ICTlogy

These are the materials I used on a seminar belonging to the Executive Master in e-Governance organized by the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and partnered by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.

ICTs, development and government: from e-Readiness to e-Awareness

Presentation

Recommended Readings

Assignment

Take your home country as the basis.

Describe the strengths and weaknesses of this country in the following five fields:

• Infrastructures
• ICT Sector
• Digital Literacy
• Content and Services
• Legal Framework

and relate them to what you think is critical to establish a full range of operational e-Government initiatives (basic, intermediate and advanced levels).

Evaluation criteria:

• Identification of main/critical aspects
• Depth of analysis, conclusions backed with data/evidence…
• Use (and citation) of appropriate and complementary references
• Quality of exposition, structure, clarity of language…

Where to start from:

• Country At a Glance tables – The World Bank
• ICT At a Glance tables – The World Bank
• Global Information Technology Report 2007-2008 – WEF/INSEAD
• ICT EYE – International Telecommunication Union

More information

• Citation
• Download the presentation (, 1.6 MB)

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Notes from the course Network Society: Social Changes, Organizations and Citizens, Barcelona, 15-17 October, 2008.

How do social change organizations innovate?
Ethan Zuckerman, Harvard Berkman Center

Social organizations do not innovate, do it badly, or just do it slowly. Quite usually, the assumption is to be unrealistic about the power of technology to enable social change.

Facing a blank canvas gives you the idea that everything is possible. But good art is about constraint. And if you don’t know your constraints, figure them out.

• Innovation comes from constraint

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail saying does not apply to innovation: innovation is about hacking the hammer and making it better.

Von Hippel (see “more info” below): Lead user theory: users innovate all over the time.

Learning from extreme uses, hostile environments. Africa is a good place to test technology, as the environment is roughest. What works in Africa, works everywhere (AfriGadget, about African innovation).

Some examples of innovation from constraints: the Zeer Pot, the Solar Stove. The problem sometimes is not innovation in processes, but innovation in culture. Then innovation has to be reinvented, hence the solar stove becomes the Jiko:

• Don’t fight culture
• Embrace market mechanisms
• Innovate on existing platforms

Innovation is using the ordinary in extraordinary ways: the Malawi Windmill. Innovation is about hacking existing technology. And the technology that now is spread on Africa is mobile phones: technological innovation in Africa will necessarily be related with hacking mobile phones. Mobile phones have already changed the way sub-Saharan Africans see and do things: TradeNet, to get agricultural information; M-Pesa, to transfer money and make payments; Ushahidi, crowdsourcing crisis information; reporting the 2008 Zimbabwe presidential election to report electoral rigging.

Incremental infrastructure: e.g. a mobile phone antenna that also is a vertical axis power windmill.

• Problems are not always obvious from afar
• What you have matters more that what you lack
• Infrastructure can beget infrastructure

Ethan Zuckerman’s ICT4D Innovation test

1. Does the innovation comes from constraint?
2. Does it fight culture?
3. Does it embrace market mechanisms?
4. Does it innovate on existing platforms?
5. Does it come from close observation of the target environment?
6. Does it focus more on what you have more that what you lack?
7. Is it based on a “infrastructure begets infrastructure” basis?

Example 1: the OLPC project fails on 1, 3, 5, 6 and maybe 7, only passing on 2 and 4.

Example 2: Kiva passes on 1-4, fails on 5, and not sure whether it passes or fails on 6-7

Example 3: Gobal Voices passes on 1, 4 and 7; fails on 5-6; not sure about 2-3.

Social innovation never comes from a blank canvas. Comes from understanding the needs of all parties. Caveat: sometimes constraints leverage innovation, but are also a limitation for an innovation to go beyond itself.

Q&A

Ricard Ruiz de Querol: How to adapt the innovation based on constraints scheme to e.g. the digital divide in Spain? A: We should be aware whether there is a real digital divide or just a geeky will (unselfish, indeed) for everyone to be a digital native, when those people maybe already got what they needed. So, pushing people towards forced uses might be dysfunctional.

Carlos Domingo: But do we always have to bend to culture and stick to the past? A: It depends whether you’re talking short run or long run. In the long run, you want to figure out how to make culture smoothly evolve; in the short run, fighting culture just will enact an opposition reaction.

Personal reflections

Innovation as a darwinist evolution: no mutations, but adaptive non-disruptive changes based on what best performs on a specific environment.

More info

Von Hippel, E. (2005). Democratizing Innovation. Cambridge: MIT Press

Francesc Balagué (interesting reading if you’re into Education 2.0, in Spanish) asks me for some references around new science publishing and diffusion systems (e.g. blogs).

Best I can do is provide the references of my own readings, gathered into a collection I named Research Blogs and Blogging for Science Diffusion ( ). Here comes a snapshot of this evolving collection:

Ricard Ruiz de Querol — always worth reading him — has an interesting reflection around the alternatives for an ICT sector (in Spanish). Based on the Financial Times article , the issue is whether and how it is possible to foster a national ICT sector so that it becomes a driver, and a locomotive, of development, in substitution of other traditional (obsolete) industries like oil, mining or raw materials.

Ricard highlights to trends to keep in mind:

• Developing an ICT industry to foster competitiveness of other established industries
• Protecting the local market from foreign competitors, trying to nationally replicate foreign technology and services

Recent history has provided good examples — Ireland, Finland… even Bangalore or Bangladesh — of strategies focused on the creation of a strong ICT sector, but I personally growingly doubt it can be generalized on a one-solution-fits-all basis. Four reasons:

1. In many cases, developing and ICT sector was not a solution but the only remaining choice, so the relative success of the initiative changes dramatically if the rest of the economy is doing (more or less) well. I am not saying those examples were not successful (they where, and quite a lot), but one should be careful to take ultimate chances, well backed up and supported by most agents of the economy, as perfectly planned from scratch strategies that became magic solutions. I don’t think there is nothing like a blueprint for ICT sector based development.
2. The successful examples benefited from well set socio-economic frameworks: the language (i.e. English), the quality of the educational system, a strong welfare state/economy that perfectly leveraged all other efforts. As the iceberg, we just saw the visible part of the whole system.
3. (As the article also states) Even if it is said that the road of ICT development can be leaped so that leapfrogging is possible, it is nonetheless true that the firms that have been able to establish themselves strongly in the market, have achieved quasi-monopolies or, to say the least, have made things very difficult for late comers.
4. In addition to the first point — and somehow a consequence of the other two — we (I) still have to find strong evidence of ICT sector based strategies and policies that have proven effective and brought a deep impact at the macroeconomic level. Most impact on the GDP of the ICT sector is due to expenditure, investment and revenue of the sector, but not (which is what we’d call a locomotive effect) because of a positive impact on other industries from the supply point of view. If the railroad had an impact on the iron and steel industry, the energy industry, etc., I find it difficult to find what have been — from a supply point of view — the satellite industries that are being developed around the ICT sector at the national level.

That said, I agree with (a) fostering competitiveness of other established industries but not in (b) protecting the local market from foreign competitors and trying to nationally replicate foreign technology and services: the goal should not be developing a national ICT sector, which, in my opinion, can be a desired side effect, but not a primary outcome.

I am more and more convinced that the focus has not to be on the supply, but on the demand.

• Stimulate demand so that ICTs are incorporated in everyday’s life, most especially in industrial and business processes so that they enhance their productivity
• Stimulate demand so that the level of technology absorption comes naturally, thus upgrading the digital capacity of human resources and firms, and benefit even more from everyday’s life ICT use
• Stimulate demand so that it requires the corresponding supply growth, that will come from abroad but will equally generate business opportunities in the national ICT sector, based on the real economy
• Stimulate demand so that ICT use is based on real needs, the only formula for long-term sustainability

Summing up, it is my opinion that, despite the evidence on the benefits of a powerful ICT sector, these benefits (while important) are limited to the direct impact and have a small multiplier effect on the rest of the economy. Thus, we should focus on the adoption of technology, which has proven to have huge and much broader effects at all levels, and let the development of the ICT sector be a second derivative of economic development — and not the other way round.

HIVOS is currently undertaking a survey to get a better understanding on how existing or new technologies (ICT) can support citizens at scale to be an active, involved participant of society. I was invited by Marc Lepage to take part in it, which I appreciate as it is always good to be reminded to think once in a while. Here come the questions and the short answers I gave to the survey, in part because it was a requisite, in part because of lack of time to do it better.

In 5 years time, what do you think will be the technology most used by citizens in developing countries to get information and to interact with others (including government)? Please, elaborate on your answer.

Personally, I find it reasonable to think that mobile phones will still be the most used technology. On one hand, due to its actual and growing pervasiveness above other devices and platforms. On the other hand, because more effort is being put in improving the flexibility and applicability of such devices by developing more and more applications for them while, at the same time, reducing their cost and simplifying their use thus shortening the learning curve.

Notwithstanding, the late generation of ultraportable devices or 4P Computers (e.g. the Acer Aspire One) – cheaper than other laptops, containing the most usual features (Internet browsers, desktop office applications, etc.), low power consumption, etc. – make us think of the possibility of seeing these devices as substitutes of not nowadays laptops but also desktops, maybe not at the household level, but yes at the SME and the local administration levels. As said, their lower cost compared with other devices, the features, added to the possibility to gain from VoIP where affordable connectivity is available make of such devices a most likely next step from mobile telephony towards a higher Internet use.

Worldwide we can see many successful small scale ICT/NGO projects. In your opinion, what blocks implementation at scale? Please, where possible refer to examples from the field.

First of all, I’d would be more sceptic at the fact of being “many” successful projects at all. I agree there are some of them, but I would not count them as many, at least in the long run, where the project ended being a pilot and became part of the daily life of the community, and sustainability left to be an issue and became just part of a more comprehensive business plan / daily costs of life.

That said, I see the following points as possible barriers to a major implementation scale:

• the project, even being successful, was tailored without the active participation/knowledge of the government bodies, thus making it more difficult to be considered as a self-owned project
• the project has not returns of scale, or is not scalable at a reasonable cost/benefit ratio. So, it is affordable at small levels (maybe because of a defective design regarding sustainability that only shows at greater scales) but is prohibitive for bigger shares of the population
• the project requires skilled human capital that is available at small scales, but not at bigger ones
• political situation swings or instabilities
• loss of interest of the promoting institution (NGO, government, international aid agency, etc.) of going the long path of widespread implementation once the fancy and newish part of the pilot project has ended, proven successful and reported the major share of personal/institutional satisfaction and/or media timespan and/or published in peer reviewed journal.

What examples from the field do you know are strong in enabling citizens through new technologies to make their voices heard and/or influence the societies they are part of (e.g. monitoring election, accessing media, monitoring the quality of local service delivery)? And what do you expect to see in 5 years?

Some real examples: Global Voices, Mobile Monitors, Fix My Street, My Society…

I find many more examples can be found in personal and institutional blogs and websites, and social networking sites in general. Mobile (SMS) powered mobs should also be taken into account.

I would expect not many different things, but (hopefully) a higher degree of adoption I would not dub as pervasive. Web 2.0 and SMS based initiatives are still part of either the geek realm or absolute frontline early adopters.

Indeed, a chasm has been growing between those early adopters and the late comers, as it happened with the ones that have access to affordable and quality ICTs and those who have not. This chasm is being created by both the cost of being continually up-to-date and the message of geekery/elitism that these digerati (wanted or not) send to the non-initiated.

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.