ICTlogy

The Web2forDev – Participatory Web for Development Conference is taking place at FAO Headquarters in Rome, organized by FAO, CTA, IICD, GTZ, UBC, IFAD, CGIAR, euforic, UCAD, APC, ACP and the European Commission. Here come my notes.

Presentation: Anton Mangstl

It’s the first time that the revolution is not about the development of systems, but empowerment.

Presentation: Hansjörg Neun

Holidays for me is getting no internet and no GSM. It is important not to get drowned by technologies, but to master them.

Jacques Diouf, Director-General Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Keynote Speech: Anriette Esterhuysen

The importance of ICTs in leapfrogging.

Skilled development, that can be enhanced/fostered by ICTs, and has traditionally been forgotten from the (cooperation for) development agendas.

The focus of ICT4D can be focused into mainstream.

Proliferation of online content, along with language/translation tools, bringing in new users that do not come from the developed world.

Web 2.0 removes the barriers on the consumers, creators of content.

Partnerships are crucial, collaboration is critical for cooperation for development, but most especially engagement, which is widely enhanced by Web 2.0, a perfect platform for this multilayer commitment, response.

Sharing is a main challenge.

We need to rethink (cooperation for) development deeply. We have to provide access to the tools, and to let/help people use them effectively.

Participation, decision making, human rights… are new dimensions on development that the Web 2.0 can include on the development debate.

Online participation should be ways to promote a more inclusive society.

More info

• Web2forDev – Participatory Web for Development at internet.artizans
• Website of the conference
• Blog of the conference
• Wiki of the conference
• Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us, by Michael Wesh
• Pages tagged with "web2fordev" on del.icio.us
• Flickr Photos tagged with web2fordev

Back in March 10th, 2006, I was asked to impart a workshop about Web 2.0 and diffusion of research. The workshop was improved, repeated and even published with a strong focus on teaching.

The subject quite caught on me and I’ve been working since to (a) strengthen the theoretical framework and (b) give it the “for development” bias that I’m so fond of. There’s quite a bunch or articles that I’ve been publishing here exploring ideas, doubts, thoughts about the issue — just on my previous article, for instance.

Finally, it has taken the appropriate shape and been published in the Knowledge Management for Development Journal, in an issue under the topic of Stewarding technologies for collaboration, community building and knowledge sharing in development, coordinated by Nancy White, Beth Kanter, Partha Sarker, Oreoluwa Somolu, Beverly Trayner, Brenda Zulu and Lucie Lamoureux. Having an article accepted — and commented — by such a team is something that makes you feel really good, as they all are people of reference in both the researcher and practitioner fields.

The full reference is:

Peña-López, I. (2007). “The personal research portal: web 2.0 driven individual commitment with open access”. In Knowledge for Management Journal, 3(1), 35-48. Amsterdam: KM4Dev Community. Retrieved July 30, 2007 from http://www.km4dev.org/journal/index.php/km4dj/article/view/92

On the other hand, a live presentation of the contents of this article will take place at the Web2forDev Conference in Rome next 25 to 27 September 2007.

Feedback welcome!

One of the things that thrills me about attending the Second Annual ICT4D Postgraduate Symposium is seeing Hans Rosling in the flesh, as he will be there as keynote speaker. I’ve always loved his work with Gapminder and how information or statistics, graphically presented, can be so revealing — and appealing.

My friend and colleague César Córcoles now reminds me that prof. Rosling was back at TED this year (he also was there on 2006). The presentation, as usual, is impressive, fun… and impressive. But, over all, I loved the common sense he showed when he explained the way he understood the dimensions of development, where crosses state the importance of each item as a mean and as a goal:

As shown in the table, Economic Growth is the most powerful mean, but the real goal is not GDP increases, but Human Rights and, over all, Culture, which is what makes people’s live happy. For your enjoyment, his two speeches at TED.

This Benchmarking system is jointly developed by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development. Technical development is carried out by the Institute of Software Technology & Interactive Systems of Vienna University of Technology. We gratefully acknowledge the generous financial support from the Government of Austria.

The Benchmarking Tool is an interactive web-based system consisting of two modules: MDG Benchmarking and ICT Benchmarking.

The ICT Benchmarking lets you compare country data (provided by ITU: Total Tel. Subscribers, Mobile Subscribers, Main Tel. Lines, Internet Hosts, Internet Users, PCs) with your own quality of access (measured by your own Upload Speed, Download Speed, Google Search, Yahoo Search, MSN Search, access to Government’s Site) or with dataset spreviously saved by other users. Curious.

• United Nation’s Benchmarking Tool
• ICT indicators collection
• Development indicators collection

The Millennium Development Goals Indicators Dashboard is an attempt to show how the official UN Millennium Development Goals set could be used for assessing progress, or lack of progress, towards Sustainable Development.

Jointly developed by the International Institute for Sustainable Development and European Statistical Laboratory at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, the Dashboard can either be consulted online or downloaded and installed on your PC. Online version shows only data for Africa; local version only runs on MS Windows platforms.

To see an example of its functioning, take the policy that drives Muhammad Yunus, 2006 Nobel Peace Prize: more than 96% of Grameen loans have gone to women, who suffer disproportionately from poverty and who are more likely than men to devote their earnings to their families. And now see the following map:

Women in parliamentary seats, 2004 (ITU)
Red pictures most inequality, green pictures equality
[click to enlarge]

Technical note: the Millennium Development Goals Indicators Dashboard is built using the Dashboard of Sustainability, a tool you can personalize to create your own Dashboard to whatever you want to present graphically, the same way the Trendalyzer does.

More information

• Millennium Development Goals Indicators Dashboard
• Bashboard Development Kit
• Millennium Development Goals links collection

[via the Development Gateway]

Dick de Jong asked days ago whether I could provide with some examples of ICTs contributions to solution of water problems. I must admit I am in no way a water expert. And I must admit too that my knowledge in ICTs is not comprehensive or absolute at all. This said, I will nevertheless try and give some examples that do come in mind when talking about water and ICTs. Not magic solutions, just humble contributions. Some of them are common ideas already working, some others are just little variations of the former ones, some are just… just ideas. On the other hand, I’d like to keep this list as a brainstorming, so feel free to use the comments section.

In my limited knowledge of the issue, I guess that there are three ways of looking at the water problem, the so called 3R measures or actions: Reduction, Reutilization and Recycling. Honestly, I think ICTs can act, over all, in Reduction, a little bit in Reutilization and, maybe — but I don’t see how — in Recycling (besides computerized industrial plants, which is not exactly the issue treated here.

Concerning ICTs, I’d take this 5 step approach:

So, with this framework (on one hand the 3R model, on the other hand the 5 step approach), these are things that ICTs could do to work for a better use of water resources:

Infrastructures

We understand by infrastructures everything to provide support where to run content and services. In ICTs, we can group them in hardware, software and connectivity.

• Domotics (I): devices to optimize the use of water in taps or find leaks. Besides trivial control to avoid leaving taps open, I’m thinking on gathering data on consumption for all and every water source by date and time. Data analysis could show who’s bathing instead of showering or whether we’re using the toilet bowl as a trash bin. [reduction]
• Domotics (II): as lots of energy come from water, everything related to energy consumption. There’s zillions of examples in this field. [reduction]
• Artificial intelligence for irrigation systems (I): not just programming to water at night, but also to test soil and ambience humidity, plant real needs according to species, etc. [reduction]
• Domotics (III) and irrigation systems (II): once used water is collected, ICT assisted water analysis could provide more efficient reuse depending on the degree of water cleanliness, from clothes washing to irrigation to bowl use. [reutilization]
• Office software: not a joke. Taking into account the huge water needs to produce paper, working digitally really makes a difference. Web 2.0 apps just go deeper into this issue. [reduction]
• Connectivity: if all the previous solutions/contributions can work in a digital network, there is no doubt that some synergies will arise. On the other hand, [reduction][reutilization]
• Wireless sensor networks (I): related to the previous issue and with irrigation systems, wireless technologies to monitor the rural environment [and] apply crop prediction models that feed a decision-support system for farmers. [reduction]
• Wireless sensor networks (II): for flood prevention. [reduction?]

ICT sector

This section deals with the existence of an ICT sector in any of the three (hardware, software, connectivity) infrastructure fields.

• Free software community: this is the typical south-south collaboration. Only with a strong software community of developers, truly localized solutions, based on free software, can be possible. Take “south” in the sense you want. I take it as “anywhere where water optimization is required”, which is everywhere. The “south-south” philosophy is, nevertheless, more widely known. BTW, same applies to the closed software sector — just wanted to stress that open is better, specially when there is a need for open communities to provide more/collective wisdom. [reduction][reutilization]
• ICT devices for water optimization: this should be placed before the previous example, but the free software community is a better known issue. So, same thing, but with hardware: localized hardware solutions for local water needs. [reduction][reutilization]

Digital Literacy

While digital literacy is quite a broad concept (technological literacy, informational literacy, e-Awareness…), we take it here in an even broader sense, including ICT driven training. This last aspect clearly belongs to the Content and Services section, but I think it is more pedagogical to deal with it in this section when talking about ICTs as water optimisation tools.

• Digital literacy: as itself, to train citizenship on (a) infrastructure issues, so an ICT sector can emerge and (b) use of digital content and services, so people can benefit from the resources about water in the Net. [reduction][reutilization]
• Advocacy: digital places (websites, brochures, blogs…) to raise awareness on the water problems. [reduction][reutilization][recycling]
• e-Learning: virtual training to develop capacity building in the management of water resources, 3R policies, etc. [reduction][reutilization][recycling]

Content and Services

In other words: the finalist uses of the Internet.

• Digital content: open educational resources to help you reduce, reuse, recycle your water. [reduction][reutilization][recycling]
• Sort of a corollary of the Connectivity issue in the Infrastructures section, a virtual clearing house for second uses of water could be built, thus easily matching supply and demand for used water. Depending on how intelligent is your installation, demanding, supplying and matching could be done with no human intervention at all. [reutilization]
• Geographical Information Systems (GIS): to locate and better analyze field data [reduction]
• Mashups: corollary of the previous one, but somehow more in the web 2.0 trend. Web supported, collectively created/authored/maintained, etc. [reduction]
• Online volunteering: online mentors to help manage your water resources. If payed, volunteering becomes professional consulting: same thing but more expensive. This example is somehow similar to the e-learning one, but the difference is in the means and the hows. [reduction][reutilization][recycling]

Legal Framework

Of course, this legal framework refers to everything to describe the rules of the game in the ICT arena.

• ICT fostered water policies: provided all (or some) of the previous ideas are good, they can be fostered through public water policies or, even stronger, public regulation. Some quality regulations in other sector, all in all, just end up inducing determinate technology adoption by pursuing higher quality levels or industry standards. [reduction]

So, please feel free to contribute in the comments.

Contributors so far:

• Marco Zennaro
• Paolo Massa

Selected links:

• http://commonsense.epfl.ch
  
• http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn10360
• http://topics.developmentgateway.org/water/rc/ItemDetail.do~1048007
• http://topics.developmentgateway.org/water/highlights/viewHighlight.do~activeHighlightId=106821
• http://waterinfo.nic.in/news/ictwr.pdf
• http://www.iwra.siu.edu/win/pdf_file/anderson.pdf
• i4d, Vol. II, No. 7, July 2004. Monographic on Water and Agriculture