ICTlogy

e-STAS is a Symposium about the Technologies for the Social Action, with an international and multi-stakeholder nature, where all the agents implicated in the development and implementation of the ICT (NGO’s, Local authorities, Universities, Companies and Media) are appointed in an aim to promote, foster and adapt the use of the ICT for the social action.

Here come my notes for session I.

Raul Zambrano, UNDP
ICTs, Digital Divide and Social Inclusion

Four stages of ICT Development

• connectivity, get people connected
• content and have people have capacities to deal with it
• services
• participation, Web 2.0

Digital divide

• Within countries
• Among countries
• Within and among countries

The difference between the digital divide in developed countries and developing ones is that in developing ones is but another manifestation of other divides — this is not necessarily this way in developed countries.

How can technology bride social divides, not technological divides?

Divides: differences attributed to knowledge, and differences dues to more physical and human capital.

Both the speed of adoption and the speed of diffusion of technologies are have very different paths in developed and developing countries [So, it’s not just that leapfrogging can be made possible (adoption), but it has to be actually fostered (diffusion). But, part of fostering diffusion to achieve quicker and broader adoption is about giving the population what they need and/or are asking for].

Thus, in the policy cycle (social gaps, awareness raising, citizen participation, agenda setting, policy design, development focused, implementation, evaluation/assessment, reduction of social gaps, new emerging issues), these population needs must be taken into account when designing public policies.

In this policy cycle, networking is crucial to gather all sensibilities and ensure that participation does take place. If there is not citizen participation, public policies are likely to be government’s or lobbies’ interests biased.

All in all, it’s about empowerment.

Comments, questions

I ask whether it’s better push (public led) or pull (private sector led) strategies.

Raul Zambrano answers in the framework of developing countries. In these developing countries, the Estate is to foster and create aggregated demand, it is the main purchaser, investor and installer of ICTs (infrastructures, services, etc.).

On the other hand, it is true that there is a latent demand from the citizenry, and there already is a manifested need for ICTs.

About the private sector, the problem in developing countries is that the private sector might not have resources enough to set up pull strategies. Or maybe they could, but it still makes poor sense for them when looking at the Return of Investment. This is especially true with developed countries firms trying to get established in developing countries, though local enterprises might not think (and behave) alike, and find it’s huge benefits what elsewhere might not even make it worth it trying.

So, put short, in developing countries what seems to be working is a centralized model but progressively decentralized [as the subsidiarity principle in the European Union, I’d dare add].

Do we need to keep on working on access (if everyone already has a cellular)?

Yes, definitely, but not as an independent variable but as a dependent one [this is one of the cleverest statements I’ve heard in months about the digital divide].

Paco Ortiz (AHCIET) intervenes in this issue: incumbent telecomms normally pay a ratio of their profits to governments so the latter can help solve the last mile issue. The problem being that once these governments have cash to do so, the sometimes shift the funds to other priorities — no critique intended: these priorities can be Education or Health. Thus, legitimate or not, the result is that universal access is never achieved, but not at the private sector’s fault.

One person from the audience harshly attacks governments for their corruption, which invalidates them to foster any kind of policy or to get any kind of funding from whom ever.

Raul Zambrano states that it is precisely transparency and accountability one of the main goals of ICTs in the sphere of the government.

Some people now and then ask how I do maintain my bibliography and how do I integrate it with the blog and the rest of the site.

My bibliography runs with BibCiter, a PHP+MySQL (like WordPress) bibliographic manager that just some weeks ago had its version 1.0 released.

The new version 1.1 now supports the use of a WordPress plugin that makes it really easy to embed citations in your WordPress blog. See, for instance, the end of this page or this other page to see an example of its applications.

The full integration of WordPress + BibCiter + Mediawiki is not difficult, but it is neither a minor issue, as it requires some coding, as each and every WordPress theme, even if similar, works in different ways.

In a research I made some years ago (see more info below) I described a taxonomy and a typology for online volunteers. The typology had four types of online volunteering:

• Type I: Online Advocacy
• Type II: Online Assessment & Consultancy
• Type III: Onlined Offline Volunteers
• Type IV: Pure Online Volunteers

These types of online volunteering where based on the kind of tasks that an online volunteer could perform, especially by looking at what made different (beyond the obvious) an online volunteer from a traditional, onsite volunteer.

These differences can be summed up like this:

• Knowledge intensive — not workload intensive
• Able to use small amount of spared times between other tasks, or in the impasse from one task to another one — e.g. at workplace, at home, on the way from workplace to home, etc.
• Can quickly perform multiple, small and short run tasks
• Can work in a decentralized way
• Can network

One of the main conclusions was that online volunteering could help nonprofits regain “lost” volunteers that could not go ahead with all of their daily duties plus onsite volunteering engagement, or just access an unexploited cluster of goodwill people that could not volunteer because they were too busy or too aged to do some tasks (e.g. build a school in an overseas country).

I’m happy to see that this is exactly what Fundación Bip-Bip has done with their new project Microvoluntarios.org.

The site is a network where nonprofits can upload requirements for help that enrolled volunteers can help achieving. The difference is that the focus is put in microtasks. Microtasks are:

* The ones that do not need more than 120 minutes to be achieved
* Can be fully performed online
* Can be done by people not necessarily connected in a formal way to one organization, be it staff or volunteer
Some examples can be: looking for information on the Internet, translating some pages, transcripting some short documents, brainstorming for the creation of a logo, writing a short story, designing a campaign, recommending some bibliography, doing surveys, photo editing, viral marketing, recruiting members, etc.

The site, really at a beta stage, does need some tweaking — like how being noticed of new microtasks in your area of expertise — but the idea is excellent. Kudos to Fundación Bip-Bip!

More info

• microvoluntarios.org
• Peña-López, I. (2007). “Online Volunteers: Knowledge Managers in Nonprofits”. In The Journal of Information Technology in Social Change, Spring Edition – April 2007, (1), 136-152. Vashon: The Gilbert Center
• Peña-López, I. (2005). e-Learning for Development: a model. ICTlogy Working Paper Series #1. Barcelona: ICTlogy

[continued from e-Readiness in post-conflict and developing countries: a reflection (part I)].

Second question relates to what methodology would be more applicable in post-conflict countries, being the issue whether it should be better to apply an existing one (for the sake of comparability) or design and implement a customized one that would better fit our purposes / the country’s framework and needs.

Fostering the Information Society in post-conflict and developing countries.

I don’t really think, as I said, that there is just one solution or a common road-map to foster the Information Society. Without hesitation, each country, each region, each community could set their own successful strategy and have but just some things in common with another community… or with themselves in another moment of time.

But I can see three main trends or aspects to take into account.

ICTs and immediate relief

As it happens with the distinction between humanitarian action (or humanitarian aid) and development cooperation, I believe that in the first stages after an armed conflict or a natural disaster urgent measures of efficacy and efficiency apply. ICTs should be planned to mainly benefit logistics: not development, not empowerment, not higher goals. Basic infrastructures should be a priority to help national and foreign aid agencies to do their best.

A second step (can go in parallel with the former), and easily brought by Web 2.0 applications, could consist on some empowerment on the population to connect with their peers and kin: think of refugees or victims of natural disasters. But this is just a corollary of the efficacy and efficiency goals of the institutions: they do not only have to provide material relief, but psychological and social. It’s just efficient to set up a website where people can find and be found, by themselves, and not by centralizing everything at the headquarters.

In this train of thought, e-commerce or business e-readiness models and micro level measurements of ICT impact should prevail. We do not want to focus on the population appropriation of technology, but on the institutions’. Connectivity, networks, productivity (to better achieve their humanitarian goals). Thus, we should design our own methodologies (while inspired in others’) and own set of indicators, at the very micro level.

Development of institutions

It is way beyond doubt that development can only come in a proper framework. And this framework is called government (let’s include in this term both governance and government). Actually, this is but the second part of the former point: enforcement of institutions, now not ad hoc institutions (like foreign humanitarian aid agencies) but structural institutions.

My opinion is that the focus in this phase should be e-Government, which, at least, means thee things:

• ICT empowered institutions, measuring their access to technology, to capacity building, their supply of digital content and public services, etc.
• ICT empowered citizens, at least above a lower threshold so they can interact with their governments
• The sufficient infrastructures so governments and citizens can easily work with each other

Sectoral, government-focused indicators and assessment guides should be the ones used in this phase. Already established indicators and methodologies should be customized according to one country’s reality and specific needs and goals: e-Justice might not be a priority, but e-Administration; direct democracy (through electronic devices) might not be a priority, and strong engagement (e-participation) from the civil society might be very important.

e-Readiness for Development

Third phase is but the (only) phase that e-Readiness indices and rankings usually explain: how to benefit from ICTs to progress and achieve more welfare, by means of increased productivity, competitiveness, etc.

As the landscape has now become global (after the emergencies of the directly post-conflict issues, and after the main national institutions have been built), it is advisable to follow and use international data (i.e. rankings) to get an idea of a country’s overall performance, especially in relationship with their neighbors.

This does not mean that these should be the only tools to use, but only that some harmonization between a country’s customized tools and the global standards should be achieved, the reason being simple: not only e-readiness, but the whole economy is now competing at the global economy level, so just one set of rules applies: the international one.

Some conclusions

In my opinion, at early stages of development (such as post-conflict scenarios) only ad hoc initiatives should apply. A participatory (action) research approach can be absolutely useful. And afterwards trying to infer general conclusions to improve the model and make it valuable in broader contexts.

At stages where development (endogenous, self-centered) is not the issue, but competitiveness (exogenous, third-parties-dependent), the more globally agreed measurements, the better, with one caveat: these measurements should be improved to collect all aspects relevant to most countries.

Unfortunately, I think that we have neither one nor the other.

That someone with Marc Lepage‘s profile and experience asks for my opinion on several subjects related to e-Readiness is, to say the least, quite a compliment.

Questions are many but can be grouped in two:

• Are there any e-readiness models to be followed to draw Information Society strategies?
• What methodology would be more applicable in post-conflict countries: an existing one (for the sake of comparability) or a customized one?

These issues are really broad and I don’t think there is one solution but many, so I decided to write my thoughts here so other people can join and bring their insights.

e-Readiness models and Information Society strategies

Let’s put this really short. Nowadays, there are:

• e-readiness indices, collections of indicators and rankings, to measure the state of development (as defined by the authors of such measuring tools) of the Information Society, normally at the country level
• e-readiness guides or assessment methodologies to help, on a check-list basis, to determine the strengths and weaknesses in Information Society matters and, hence, serve as an inspiration to design your own strategy.

The main problem is that indices and guides do not go hand in hand. On one hand, indices are really global, mainly designed for developed countries, with a strong bias towards infrastructures and, most important, present a snapshot of isolated indicators, not providing the relationship — and causability — among them. On the other hand, guides are (usually) old (came up with the digital divide fever from the first years of the XXIst century), focused in just one aspect (usually e-commerce) and do not provide measuring tools (i.e. they are not necessarily using the same concepts as e-readiness indices.)

Concerning e-readiness models and assessment guides, there are many, but here comes a short selection:

Some indices

• ITU Digital Opportunity Index
• United Nations ICT Opportunity Index (ITU and UNCTAD, after George Sciadas‘s work
• The World Economic Forum Networked Readiness Index
• The Economist Intelligence Unit e-Readiness Rankings
• OECD Key ICT Indicators (not an index)
• UNPAN E-government Readiness Index
• Find more here: ICT Data sources.

Some guides

• Center for International Development at Harvard University (2000) Readiness for the Networked World. A Guide for Developing Countries
• CSPP (2000) Readiness Guide for Living in the Networked World
• Adamal, A., Lanvin, B. & Schware,R. (2005) E-strategies Monitoring and Evaluation Toolkit
• APEC (2000) E-Commerce Readiness Assessment Guide
• McConnell International (2001) Ready? Net. Go! Partnerships Leading The Global Economy. See also other works by McConnell International and Peppers & Rogers Group
• Find more here: Readings on e-Readiness.

So, trying to have a comprehensive tool would require to choose one guide and see how to use the several existing indices and indicators to measure the variables appearing in your guide. Or, instead, you can go your own way and try to obtain your own data, either because it is published by national statistics agencies or because you can collect them on your own. In the first case, it is likely that national agencies already provide all relevant data to e.g. ITU or OECD or they are not collecting it. In the second case, surveys are really expensive. If you do it just once, you won’t be able to analyze trends and impact of your strategies. If you do it several times, highest costs might make preferable to adapt your analysis to existing data than try and collect them without help. A mid-way solution is, of course, engage the national statistics agency and help them in their work (e.g. in the design).

Nevertheless, as said there are limitations in both measuring tools and assessment and strategy guides, namely

• Bias towards infrastructures.
• Sectoral focus, normally in e-Commerce or e-Government.
• Lack of focus in digital content and services.
• Poor data in digital literacy.
• Poor data in regulation and the legal framework.
• Lack of cross-data analysis (e.g. to see what’s the relationship between existence of installed capacity and digital literacy, or digital literacy and intensity of use of digital public services) necessary to establish priorities and road-maps.
• Bias towards developed countries’ focused strategies: context is usually provided from a western/developed point of view
• Bias towards state-of-the-art technology: goals and optimums are usually set on a basis of best-technology-available, not most-suitable-technology

[continues in e-Readiness in post-conflict and developing countries: a reflection (part II)].

The World Economic Forum’s Global Information Technology Report 2007-2008 is out. In my opinion, it does not bring any surprises, but reinforces some trends that we’ve been seeing lately:

• The increasing strength and importance of wireless technologies to get connected to the Network
• A gradual shift of the research focus from quantitative/economic impact analysis towards more qualitative/social impact analysis
• Hence, the realization that ICTs are much more than (information) productivity tools, and they have a role in socialization (through communication), mediated by digital literacy

Part of the Global Information Technology Report gets its data from the World Economic Forum’s Executive Opinion Survey, which, conducted annually, captures the perceptions of the leading business and investment decision-makers worldwide (many of whom represent the Forum’s member companies). As a qualitative survey, and based on perceptions, all conclusions arising from it might be taken with tons of caution. Nevertheless, there are some findings that, even if taken with caution, are worth deserving a thoughtspan:

[click to enlarge]

As the chart shows, there is a clear relationship between quality of an educational system (at the aggregate country level) and the existence of not computers but Internet access in schools. As said, while Internet access in schools is measured quantitatively after surveys sent to sample schools in every country, the Quality of the Educational System is a variable measured through a qualitative, subjective indicator after asking the 8,000 interviewees of the Executive Opinion Survey. In the survey, the respondents range the educational system from 0 to 7 whether the Educational system
[serves the] needs of competitive economy.

Depending on how you agree with the definition of “quality” for a national educational system, and how you’d like the reality to fit your beliefs, different interpretations arise:

• The more straightforward: Internet access increases the quality of the educational system. The more Internet access, the better education.
• Inversely, we can say that high quality educational systems are more eager to introduce the Internet in schools than lower quality ones. The more quality of the system, the more (awareness in) the use of Internet.
• There’s a relationship between educational quality (as understood by the Executive Opinion Survey) and Internet access in schools, but we do not know which is the cause and which the consequence: they just happen to go hand in hand.

Even if some of the previous statements are sweet music for cyberoptimists (like me), I wouldn’t strongly stand for any of it: there are too many loose ends to be axiomatic.

But one thing is absolutely clear: even if we cannot establish (yet) any causality between quality and educational Internet access, the perception is that some degree of relationship does exist. And if this perception is widely shared at both the decision-taker and policy-maker levels, some consequences in the short run would be likely to be expected:

1. Firms would be more likely to hire candidates with strong digital competences, as it looks like Internet and quality go together, and quality means a more competitive economy (i.e. firm).
2. Stress would then be put in teaching digital skills in the design of educational strategies, along with the introduction of the Internet in the school
3. If the Internet — this huge information silo — enters the classroom, the role of the educator should change, and shift from an information holder to a knowledge acquisition enabler or facilitator
4. Open educational resources should be coming in and out of the classroom both as input and output
5. This abundance of (educational) material would require more and better reputation systems and information assessment systems, all of them based in more and better digital skills
6. And back to #1

In the most conservative scenario, I see this as the perception of inflation: regardless whether there is not the slightest chance for inflation to happen, if citizens believe so, there’ll be inflation. The sensation is now that digital skills matter and that we are going to evaluate education under this light. Schools must not just let themselves go along with the current (i.e. the cyberhype), but neither swimming against it.

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