ICTlogy

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.

Round Table: Mul-stakeholder networks and Multi-network actors in Development

What are the key factors that made a network successful?

Stephane Boyera, Device Independence Working Group of W3C

At the W3C more than one hundred working groups in the last 15 years, issued 70 standards. How could this be made possible?

• It’s a multi-stakeholder forum
• Powers are evenly distributed along the components of the network
• Having standards is a key thing for success
• A focussed programme. Working groups have limited lives (12 to 18 months) and expected results to be issued at the end of it
• Members are fully committed. And if they are not, they just cannot participate
• There are tools to support international, distributed work
• Don’t put value on the network, but on the network’s goals, do not promote the Internet bubble, don’t move away from the goal

Caroline Figueres, Global Knowledge Partnership

• Have to review on a regular basis the purpose of the network, so that it adapts to the changing needs and goals of the members.
• Win-win perspective: a good balance of what members bring in and what they get from the network
• Have to be clear about what is your motivation in being part of a network – and cope with other members’ motivations
• Based on trust (might take years to achieve an optimum trust level)
• The network is not there for the benefit of the chairman but for the benefit of the members. It should promote everybody
• Gender balanced

Anriette Esterhuysen, Association for Progressive Communications

• Diversity seen as a strength, not as a weakness
• Flexibility
• Regular contact
• Distributed “ownership” of the network and its outputs
• Manage delivery
• Get critical feedback
• The personal dimension: institutions but also human beings (with their daily human problems) have to be represented in the network
• Branding, indentity
• The network should provide more than what individuals face daily
• Learning space, exchange as equals
• Gender issues are really important for both the inner performance and public outcome of the network

Oleg Petrov, e-Development Thematic Group of World Bank

• Don’t take sharing for granted
• ICTs are great, but they have to be used in an innovative way, try and rethink completely the way things are being done
• Don’t take ICTs for granted either

Discussion

Vikas Nath: what’s exactly the role of the private sector in multi-stakeholder partnerships? Why is their participation so important? Figueres: people from the private sector is more solution oriented. There’s a confusion between what the real needs are and what you think their needs are. The private sector is a powerful informing agent to identify the real needs and bridge them with policy.

Vikas Nath: how to tell back to the society at large what is not working in a network (not only sharing good outcomes)? Petrov: things get wrong if you take things for granted, as knowledge sharing or knowledge management. And knowledge management has to be linked to operations, to task managers.

Manuel Acevedo: how to avoid “network fatigue”? how does knowledge absorbtion (vs. just generating knowlegde fluxes) happens? Esterhuysen: to recover from network fatigue, one can “retreat to the boundaries of the network” and people respect this. And even people retreating back to work again at the local level. Knowledge absorption is about knowledge management, repeating concepts, going back over same topics again and again… Boyera: networks limited in time and tied to achieving specific goals is a way to avoid network burnout. There’s no sense preserving a network that serves no purpose.

(My personal opinion on the previous topic: do we really need knowledge absorbtion? If we just don’t memorize everything we write down, why not use the network as a permanent extension of our cognitive resources? as another way to fix memory. I see networks of people, experts, institutions as just part of the cognitive and knowledge storage resources we have at hand: our brain, libraries, hard drives…)

Q: how to know not people but what (interests) they represent? How to encourage exchange? Boyera: it’s better to have leading networks for specific topics. If working groups work in related or overlapping domains, coordination and cooperation between networks is the way to proceed.

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.

Development Cooperation Agencies or Cooperation Networks?
Vikas Nath, Head of Media and Communications in South Centre Inter-Governmental Organization.

It’s important to be part of the solution, not part of the problem: institutions have to learn, and to innovate.

Different kinds of aid: ideological aid, commercial aid, environmental aid, solidarity aid, humanitarian aid, development projects… Thus, depending on your government’s priorities, you’re likely to find your national development cooperation agency to foster one or another kind of aid. And this shapes too the tools you’re to use to implant your aid programmes and projects.

But we’re at a critical juncture: food crisis, financial crisis, energy crisis, environmental crisis… Things have changed, the Old World Order is weakening… but a New World Order has not fully formed. What to do?

Solutions:

• Best-Shot Method: GPS, cure for AIDS
• Weakest Link: stopping being part of the problem and begin to be part of the solution: cure for Polio
• Aggregation Method: joint effort to find solutions

Networked cooperation is a must. Critical mass is required to find difficult solutions. And the cost of inaction is higher than the cost of networking, even if the cost of networking or consensus achievement might be seen as high.

But, besides Humanitarian Aid, which is quite coordinated, rest of kinds of aid are not networked, specially development projects.

We can find, nevertheless, some initiatives to bring people together around the Millennium Development Goals, Climate Change, Extreme Poverty Alleviation, the Digital Divide.

In the field of tools, the landscape is more optimistic. Initiatives like the Global Development Network, the Global Knowledge Partnership, Solution Exchange, or INSouth are good examples of networking strategies to share resources, efforts and so.

New Diplomacy or Diplomacy 2.0: shift from North-South networks towards South-South or North-South-South.

Julius Nyerere: If you cannot share your wealth, share your poverty. e.g. Venezuela gives oil to Cuba in exchange of physicists. You have to understand you’re part of the problem and try to be part of the solution by glimpsing alternative views.

We need, in development cooperation, a change of paradigm, the like of scientific revolutions that bring paradigm shifts.

Development Cooperation is no longer a foreign affair, but an inter-agency affair.

Q & A

Q: What’s the role of the Web 2.0? A: Important that more information circulates South-North, and not opposite. It’s about enabling participation of all parties.

Q: How is going to change international cooperation in the framework of a financial crisis? A: There is going to be a wash up of inefficient measures and cooperation channels and, on the other hand, we will be able to find solutions out of the usual lines of cooperation, with new models coming up (e.g. Venezuela’s or China’s). The chinese concept of crisis: crisis as a thread but also as a opportunity.

A: How can we force a shift of paradigm at the social (not at the scientific) level? Q: We have to find spaces in out networks to accomodate the different points of view.

Q: Networks are great… if you’re part of them. What happens if you’re out of the network? Can you afford being put outside of everything? A: Don’t think there’s a way too look at things in a separate way. They’re all interlinked, so the network is the only approach. Of course, network exclusion is a risk and we have to be aware of it.

Q: How the entrance of big foundations and philantropists (e.g. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) in the development cooperation landscape has changed the whole system? A: It’s a good step forward towards multi-stakeholder partnerships. Putting the private sector in the equation is one of the keys for sustainability.

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.

GONG Project.
Jorge Martín. CENATIC

The CENATIC observatory monitors the development of the Information Society in Spain and makes proposals to foster it. One of its outputs is the GONG project, a software for NGO management.

It’s free software and, of course, relies heavily on existing software, but with a huge effort to integrate all previously existing solutions.

The project is not only software: a virtual community has been created to support and provide support about GONG. This community shares good practices, troubleshooting, etc.

The software is thought to be managed from wherever (runs on a web browser) and using hardware NGOs already have, both at headquarters or on the field. The great thing is that it is possible to work offline and then import all update data to the online platform.

• Demo site

It’s an impressive project and covers a historically demanded need.

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.

Using web 2.0 in ICT4D organizations
Florian Sturm. ICT4D.at

ICT4D.at: raise awareness about ICT4D, inform about news, projects, run own projects…

Work only with web 2.0 tools in the cloud, coding anything at all. Mainly use of WordPress and Mediawiki. These are used for the institutional site.

Intensive use also of social networks like Facebook, XING, twitter, LinkedIn or Orkut. Through social networks you can directly address people anytime.

Content sharing platforms: Flickr, Youtube, Slideshare

Tools for analyzing: Feedburner, Google Analytics

Other: Delicious, Digg, Paypal

Not much effort to set up, enhanced reach of information, easy approach to a large user base, reused content (CC-licensed)… though not everythign works.

Q & A

Q: what are the criteria to choose one social networking site or another one? A: Already existing networks is a good place to start.

CEDUCAR network, a horizontal cooperation model through ICTs
Fernando Fajardo, AECID/CECC-SICA

To leverage the Central America education system.

By using Joomla, virtual communities have been built for educators to network and meet each other. A Moodle paltform has also been set up to train trainers/educators in ICTs for education.

Besides technology (FLOSS), all content is also licensed freely (CC). This way, there’s not only a platform but a course bank to be used in any educational initiative.

One of the strengths of this project is that is regional: there’s eight countries (+ Spain) in Central America and the Caribbean taking part in it. It’s also multi-stakeholder: NGOs, universities, enterprises, national agencies…

Digital Democratization in Guatemala
Ramon Bartomeus, Iwith.org

It’s a coordination project: each organization does their own projects, but in the same place (i.e. Guatemala) so it makes a lot of sense to coordinate some resources, findings, problems…

Learnings:

• Communities do not come after technology, but the opposite
• Find who the early adopters are and rely on them
• Begin with simple, successful things. Do not deploy the whole set of things

Viva, the voice of the people
Arturo Enzo, Viva

Public radio, set on telecenters, and used by citizens to ask their governments for several civic issues.

Telecenters are placed in several places, including jails, where they have weekly broadcasts.

But the problem of the digital divide remains. Why did not the project improved this issue? You don’t teach guitar without the instrument. If people just have computers an hour a day (or an hour a week), people are not empowered at all. So, the project succeeded in digital literacy, but not in bridging the digital divide.

But, notwithstanding, it is a seed for a change of reality.

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.

Towards a World network for digital solidarity
Najet Teutit. Deputy Director of World Digital Solidarity Agency.

Digital solidarity is a grassroots initiative to bridge digital development.

The Digital Solidarity Agency provide expertise, monitoring and promote catalyst actions within the digital solidarity world.

The “1% digital solidarity” principle: a new tax on public ICT markets. Not widely implemented: european regulatory framework of ICTs difficult to change, recent initiative, etc.

Lyon Declaration for Digital Solidarity: call to federate joint action in the ICT sector, with two main outcomes:

• a world forum for digital solidarity, with a european digital solidarity key actors network (EDSKAN) and Web2solidarite
• build a virtual micro-finance platform to raise funds and loan money for digital solidarity projects

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.

Round Table
Alexander Widmer, Responsible for the support of Swiss Agency for Development Operational Divisions; Eduardo Sanchez, NGO for Development Association Secretary; Carmen Rodriguez Arteaga, Head of Planning Service. Ministry of Foreing Affairs and Cooperation; Anriette Esterhuysen. Executive Director of the Association for Progressive Communications

General issues that came up at the round table:

Knowledge management

• Coordination
• Building from existing experience
• Share best practices
• Share worst practices

Design of policies

• Capacity building before network building
• Human network building before technological network building
• Coherence of all policies
• Specialization, then coordination: we have to focus on our expertise

Community building

• Empowering people at the local level
• Coherence in ICT4D: government is a key issue, so ICT4D to improve government quality (transparency, accountability) should be added in our ICT4D plans