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.
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.
Notes from the PhD Dissertation defence by Francisco Lupiáñez entitled Internet, Salud y Sociedad: Análisis de los usos de Internet relacionados con la Salud en Catalunya (Internet, Health and Society: Analyses of the uses of the Internet related to Health in Catalonia), directed by Manuel Castells.
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
Internet is a space for information, not interaction.
The e-patient is determined by access to information and intensive use of the Internet to get information about health.
The health e-professional is determined by orientation towards research and access to international information.
Future lines of research
What are the determinants of innovation processes in the health system, including its impact on productivity.
What are the determinants of the state of health in the framework of the Information Society
What are the public policies to improve the health system in the framework of the Information Society,
How the biomedical paradigm evolves within the framework of the Information Society
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Online Social Networks — a more comprehensive term than virtual communities — enable people to co-operate. Social networks have always existed, but now they’re empowered, enhanced by ICTs, so communities of practice can form.
Online communities: promote social capital, support lifelong teaching and learning, connect people and build relationships, grow a searchable communitye memory (knowledge sharing).
Participatory media (e.g. blogs, wikis, mobile phones with cameras) have totally changed the landscape, enabling broad participation by making it easy to share any kind of media (image, video, text, software…). Media allow learning, sharing, debate…
New media require media literacy: understand the media, know how to send and receive, then be able to produce.
Social Cyberspaces Connect People
People join through affinities and shared interests, that can be social, practical, interest-based, technical…
So, you have to start with a plan, a plan that includes social, marketing and technical infrastructure. You have to think on how to attract people towards the network, but then think alson on how to make them come back.
Marketing is essential: build it and they won’t come if it does not fill an important need (they’re too busy); start with enthusiasts (if there’s any, just don’t start); build a critical mass with enthusiasts first, then let the others join; start small, learn, redesign, grow organically: follow an iterative redesigning.
Civility is essential; online facilitation is a skill and a body of knowledge; weed, feed, transplant: gardening, not architecture; encourage emergent leadership, regardless on who you said that was in charge.
Debate
César Córcoles: how institutions can face the changes that social networks bring (e.g. teachers). Howard Rheingold (HR): the actual teaching model (Paulo Freire’s “banking model”) is inadequate for online social networks. The responsibility of the reputation of the “text” (the basis of actual teaching models) has shifted from the editor, or the teacher, towards the consumer: it’s now up to you to determine the reputation of what you’re reading, as the offer is huge. Participatory media, nevertheless, is absolutely compatible with students being more active in teaching, as some pedagogical theories have been stating in the last years.
Oriol Miralbell: how do we manage leadership in big online social networks? Can it be both distributed and centralized? HR: It’s not either or. Indeed, power and authority are quite different things. Communities, individuals, are normally reluctant to take authority when a reputed person is participating in the community: authority comes naturally, and is provided by the rest of the participants.
Oriol Miralbell: experts or teaching experts? HR: Teaching skills are the key. If there is a trade-off between being an expert in a field and a good teacher, you might prefer the good teacher, as they will be leading the group towards debate and knowledge sharing in better ways.
Francisco Lupiáñez: how do deal with complex processes (bureaucracy?) when there’s an urgent need for flexibility? HR: Online, ironically, allows more direct communication with the student, which is really time consuming. So, planning and, more important, seeing how what you are going to build scales is crucial. To be able to scale up, bringing the students agency, and let themselves discover than you discovering for them is one of the most important changes of mindset required to build a successful social community.
César Córcoles: isn’t this kind of working putting more stress on students (switch from passive to active attitudes)? HR: Is it a problem of stress management… or attention management? Focuss on questions, issues that matter.
Joe Hopkins: how does the work with the wiki works? HR: I don’t expect them to delete. Context is a must for anything added to the wiki. And if given the opportunity, students will end up finding out things that the teacher did not know… in any kind of media support: text, video, etc. Have to give the students ownership of their participation.
Ismael Peña-López: what are the minimum skills required to engage someone on an online social network? HR: Collaborative working is new to the students right now, it’s a new way of thinking. The students already live on Facebook, they manage their digital identities, but they might not really be aware on how this impacts their lives. And we have to teach them too these issues: to distinguish between the “know hows” and the “know ho nots”.
Ismael Peña-López: is there a minimum threshold of digital awareness to be achieved before being able to positively contribute into an online social network? HR: Yes, of course, there are. There’s a set of rhetorics to be learnt to be able to engage in a virtual community. And blogs are a perfect gateway towards this understanding on how things work in the digital world. The ability to link.
Oriol Miralbell: IT tinkering a need? or digital natives already know everything? HR: digital natives master some tools, but they do not know at all about the whole rest (i.e. 99% might use Wikipedia, 1% might know they can edit it). And this might change… but it might not if we don’t address it within the education system, integrating the training of this skills in the syllabus.
Rosa Borge: virtual communities a need? or can smart mobs be a better option? HR: We don’t really know yet. Smart mobs are ephemeral and happen after a particular event. Do they stay? Do they turn into a crystallized movement? Doesn’t look like it. This does not mean that smart mobs do not achieve results, but they are on the shortest run… and when there’s more impact than that, it’s because there was an actual movement behind.
Max Senges: quality, control and scalability is a Bermuda Triangle that is difficult to manage. How to mitigate or give away control while keeping the institution happy? How to scale up? HR: Giving up control is not bringing anarchy in, is just defining the boundaries of the project, which is quite different. Peer evaluation is also a way of not exactly giving control away, but distributing it. Meritocracy might be a good option to both keep some kind of rules (not real control, but keeping rules) and also being able to scale the model bit by bit, by shifting some responsibility (and authority) to the “best” students. e-Porfolios, self-reflection, self-evaluation is a very powerful tool too, as it raises motivation, self-management, ownership of your own contributions, self- and third party assessment.
Oriol Miralbell: How to learn to be an online mentor? Should we first learn some particular dynamics before online teaching? How to keep authority? HR: Tell the students: you’re going to be able to teach this course. This triggers leaders and really engages them, and makes leadership emerge, as the possibility/chance to be the teachers is real.
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.
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.
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).
Francisco Lupiáñez-Villanueva
Howard Rheingold
