ICTlogy

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

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.

New competencies for politics, government and participation
Ismael Peña-López

Q&A

Carolina Velasco: one of the problems with cyberactivism is creating buzz around some concepts or information or pieces of news that are not fully understood by who’s endorsing them. A: Agreed. Indeed, the fact is that there’s people that are highly technologically literate and master several tools, but lack other dimensions of digital literacy such as informational literacy or e-awareness, for instance, and have the ability to endorse but without a critical point of view.

More information

• Citation and downloads, in Spanish and English: Peña-López, I. (2009). Goverati: New competencies for politics, government and participation. Seminar at the Course: Digital Competences: Knowledge, skills and attitudes for the Network Society. CUIMPB, 16th July 2009. Barcelona: ICTlogy.
• Competències digitals. Coneixements, habilitats i actituds per a la Societat Xarxa (3), by Joan Carles Torres
• Competencias digitales para la sociedad red (I), by Emilio Quintana

For the next month (July 13th to August 7th, 2009) I am teaching — actually guiding — a course on the Digital Divide and e-Participation at UNDP‘s Escuela Virtual para América Latina y el Caribe [Virtual School for Latin America and the Caribbean].

This is part of a project run by the UNDP and the Instituto Distrital de Participación y Acción Comunal de la Secretaría de Gobierno de la Alcaldía de Bogotá (IDPAC: Participation and Community Building Institute at Bogotá, Colombia) whose main outcome will be the creation of the Escuela Virtual de participación y gestión social del IDPAC [IDPAC’s Virtual School of Local Participation] — see also Digital Divide, Government and ICTs for Education.

The course is framed in one of the last stages before the actual creation of the Virtual School and it mainly deals with the definition of the overall strategy, identifying the context and the characteristics of the environment and see how the network of telecenters the school will heavily rely on have to be adapted to provide the expected output: digital competences and a much higher degree of e-Participation amongst the population.

The (my) course has four parts, two of which are related to knowing the grounds and concepts of the Digital Divide and e-Participation, and the remaining two deal with writing an Action Plan and reviewing the Strategic Plan in the framework of the Colombian Plan for the Information Society.

I here share the bibliography for the first two, would it be of any help to anyone: Brecha Digital y e-Participación ciudadana

Basic concepts: Analysis of the Digital Divide

e-Participation: Use of telecentres to foster participation

Notes from the 5th Internet, Law and Politics Conference: The Pros and Cons of Social Networking Sites, organized by the Open University of Catalonia, School of Law and Political Science, and held in Barcelona, Spain, on July 6th and 7th, 2009. More notes on this event: idp2009.

Politics Track Gather Up
Daithí Mac Sithigh

Two major questions today: what will we do? how will we stay safe?

Innovation come not by using specific technology or platforms but on the effective uses we put into them.

The safety issue seems not to be approachable by the Law alone, being self-regulation and self-commitment a good share of it, and collaboration and co-operation another good share of it.

In a time of crisis, the international community turns its attention to the Information Society. But this is not about hardware, but about organizational change, institutional change. A major planning has to take place to deal with focal issues like e-commerce, network safety or e-Administration.

We’d do well to learn from sub-national or even local successes in open data initiatives, or data sharing initiatives. And what a different it makes to move from the “e-” Government to the “o-” Government.

And open data might be a necessary step to change not only government but also democracy and politics, to enable citizen participation and engagement.

We’re seeing times where political crisis and financial crisis is accompanied by a demand for transparency, openness, open data, etc. And it looks like broadly demanded political reforms could move towards this direction.

This is, for instance, how Politics 2.0 evolve from Politicians 2.0 towards Political Spaces 2.0.

Politics 2.0 can be presented as a virtuous circle, where everybody is part of that circle, and where the sense of “small” (as in a small issue) can have a brand new meaning (and not be small or irrelevant at all).

Will, hence, the unconventional ways of doing politics become the conventional or mainstream ones? Do we want that?

What is the right agenda? Does a creative use of public information (initially well intended) have bad consequences?

Next steps?

• W3C Access to Government interest group
• Pulic Services 2.0 declaration
• From “come back tomorrow” to “come back next year”?
• Social networks and social questions

More Information

• IDP2009: Day 2 Report (slides), Daithí Mac Sithigh’s slides of his presentation
• IDP2009: Written Report of Day 2, by Daithí Mac Sithigh
• El twitter del V Congrés d’IDP, Joan-Baptista Gavaldà i Moran’s compilation of all twitts tagged #idp2009