ICTlogy

This is a reminder — for those RSS feed subscribers seldom visiting the site itself — of ICT4D Events, an agenda of seminars, congresses, workshops and other events in the field of ICT4D and the Information Society. Not a comprehensive list, but a selection based on two criteria:

• A first selection based on the subjects that do interest me, are reflected in this site and, potentially, interest the readers and visitors
• A second, natural selection based on what gets to me through RSS feeds, discussion lists and personal e-mail. What I don’t read, drops its probability of appearing here ;)

Just to bring some content, I’d like to highlight three initiatives that during the next months will have — if I’m not wrong — their second edition.

In chronological order, the first one is the Second Annual ICT4D Postgraduate Symposium, where Tim Unwin’s ICT4D Collective will pass the responsibility of the event to the Karlstad University in Sweden. Last year’s event was impressive. A must for PdD students and highly interesting for ICT4D researchers in general.

The second one is the International Conference on ICT4D 2007. I missed last year’s, so I cannot tell, but as far as I can see, Bangalore has taken the place of Berkeley and Microsoft Research India has acquired relevant prominence chairing the event. An option to seriously consider.

Last, but not least, the Digital Divide Mini-Track in the framework of the 41th edition of the Hawai’i International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-40), carefully organized, once again, by Karine Barzilai-Nahon. I had the chance — and pleasure — to be one of the referees of this mini-track’s communications and I can state that the quality standards were highest. You just can check the results of the mini-track Digital Library of Proceeding Papers for the 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. A pity Hawaii is not really close to… err… anywhere, but it could be a very good Christmas (self)gift.

Thanks to Gudrun Wicander and Eduard Muntaner for the tips.

The Fundación Bip-Bip [Beep-beep Foundation] is no doubt one of the most important Spanish NGOs in the field of ICT4D, specially in everything related to bring ICTs to nonprofits to improve their managing capacities, advocacy reach, training programmes, etc. Indeed, they issued back in 2005 a report that analyzed the level of adoption of ICTs in Spanish nonprofits that worked in the area of professional inclusion entitled Estudio de diagnóstico sobre el nivel de utilización de las TIC en las entidades no lucrativas de acción social que trabajan en pro de la inserción laboral en España.

Juan Gigli now let’s me know about their new project called PuntoOrg [dotOrg] self described as the web portal devoted to making possible the access to ICTs for nonprofits, through practical guides, discounts and products and service donations. For those familiar with the Third Sector and new technologies, I’d dare say that this is a somewhat spanish version of TechSoup, though at an earlier stage.

Best of lucks in this new project!

Disheartening analysis that Jakob Nielsen does in his November 2006 Alertbox Digital Divide: The Three Stages. He there defines the Digital Divide in three stages:

• Stage 1: Economic Divide
• Stage 2: Usability Divide
• Stage 3: Empowerment Divide

I can understand — we all do this — that he tries to bend the term Digital Divide and reshape it under a usability light — Nielsen’s field of expertise. But I think this “reshapening” goes way too far. I fully agree with the Economic Divide stage. I would call it Access to Infrastructures (hard, soft and connectivity), but it’s the same thing with a different name.

My first objection is in splitting his so-called Usability Divide from the Empowerment Divide. Actually, this is all about Digital Literacy, which can be defined in several levels, as many as you’d like to: technological literacy, informational literacy… functional literacy. But it is absolutely about the same thing: using ICTs. I mean, it’s okey separating the different skills that compound digital literacy, but this should be a starting point, not an ending one.

Thus, I find a second objection, and surely the most serious one, that is forgetting — intended or not — that there is much more to the Digital Divide than money/access and literacy/capacity building. The existence of an ICT Sector is crucial in the correct development of a local Information Society, specially in fields such as Education (ICT enhanced or just e-Learning) or e-Administration and e-Goverment. If ICTs are to be used as a locomotive to foster the economy, then the ICT Sector becomes, simply, a must.

Of course, a local Information Society must be driven by an accompanying legal framework that monitors and drives its development, be it by just regulating the activities that take place in the Network, be it through public policies devoted to this goal.

And last, but not least, there’s something even more important than all those described digital divides or stages: digital content and digital services. Simple as it might sound, with no content and no services, there’s no use having skilled people tapping on state of the art computers. And this is, by far, one of the most important pitfalls nowadays, almost unsurmountable in most developing countries — more than the economic divide, I’d dare say: while we “have” one laptop per child, there are just 3,102 articles in the Swahili Wikipedia vs. the 1,621,894 of the English Wikipedia.

Summing up, this is my 5 step approach, as stated on a previous article:

So, I liked Jakob Nielsen entering the field of ICT4D and the Digital Divide. But least I’d expected was some humbler approach, avoiding that holistic aim.

The debate of Open Access is really hot — hottest, I’d dare say — as benefits from open science, self-publishing and self-archiving become clearer and clearer and, on the other side, there are new and imaginative solutions — or, at least, attempts — to deal with the (a) inevitable (though downsizeable) costs of publishing and (b) the benefits of peer review, the quintessence of scientific publishing.

While the balance among costs and benefits is a matter of arguments in the developed countries — and this is why we still have a debate and not a clear direction to head towards —, the benefits side of open access seems to gain weight when the scales are placed on developing countries, especially when open access appears to be a perfect second best for a lacking (supposed) optimum: renowned international journals dealing with areas of knowledge that interest developing countries (and people doing science in those issues) and at an acceptable cost for their standards.

I here present a gathering — a reader? — of selected articles that should allow the reader to get a rough picture of the subject of Open Access for Development. Credit should be here paid to Peter Suber and his Open Access News, source of endless resources, information and news: most of the references here came to me through his blog.

Further information

This is an evolving selection. The up-to-date version of this list can always be consulted here: A Reader on Open Access for Development. Feel free to write back to me with proposals for inclusion in the list and/or corrections for found errors.

From iCommons A quick guide to implementing ICT for development projects:

Pre-project best practices

1. Conduct a needs assessment
2. Ensure ownership, get local buy-in and find a champion
3. Identify key external challenges

Project rollout best practices

1. Avoid duplication of efforts
2. Take small achievable steps and stay focussed
3. Stay Focussed
4. Critically evaluate efforts and adapt as needed

Post-project best practices

1. Final project evaluation
2. Disseminate information
3. Make it sustainable

The Open Publishing Edition of NGO-in-a-box is a toolkit of Free and Open Source software, tutorials and guides for producing, publishing and distributing content. The Edition, produced by Tactical Tech in collaboration with iCommons, is aimed at small to medium sized non-profits, independent media organisations, free culture creators and grassroots journalists with a particular emphasis on those in developing and transition countries.

Good compilation of resources to, as said before, publish content and do it on a free/open basis. The compilation has three main sections:

• Tools, with the main free software applications to manage your content, be it text be it images, on your desktop or online, etc.
• Projects – How To…, with concrete, practical examples on how to carry on the most common tasks
• Resources, with outlinks to Tactical Tech guides for content diffusion

Besides this main navigation architecture, there’s still room for an Introduction to Open Publishing, other resources and live CDs. A very good work… and reference.