, the Parliament 2.0 initiative by the Catalan Parliament led by its president Ernest Benach himself, a project that opens up the whole activity of the Parliament and really enables and fosters citizen participation.
President Ernest Benach wrote a book about this project and other “politics 2.0” reflections: #Política 2.0.
Prospects and risks of eDemocracy?
The main risks are, of course, the digital divide in all its senses (physical access, digital competences, etc.).
Besides the digital divide, we have to rethink political institutions… without necessarily destroying or ignoring or circumventing them.
What will be the content of the EDem Conference 2020?
Did we succeed in transforming political institutions and how?
Did we manage in how to mainstream democratic participation in everyone’s daily life?
During the 250 years of our industrial society, capital owners (capitalists) have been the ones that have ruled the world, the ones that are in power.
Our democratic system is shaped according to this industrial society and its power relationships.
In the upcoming knowledge society, the ones that will be able to manage cleverly knowledge by means of digital tools (digerati) are likely to have a higher share or power in all the aspects of life, especially the government (goverati).
We need to work to make access to knowledge as widespread as possible — access to infrastructures, digital competences, effective usage — so to avoid replacing the existing plutocracy with a new e-aristocracy.
Župa – Grassroots Democracy Revolution on the Web Alois Paulin
We have to find out a way to get rid of inefficiencies, lobby-influenced politicians or sheer corruption in governments.
The Župa — slavic for community — model aims at reducing the size of the government through an intensive usage of Information and Communication Technologies.
You can set up a profile (with your blog, ideas, etc.) and be elected as anyone’s candidate.
[this projecte reminds me of something Ethan Zuckerman explained to me two years ago]
E-Parliaments and novel Parliament-to-Citizen Services: An initial Overview and Proposal Aspasia Papaloi and Dimitris Gouscos
Age group parliaments, social parliaments, thematic parliaments, alternative or counter parliaments, etc. have been initiatives to open up parlaments.
e-Parliaments are a new way, supported by ICTs, to open up the parliaments to their citizens.
Examples of activities taken up in e-Parliaments include participatory budgeting.
For these to work there is needed: political will, strategy planning, etc.
European Status of E-Participation and what is needed to optimise future Benefits? Jeremy Millard and Morten Meyerhoff Nielsen
eParticipation initiatives are quite common all along the European Union, and they are especially relevant at the local level. And while eParticipation initiatives are important too at the national level, we still find crossborder initiatives, aiming at people that communte between countries, are immigrants within Europe, etc.
At the local level, e-Participation initiatives have much more users (in % of the targeted population) and participation decreases as we move up in the scale of the government (regional, national, international, etc.), though the latter are better funded than the former.
Among the tools, e-Voting or e-Petitioning are in the lower end of usage, being websites in the upper part. It is surprising that voting has such a poor importance in these initiatives.
How to optimise e-Participation?
Formalise and mainstream e-Participation as part of a coordinated ‘open engagement policy’.
Help establish or support independent, neutral trusted third party service for e-Participation.
Governments/institutions should listen to and provide frameworks for building citizen participation from the bottom (but not control it).
Unleash the empowering potential of easy to use Public Sector Information for re-use in machine-readable format.
The Policy-cycle is a simplified, ideal-type model of policy processes. It is useful to structure and systematise the complex, though in real-world policy-making does not follow clear-cut stages and chronological sequences:
Problem definition;
agenda setting;
policy development;
implementation;
policy evaluation.
Most e-Participation initiatives focus on the first two stages, while other stages are largely ignored. Notwithstanding, we do not have to underestimate these first stages or the power of “non-decisions”: indeed, many projects went on or were prevented to evolve in these precise two stages. Indeed, agenda setting is but another way to decide what is to be dealt with and, hence, what is to be decided in the latter stages.
[interesting debate difficult to catch on these notes]
