ICTlogy

The World Bank has published the World Development Indicators 2009. The indicators and the report that accompanies the updated version of the indicators are, arguably, one of the best comprehensive snapshots on the state of the question of development worldwide.

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

ICTs used in e-government projects can reduce corruption

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

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

Again, see Economic Benefits of ICTs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m pleased to announce an event of which I’m part of the organizing committee, the course Network Society: Social changes, organizations and citizens, to take place in Barcelona, Spain, from 15 to 17 October de 2008.

Some info about the course:

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

PROGRAMME: NETWORK SOCIETY: SOCIAL CHANGES, ORGANIZATIONS AND CITIZENS

Day 1 – Wednesday 15 October

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

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

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

Day 2 – Thursday 16 October

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

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

Day 3 – Viernes 17 October

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

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

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

Last reflections

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On access as a dependent variable

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

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

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

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

Use of ICTs in development cooperation models

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

Networked cooperation

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

ICTs in the Spanish Development Cooperation

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

More info

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

Round Table: Enric Senabre (moderator), Ana Moreno, Eduardo Sánchez, Carlos Mataix, Paco Prieto, Martín Jerch
ICTs in the policies and strategies of Development Cooperation, particularly in Spanish Cooperation

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

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

Ana Moreno: ICTs in the organization

ICTs both integrated in daily work and integrated in projects.

Change management in the organization a must.

Lessons learned

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

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

Martín Jerch

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

Eduardo Sánchez

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

Paco Prieto

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

Comments from the audience

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

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

More Info

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

Lady Virginia Mugarra Velarde
Education for HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases prevention

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

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

Goals

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

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

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

María Jesús Medina
Cybervolunteering at Iníci@te Programme

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

Volunteers experts in ICTs to help users in telecenters.

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

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

Olga Fernández Berrios
Reflections, tools and experiences about cooperation 2.0

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

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

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

Directories of projects and institutions.

Metablogs: Global Voices Online

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

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

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

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

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

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

Slides:

Vicente Carlos Domingo González
humania.tv

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

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

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

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

Success bridging the digital divide

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

The importance to generate local business possibilities based on ICTs.

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

Mobile Solutions

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

Mobile Web

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

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

Goals

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

Leverage communities of practice and communities of learning with ICTs.

Challenges

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

Communication in Alegría Activity

Mobile (connected) classrooms.

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

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

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

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

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