ICTlogy

Notes from Asian Telecentre Forum 2009 / eAsia 2009 held in the BMICH, Colombo, Sri Lanka, on December 2-4th, 2009. More notes on this event: easia2009.

Plenary Session, Track 2 (pt.2)

Building a Knowledge Society for All. Emphasizing Government’s Strategic Role Supporting ICT Innovations in Education
Jyrki Pulkkinen, GeSCI

The gap between developing countries and developed or industrialized countries can be widening due to lower investments in ICT, education and innovation processes in developing countries. Knowledge is increasingly the key factor of production as well as a raw material for economic development.

We need to invest in ICTs that impact Education. But not wasting money in screens that substitute blackboards or handbooks for doing exactly the same things: this is a misinvestment.

One OLPC promoter once said that computers at the OLPC programem could substitute teachers. Then, why give them to children that already go to school instead of giving them to childrent that do not go to school?. We need to prioritizise the excluded ones, not the included ones.

ICT Innovations and educational challenges:

• lack of universal inclusive access
• poor quality of education
• poor management on the education system
• incrasing irrelevance of the current educatoin system in the knowledge society, new skills that need to be learnt (and besides e-skills)

Layers of successful ICT integration in education (much more than infrastructure):

• Hardware, software: ICT
• Warsmware: principal, teacher, learners, parents
• Socialware: school, university, institutional development
• Cultureware: strategies & policies

What can the government do?

• Foster multistakeholder partnerships
• Create an enabling environment for development
• A blueprint and a roadmap for partners
• Key resources: institutional, human and financial

J.B. Dissanayaka, Ambassador for Sri Lanka in Tahiland, Cambodia and Laos PDR

Vidatha (sanscrit): knowledge that is given, knowledge that is transferred.

[interesting speech — impossible to reproduce here — about languages and their usage in ICTs]

Digital Bangladesh: Road to Achieving ‘Sonar Bangla’ (golden Bengal) in the 21st Century
Abdul Karim, Prime Minister’s Office, People’s Republic of Bangladesh

Virtual one stop shop for Government services: cost effective, quick, participative, etc.

Of course, connectivity is the issue, that’s why the cretion fo the “mobile lady” and other public access points.

Also a rise of m-Services provisioned by the privaste sector: language learning, health, agriculture information, legal advisory, court case notification, market access and trade, emergency service, etc.

ICT Act 2009 (digital certification, fight against cybercrime), Right to (Public) Information Act 2009, m-Banking.

Q&A

Q: How can ICTs or the ‘Sonar Bangla’ be used to fight government corruption? Abdul Karim: ICTs can ensure proper transactions, as getting rid of paper, and minimizing physical contact of documents, bureaucratic corruption has necessarily to decrease. Pulkkinen: corruption happens when people don’t know. Raising awareness — and knowledge — on public affairs is the best way to reduce corruption. E.g. if the citizen knows how much money should there be in a specific account and the citizen knows how much money there actually is in that account, it is very difficult to cheat and remain unnoticed.

Notes from Asian Telecentre Forum 2009 / eAsia 2009 held in the BMICH, Colombo, Sri Lanka, on December 2-4th, 2009. More notes on this event: easia2009.

Plenary Session, Track 2 (pt.1)

Telecentre for a digital divergence era
Florencio Ceballos, telecentre.org

More and more mobiles in people’s hands, many of them in developing countries. 4.6 billion estimated by end of 2009. Thus, we might be facing not a digital divide, but a digital divergence: it’s not that people do not have access to ICTs, but that they have access to different qualities of ICTs. Difference between full access to the Knowledge Economy to restricted access to the Knowledge Economy.

Telecentres are a way to share enhanced access to the Knowledge Economy. But not only they provide access, but also skills, etc.

Why shared access? Well, not that new:

• Public transportation
• Shared bycicles in many cities in the world
• Access to water through fountains at streets
• Public libraires

Ownership, thus, is not the issue, but access to knowledge. And telecentres are the “sherpas” that facilitate this access to people.

Though sustainability is quite often raised as an issue, in fact, many times is lack of investment what strangles the viability of certain telecentres. With the appropriate investment, more (business) opportinities come at hand.

And public access is not at all a “solution for very poor countries”. Germany, Sweden, Spain, UK, etc. are amongst the countries that have a more developed (in quantity and quality) network of telecentes.

But of course, telecentres have to evolve. Some are using telecentres to access higher education courses, others to bring microcredit to rural areas…

The impact of the Cloud on Public Sector
Bash Badawi, Microsoft Public Sector APAC

The cloud:

• software as a service,
• data as a service,
• platform as a service,
• infrastructure as a service,
• everything as a service.

It lowers the entrance costs to ITs, forces integration.

On the other hand, it’s fully scalable and you don’t even have to care about predicting how much usage, computing power, storage, etc. you will be needing. It’s just a pay-as-you-go.

Building a Smarter Planet: Government
Kevin North, IBM Asia Pacific Public Sector Business

We now have the aility to measure the condition of almost anything: e.g. with RFID cards we can constantl monitor the temperature of each and every cow in our herd.

The imperative for government today:

• Deliver value
• Exploit opportunities
• Act with speed

The road to outsourcing:

• Staff augmentation
• Out-tasking
• Co-sourcing
• Portfolio outsourcing
• Outsourcing

Q&A

Comment by attendant: India is increasing the number of mobile phones by 18,000,000 monthly, thrice the population of Finland.

Notes from the Fourth IPID ICT4D Postgraduate Symposium 2009, held in the Royal Holloway University of London, Egham, United Kingdom, on September 11-12th, 2009. More notes on this event: ict4d_symposium_2009.

Specialized Areas Workshop
Chairs: Åke Grönlund

What’s “for Development”? Isn’t everything for the development of a community or the world as a whole? Is it “for Development” only what happens in developing countries?

On the other hand, development has to necessarily rely on institutional support and adoption. Though it can be initiated and even fostered bottom-up, governments have to acknowledge and, lastly, actively support any initiative that wants to last and have a long term impact.

Thus, institutional reform is necessary… though it is normally slow everywhere, specially in developing countries.

Discussion

Social sciences should be providing feedback to Computer Scientists on how things work and how they are used. This means not only providing information about the impact, but taking part in the design itself, to feed innovation back.

We could say that ICT4D is to developing countries what e-Commerce is to the developed world. But e-Commerce is a quickly changing “discipline”: if it’s in a handbook, it’s outdated. So, trying to build relevant and useful content on ICT4D is difficult, as it will soon be outdated too. That’s one of the reasons IT researchers and social scientists just seldom come together in the needs and the solutions.

One of the priorities of developing countries’ governments, is how to make money out of ICTs. So we have to be aware of the priorities, which normally are not that people participate more or have better access to government services.

ICT4D is a means to understand societies and cultures and how they will be using ICTs.

There is a need to go multidisciplinary and try and understand others’ points of view and, more important, to learn something about others’ disciplines, so that mutual understanding happens in a easier way.

We should be able to make money out of some e-whatever projects, so that they are seen useful and, at the same time, to make them sustainable. On the other hand, this is usually a high priority for people in developing countries. For this to happen, some capacity building and digital capabilities development would also be a high priority goal.

Three economic approaches to ICT4D:

• make money locally, enable cash sources: this is what local beneficiaries want
• be cost effective, efficiency, efficacy, specially in Health, Government/Democracy and Education: this is normally the agenda of Development Studies
• ICT sector for international commerce (leapfroggers): which might have or might have not an impact in the domestic economy (but only benefit the plutocracy)

Notes from the Fourth IPID ICT4D Postgraduate Symposium 2009, held in the Royal Holloway University of London, Egham, United Kingdom, on September 11-12th, 2009. More notes on this event: ict4d_symposium_2009.

The Social Construction of ICT as a Strategy for Development in Jamaica
Michelle “afifa” Harris

Development challenges in Jamaica: high crime rate, unemployment, inadequate resources, etc.

According to the e-Readiness Report 2006, Jamaica has inadequate ICT infrastructure, limited contribution of ICT to GDP, unreliable electricity, limited Internet connectivity, low computer ownership, low innovation in the area of ICTs.

Why ICT policies, though? Are particula perspective shaping ICT policy? Are particular interpretations of realities shaping policy? What are these interpretations of the reality?

Research questions

• How have decision makers interpreted ICT as a developemnt strategy for Jamaica?
• How do these interpretations construct the need for using ICT as a development strategy? What are the discourses associated with this construction?

The national ICT strategies are being analysed to see what the backing discourses are, and which the underlying assumptions and conceptions around ICTs that policy-makers used in their discourses. The research, in the end, wants to provide a critical analysis on the process of policy creation and therefore the ideas and perceptions behind the adoption of National Strategies, deepening the discussion on the role of discourse in agenda setting.

Initial findings on the meanings and interpretations of ICT4D-Thematic areas:

• Us the power of communication to make us better
• About empowering people
• About enabling people
• Using the IT sector to generate development

But this was placed in the context of what “modern” development required particularly with definitions which seem to underscore the importance of creating a “knowledge based economy”.

Initial findings on the reasons for ICT as a tool for development

• Ability to drive development
• Necessary Government action
• Responding to Global developments

Initial findings on the themes and areas of Discourse

• Education and e-Learning Jamaica projects
• Agriculture-ABIS system for Farmers
• Community Development-Community Access Points

Open Educational Resources for Development. Let’s be realistic about its potential!
Annika Andersson & Mathias Hatakka

Do open educational resources (OER) have any impact in education and/or developing countries? There’s a good amount of literature that state one or the other one or both, so this research pursues testing it in a real environment.

The problem is how to measure the impact of OER on development, as development itself is a complex concept. So, the research will look at its use, how are they looked at and what’s the impact on development.

ICTs regarding to use: OER are seen as a commodity, supporting development activities, as a driver of economy (increases productivity, efficiency), and directed at specific activities.

ICTs views: OER as a tool (OER as seen as a way to build your own resources), computational, ensemble, proxy (OER as an enabler for empowerment).

ICTs impact: OER as a replacement, the increase of a phenomenon, OER as a transformation.

Issues/hypotheses:

• Tertiary effects are hard to measure?
• OERs do not contribute to development?
• OERs are not designed in a way that they can contribute to development?
• OERs are not used enough to have an effect?

Re-shaping ICTs for nation building: the Ethiopian case
Iginio Gagliardone

In Ethiopia there were some projects that costed a total amount of 300,000,000$, coming from the government treasury (not the donor agencies), projects that you wouldn’t find in the richest countries of the World. How did they came to think of, design and implement such projects? What was the mindset behind them? How was the political discourse embedded in technology?

In the late nineties, the minority from Tigray came to power and are since building a federalist while centralized state. There’s thus a need to decentralize to suport their ideology but also to exert a central control to make sure they can stay in power. Here is where ICTs come to the rescue.

Videoconferencing technologies for political administration, or broacasted lectures for education, are indeed being used to disseminate discourses about the nation at the grassroots level and among those in power. On the other hand, they reinforce the presence of the government around the nation (just for the record, all the web servers and their related services are hosted at the president’s seat).

This is a clear case where technology is not created to empower but to control.

Downloads

• Video of the session (part I) (235 MB)
• Video of the session (part II) (84 MB)

Notes from the Fourth IPID ICT4D Postgraduate Symposium 2009, held in the Royal Holloway University of London, Egham, United Kingdom, on September 11-12th, 2009. More notes on this event: ict4d_symposium_2009.

eGovernment: Understanding the dynamics between adoption, social inequality and empowerment
Mishra Gaurav

Most of the eGovernment debate nowadays is, surprisingly, more focused on data than on citizenship, the citizenry or empowerment. Indeed, research has focused in impact assessment, sustainability or the digital divide.

Research gaps? Impact assessment in terms of development, understanding adoption and usage in developing country perspective; coordination and transformation process; quality and efficiency of services; empowerment related issues of disadvantaged groups. In general, eGovernment has been focussing in itself rather than in impact.

Goals

• Factors influencing adoption and use of eGovernment services by rural people: how do SES, type of government, etc. determine eGovernment adoption
• How eGovernment addresses the issue of social inequality, how does eGovernment affect social inequality
• To examine the role of eGovernment in empowering people: what type of eGovernment fosters empowerment

Theoretical framework:

• Unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) Venkatesh et al. (2003)
• Capabilities framework-motivated from Sen (1999)

More information

V. Venkatesh, M. G. Morris, G. B. Davis, and F. D. Davis, User acceptance of information technology: Toward a unified view MIS Quarterly, vol. 27, pp. 425-478, 2003

eRebellion: The role of ICT on changing government policies and regimes
Amara Thiha

The web 2.0 has enabled several new ways for information to circulate and citizens to state their opinions publicly. But it also has enabled amplification of propaganda issued by extremist and minority groups that just seldom represent e.g. the people inside a country (Myanmar case). We don’t have to take for granted that “2.0 agencies” are more neutral than traditional news agencies.

Research questions

• What is the boundary between Democratic and Undemocratic with self amplified information and news?
• How to control this participation which lead to undemocratic situation in democratic manners
• What is this process and what is the common model of this participation in web 2.0

Towards Open Government in Morocco
Asmae El Mahdi

There has been a rapid expansion of ICTs in Morocco, but they have still to hugely impact both the Administration and the citizens. Indeed, research has been done about enabling the shift from manual to automated service delivery of public services, dealing with issues like labor intensive and paper-based back offices, the integration of back-office and front-office, the provision of citizen-friendly instant service delivery, etc.

A second kind of research was focussing in the adaptation of the electronic front-office to illiterate end-users.

Open ICT4D is the use of new ICTs to engage in “open ” processes to achieve developement goals, IDRC.

A third research, eFES, focused on the impact of these new technologies applied to the Administration, on assessing ICT influence on development, while shifting towards open government:

• Fez Municipality: shift away from telecom operators towards city-wide wireless open spectrum: joining up
• Local Public Administration: shift away from mere comsumption to prosumption: user-driven innovation
• Civil Servants: shift away from closer practices to encouraging open practices: self-service touch-screen kiosks
• ICT4D team: shift away from proprietary software to free software: per-poor model of development

Results: efficiency gains evidenced in several indicators. Indeed the scheme has been replicated so far in 50% of the administration offices.

Challenges: institutional weaknesses, severe deficit in capacities; policy matters: human choices weakening innovation systems.

Downloads

• Video of the session (156 MB)

Notes from the course Competencias digitales: conocimientos, habilidades y actitudes para la Sociedad Red (Digital competences: Knowledge, skills and attitudes for the Network Society), organized by the CUIMPB, and held in Barcelona, Spain, on July 16th and 17h, 2009. More notes on this event: competencias_digitales_cuimpb_2009.

Communities of Practice in Public Administrations. Compartim programme and digital competences
Jesús Martínez and Dolors Reig

The Compartim programme

The professionals from the Catalan Justice Department are expert professionals that need no diffusion but working sessions where to share requirements of specific training and see whether any colleague might know or have a solution: the way to engage these professionals in training is, then, communities of practice.

On the other hand, the problem is that most of the times there is not a preset solution for many problems, as they are complex and need many approaches.

Technology enables a constant connection among peers, provided that everyone shares and collaborates and builds knowledge together.

A good thing about communities of practice (CoP) is that they can be shaped as needs require. The structure Compartim established has: an e-moderator that leads a working group, face-to-face meetings and online work, discussion, outputs, diffusion of these outputs (normally reports) and assessment of the whole process. The working group is smaller (+250 people) and its first approach to the problem is shared with the rest of the participants (+1300).

An external consultant provides seldom “knowledge pills” that feed a knowledge based, also fed by the library and the outputs of the CoP, which, at their turn, are provided by the employees.

Adaptation from face-to-face was tough: people used to sharing and participating in meetings, could dangerously evolve to the 1-9-90 standard: 1% heavy contributors, 9% intermittent contributors, 90% lurkers. With people overwhelmed with work, this could even get worse. The ratio they got was 16.17 active participation, rest lurkers.

One of the best outcomes was learning. From the 4 main components of the CoP (antenna, organization of know-how, production and learning), learning became the focus of the CoP and the main driver of satisfaction. And this learning has as origin tacit experts belonging to the CoP.

Digital competences at the Communities of Practice

At the Compartim CoP all kinds of digital literacies and competences were dealt with, specially Technological and Informational literacies, and much less (a “to do” for the nearest future) e-Awareness. But almost all kinds of tools, approaches and competences were dealt with, including digital identity/presence by means of LinkedIn.

Main characteristics of the learning process:

• Viral design
• Meetings and events with reputed people to trigger change and engagement
• Short and really operative learning units, on a constant basis and always available
• Presence and conversation, through blogs, contents on several platforms (podcast, vidcast, etc.), netvibes, etc.

Strucutre of the learning process

• Specific courses for e-moderators
• Specialized seminars on knowledge management
• Good practices sessions
• Conferences

The blog proved to be the best tool as it could be uses in many applications and levels of knowledge, including the training of several skills at a time.

Besides digital competences, of course collaborative work was highly treated and trained. And learning proved to be higher the higher was the engagement of the members to the Community of Practice.

What’s next? more processes on a peer-to-peer basis; reinforce autonomous learning and people oriented towards learning; more work with tools, specially when there are new tools every day; creativity and lateral thinking; creation of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) and professional e-portfolios, both at the individual and the collective (CoP) levels.

Q&A

Ismael Peña-López: how much have been CoP mainstreamed or embedded in everyday’s life? Jesús Martínez: the CoPs that are useless, just fade away. The ones that are interesting, with the appropriate support and digital skills training completely succeed and are used on a daily basis. Dolors Reig: because people are absolutely engaged, which is one of the main goals: engagement. CoPs have to be useful for work but also for other aspects of life.

More information

• Competencias digitales en las Administraciones Públicas, by Dolors Reig
• Competències digitals. Coneixements, habilitats i actituds per a la Societat Xarxa (4), by Joan Carles Torres