ICTlogy

I’ve been recently asked to give some advice on what topics and what issues should be included in a literature review introducing an e-Readiness assessment on Ethiopia. Here comes what my thoughts are:

Starting point and References

To begin with, the next categories from my own bibliographic manager are one possible place where to start digging about such works, being the former the more relevant:

• e-Readiness
• Digital Divide
• ICT4D

Yes, this produces hundreds of references that are all of them (or almost) worth having a look at. To make it easier, one can then look for some other literature reviews and/or comprehensive approaches to the topic, so that we are pointed to the main references in the field. In the case of e-Readiness and Ethiopia, I believe the next ones are musts:

• All the whole work published by Bridges.org is, undoubtedly, the best way to picture oneself a map of what is e-Readiness and what has been done in this field. Is is now a little bit outdated, but it still is a reference.
• George Sciadas‘s work implied a break in the field, clearly separating a before and an after eras in the measurement of the Information Society and the Digital Divide. The reflections that led to the Infostate model are, to my understanding, a fundamental knowledge for anyone interested in how to measure or assess digital progress.
• Concerning Africa specifically, the unavoidable reference is the Research ICT Africa team and their work, whose main authors/editors are Alison Gillwald, Steve Esselaar and Christoph Stork, among many others.

After these comprehensive approaches and main references about the subject, other references would be ITU, The World Bank, the World Economic Forum, the Economist Intelligence Unit, UNCTAd. A cross-search between these authors and the categories mentioned above will show up most interesting documents.

Besides, a look at the ICT Data category in the wiki will also list some of the main existing indices and data sets.

Topics and Scheme

There are, at least, three things that I’d like to see included in an e-Readiness assessment on any country:

• A general overview and context about this country, and not only about its development of the Information Society or Digital Economy, but as a whole: economy, society, etc.
• Then, the necessary shift towards the state of their Information Society, with a special focus in what is understood by ‘access’ in this specific country. This is, by far, the most important thing — to me — in any e-Readiness assessment. The definitions of access (and the lack of it: the digital divide) are many and do not necessarily coincident across countries. Is access ownership of infrastructures? Is access the possibility to communicate, from wherever and using whatever? Is access the capability to use available devices? Our understanding of access will determine both the literature we choose and the analysis we made of what our eyes will be seeing.
• Last, and according to the previous two points, some real data providing an empiric evidence and measure of what we stated before. Maybe this is not exactly literature review… but maybe it is: what have been looking at and what they did came up with the ones that preceded us. Most of this information will be found at the same references we talked about in the References section.

So, summing up: what is my reality — both in terms of discipline and social context — and what have others said about it.

Economist Jeffrey Sachs signed on August 21 2008 an article at — The digital war on poverty — in which, summing up, he explains that [t]Thanks to market forces, even the world’s poorest people are beginning to benefit from the flow of digital information. Not that I do not agree, in general, with what is explained in his article, but there are some clarifications I’d like to make.

Over all, the tone of the article is optimistic. I am also optimistic about the ends, but not on the actual estate of the situation nowadays. Besides, I’m becoming more sceptic about leapfrogging, which is one of the strong points made by Sachs. Don’t get me wrong: I do believe ICTs are a revolution and will provide renewed energies for those who will be capable of benefiting from them, but I think that ICTs will be catalysts and multipliers (perhaps in several orders of magnitude), but not substitutes.

I’ll try and comment some original statements made in the article one by one, and then gather up some conclusions.

The digital divide is beginning to close

Were this a question, the answer would simply be no. Put short, the inequality in the quantity of existing infrastructures is certainly narrowing. But when we look about quality, the digital divide is actually widening. I’ll be discussing this later, but here come some other articles of mine where I already debated about this issue (in chronological order):

• World Telecommunication/ICT Development Report 2006: digital divide narrowing?
• The Millennium Development Goals Report 2006: ICT and Digital Divide target
• The 2007 e-readiness rankings: comments and critiques

Extreme poverty is almost synonymous with extreme isolation […] [b]ut mobile phones […] will therefore prove to be the most transformative technology

I agree. Mobile technologies (cellphones, wireless, etc.) have a strong power and I also think that they will (they actually are) transforming the society at several levels. But from this sentence we understand — I’m sorry if it is me that got the author wrong — that poverty comes from isolation and, hence, as mobile devices will make isolation disappear, so will poverty.

I agree with Sachs that poverty usually means isolation — I’d say “exclusion” — but this is a consequence of other factors, a symptom, but not (or not always) a cause. So:

• Communication fosters development, but isolation not necessarily leads to (dire) poverty.
• Poverty has many factors, and many of them come from unequal distribution of wealth, unbalanced trade relationships, personal exploitation, etc. And they do happen in spheres of actual communication and not isolation (especially exploitation, by construction).

Mobile phone technology […] costs so little per unit of data transmission

Underdeveloped countries quite often are accompanied by lack of civil rights and concentration of power, which includes, usually, lack of competition in the telecommunications market. This means that prices are not that cheap. In absolute terms. In relative terms, with huge amounts of people living under the threshold of poverty, the prices are anything but cheap (a direct consequence of monopolistic regimes). Of course I agree that they provide cheaper means to exchange knowledge than other technologies, but I’m afraid that, even so, costs are not “so little”.

On the other hand, not only communication services have to be cheap, but also devices. Data transmission requires some devices (e.g. 3G cellphones) that are simply out of reach to 99% of the world population. Of course, I’m talking about rich data, and not SMSs or (in some cases) WAP — remember what we said about quality.

Despite this criticism, there are excellent experiences like Brosdi, Tradenet or (also mentioned by Sachs), M-Pesa, that picture an optimistic future. The final results will depend on how these experiences impact on developing countries and, more important, how fast developed countries are in running their own path… with better technology.

In the following paragraphs, Sachs explains some good examples on how ICTs have changed jobs and employment, business and commercial relationships, Education or the Health system. I agree these are good examples. I agree, too, that convergence is a very good thing, so that same content and services are made available regardless of the place or tool you’re using to access them. In general, I somewhat share his ideal that the end of poverty could be reached would we put all the potential we already have by pointing to that goal.

But the devil is in the details.

In a research I’m just carrying on, I’m finding that (almost) all good performance in indicators from the Digital Economy depends on exogenous factors, on analogue or “real economy” ones: the gross domestic product, education, inequality, freedom, etc. This puts at stake some optimisms about leapfrogging. The idea that the Information Society, Knowledge Based Societies or the Digital Economy can run in parallel from the Industrial Society does not seem backed up by evidence. So, not two parallel lines of development, but a circle is the figure that fits best. A virtuous circle or a vicious one, depending on what sense are you making it spin.

For all the benefits that Sachs speaks of to come, other (deeper) changes must take place too. And it is true, we can provoke and speed up some of these changes by means of ICTs. But to have a rabbit coming out of the hat, someone had to feed it first.

(notes from the homonimous session at the bdigital Global Congress)

Moderator: Begoña Gros

Three main reports issued in 2007 in Spain about ICTs at Schools. The conclusions are more or less the same: everyone uses ICTs (teachers and students) but not at school.

Ismael Peña-López
Digital students, analogue institutions, teachers in extinction

(click here for Spanish version of the presentation and presentation downloads)

Jordi Vivancos
Knowledge and Learning Technologies, a transforming vision of ICT in Education

The Educational sector (i.e. teachers) is one of the sectors with highest penetration in the use of ICTs. So, teachers are not analogue anymore.

The design of the traditional syllabus did not make possible the introduction of ICTs in the educational programmes, especially the acquisition of digital competencies. This was solved (in Catalonia) in year 2006, where such capabilities where included in new syllabuses.

Copernican change in Education (K-12): shift from “memorizing the capitals of the world” towards “learning how to use a map”.

Three stages of tech education:

• Learning about technology
• Learning from technology (i.e. instructional technology)
• Learning along with technology: technology as a context

And especially the last stage requires huge amounts of investment to achieve total capilarity of ICTs at school.

But, computers per student, without data about its use, is a useless indicator: it is intensity and not density what counts. So investment in computers is not (only) the issue. So, how educators and schools should and could appropriate technology for teaching purposes? How to improve, through ICTs, the learning processes?

Antoni Zabala
Computer sciences at school or PC at school?

The ICT adoption problems comes not from the Education professionals, but from school policies and design. We’ve been putting computers in the schools and this has not happened anywhere else: in other sectors of the Economy, there’s been no “pc installation” but “computer-based strategies”.

We use to relate ICTs with educational innovation, in quite a Freinetian approach. But ICTs might not solve each and every problem educators have.

As long as ICTs help educators solve their problems and move ahead, ICTs will be successful. The inverse (ICTs will be successful as long as they change the way educators act) is completely wrong.

Thus, we should analyse what the necessities are, both the educators’ and the students’ in the whole educational process. And leaps are no solution, but tiny and smooth evolutions.

In this train of thought, specific tools and software are better than computers. For instance: there are plenty of handooks from which the educator can choose to impart their courses, but there’s not such a thing in the instructional technology landscape: not a real choice, not competence.

Manuel de la Fuente
ICTs and Education: A Vision from the Classrooms

Not ICTs, but KLTs: knowledge and learning technologies.

SWOT Analysis on several schools:

Opportunities

• Plenty of digital content
• Good educational free software
• Virtual communities of practice
• New syllabuses include digital competencies
• Global acknowledgement that digital competencies is a priority goal

Menaces

• Lack of infrastructures inside the classroom, and lack of resources (e.g. maintenance) in general
• Based on goodwill not on incentives or general strategies
• Self-taught people, not formal training
• Lack of strategies

Strengths

• Highly motivated educators
• High potential of KLTs
• Existing intensity of use
• Some infrastructures already installed
• Some pioneers setting up interesting best practices
• General agreement that sharing is the new scenario

Weaknesses

• Lack of time to lead and coordinate
• Lack of training
• High dependency from the leader or the coordinator
• Existing material is but an adaptation of traditional methodologies, it’s not designed from a technological paradigm.
• Increasing loss of confidence because “the future never comes”

Way forward

• Hardware
• Resources
• Training

Comments from the audience

• Stress on media literacy, not only informational and technological literacy
• How to bring back value to content, content creation and authorship, and fight not only plagiarism, but devaluation of knowledge and reflection.

(notes from the homonimous session at the bdigital Global Congress)

Moderator: Miquel Mateu

Tim Kelly
Success factors for national ICT strategies: Case studies from global leaders

How do we recognise and measure success in ICTs?

Universal service:

• Availability
• Accessibility
• Affordability

But new concerns or challenges that should be included in ICT measuring:

• Participation
• Quality and intensity of access
• Lifestyle enhancement

Ubiquity of access: At anytime, by anyone, anywhere, to anything

Different perceptions of what quality is: reliability? time of response? depending on user and use.

For instance, in terms of proportion of Internet users, the digital divide is shrinking, but new types of digital divide are appearing, the most important of all, the broadband divide: broadband costs are 10 times higher in low income countries than in hight income countries. The cost of broadband access is nowadays a good indicator to prospect about the present and future health of one country’s Information Society.

Internet Access Inequality (Lorenz curve) (source)

Successful economies

Not only important their rank in the DOI, but also how many rank places they gained along the years.

Republic of Korea: DSL technologies, cable modem, appartment LANs, Wireless LANs, mobile broadband, low prices, active public-private partnerships.

Hong Kong: highest mobile penetration rate, multiple service providers and spreading over many different platforms.

Keys for success:

• market competition
• public-private parterships
• independent regulation

One of the goals an Information Society should address is the “dematerialization” of the society, so commuting, material spending, etc. is reduced so a deep impact is done to stop climate change.

• More info: International Telecommunication Union (2007) World Information Society Report 2007. Beyond WSIS.

Amadeu Jensana
China, Japan, Korea and India: Asia and the Digital Societies

The importance of the cultural fact as a difference to be taken into account before trying to draw “generic solutions” for everyone.

Japan

The structure of big japanese corporations made it difficult to be flexible and face innovation as the new times required. It took some time until start-ups — and their “aggressive sharks” — find their place in japanese society. Of course, language is way an issue.

Homogeneity and the relative small geographical extension of the country have played an important role for standarization and spread of new technologies policies.

People from Japan are eager to experiment and adapt new things.

Long run R&D strategies (5 or 10 years ahead) are possible in Japan, which enables some developments that require some time to develop or to bring results.

Portable or mobile devices, with high number of features, have had great success because of the way of living in Japan (lot of commuting time, lack of physical space, etc.)

Korea

Huge importance of public-private partnerships.

China and India

Great infrastructures (India somewhat behind), though still low acquisition power.

Huge economies of scale that enable them to create their own standards.

Sebastián Muriel
The role of red.es is to help Spain to become a networked society as soon as possible

In Spain: increase in both the share of budget spending and number of ICS services/devices in households.

Broadband subscribers have multiplied by four, coverage is at 98% and more than half the population are Internet users. Benefits of scale can be developed, indeed, by the fact that the Spanish speaking community is bigger than just Spaniards.

Goal: not access, but participation and content.

To enable the development of the Information Society, the DNIe (electronic ID) is crucial, so e-Administration and e-Government (among many other e-Services) can be made possible.

Concern in how new generations adopt ICTs: Chavales.

• More info: Plan Avanza

Jordi Bosch
Government of Catalonia: Vision and Strategy of the Information Society

We’re still far from having the solution to how to foster the Information Society. Benchmarking best practices seems to be a second best, though localization and keeping in mind the cultural differences is a must before copying-and-pasting others’ solutions.

Education is determinant for e-Readiness. So does intensity of use.

The key to the “Irish Miracle” is 1921: independence. Being able to define one’s own strategy is very important for a Public Administration (note: Mr. Bosch is speaking on behalf of the Catalan “regional” government, a second level administration depending on many issues from the Spanish “state” Government). If there is no coordination, collusion takes place. Thus, digital cohesion should be a goal.

Pilar Conesa
Barcelona, ICTs at the Service of the Citizens

u-bcn: ubiquitous Barcelona. Inspired in Seoul’s u-city: u-card, u-street, u-traffic, u-office, u-home, etc. Huge deployment of wire and wireless broadband. Goal: enable access anytime, anywhere and using anything.

Infrastructures: deployment infrastructures, with emphasis on Wi-Fi access for city services. All services should be integrated in mesh networks to provide real-time information.

Integrated interaction with the citizen. A big barrier being the zillions of solutions and providers existing… most time not following standards.

22@ Barcelona: transformation of a district based in obsolete technology industry towards a knowledge intensive district.

iCities is a Conference about Blogs, e-Government and Digital Participation.
Here come my notes for session I (part II).

Opening Session (part II)
Chairs Carmen Sánchez-Carazo

Intelligent Cities
José Gumersindo García

ICTs will improve the image that public administrations have before the citizenry: proximity, transparency, etc.

e-Administration and Modernization go hand in hand and they are co-requisites for the development of both.

The Public Sector does have to bet on digital literacy training for their public servants. But not only their employees, but also firms. With this digital literacy many projects can take place: instant messaging for better communication, datasharing through wireless networks, e-commerce, etc.

Free software is very important for the Public Sector, and again, also for enterprises.

Some reflections:

• To be connected does not mean appropriate use of the Internet
• To be in the Net does not mean being in the Net.
• Technological quality does not guarantee quality in Politics

Plan Avanza
David Cierco Jiménez de Parga

Video in Spanish about the Plan Avanza, the Spanish Government plan to foster the Information Society:

The Plan Avanza is a bottom-up aimed plan, where it pursues empowering citizenship initiatives, the main asset being sharing: experiences, resources, knowledge, etc.

Thus, many nonprofits are being the actual leaders of many projects.

Comments

For an e-Administration to be really “2.0” in the field of development cooperation, the output of the development cooperation founds should be open: open contents, open educational resources, free software… Once payed with public money, all output should be made freely available to the society at large.

There’s an agreement that there’s an urgent need for training:

• training on use, to learn how to get the most benefit from digital technologies, specially to the citizenry at large
• training on e-awareness, to learn how to change our functioning paradigms and models (and business models), specially to decision-takers and policy-makers

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 VI.

Ángel de la Riva

Cibervoluntarios

CiberMix: Diffusion and advocacy program that shows the benefits of ICTs in institutions, firms and citizens in rural areas through educational, leisure, content and services activities.

Antonio Fumero

periodismociudadano.com: a gate for initiatives, experiences, people, etc. that deal with citizen journalism.

The goals of citizen journalism (and blogging): listen, link, impact, share.

Ismael Peña-López

• Peña-López, I. (2007). “Online Volunteers: Knowledge Managers in Nonprofits”. In The Journal of Information Technology in Social Change, Spring Edition – April 2007, (1), 136-152. Vashon: The Gilbert Center
• Peña-López, I. (2005). e-Learning for Development: a model. ICTlogy Working Paper Series #1. Barcelona: ICTlogy

Kafui Amenu Prebbie & Miguel Ángel Álvarez

Digital World Forum on Accessible and Inclusive ICT.

Low cost computing has revolutionized access to ICTs. Now the project wants to analyze where technology is heading.

The problem of low cost computers is data storage, but if Internet access is cheap too (i.e. thanks to cheap wireless networks), the data can be stored online.

infopreneur: the telecenter at the minimum expression, developed by the Meraka Foundation.

Francisco Pizarro

Emprendedores sociales, Ashoka‘s branch in Spain to foster social entrepreneurship.

Carlos Flores

socialGNU, to foster the diffusion and use of free software in nonprofits.

Alejandro Simon

Zoowa, to create and share your agenda 2.0.