ICTlogy

Ismael Peña-López (moderator), Shafika Isaacs, Vikas Nath, Paula Uimonen
Networking Cooperation — towards the networked Cooperation

Ismael Peña-López: Introduction

see my position paper here

Paula Uimonen: Is development cooperation prepared?

No. The structure is too bureaucratic.
But the network logic is horizontal, cross-sectorial, transversal, non-hierarchical.
But it seems that the international arena is working for a more networked development cooperation sector.

Shafika Isaacs: Are organizations prepared to network?

It depends: they’re all in an evolutionary process.
There’re more and more organizations working in the field of ICT4D.
And a rising awareness on the issue.
Big leadership behind ICT4D fostering.
Common agenda that enabled collaboration and networking, especially withing the civil society, with an inflection point at the WSIS.

Vikas Nath: What is networking and how can this be achieved?

People join networks for two reasons: (1) more benefit than the cost of joining it and (2) multiplier effect that a network is increased by one member.
There’s no optimum design for a network: the network will shape itself according to its needsl.

Conclusions from my group (the four people above)

Objective facts

• Network culture assumes the character of the leading person/organization, of the dominant personalities
• Networking is about “we”, and ceases to exist when focused at the “I” — not a consensus on this part
• The Network Society is here, and is here to stay
• In developed countries — and their institutions and organizations — infrastructures is not the issue
• Big funding agents foster collaboration through compulsory partnerships
• Network participation implies engagement with the other (which might be different from you), boundary crossing

Criticism

• Where there is power there is resistance, and resistance is also organized in networks (Foucault)
• We lose to dream, we ain’t dreaming enough, we “think small”
• Lack of e-awareness
• Competition for funding

New concepts

• The contradiction that the network compromises the individual with the collective will
• Networks can bring disruptive creation
• I exist because I am on the Internet
• The Network is becoming more “real” than reality itself, we should think digital

Intutitions

• Network creates a more human society
• The power dynamics are designed by the network leaders
• The network is cold and has no emotions
• Big nonprofits will act as hubs, and distribute work to smallest nonprofits and individual online volunteers

Optimism

• The social and cultural aspects of ICTs will promote networking
• We have potential to make positive changes, because we are the network,and networks have potential to make significant changes
• Web 2.0 enabling more collaboration and bottom-up initiatives

Control

• Resistance, which leads to lack of change
• Endorsement, that leads to progress
• Impossibility to keep tight control
• Flexibilize organizations
• Focus on what value you are adding to the network
• Be a statue sometimes and not always the pigeon

General conclusions (from all groups)

• Networks are here and are powerful
• There’s evidence of change and shifting towards networking: in the society, in organizations. And there’s an evolving trend towards more networking
• Networks are catalysts, make things happen, have multiplier effects… but they have no essence on their own, they just mirror the good and bad things of the society, what works and what does not work, there’s nothing new under the (networked) sun but humans
• Strong need to enable individuals so they can work with ICTs, in networked frameworks
• Same with organizations: collective change, organizational change, reshaping according to networking needs
• We have to make networks explicit, design them, rule them, have common goals, a common agenda, managing confidence and leadership. Monitoring and network assessment is a must that comes along with network creation and maintenance.
• We should work towards inclusive networks, fostering capacities, networks that empower their nodes so they can still be a part of the network.
• The Web 2.0 is seen as a (potential) inclusion concept/philosophy/technology, an empowering one
• Caveat #1: all these conclusions are not axiomatic: there are shades, blurring edges, contradictions, etc.
• Caveat #2: this is how we see networks today, but we should also keep in mind that networks (and society) will evolve, so should these conclusions

Florencio Ceballos
IDRC: Learnings, limitations and challenges from the telecentre.org experience

Crisis of performance, effectiveness, results, etc. in development cooperation, despite the increasing amount of resources devoted to it.

Reasons

• Industrial way of thinking, not post-industrial. The actual development paradigm is old and not valid. We need a new, up-to-date paradigm.
• Focus on pilot projects that are not maintained after the pilot phase, so they die in the medium- or long-run.
• Short-sightedness of asymmetric internationalism: there’s more and more knowledge in the South about south issues than in the north, so don’t (you northern developed country) look at your local environment, because it does not mirror the southern reality.
• Money is an issue, but not the issue.

Solutions?

• Try a new networked, collaborative way of designing and implementing projects
• Forget about old ways of accountability and reporting mainly focused to satisfy the “needs” of the funding institution’s bureaucracy: instead, public accountability through the institutional web site, blogs, etc.
• Boost (local) leaders, people that can enable (social) changes. Horizontal leadership and social capital, again enhancing networks and (symmetric) networking

Development and ICT4D are blurring concepts that are becoming indivisible aspects of Development in general.

We’ve much focused in access to infrastructures that we didn’t realize that mobile telephony was closing the digital divide at our backs. So, how does the telecenter has to adapt to this trend and make of (a) the PC+Internet a (still) valuable tool and (b) the mobile phone a more powerful tool (as the PC+Internet is)

New cooperation models: from charity to collaborative business strategies where both partners (northern, southern) benefit/profit from ICT4D projects.

More on horizontal leadership

The assumption that you (the North) can change the world, with just one project, designed in the framework of your office, is absolutely wrong. It’s better to empower, boost the leaders that are already operating this change through their daily work, so they can have a wider and deeper reach and impact, so the social change truly happens and at a higher level.

It’s not that we have to forget about all we’ve learned through the years about development, but just forget about the asymmetry that now rules development cooperation.

Round table: Manuel Acevedo (moderator), Shafika Isaacs, Vikas Nath, Eiko Kawamura, Paula Uimonen
Opportunities and Challenges of ICT integration in Development Cooperation

Q: who’s to design ICT4D cooperation strategies?

Paula Uimonen: It makes lesser and lesser sense the North-to-South approach of knowledge and aid transfer. More and more the South is sovereign to define its own needs, and should be able to ask for help, resources and so to the North, but not to have to indiscriminately accept what comes from it.

Q: can I help you if you (country) don’t have a framework, an explicit policy to foster ICTs?

Shafika Isaacs states that in most Africa such policies do exist [focus in education], and the frameworks, even in an emergent state, they are already built and capable of processing/absorb any project or help that might come in the field of ICTs. Even more, the network to enable a knowledge exchange practice is already there, and this is the priority of Africa.

Q: can we set up ICT4D projects/agencies/development cooperation in the South?

Vikas Nath: Sure. There’s been lot of work already been done in the private sector arena, and now’s the turn for the civil society to lead the process, enabled/fostered by such cooperation. And this empowered society (private firms, nonprofits, etc.) are actually and already leading some interesting development projects, trends, paths, etc.

Q: what kind of action should design an international agency to work in Latin America to foster the Information Society?

Eiko Kawamura: first of all, have a clear map of what the local reality is like, specially describing the real needs of the beneficiaries, what do people need in communication related issues.

A huge problem in top-down initiatives is that they have embedded by default their own (success) indicators, most of them quantitative, while raising living standards, welfare, is most times a matter of qualitative perceptions… and indeed a long term issue, sometimes quite separated in time from the project itself. You might be measuring the irrelevant and forgetting the relevant.

Another problem is short-run, pilot projects that do not have time enough to (positively) effectively impact the community, while they generate financial dependences that do not take into account sustainability issues in the long run.

Random comments from the audience

• ICTs crucial for development (by a man from Angola’s government)
• The importance of capacity building and digital literacy when/besides “installing computers”
• Importance of top level commitment and policies to framework ICT4D projects
• Shift the focus from computers to education

Shafika Isaacs: right, there’s high penetration of mobile phones in Africa, way greater that computers/Internet, but removing out of the spotlight computers/Internet just because they have lesser penetration would be like throwing the baby out with the bath water. We have to work in how such different technologies can be integrated, and this means mobile phones + computers + Internet, but also radio, that has a huge penetration in Africa and is really popular.

Eiko Kawamura: Indeed, the problem with mobile phones is that they’re (still) expensive and (still) just used for text messaging, so she agrees with Shafika Isaacs about integrating different technologies so they fit different purposes.

Vikas Nath: we’re suffering a lock in syndrome in ICT4D. The lack of infrastructures and literacy does not let us think about effective uses/applications of ICTs for Development. A vicious circle. We have to break it and surely policies and government strategies is a good means to.

Manuel Acevedo: it’s important to use ICTs to do old things in a better way. But, what about trying to do new things?

Live notes at Cooperación al Desarrollo 2.0: I Encuentro Internacional de las Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación para la Cooperación al Desarrollo [Development Cooperation 2.0: I International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Cooperation for Development], in Gijón, Spain, 30 and 31 January 2008.

Keynote speech: Manuel Acevedo
The challenges of the integration of ICTs in a networked cooperation

How do we integrate ICTs in Development Cooperation? What does “networked cooperation” exactly means?

Human Development and Network Society

Human Development according to Amartya Sen: not only “physical” development, possibilities, but also capabilities, entitlements.

Network Society according to Manuel Castells: everything (society) is structured in networks, which are indeed different from hierarchical, vertical structures.

ICTs for Development

Denning: we can describe knowledge ecosystems, using the metaphor of a garden: Knowledge cannot be extracted, we have to make it grow

Labelle: ICTs for Development:

• making access easy
• helping countries to reach knowledge economy
• enabling people

Digital Divide

• access
• capacity
• relevant content

Fostering the Information Society:

• Infrastructure
• Capacity
• Services
• Content
• Education
• Health
• Work
• Commerce
• e-Government
• Other Services
• Legal Framework
• Policies

Mainstreaming ICTs in Development Cooperation

Use it in each and every aspect of the daily work in a cooperation agency or nonprofit: design, planning, project implementation and management, communication, etc.

It, hence, implies and extensive adoption of ICTs within the organization.

Issues: special attention towards ICT integration, corporate strategies about ICT4D, specialized departments about ICT4D, ICT4D project funding, etc.

Reasons to: increase efficacy; more control about performance and autonomy; stimulator and catalytic effect, using the own organization as a sandbox; to share knowledge and good practices.

Networks for Development

1-D networks: much alike hierarchies

2-D networks: coordinated; norms very important; action is mostly planned; access to information is the priority

3-D networks: nodes are to dynamize the network; no coordinators; the functioning is ad-hoc; monitoring is periodic; knowledge creation is the priority

Development networks

• corporate
• about knowledge or thematic
• around projects
• networked projects
• open source
• created by “diaspora”

3-D networks, enabling networks, are the best fit for development cooperation

Development Cooperation needs a redesign in its architecture, shifting towards networked collaboration. And same stands for projects, not only for organizations. A shift towards putting knowledge at the center would be a must. It is important to state that the network creates a network capital, which emerges from the fact of the mere existence (and intensive use, of course) of the network.

More info

• Position paper by Ismael Peña-López
• Position paper by Carlos Guadián
• Breves ideas de Manuel Acevedo
• Slides by Carlos Guadián

As in a pendulum movement, the reflections about the impact of ICTs in the Economy have swung from enthusiasm to realism and back to optimism, being each of these states really subjective and implying a wide range of shades within.

After a first period of cyberoptimism, people that “wanted to see” and people that thought “waiting to see” was a bad strategy because “it will then be too late”, followed a timespan where scientists — mainly economists — stuck to strict evidence from reality, being their main conclusion that the more you spend/invest in ICTs the more they affect both the share and the growth of the GDP — an obvious conclusion to many, I’d dare say, as it’ll happen with sweets if you spent half your national budget in candy.

In the last years, due to more data available and more and better analyses, we have been seeing new findings that, at last, seem to bring more light to the issue of the impact of ICTs on the Economy. In the following table I present a summary of a good bunch of such positive impacts. One caveat is due: as it is clarified in most of the documents listed below, evidence is not always subject to generalization. While sometimes it actually is, some findings apply only to specific contexts such as countries, economies, moments of time, constellations of conditions and so forth. I nevertheless believe that these impacts are worth listing because some were predicted — or expected — ten years or more before they could be measured. On the other hand, some caveats about the applicability of these findings are mainly based on (non) availability of data. Last, but not least, because even if some results only apply, as we have said, to specific economic setups, some of these setups could be reproduced in other contexts — e.g. in developing countries — in order to try to provide the same results.

Surprisingly — or not — there are few papers stating the negative impact of ICTs in the Economy. Some of them do not dare talking about negative impacts but of changes in the Economy: change of paradigm, organizational changes, turbulences in international markets, etc. and speak of them quite neutrally: they are neither positive nor negative on their own, but it will depend on a firm or a sector strength and position to benefit from them or to suffer them.

To be true, the only potential negative impact I have been able to find in economic papers — and also in sociological papers — is about employment. Again, a caveat: as I have shown before, most authors predict that the net effect on employment will be positive, and will be in the lines shown in the table. Nevertheless, some — among them Greenwood (1999) and Castells (2000) — picture some drawbacks of ICTs entering workers’ life. While the first one describes an impasse scenario where skilled workers will benefit while non-skilled will have to adapt to new technologies — losing productivity, competitiveness and earnings in the meanwhile — Castells is certainly more frightening, as he depicts the segmentation of workers in two axes: networked vs. switched-off labor, and self-programmable vs. generic labour. The conclusions are similar to Greenwood’s, but presumably to stay in the long run and with deeper consequences that spill from the labor market over the social and cultural arenas in a not really promising future for the switched-off and/or generic kind of workers.

References

Second of my three seminars imparted at the he Rich-Media Webcasting Technologies for Science Dissemination Workshop, organized by the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics Science Dissemination Unit.

Main aspects

Seminar fundamentally based on my notes on the Web2forDev Conference and split in two parts:

• Part I: showcase of different Web 2.0 — and related ICT4D — projects in developing countries
• Part II: open debate with the attendants based on random thoughts extracted from the said notes

Live recording of the session

• Part I (begins at aprox past the 2/3 of total running time): view, download ( 94.86 Mb)
• Part II: view, download ( 119.38 Mb)
• See, also, the rest of the workshop presentations

Slides

Click here to download, or watch them on Slideshare: