ICTlogy

The Escuela Virtual para América Latina y el Caribe (Virtual school for Latin America and the Caribbean) is an organization (depending from the UNDP) whose mission is to build capacity and impart training in the fields that can promote social transformation, namely human development and democratic governance. As its name reads, it is a fully online school and uses ICTs as a means; but it is also worth noting that the Virtual School is in itself a showcase on how to apply ICTs in Development (ICT4D), specially in what we’d call e-Learning for development.

A successful project, it is now in its way to train other organizations not only in their missionary content, but also in the “how to” part of the story: how to build up a virtual school (for government, for empowerment) in Latin America. These days (10th to 12th March 2009) it’s taking place a training-consultancy for people at 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), so that they can build their own Virtual School of Local Participation.

I have been invited to give a conference on e-Learning for Development, entitled La Brecha digital y el uso de las TIC para la Educación (The Digital Divide and ICTs for Education).

The presentation has four different parts:

1. Slides 1-6: A brief introduction and some highlights about the crossroads between participation, governance, human rights and the changes that the Information Society is bringing in. The topic just frames my introductory presentation, and is later on developed in depth by professor Jaime Torres, Universidad de los Andes.
2. Slides 7-12: Second part is a characterization of the Digital Divide. It actually is about the digital divides, which is absolutely my point: there are many of them, and most of them usually kept out of the spotlight.
3. Slides 13-21: Third part is about networks. It is focused in development and development cooperation. There’ll be time to explore online volunteering, development 2.0, the gift economy, etc.
4. Slides 22-31: A last part is about (how great it is) e-learning for development issues, from different points of view: efficacy, efficiency, suitability, convenience, etc.

Citation and downloads: La Brecha digital y el uso de las TIC para la Educación.

I want to thank Andoni Maldonado and Gemma Xarles for their kind invitation, and to Nicolás Padilla for assistance and patience.

Notes from the II Encuentro Internacional TIC para la Cooperación al Desarrollo (Development Cooperation 2.0: II International Meeting on ICT for Development Cooperation) held in Gijón, Spain, on February 10-12th, 2009. More notes on this event: cooperacion2.0_2009. More notes on this series of events: cooperacion2.0.

How do we go forward in the field of ICT4D R+D+i?

Florencio Ceballos, telecentre.org

• ICT4D are a clear niche that can grow outside the circuit of development issues
• Capacity building happens locally, and this means building confidence, trust.
• Institutional independence has to be promoted to enable real capacity building.
• Focus on networking: promoting open networks for capacity exchange

It’s not as much as how you design agendas, but how you make them evolve, how to shift the paradigm. And this shift of paradigm is towards openness.

Caroline Figueres, International Institute for Communication and Development

There is a need for a research to ground some “evidences”, and showcase successes in the field of ICT4D under the rigour of scientific analysis.

People in the South should be put in the agenda of ICT4D research, as most of the output is targetted to developing countries.

Co-creation (e.g. in the sense of Don Tapscott’s Wikinomics) is a very powerful concept. Capacity building can be enabled this way by means of knowledge workers co-creating together.

Kentaro Toyama, Microsoft Research India (MSR India)

How to do formal research in ICT4D? Several steps:

1. Immersion. Ethnography
2. Design, involving people, where technology is just one component and a cost-effective one
3. Evaluation, including finding statistical significance on the impact of a specific project or action

It’s a good idea to break the link between funding and the research agenda. The researcher should be able to pursue their own interests and not be tied (or upset) to the need for funding.

Experience in research might be as important as (or even more) than experience in development. Accuracy of the scientific process is crucial.

Andrés Martínez, EHAS Foundation.

Evidence has to be demonstrated to convince policy-makers and funding institutions that some actions are to be taken and deserve being supported (politically or economically).

• Research is needed in the impact of ICTs in welfare, health, education
• But also, research is needed on how to provide appropriate and cost-effective infrastructures, as most communities just do not have access to either hardware or connectivity
• Sometimes the context is unknown. Thus, research should focus not only on the impact of a specific project, but on what the context (sociocultural, health, education, economic) is.
• Research on services.
• How to measure empowerment and mainstreaming of technologies in specific communities and sectors (e.g. the Health sector)

The only way to promote research in the field of Development and ICT4D is to foster publication of research results in indexed publications. Despite the interest of the topic, if the work is “well done”, then it can be published. It is highly relevant to find the problem you want to deal with your research, more important than finding “the” solution.

And diffussion is absolutely worth doing it. On the one hand, results of the projects and the research undertaken. On the other hand, not only information about the results, but knowledge transfer through assistance, direct training, formal education, especially to achieve multiplier effects.

Merryl Ford, Emerging Innovations Group of the Meraka Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

There’s sometimes resilience to empowerment. Capacity building is not only about specific (digital) skills, but also about changing mindsets.

• Slogan on disabilities in SouthAfrica: Nothing about us, without us. We need to make sure that we don’t do things “for” people but “with” people. Africa should take ownership of its development agenda.
• Interventions should be simple
• The cellphone is the PC of Africa
• Sustainability, replication, massification. A pilot needs to be scaled at any stage.

Q & A

Q: research on impact… is a real need or an imposed “need” of the inner structure of development cooperation, projects, agencies and so? Ceballos: The need to measure impact is real. Many policies are put into practice based on intuition, on vision. So we do need to evaluate these policies to support or reject such intuitions. Martínez: short-run projects are difficult to analyze accurately, as there’s no time to do it properly. A solution would be that everyone involved in the projects collected data and helped to analyze it.

Q: How do we cope about the cost of maintenance of cellphones in rural areas? A: There are alternatives (e.g. via radio) that do not charge per call… but the maintenance of the whole network does have a cost. Certainly, it’s not a matter of absolute costs, but a matter of cost-benefit analysis, seeing whether the project is worth running it and find out how to support the overall costs.

Q: How do we put social research together with tecnology research in development related research? A: The problems that research has to face have to be far ahead enough. And they require plenty of time. In this sense, everyone involved in ICT4D should be in a same conversation, to gather all sensibilities and be able to look far in the horizon.

Notes from the the II Encuentro Internacional TIC para la Cooperación al Desarrollo (Development Cooperation 2.0: II International Meeting on ICT for Development Cooperation) held in Gijón, Spain, on February 10-12th, 2009. More notes on this event: cooperacion2.0_2009. More notes on this series of events: cooperacion2.0.

Innovating in ICT for Human Development
John Dryden, Ex-Deputy Director Science, Technology and Industry. OECD

Main learnings from the OECD in the field of ICT4D:

OECD’s findings on the benefits of ICTs do not carry over easily to developiong countries.

• Global initiatives in “ICT4D” have been long on discussion and short on action
• ICT mainstreaming is indispensible to achieveing MDGs
• ICT mainstreaming is implicit rather than explicit in the push for “aid effectiveness”
• The conjuncture is very poor so current prospects do not appear good but there are a few developments that create opportunities both for development co-operation and for ICTs to enhance its quality and effectiveness

ICT in Development Cooperation institutions vs. ICT4D

ICTs in development cooperation

• ICT aids management and delivery of development assistance
• ICT “mainstreamed” as part of development assistance: ICTs integrated on what institutions “deliver”

ICT4D

• All of the above, plus ICT productgion and use to achieve economic growth, development and social welfare.

The Seoul Declaration, 2008

• Facilitate the convergence of digital networks, devices and services
• Foster creativity in development, use and application of the Internet
• Strengthen confidence and security
• Ensure the Internet Economy is truly global

For developing countries, this means

• more access to Internet and related ICTs
• competition
• use by all communities: local content and language, inclusion
• energy efficiency

Against the Solow Paradox: there is now evidence on the economic impacts of ICTs:

• macro-economic evidence on the role of ICT investment in capital deepening
• sectoral analysis showing the contribution of (a) ICT-producing sectors and (b) ICT-using sectors to productivity growth
• detailed firm-level analysis demonstrating the wide-ranging impacts of ICTs in productivity

Problems to implant ICTs in developing countries:

• Barriers of entry and different people needs
• The relationship between ICT investments and economic growth in OECD countries is complex and uncertain,highly dependent on complementary factors, many of which less apparent in developing countries: power supply, maintenance, skills and literacy, the degree to which society is networked, the extent to which its economy is reliant on services, etc.

The Genoa Plan of Action

• development of national e-strategies
• improve connectivity, increase access, lower costs
• enhance human capacity development, knowledge creation and sharing
• Foster enterprise, jobs and entrepreneurship

Mainstreaming ICTs

UN ICT Task Force Mainstreaming ICTs for the achievement of the MDGs: ICTs as an “enabler” of development, not a production sector

ICTs should be able to enable donnor coordination: need analysis, non-duplication of efforts and projects, etc.

Debate

Caroline Figueres: is effectiveness only top-down? aren’t we seeing bottom-up effectiveness? A: Yes, of course.

Notes from the the II Encuentro Internacional TIC para la Cooperación al Desarrollo (Development Cooperation 2.0: II International Meeting on ICT for Development Cooperation) held in Gijón, Spain, on February 10-12th, 2009. More notes on this event: cooperacion2.0_2009. More notes on this series of events: cooperacion2.0.

Innovating in the Use of ICT for Human Development: the Key in the Transition to a New Phase in ICT4D
Najat Rochdi, Deputy Director in charge of Policy, Communication and Operation at the UNDP Liaison Office in Geneva

The goal: achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Can we do it the proper way?

What’s the connection between ICTs and poverty alleviation? What does it really mean ICT4D?

And it’s not about the poorest ones only: the crisis that began in 2008 — and it’s absolutely blasting in 2009 — is also about how ICTs can contribute to alleviate its effects. Access should be able to enable people to progress. But access is unevenly distributed.

The private sector has lead innovations in the ICT field. The development sector should also be reached by such innovation processes: new ideas and new applications of old ideas. We need to leverage knowledge. We have to shape the changes, not be shaped by the changes.

A new digital aid is coming, based on the citizen, on the individual, empowered by the web 2.0 and the upcoming web 3.0.

Web 2.0, added to text messaging, is opening a new landscape of participation and democracy. The web 2.0 and mobile technologies do not only increase development by empowerment, but also create new markets that make it sustainable.

Sharing is the key to ICT4D success: share methodologies and instruments, best practices, research, data, etc.

But there’s urgency in pursuing these goals and putting hands to work in ICT4D related issues. And commitment is needed too. The resources, the human capital, the technology… everything is out there, but we need to bring it to the ones that need it, and we need to do it with a broad political support.

Take hold of the future or the future will take hold of you.

Debate

Q: how do we know we’re really addressing the real needs? A: It’s a collective responsibility. We have to abandon the idea that development agencies and organizations know everything, and that there’s so much to learn from local communities, that we have to engage them in the making of the projects.

Caroline Figueres: Participation and communication is already happening on the field. The problem is that is not being known elsewhere. We have to make it sure everything is well known.

Q: What happens when there’s no infrastructure? A: Mobile technologies seem to be helping in the infrastructures issue. On the other hand, it’s important to catalyse the demand, so that the private sector sees there’s a niche, a need to be covered that can report benefits. A holistic, multi-stakeholder approach is what has to be solved beforehand.

Q: Why is there not an international political commitment to apply the same energies to poverty alleviation than to the financial crisis? A:

Manuel Acevedo: Next step? A: We need scalable initiatives. To do so, from the beginning a quantitative approach has to be made so that sustainability can be (sort of) calculated and know that there is a potentially high probability of success. We do not use to document projects, to see whether we can share outcomes and learnings, specially methodologies. We have to end up with experimentation, and go to the field scientifically prepared. We have to innovate (i.e. apply tested things), do not experiment.

Anriette Esterhuysen: (re: Caroline Figueres) it’s not already happening. There is no continuity, hence there is no scalability. On the other hand, there’s lack of capacity and ability to communicate knowledge. And, in this time of crisis, what will happen to ICT4D projects and institutions? A: ICT4D is not marketing issue you can cut down to reduce costs. Is a matter of international survival, so commitment will (hopefully) stand. The private sector is playing a most important role in developing countries and is there to stay, it’s boosting and changing a mindset change.

The research (partly) belongs to E-Health and Society: An Empirical Study of Catalonia, at its turn belonging to the Project Internet Catalonia (PIC).

Introduction

Francisco Lupiáñez-Villanueva

Historically, the concepts of health, healthiness, public health, etc. lack of consensus. The scientific revolution brings a new approach to these concepts, secularizing the way it is dealt with drawing the biomedical model. But social sciences imply a disruption in the building of consensus and a separation from the usual biomedical model, relating it with society, the relationships of power, human structures, etc. Castells goes one step further stating that the informational paradigm, within the Information Society, brings in yet another change: how (specially) the Internet newly interrelates the different authors around the concept of Health.

The thesis wants to identify and characterize these authors and how and why they use the Internet to get informed and interact amongst them.

Hypotheses

• The Internet is a space for information
• Decision taking determines the uses of the Internet for Health related issues
• A new profile arises between the health professionals: the networked health professional

Methodology

Data come from surveys answered by patients, physicians, nurses and chemists.

(Complex) Information is simplified by factor analysis and cluster analysis.

Binomial logit regressions are used to find the determinants of Internet use for health related issues.

Results

Citizens

patients tend to browse the Internet to get information about their diseases or other health related issues, somewhat limited by the lack of personal infrastructures (hardware, connectivity, skills, etc.). This means that patients are empowered by the Internet to decide about their health based on better grounds. Those are the connected citizens. At the other end, we have the disconnected citizens, mainly due to their socio-economic background: income, education… The relationship (not the causality) between connected citizens, better health and higher socio-economic status is evident.

The Health digital divide excludes 40% of the total population.

Interaction does not happen: Internet is out of the equation in the physician-patient relationship.

Physicians

Three types of Internet use: focus towards research, health information dissemination and institutional information.

The network physician: uses the Internet to get information and communicate with their peers, disseminate their research and spread information about their institutions. These are just 5% of the total physicians.

Networked physicians believe that the Internet is good for their patients, but only half of them encourage their patients in browsing the Internet.

Orientation towards research and intensive search and use of international information mostly determines a physician being or not being a networked physician.

Nurses

The networked nurse follows a similar path than the networked physician: focus on research and lowest proportion in relation to the whole population of nurses (4.5%). As the physicians, networked nurses also believe that the Internet is good and empowers their patients.

Chemists

Just like the prior professional profiles, the networked chemist is research and international information focused, and they also believe that the information in the Internet is good for their patients and has a positive impact on them being autonomous.

Conclusions

1. Internet is a space for information, not interaction.
2. The e-patient is determined by access to information and intensive use of the Internet to get information about health.
3. The health e-professional is determined by orientation towards research and access to international information.

Future lines of research

1. What are the determinants of innovation processes in the health system, including its impact on productivity.
2. What are the determinants of the state of health in the framework of the Information Society
3. What are the public policies to improve the health system in the framework of the Information Society,
4. How the biomedical paradigm evolves within the framework of the Information Society

Discussion

Answers to Joan Torrent

There is a lack of available data about the impact of the use of the Internet on the health of the patients. It is, undoubtedly, a future line of research.

The e-patient paradox: the networked patients are the ones — because they are healthier — that benefit less from e-Health.

The public health system tends to use the Internet to inform, while the private health system has a more intensive use of information technologies for management issues (e.g. e-invoicing), though not necessarily related with physician-patient — or interaction — focused applications.

While physicians see the Internet as a gate to access better information, they are also threatened by a potential use of authority in front of their patients. Thus why they are intensive Internet users, but only for information related issues, not for interaction with their patients. On the other hand, chemists have to ensure their customers’ loyalty, so they have more incentives to share information and open new channels of interaction with them, which might explain why they are more eager to encourage their customers/patients to enter the Internet.

Answers to Gustavo Cardoso

It is very likely that both the methodology and the findings of this research can be applied into other economies that are in their transition towards the Information Society, provided their health and social systems are similar.

It seems there is a new health paradigm: the technoscientific health paradigm, where technology plays an important part along with health infrastructures (e.g. hospitals), culture, etc.

Internet does not replace — in the eyes of the patient — the professional: it’s complementary. Actually, patients are fully aware on who’s behind the information on the Internet, and asks for a professional backup of this information to consider it quality information. But the professionals don’t usually feel alike. A further research, indeed, should analyse the actual relationships of power between patients and professionals, and how these relationships change or can change due to the Internet and the information that it makes broadly available.

A technological layer, in combination with an evolving social layer, has enabled Health “getting out of the closet” and being present in all aspects of life, way beyond the walls of the hospital. This is new, and this issue should be addressed seriously in further research about society in general and Health especially.

Answers to Miquel Àngel Mayer

It’s very difficult to define “quality” in the Internet, specially when speaking about websites about Health. Maybe, the focus should be not quality of the information, but the skills of the one that searches and accesses this information. Indeed, the concept of quality is closely related with the authors that issue and access the information, thus why the stress in capacity building, digital skills and, in general, digital literacy.

Internet is becoming not an exogenous, dependent variable of the Health system, but an endogenous, independent one that should be included in the equation of Health studies.

Answers to Eulàlia Hernández

The e-patient, unlike the networked professionals, cluster around patient associations, engaging into interaction amongst them and not restricting themselves only to access to and use of information.

Answers to Ferran Sanz

There are dire problems in most researchers about Internet uses: how to define the population, how to define the actual use, how to define authorship, how to define jurisdiction, etc. These problems make it difficult to state with statistical significance some findings that might be perfectly valid for the sample.

Bibliography

For a complete listing of references for the PhD Dissertation, please see The definitive references’ collection of my thesis.

NOTE: summa cum laude. Congats!!

Extended information

Thesis defense: The Internet, Health and Network Society, by Francisco Lupiáñez-Villanueva.

Third session — and second teamwork session — at the Open EdTech Summit. This second teamwork session focuses in converging the ideas of the brainstorming session and try and come up with 5 “plus” ideas and 5 “idealistic” ideas.

(reprise and gather up from the previous session)

Focus on mentoring as the added value in the learning process

Microcredit structures, besides personalization, allow the evaluator and the evaluate to be different entities. Right now the system is self-referential, as the output is evaluated by the same one that facilitated the inputs.

Education institutions could split in three different institutions: the ones that provide content, the ones that provide guidance and the ones that provide certification.

The added value is in mentoring, not in content. So we should concentrate in mentoring. And open content and open technology to support it play a crucial role in this part.

And quality also has to do in this scheme of things: we have to go open to reach high quality standards.

From teaching to learning

The “bolonization” (convergence) of educational systems, shifting responsibility to the student, and putting more stress on learning rather than on teaching. Focus also in capacity and competences. If just e.g. 25% was standarized or compulsory, that will leave plenty of room for personalization within assessment.

Capacity building

On the competences side: empower people to do things.

On the choice side: allow people to do their choices.

Learner motivation

How to engage the student: personalization would actually be a good way to keep students engaged.

Quality

Quality assurance systems that foster innovation, or testing innovation in quality assessments, act as a bottle neck as normally do not include technology in their evaluation system. Their assessment map is closed. How much space for subversion, for innovation, can we find.

Empowering teachers

Make lower design statements to that the learning materials can be acted upon, that feedback from experience can be adapted and sent back to the material or the lecture.

(for “plus” ideas and “idealistic” ideas, please see next session)