ICTlogy

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.

In 2007, half the world population — 50.10% to be true — were subscribers of a mobile telephony service, representing 72.1% of the total telephony subscribers (fixed, mobile, satellite, etc.). The datum is even more shocking if we move into the African continent: there, still only one third of the population has (actually, is subscribed to) a cellular phone (28.44%), but it is important to stress the fact that this third stands for 89.6% of the total subscribers to telephone lines, the highest proportion of the five continents. Though it is but an average that goes way higher when looking into specific countries like Tanzania (98.1%), Mauritania (97%), the Congo (97.2%), Kenya (97,7%) or Cameroon 96%), just to put some examples.

These data absolutely support the creation, in 2008, of the Mobile Web for Social Development Interest Group (MW4D), fostered by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). This interest group — a part of the W3C Mobile Web Initiative — has as a purpose to:

explore how to use the potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) on Mobile phones as a solution to bridge the Digital Divide and provide minimal services (health, education, governance, business,…) to rural communities and under-privileged populations of Developing Countries.

Some projects using mobile phones for development

• Kiwanja and their projects: FrontlineSMS, to help nonprofits to benefit from using SMS for advocacy and monitoring; nGOmoblie, a competition to encourage them to think about how text messaging could benefit them and their work; and Silverback, a game for mobile phones to raise awareness about gorilla conservation
• TradeNet, to access and manage market information (specially on agriculture markets) from the mobile phone;
• M-Pesa, to transfer money and make payments through text messaging;
• Ushahidi, a platform that crowdsources crisis information, allowing anyone to submit crisis information through text messaging using a mobile phone, email or web form.
• Kubatana.net and their experience monitoring the elections in Zimbabwe, now converted into a handbook on How to run a mobile advocacy campaign

These and other projects, stories, people and organizations using mobile phones for social impact can be found at MobileActive.

On the other hand, Stéphane Boyera and Ken Banks, co-chairs of the Mobile Web for Social Development Interest Group will be at the II International Meeting on ICT for Development Cooperation, where there is a whole track on mobile telephony for development.

More information

• Mobile Phones and the Digital Divide, article by Ken Banks in PC World
• The meek shall inherit the web, article at The Economist
• Africa Perspective on the Role of Mobile Technologies in Fostering Social Development, workshop about mobile phones for development taking place in Maputo, Mozambique, on April 1 and 2, 2009.
• Most mobiles…, Johathan Donner’s blog on mobiles for development.

From 10th to 12th February 2008, the Development Cooperation 2.0: II International Meeting on ICT for Development Cooperation will take place in Gijón, Spain.

Last year’s edition featured a interesting collection of international speakers from the Development Cooperation and the Information Society world that rarely come together. This year’s pool of speakers lists an equally impressive range of personalities from which to learn — and debate with: Stéphane Boyera, Ken Banks, Ana Moreno, Vikas Nath, John Dryden, Eduardo Sánchez, Alexander Widmer, Carolina Figueres, Merryl Ford and Najat Rochdi.

The central topic of the conference will be Innovation in ICT for Human Development, with threethree associated thematic axis, namely:

• ICT and Quality in Development Cooperation
• ICT and Mobility for Development
• Development Cooperation Networks

Being interested in ICT4D and Development Cooperation, this is one of the two events taking place in Spain that you dont want to miss — the other one being e-STAS: Symposium de las Tecnologías para la Acción Social (more information to come).

More info

• Official Website
• Call for open participation
• The tag of the event will be cooperacion2.0

Next 23 and 24 October 2008, Net.es 5, accesibilidad y nuevas tecnologías en la sociedad. El papel de la Sociedad Civil [Accessiblity and new techonologies in the society. The role of the Civil Society] will deal about human rights, digital citizenry, accessibility and disabilities, usability, e-inclusion and digital literacy.

I will be sharing a round table with Rafael Casado Ortiz and David Cierco about accessibility, inclusion and digital literacy.

I will take a real from the real life to explain why and how digital literacy can enable or enhance inclusion — just inclusion, not digital inclusion —. The example, which I already used in my seminar at the Executive Master in e-Governance and made up with Mercè Guillén-Solà, is taking the crafting community as a paradigm of a network that existed off-line and used the Internet — and Web 2.0 applications specifically — to enable and enhance better and stronger links. Digital literacy comes, then, as help to leverage the existing network (and to avoid the danger of dropping out of it), but not as a substitute or a goal in itself.

Presentation

More information

• Net.es 5 official site
• Peña-López, I. & Guillén Solà, M. (2008). Accesibilidad e Inclusión Digital:el papel de la Alfabetización Digital. Conference imparted in Madrid, October 24th, 2008 at the Net.es 5, Ministerio de Educación, Política Social y Deporte. Madrid: ICTlogy.

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.

iCities is a Conference about Blogs, e-Government and Digital Participation.
Here come my notes for session V.

Round Table: Connected Citizens. Cyberactivism.
Chairs: Rosa Jiménez Cano

Alana Moceri, president Democrats Abroad Spain

First time that primary elections can be done on-line. This means increasing the number of countries where voting is possible from 34 up to 161.

Online, everyone can contribute: absolutely everyone can upload videos to YouTube, photos to Flickr or text to any blog. Pro: democratization. Con: loss of control over your campaing.

Fundrising is key and is a good proxy to test the health of a political campaign.

Obama’s discourse is really 2.0: you can, empowerment, engagement. MyBarackObama.com is a good example of it, where you can even earn points as a reward for your implication and helping recruit other people. This really builds up a formidable base of activists.

Marshall Ganz: It’s values, not only interests, what drives people to take part in civic movements.

Sebastián Lorenzo

Fundación Generación Libre: how voters connect to social networks in Argentina. Not centralized, not decentralized, not distributed, but complex networks. They best way to boost complex networks is to build software that enhances the connection between peripheral nodes to the central ones (leaders).

Cyberactivism: activities to help bridge the digital world with the off-line world, with impact in the “real” world.
Cybermilitant: someone commited in the long-run with “someting beyond” cyberactivism. We’ve yet to find out what this really means.

Noticias LA: a distributed network of volunteers, living in all coutries of Latin America and Spain, selecting local news and feeding them to the site, acting as a news agency 2.0.

César Calderón

Social mediators are no more the protagonists in the Administration-Citizenry interaction: it’s the citizen the one that has to lead the approach towards their Government.

We are used to long run political campaigns, this is why, how and what for political parties were created for. But now people gather around more ephemeral and ad hoc actions. And, indeed, the top-down way of designing engagement has given place to a more bottom-up way of participating. Horizontal replaces vertical.

Antoni Gutierrez-Rubi

Goals of activism: have to be possible to reach and well planned. Assessment is a must and often overridden because of the speed of times and lack of time to reflect.

Proposals: agitation is good, but also reflection. A choral voice (i.e. making the same proposal from different places and points of view, but the same one) might be desirable now and then. Continuity and orientation of the discourse would help in the long-run engagement of our target.

Arguments: less opinion, more arguments. Ideas are good as long as they are “well packed” and backed with arguments.

Leadership: hyperleadership is good to avoid fragmentation, but has to leave room for shared leadership. Of course, leadership to achieve changes and goals. The ROI on leadership has to be positive and as big as possible. What matters is not getting there alone and early, but with everyone and on time (León Felipe).

Activists: they have to feel comfortable working without parties and organizations. But linked to the causes by following some basic rules. ARTivists: someone to be taken into account to help in the “packaging” of our ideas and arguments.

Plurality: are we in a networked world without boundaries… or sheltered in our trenches? Open minds.

Influences: credible, proximate, creating opinion. We have to impact “reality 1.0”, not think from and for the minority.