The Asian telecentre movement: the role of networks and their future Chairs: Reshan Dewapura, Information and Communication Technology Office (ICTA) of Sri Lanka
Asia and Pacific region has, out of all the UN regions of the world, been the most economically prosperous. But also the one more populated and the most disaster prone in the work, including human disasters caused by poverty.
The region has a wider disparity in the Internet usage, and the digital divide will come not from access, but from broadband or lowband access.
Why a need for community e-centres? Disconnected rural areas, population under poverty line, etc.
The Nenasala (Wisdom Outlet) project in Sri Lanka has inscreased IT literacy rate from 9.7% i 2004 to more than 20% in 2008, aiming to have 1,000 centres in 2010.
Key issues:
Leadership and organization
Financial viability
Services
Ownership and access
The Asian telecentre movement Srinivas S Tadigadapa, APAC Intel Singapore
Provide public access to information for education, personal usage, social and economic develoment… Thus, they need not being limited to just kiosks, but shared access for education, telehealth, etc.
Sustainability:
Financial sustainability
Sustaining staff capability
Sustaining community acceptance
Sustaining service delivery
Key challenges
Connectivity
Linking up to local self governing bodies to telecentres
Diversity introduces complexy: each area has its own requirements, local community involvement and content, creating value at the grass roots is a challenge, etc.
Proper power back up remains a challenge
WiMAX is certainly the solution for last mile access.
Telecentres as access to e-services, a key to service utility. Shared access is important as a bridge to economic growth, employment, training & PC ownership.
Network mid-life crisis — What it is and managment Meddie Mayanja, telecentre.org, International Development Research Centre
Signs of mid-life crisis (Richard McDermott, 2004)
Loss of momentum
Loss of attention
Localization
Avoiding mid-life crisis in networks:
Clear purpose
Active leadership
Critical members engaged
Sense of accomplishment
High expectation, not only the one who’s leading, but of all the constituents of the network
Asian Pacific TeleNetwork (APTN) Dil Piyaratna, Asia Pacific Telecentre Network, ICTA Sri Lanka
In Asia, the most affected by the digital divide are the rural poor. That’s why telecentres deliver more than ICTs: shared access at low cost, meeting place for networking, knowledge centre, access to capital assets, training centre, etc.
Operational challenges
Sustainability
Lack of IT knowlegeable staff
Community acceptance
High cost of broadband
Lack of content in local languags
Sustainability is beyond financial sustainability. Here is where networks of telecentres can enable knowledge sustainability, or help in achieving financial or self-financial sustainability.
Roger Harris explains how seeking financial sustainability leads to losing your “for development” aim, while forgetting about it turns you into an inefficient government service provider.
The Asia Pacific Telecentre Network (APTN) was launched in november 2008 by UNESCAP and forms now part of telecentre.org.
APTN’s role:
Information sharing. APTN to act as the knowledge hub in the Asia Pacific region, being a repository of knowledge.
Facilitate knowledge exchange between national telecentre networks
Facilitate study tours among networks
Consultancy assistance, facilitating consultancy work in Asia Pacific, or creating a database of experts in various areas
Funding assistance, accessing potential donors jointly with member networks and go together for greater credibility
Event coordination, coordinating events in partnership with eAsia or other larger events (resource sharing, knowledge sharing)
Resource mobilization, working together towards a common goal
Enabling policy, assisting governments to implement the telecentre component in eGovernment programmes, and including telecentres inproviding government services to citizens in the rural areas
USAID, Last Mile Initiative
Commercial approach, looking at it from a market perspective, with minimum or no subsidies, but an entrepreneur running a centre which provides services on a price-basis (not for free).
The centres run as franchises. Wireless broadband was deployed for the centres and the founding was lobbied for at two national banks.
A package of services (business-in-a-box) was provided so that to lower the barriers of entry.
Lessons learnt
The packaged model included fixed prices, but communities are different, and so ought to be prices
Services need to go beyond ICT, beyond the PC, beyond Internet access. The telecentre operator has to be free to implement whatever he foresees
The franchise itself was hard to sustain and ended up being taken up by Dialog (telecom)
The private sector has to see that these telecentres are useful to deploy their businesses
Many of them are related to knowledge sustainability.
The LAKapps Project. Making localisation effective: user guides and training Sanath Jayasena, University of Moratuwa
Goal: facilitate the use of the Internet through local languages, by deploying Sinhala and Tamil email, web browsing and e-learning software and a selected set of sites (schools, Nenasalas): Firefox, Thunderbird, Joomla, Moodle, etc.
User guides and training material to run this software were also created to help users in their usage, including how to use keyboards to type Sinhala and Tamil characters.
Analysis of factors affecting the effectiveness of telecentres of Sri Lanka L N A C Jayawardena
Telecentre operators: 57% operated by aged from 27 to 35 years, majority of high performing telecentres operated by males (see later for absence of cause relationship).
School students and leavers, and job seekers and employees, most of them have ICT training as the first utility, while businessmen and monks search more office-oriented services (photocopying, faxing).
Key attribute of high performing telecentres
Social network
Managerial skills
Attitudes of operators towards business
Educational background of telecentre operator
There is also a significant relationship of growth of telecentre and relationsihp of owners/operators with mother organization. No significant relationship with gender or age. Effectiveness is related with the kind of services provided by the telecentre. Relationship between growth of telecentres and knowledge about community.
Recommendation:
Proper selection criteria for telecentres
Establishing effective communication between telecentres and mother organizations
Upgrading telecentre service is timely
A responsible authority to coordinate Nenasala centres and use them as ICT education centres, or education hubs
Rural schools, extension services, can use telecentres for profesisonal training, distance learning, farmer training
Participatory methodologies should be used to evaluate the impact of telecentres in rural stakeholders
Back to the Community: the Future of Telecentres Ismael Peña-López
Up scaling and replication? 150 experiences. Niranjan Meegammana
e-Fusion phtv Initiative in Sri Lanka. After some pilot projects in 2007, success brough a huge demand that required an important change of strategy to make it possible to be scalable and replicable.
Design vs. implementation gaps: dynamic re-design, operation flexibility, learning from grassroots.
Continued existence implies maintaining your project team, maintaining demand and increasing social acceptance. To do so, you have to identify participation benefits, innovative partnerships, local support structures, etc.
Telecentres and their role in socio-economic empowerment Chairs: Basheerhamad Shadrach, telecentre.org Academy, International Development Research Centre
If you have a telecentre you need:
A place, the centre
Devices, to connect the “tele”, and they can be computers, a ciommunity radio, mobile devices
But, over all, you need people, a community, that are entrepreneurial, with skills, with the ability to connect
Understanding the people, and bridging the gap between the government and the people is crucial to have effective policies.
To do this, you necessarily need to bring in stakeholders, and do it with a plan.
Unleashing technology to advance social and economic development Tim Dubel, Microsoft
In the next five years we foresee an even increasingly path of innovation in technology, being the role of telecentres how to wrap it in a human way. Indeed, telecentres are not interesting (only) by their mission for inclusion, but because there’s business interest in them. Thus, telecentre operators should “help” the private sector in understanding the possibilities to add value from a telecentre. Thus, both telecentres can achieve their social goal while being sustainable as thei also achieve an economic goal.
New business models:
Kiva
Hopemongers
See your impact
M-Pesa
New delivery models:
e-Health
e-Government
e-Learning
Shared resource computing
One monitor, multiple mice connected to one computer
Multiple monitors, multiple mice and keyboards, connected to one computer
The role of telecentres:
Leverage technology: not only increasing access to technology, but also showcasing specific new technologies
Support innovation: telecentres can serves as laboratories for innovation, where experimentation can be done, especially entrepreneurial innovation
Build capacity: train skills, workforce developement. According to European survey, 90% of jobs in the short run will require ICT skills
Expand networks: to share knowledge, to collaborate with other organizations and institutions
The role of telecentres in reviving a knowledge-based agrarian society Kshanika Hirimburegama, University of Colombo
65% or population in Sri Lanka in the rural sector, but leaving to urban areas because of lack of knowledge and information to stay up-to-date in agriculture techniques.
The course has increased student computer knowledge and given e-mail access to all of the participants. Internet usage has increased from 35% to 93% and most of them have a good level of awareness of online distance learning.
An example of the output is farmers sending information (text, images) to the Coconut Research Institute to find out what the diseases are, or to get advice for their crops.
Most people follow the courses from Nenasalas. Materials are adapted from the ones from the Indira Gandhi Open University, or, sometimes, created from scratch. Language is bilingual, one of them being the local language which changes according to the region where the students are. And everything is managed with Moodle.
The online education programme has proven successful to bring into the educational system people traditionally excluded from it.
Common Services Centres. The Indian Experience Ashish Sanyal, Department of Information Technology, Government of India
Common Services Centre: low cost and/or cost-effective delivery of e-governance services to the rural citizens, benefiting from the increase of penetration and quality of ICTs.
Services: government certificates, licenses, grievandce redressal, law & order, governemnt welfare schemes, market prices, education, news, entertainment, communication, government & private sector mixed services, etc. Availability of government services is a must for the sustainability of Common Services Centres.
These services can be categorized as:
Savings: save you time or money, as e-Government
Buying: help you to shop more or better. Not only e-commerce, but e-learning and important part of this category
Income: help you to actively increase your earnings
Have to find the local entrepreneur, guide and counsel him to set up the Common Services Centre, but then, convince the bank to help the entrepreneur in investing on the Centre, and convince the telcos to provide connectivity services.
Building a Knowledge Society for All. Emphasizing Government’s Strategic Role Supporting ICT Innovations in EducationJyrki Pulkkinen, GeSCI
The gap between developing countries and developed or industrialized countries can be widening due to lower investments in ICT, education and innovation processes in developing countries. Knowledge is increasingly the key factor of production as well as a raw material for economic development.
We need to invest in ICTs that impact Education. But not wasting money in screens that substitute blackboards or handbooks for doing exactly the same things: this is a misinvestment.
One OLPC promoter once said that computers at the OLPC programem could substitute teachers. Then, why give them to children that already go to school instead of giving them to childrent that do not go to school?. We need to prioritizise the excluded ones, not the included ones.
ICT Innovations and educational challenges:
lack of universal inclusive access
poor quality of education
poor management on the education system
incrasing irrelevance of the current educatoin system in the knowledge society, new skills that need to be learnt (and besides e-skills)
Layers of successful ICT integration in education (much more than infrastructure):
Hardware, software: ICT
Warsmware: principal, teacher, learners, parents
Socialware: school, university, institutional development
Cultureware: strategies & policies
What can the government do?
Foster multistakeholder partnerships
Create an enabling environment for development
A blueprint and a roadmap for partners
Key resources: institutional, human and financial
J.B. Dissanayaka, Ambassador for Sri Lanka in Tahiland, Cambodia and Laos PDR
Vidatha (sanscrit): knowledge that is given, knowledge that is transferred.
[interesting speech — impossible to reproduce here — about languages and their usage in ICTs]
Digital Bangladesh: Road to Achieving ‘Sonar Bangla’ (golden Bengal) in the 21st Century Abdul Karim, Prime Minister’s Office, People’s Republic of Bangladesh
Virtual one stop shop for Government services: cost effective, quick, participative, etc.
Of course, connectivity is the issue, that’s why the cretion fo the “mobile lady” and other public access points.
Also a rise of m-Services provisioned by the privaste sector: language learning, health, agriculture information, legal advisory, court case notification, market access and trade, emergency service, etc.
ICT Act 2009 (digital certification, fight against cybercrime), Right to (Public) Information Act 2009, m-Banking.
Q&A
Q: How can ICTs or the ‘Sonar Bangla’ be used to fight government corruption? Abdul Karim: ICTs can ensure proper transactions, as getting rid of paper, and minimizing physical contact of documents, bureaucratic corruption has necessarily to decrease. Pulkkinen: corruption happens when people don’t know. Raising awareness — and knowledge — on public affairs is the best way to reduce corruption. E.g. if the citizen knows how much money should there be in a specific account and the citizen knows how much money there actually is in that account, it is very difficult to cheat and remain unnoticed.
Telecentre for a digital divergence eraFlorencio Ceballos, telecentre.org
More and more mobiles in people’s hands, many of them in developing countries. 4.6 billion estimated by end of 2009. Thus, we might be facing not a digital divide, but a digital divergence: it’s not that people do not have access to ICTs, but that they have access to different qualities of ICTs. Difference between full access to the Knowledge Economy to restricted access to the Knowledge Economy.
Telecentres are a way to share enhanced access to the Knowledge Economy. But not only they provide access, but also skills, etc.
Why shared access? Well, not that new:
Public transportation
Shared bycicles in many cities in the world
Access to water through fountains at streets
Public libraires
Ownership, thus, is not the issue, but access to knowledge. And telecentres are the “sherpas” that facilitate this access to people.
Though sustainability is quite often raised as an issue, in fact, many times is lack of investment what strangles the viability of certain telecentres. With the appropriate investment, more (business) opportinities come at hand.
And public access is not at all a “solution for very poor countries”. Germany, Sweden, Spain, UK, etc. are amongst the countries that have a more developed (in quantity and quality) network of telecentes.
But of course, telecentres have to evolve. Some are using telecentres to access higher education courses, others to bring microcredit to rural areas…
The impact of the Cloud on Public Sector Bash Badawi, Microsoft Public Sector APAC
The cloud:
software as a service,
data as a service,
platform as a service,
infrastructure as a service,
everything as a service.
It lowers the entrance costs to ITs, forces integration.
On the other hand, it’s fully scalable and you don’t even have to care about predicting how much usage, computing power, storage, etc. you will be needing. It’s just a pay-as-you-go.
Building a Smarter Planet: Government Kevin North, IBM Asia Pacific Public Sector Business
We now have the aility to measure the condition of almost anything: e.g. with RFID cards we can constantl monitor the temperature of each and every cow in our herd.
The imperative for government today:
Deliver value
Exploit opportunities
Act with speed
The road to outsourcing:
Staff augmentation
Out-tasking
Co-sourcing
Portfolio outsourcing
Outsourcing
Q&A
Comment by attendant: India is increasing the number of mobile phones by 18,000,000 monthly, thrice the population of Finland.
