2nd i4d Seminar Special : December 2004 Issue by i4d magazine

Vol. II No. 12

December 2004

The first monthly magazine on ICT4D

Dilemma of localisation in Asia Pakistan case study Information for development www.i4donline.net

ICT and gross national happiness Advancing Bhutanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s development goals

Challenges and opportunity

ISSN 0972 - 804X

2nd i4d Seminar Special

Emerging e-Learning in developing countries

April 2004 | www.i4donline.net

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

8 T H A N N U A L I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O N F E R E N C E A N D E X H I B I T I O N I N T H E FIELD OF GIS, GPS, AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY AND REMOTE SENSING

8 9 0

7-9 Feb '05 Hotel Taj Place, New Delhi

1 2 3

THEME

BACK TO BASICS

GOLD SPONSORS

India is passing through a phase of unprecedented economic boom wherein the focus in areas of land reforms, infrastructure and utility services are finding great significance. The geospatial industry in the country is re-working towards this movement 'back to basics'. Map India 2005 will highlight the major achievements and pitfalls in these basic areas of application and will try to assess the potential of geospatial sciences in these areas.

7 8

Engineering the future together

9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1

ISG ANNUAL CONVENTION

2 3 4

THEME

5 6

GEOMATICS TECHNOLOGIES FOR BRIDGING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE Delivery of information, using latest information and communication technologies to all sections of the society is a challenge in the present millennium especially, when many have a background of poor literacy and reside in rural areas. Digital technologies can contribute in raising the level of human development and bridge the gap between all sections of our society.

CO-SPONSORS

7 8 9 0

Elcome Technologies

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

H I G H L I G H T S

0 1

MAP INDIA 2005

USER MEETINGS

GEOMATICS 2005

2 3 4

PLENARY AND KEYNOTE SESSIONS Back to basics

NRDMS User Meet

SESSIONS

Survey of India User Meet

Presidentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Address and Millennium Lecture Applications of Geomatics in

Technology trends GIS industry in India-moving up

TECHNICAL AND POSTER SESSIONS

Agriculture, Health and Infrastructure

the value chain

STUDENT'S SESSION

with emphasis on rural segment

SEMINARS Infrastructure development Transportation Power and telecommunications Land information systems

WORKSHOP National Workshop on Cadastral

A special session will be held for students providing them with an opportunity to present their research initiatives, innovations and viewpoints for the mapping community.

Enabling technologies (Web, Language, Speech, Communication, GIS, GPS, PDA etc.) Cadastral & Property mapping Roundtable/panel discussion

5 6

SPECK

7 8 9

ORGANISERS

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

30o DELHI

20o

CALCUTTA

20o

BOMBAY

EXHIBITION Over 1000 square metre of exhibition space to display various industry products and services.

Surveys and Mapping

Annual General Body Meeting

MADRAS

70o 80

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Important deadlines for Map India 2005 and Geomatics 2005 Abstracts 15 December 2004 Paper Acceptance 25 December 2004 Full Papers 15 January 2005 * For abstract submission guidelines, visit www.mapindia.org/2005/call.htm

MEDIA PARTNERS

8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5

Secretariat: G-4, Sector-39, Noida-201301, INDIA Tel +91-120-2502180 to 87 Fax +91-120-2500060, Email info@mapindia.org

6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3

w w w. m a p i n d i a . o r g

Contents

i4d Vol. II No. 12

Features

December 2004

Mailbox Mail

info@i4donline.net

21 News Columns

Insight Improving health care of rural Bangladesh Prof. Lutfor Rahman

Pakistan case study Dilemma of localisation in Asia Sanu Gul

Suchana Mitra Making people partners in e-Gov Amitabh Saxena and

19 Bytes for All... 41 What’s on

Shailesh Pandey

ICT and gross national happiness

42 In fact

Afro-Asian digital access

Advancing Bhutan’s development goals Christopher B. Faris

25 Challenges and opportunity Emerging e-Learning in developing countries Ahmed El-Sobky

unique experience of 29 The Sri Lanka Bridging the ‘analogue’ and ‘digital’ divide

40 ICT and Education Rural India benefits from digital initiatives

Chanuka Wattegama

Collaborative web-based learning communities Information ecology for teachers

i4donline.net

News Search ICT4D news by date in the sectors of governance, health, education, agriculture and so on.

Percy Kwok

E-mail Subscribe to daily, weekly, monthly newsletters online or send request to info@i4donline.net

A cross-cultural perspective

Research e-Learning projects from India. www.i4donline.net/elearn.asp

Community learning centres in Asia Cameron Richards

Print edition The past issues of the magazine is available online www.i4donline.net/archive/archive.htm

I like to congratulate you very warmly on Vol. II No. 10 of i4d. I think this edition contains an in-depth and comprehensive collection of succinct articles on FLOSS. I am particularly impressed with the high quality of editorial input, which rendered the articles accessible to most readers. FLOSS is not easy to put across to readers but you did it wonderfully.I also enjoyed very much reading your insightful editorial and the profound questions you posed. Congratulations again on your success with this edition! Chin Saik Yoon, Southbound, Malaysia chin@south.pc.my i4d magazine in its October 2004 issue covered Free/Libre Open Source Software in considerable detail. In particular, the features on FLOSS usage in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean are of significance to similar initiatives being planned in India. Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay, Red Hat India Ltd., New Delhi, India sankarshan@randomink.org As an attendee of this seminar, I get more experience about different applications of ICT in development in different Asian and African countries. Ahmed El-Sobky, Egypt asobky@ritsec.com.eg It was a very useful three days and I could learn so many things about the ICT4D efforts in other countries especially, the e-Learning activities carried out in Hong Kong. Chanuka Wattegama, Sri Lanla chanuka@hotmail.com It was a great opportunity to exchange experiences and learn from practitioners from a variety of countries. Christopher Faris, Bhutan chris.faris@undp.org

Contents

i4d Vol. II No. 12

Features

December 2004

Mailbox Mail

info@i4donline.net

21 News Columns

Insight Improving health care of rural Bangladesh Prof. Lutfor Rahman

Pakistan case study Dilemma of localisation in Asia Sanu Gul

Suchana Mitra Making people partners in e-Gov Amitabh Saxena and

19 Bytes for All... 41 What’s on

Shailesh Pandey

ICT and gross national happiness

42 In fact

Afro-Asian digital access

Advancing Bhutan’s development goals Christopher B. Faris

25 Challenges and opportunity Emerging e-Learning in developing countries Ahmed El-Sobky

unique experience of 29 The Sri Lanka Bridging the ‘analogue’ and ‘digital’ divide

40 ICT and Education Rural India benefits from digital initiatives

Chanuka Wattegama

Collaborative web-based learning communities Information ecology for teachers

i4donline.net

News Search ICT4D news by date in the sectors of governance, health, education, agriculture and so on.

Percy Kwok

E-mail Subscribe to daily, weekly, monthly newsletters online or send request to info@i4donline.net

A cross-cultural perspective

Research e-Learning projects from India. www.i4donline.net/elearn.asp

Community learning centres in Asia Cameron Richards

Print edition The past issues of the magazine is available online www.i4donline.net/archive/archive.htm

Subscription Form

EDITORIAL GUIDELINES

SUBSCRIBE TODAY!

Information for development www.i4donline.net

i4d contains articles and features on the theme of “ICT for development” and related issues. Authors are requested to follow the guidelines while sending their articles to i4d.

Duration

Issues

(Year)

News stand

Subscription

Price Rs.

Rs.

Saving

Subscription US$

1200

1080

10% (Rs. 120)

US$100

2400

3600

2040

15% (Rs. 360)

US$160

2520

30% (Rs. 1080)

US$200

Please also consult the editorial calendar to choose the theme of your interest. We also accept soft or hard copy submissions of your contributions. We encourage you to share your original research with our readers.

Now be scri sub ne! onli

The Editor’s decision will be final to select, accept, modify or adjust your write-ups due to space constraints. Editorial guidelines are available at http://www.i4donline.net/guidelines.asp All correspondence should be addressed to: The Editor, i4d G-4, Sector-39, Noida, India Tel +91-120-2502180 to 87 Fax +91-120-2500060 Email info@i4donline.net

I/We would like to subscribe for (circle as applicable)

years.

First name............................................................................................ Last name .......................................................................... Designation/profession ........................................................................ Organisation ...................................................................... Mailing address ................................................................................... City .................................................................................... State ................................................... Country ................................ Postal code ......................................................................... Tel (o) ................................................... Tel (r)................................................................. Fax .......................................................... Email ................................................... Website ............................................................................................................................. Payments for mailed subscriptions are only accepted via cheque or demand draft. Cash payments may be made in person. (tick one and fill as applicable) Please find enclosed my/our cheque/demand draft numbered dated ......................... for Rs......................................... in favour of CSDMS - i4d a/c payable at New Delhi. I am submitting this form in person and paying by cash Please use photocopies of this form as required. i4d, G-4 Sector 39, Noida 201 301, India Tel +91 120 250 2180 to 87 Fax +91 120 250 0060 Email info@i4donline.net

The first daily news service on ICT4D

Subscribe at www.i4donline.net 4

i4d Editorial Calendar 2004 Month

Theme

January

Microfinance

February

ICT and education

March

ICT and health

April

Wireless communication

May

ICT for the poor

June

Local Content

July

Water/Agriculture

August

Community Radio

September

Tele-centers/Kiosks

October

FOSS

November

e-Culture

December

2nd i4d seminar special

i4d | December 2004

Editorial 2004: An exciting year for the i4d

Information for development www.i4donline.net

Advisory Board M P Narayanan, Chairman, i4d Amitabha Pande Department of Science and Technology, Government of India Chin Saik Yoon Southbound Publications, Malaysia Ichiro Tambo OECD, France Karl Harmsen Centre for Space Science and Technology Education in Asia and the Pacific, India Kenneth Keniston Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA Mohammed Yunus Grameen Bank, Bangladesh Nagy Hanna Information Solutions Group, World Bank, USA S. Ramani Research Director, H.P.Labs, India Walter Fust Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Switzerland Wijayananda Jayaweera UNESCO, France Editorial Board Akhtar Badshah Fredrick Noronha, Bytesforall Editor Ravi Gupta Editorial Consultant Jayalakshmi Chittoor Research Associates Anuradha Dhar, Gautam Navin, Saswati Paik, Jhinuk Chowdhury, Tanzeena Ghoshe Mukherjee Design Deepak Kumar Assistant Designer Bishwajeet Kumar Singh Business Executive Neeraj Budhari Group Directors Maneesh Prasad, Sanjay Kumar i4d G-4 Sector 39, NOIDA, UP, 201 301, India. Phone +91 120 250 2180-87 Fax +91 120 250 0060 Email info@i4donline.net Web www.i4donline.net Contact us in Singapore 25 International Business Park, #4-103F, German Centre, Singapore - 609916 Phone +65-65627983 Fax +65-656227984

In the last one year, i4d team participated and met with a number of people working in the field of ICT4D. The networking opportunities provided by the many ICT events last year, which were extensively covered in the magazine, builds into a platform for knowledge sharing and exchange of new ideas, concepts and practices for documentation and replication. One such event was organised by the i4d team itself. The 2nd i4d seminar was held in Beijing, China. Generous support from SDC enabled participants from Asia and Africa to present their work and debate on issues, while converging on the development perspectives and agendas. In this issue we bring to the readers some of the papers that were presented, and the authors have rewritten these for the readers of i4d. This is only a selection of the papers presented. To get a feel of the actual presentations, please take a few minutes and visit the web pages of the portal at http://www.i4donline.net/events/ 2ndi4d/index.htm We are very pleased to be users of the digital technologies in reaching out to new and extensive audiences. Our online visitors grew from some hundreds a month to a few hundred thousands a month. This shows that our readers valued our services. At the beginning of the 2004, i4d became a monthly, and we had many a folks telling us that this was going to be a challenging task. Did we have enough writers and material to document? Well, the answer is Yes, it was a delightful year for the researchers and in-house staff members to drive through the thick and thin of building i4d into a strong platform for documentation and exchange. We learnt a lot while dialoguing with authors and issue sponsors to develop content that is significant, relevant and globally useful. As we prepare to give thrust to the next year’s issue – which we hope will have an element of field visits to project sites, and some secondary research, the story telling is expected to serve as a medium of direct linkage with field projects – but with a policy relevance. We wish all our readers a very Happy New Year 2005, and look forward to serving new and growing readership quality material in the field of ICT4D – building a southern perspective and content.

Printed at Yashi Media Works Pvt. Ltd. New Delhi, India i4d is a monthly publication. It is intended for those interested and involved in the use of Information and CommnicationTechnologies for development of underserved communities. It is hoped that it will serve to foster a growing network by keeping the community up to date on many activities in this wide and exciting field. i4d does not necessarily subscribe to the views expressed in this publication. All views expressed in this magazine are those of the contributors. i4d is not responsible or accountable for any loss incurred directly or indirectly as a result of the information provided.

Ravi Gupta Ravi.Gupta@i4donline.net

Supported by:

and

November 2004 | www.i4donline.net

Session ICT and application P AKISTAN C ASE S TUDY

Dilemma of localisation in Asia In the developing countries, ICTs can transform old challenges and create unprecedented possibilities for sustainable economic development, just as it has done for business in the industrial world.

Sana Gul Centre for Research in Urdu Language Processing (CRULP) National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences (NUCES), Pakistan sana.gul@nu.edu.pk

According to an estimate, 32 out of 50 Asian countries are below the poverty line having a per capita income less than $500. A similar trend is observed in Pakistan where 32 per cent of the total population is below poverty line. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), specifically the Internet has proved to be a diverse technological tool used to communicate, create, store, disseminate and manage information. In the developing countries, ICTs can transform old challenges and create unprecedented possibilities for sustainable economic development, just as it has done for business in the industrial world. Realising the beneficial returns from deploying ICTs, public sector is investing heavily to strengthen the telecommunication infrastructure. Government is taking measures to connect the remote areas with Internet facility as an attempt to provide them access to the information world. A study of economic indicators of Pakistanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s infrastructure reveals that about 1350 cities/towns/villages have been provided with Internet connectivity up to March 2003. Total telephone lines installed by March 2003 were 4.6 million and the mobile phone connectivity reached approximately 2 million by the end of the same month. Unfortunately, even with ICT infrastructure in place, the number of total Internet users is merely 5 million, which comes around to 3.4 per cent of the Pakistani population. It suggests that only a small fraction of the total population is benefiting from the information available on the Internet. The statistical debate presented above therefore rejects the stance that low rate of Internet usage within the country is due to the unavailability of infrastructure. Majority of the local population cannot access the ICT devices, since English and

Spanish are the lingua franca for ICTs. Language barrier hampers this access, as local population is barely literate in their mother tongue. Twenty per cent of the total literates in Pakistan can read and write in English. This 20 per cent comprises entirely of urban population who form only 31 per cent of the population. The dominance of English content on the Internet therefore leaves the remaining 69 per cent rural population â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;digitally dividedâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; from the rest of the world. Researchers are now well aware of the need to enable ICTs in the local languages of the consumers. Movement for developing local language solution for legacy software systems is now underway. However, even with present availability of localised tools like Urdu fonts, proprietary software for Urdu on Windows XP, commercially developed Urdu word processors etc., only 3.4 per cent of 149 million population in Pakistan is using ICTs. However, investing into developing localised ICTs alone would not bridge this gap. Hence, the urgency is to uncover and effectively address those issues that are the major causes of depleted ICT usage within the country. Issues pertaining to low Internet usage are induced due to multiple socio-economic reasons. One obvious reason is the very low literacy level in ICT languages (English and Spanish specifially) due to which majority of the population remains aloof from the usage of computer. At present only 20 per cent of the total literate population of Pakistan understands English, the language of the Internet. This language barrier could potentially be estranged through provision of localised solutions to the masses. Even if localised solutions were built, the appallingly low computer literacy of the Pakistani population would pose another hindrance to access the information on the i4d | December 2004

web. A very small fraction of the total population is literate enough to perform the basic computer operations. Even if the preliminary hurdle to enable ICTs in local language is overcome, the next obstacle to access information is the unavailability of “relevant” local language content. This issue brings to the forefront the utmost need to produce local language content of direct relevance to the common man. The exercise of the creation of content in local language would demand certain technological formalities to be fulfilled. Among the inevitable is the standardisation of local language character sets and keyboard layouts both on linguistic and technological levels for developing localised applications. Software produced following these standards would ensure consistency across applications. Still if we try to overcome the issues stated above, the high cost of localised applications would keep these solutions out of the reach of the common man. A few of the contemporary Urdu language packages, for example, Inpage, Liwal and Urdu98 applications costing US$ 350, US$ 725, US$ 99 respectively are evidently out of reach of the majority of the local populations. Even on the commercial level, these solutions are not popular due to their steep prices. The CEO of Systems Pvt. Ltd, (the developers of Raakim software, www.raakim.com) acknowledges during his meeting with the author that lack of commercial incentives and declining market for local language solutions has retarded their efforts enormously. This is because the clients would not acquire the expensive localised software when pirated copies of the same solutions would be readily available at a much cheaper rate. The clients would not mind to compromise the output quality of the software due to their financial constraints. Apart from the stated economic and technological constraints there are certain social problems that inhibitor ICT utilisation. As an example, women visiting Internet cafes is a taboo in Pakistan. Thus, such social restrictions would apply to the entire women population, which forms about 48 per cent of the total population. Similar gender biases thus decrease the ratio of women using the Internet. All localisation initiatives should be guarded by a backbone of strong localisation policy. Unless the public agencies do not create a demand for local language applications, no sound initiative for ICT development would come up. The problems quoted above, need to be addressed rigorously in order to ensure smooth inclusion of the digitally divided population into the informed society. Various steps have to be implemented in the area of standardisation for technology, human as well as technical resource development and certain level of change in the over all thinking pattern of the society regarding the uses and abuses of the ICTs. Foremost for the social, economic and technological uplift of a region is increase in its literacy rate. Increasing literacy rate to initiate ICT utilisation is not a practical solution, however, it is realistic to build speech technologies like text-to-speech systems for the illiterate and physically impaired populations. In order to address these issues one such initiative has been taken in Pakistan by the Electronic Government Directorate through collaboration with National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences. The project is known as the Urdu Localisation Project. One part of this December 2004 | www.i4donline.net

In order to develop the sophisticated natural language processing technologies, a dire need of trained human resource would therefore be felt project is to develop a plug-in into the user browser, which will translate the information from English to Urdu in real time. In order to develop the sophisticated natural language processing technologies, a dire need of trained human resource would therefore be felt. Universities across the country should offer under graduate and graduate level degree programmes in various disciplines of natural language processing and local language technologies to catalyse the development of localised solutions, which counts to be none at present. These universities should also establish research and development centres dedicated to research in localisation. This research however has to be institutionalised within the universities in order to ensure sustainability in efforts. Pakistan at present has only one local language computing research centre, Center for Research in Urdu Language Processing (CRULP), (www.crulp.org ), which is involved in research in linguistics and computational aspects of the regional languages of Pakistan. Human resource development programmes through localisation training can also catalyse the production of these localised solutions. One such training initiative was taken by the PAN (Pan Asia Networking) localisation project. This training was conducted on the ‘Fundamentals of local language computing.’ The training aimed to equip the participants with education on the basic tools and technologies required to build intermediate to advanced local language applications. It was a five day long workshop that included presentations, hands on training sessions, font development exercises and lecture presentations by localisation experts. CRULP through the grant funds of the Ministry of IT conducted a one-day long free seminar on ‘Font development’ in Arid Agriculture University, Pakistan. Therefore, similar initiatives need to be taken up in order to stimulate the production of localised solutions. End-user training is essential to ensure the success of the developed product. Such training would further reduce the computer literacy ratio within a country. To this affect, presently the Pakistan Computer Bureau (PCB), successfully conducted the end-user training for 6000 federal and 6800 provincial government employees and the respective headquarters. PCB has also plans to dispense advisory services to various other public and private sector organisations as a first step to commence the end user training practice in the country. For the Urdu Localisation Project, the Electronic Government Directorate (EGD) of Pakistan also aims to conduct the end-user training of the product after its commercial release. In a recent meeting with the Director Projects, EGD, Ministry of IT,

The backbone for promoting localisation initiatives should be available through strong public policy for endorsement of localised solution Pakistan, with the author, the director explicitly specified that the organisation visions to provide end-user training facilities for all applications that are being developed through the initiatives of the EGD. e-Government Directorate of Pakistan recently performed an end- of the senators after deploying local language enabled software in the user training senate of Pakistan. Every possible effort to access information would be ineffective, unless the user gets the information what he wants. Localised application would not prove successful unless users have access to content that is relevant to their purpose of study. For effective execution of a similar ideal content creation cells should be developed. The government to facilitate the relevant content creation, in the country can fund these cells. These bodies should comprise of a mix of linguists, typists, social scientist, web developers and programmers to work in collaboration to produce the relevant content. Private sector organisations can be instrumental in developing such bodies. Apart from manual translation of content into local language, sophisticated localisation tools like machine translators, OCRs (Optical Character Recognitions) etc. could be built to expedite the local content creation process. OCR applications can be very beneficial in converting dictionaries, newspaper content, and other heavy printed material of local language into the computer formats. In addition, speech recognition tools can also be useful for local content creation, which can facilitate local content creation by reading out local language content. Once the local content creation movement is in place next would be the urgency to develop technology standards for the local language. Government through the Language Authority\Ministry of Culture should ensure that the technological and linguistic prerequisites for enabling regional language into the ICT are provided to the technology developers. Extremely steep costs of the proprietary local language solution would bring the entire movement of localisation to an instant halt. Government through its Information Technology division should invest in the organisations doing R&D in localisation, facilitating them to develop local language software to be disseminated for free. Software piracy should be eradicated, but at the same time options for availability of cheaper software should be introduced as explained in the preceding section. The government should ensure the development and practice of strict security of intellectual property rights and copyrights of a vendor that has invested in the development of software. Due to the negative implication of the

open availability of pirated software, the trend of development of Urdu software came to a drastic end during the middle of 90â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. As a result of the copyrights violation, vendors ceased to develop localised software. Even if all of the above-mentioned techno-economic issues are effectively met, one cannot adequately predict the maximal usage of the content available on the ICTs. This is because if the society itself condemns access through the ICTs, no effort for installing localisation would be successful. A lady visiting an Internet cafe alone is an undesirable practice. To counter for such a situation, separate time slots should be reserved for women and men in the net cafes. In more conservative environments, separate Internet cafes especially for women may be formed. However, only reserving time slots for women in the villages would not help, because women depend on their spouses in making. Once if a negative content over the Internet is observed, Internet usage would be stigmatised. For this purpose, intense awareness programmes must be conducted throughout the rural area explicitly highlighting the potential of ICTs as a tool for information exchange and its utilisation in solving problems. These awareness campaigns may for example be like the lady health worker initiative in the rural areas of Pakistan. Similar exercise could be duplicated to impart knowledge about ICT usage on door-to-door basis. Distributing free demo CDs or information storage gadgets that present demonstrations on how the ICT usage can benefit even a common man can compliment this exercise. There can also be target-training programmes especially for women, as although they constitute the 48 per cent of the total population but are far more illiterate than the men in the rural areas. Women literacy in rural areas is only 6.4 per cent in rural areas of Baluchistan, the largest province of Pakistan, according to an estimate. The backbone for promoting localisation initiatives should be available through strong public policy for endorsement of localised solution. The public policy should explicitly address issues pertaining to securing Intellectual Property Rights. Copyright laws should be enforced but as said previously, it should also be assured that local language software remains within the purchase power of its end-user. To implement this, it should be policy driven that the government invests in its own IT sector and provides free to very cheap software applications. The government should also follow a focused approach towards proprietary software usage or open source applications for implementing local language solutions. Computer education must be initiated at the very initial levels of study so that students at the primary schooling receive education to use localised ICT. Pakistan presently has an Urdu and regional language software development clause in its information technology policy. Owing to this policy, the government has recently started investing in the development of local language solutions. In spite of the availability of the necessary infrastructure for localisation, present ratio of ICT usage in the country in not encouraging. This would remain at lower levels unless the end users are provided an environment where ICT usage is encouraged from within the societal set-up. Such a situation would thus adequately attend the call of the vast digitally divided Asian population, to diminish as much as possible their segregation from the information world. i4d | December 2004

Session ICT and application I NSIGHT

Improving health care of rural Bangladesh Towards the end of 1996, AAIT embarked on a project to establish an IT training programme for the women scientists, researchers and technologists of Bangladesh.

Prof. Lutfor Rahman The Association for Advancement of Information Technology (AAIT) Bangladesh lutfor@agni.com

December 2004 | www.i4donline.net

Introduction The Association for Advancement of Information Technology (AAIT) is a non-political, non-governmental and non-profit making organisation with the responsibility of coordinating scientific and technological research and training in Bangladesh. Other functions of AAIT are to acquire, store and disseminate scientific and technology information, and for that purpose hold conferences, symposia, meetings, or workshops or do other things designed to promote interest in science and technology development. For the better performance of these functions, AAIT facilitates regional and international cooperation in scientific research and technology development.

The AAIT project Towards the end of 1996, AAIT embarked up on a project to establish an IT training programme for the women scientists, researchers and technologists of Bangladesh. The association received financial assistance to execute the programme from the Commonwealth Science Council (CSC). The project was based on the fact that a sizeable proportion of women scientists, researchers and technologists are working in the rural areas, but they are disadvantaged and traditionally under- represented. Their knowledge and skills are unrecognised, under used and under valued in science, engineering, technology and particularly in medical fields. As such they are in greater need of upgrading their skills, especially in the fast advancing world of information and communication technologies, which might enable them to connect their global colleagues, and sources of information and global knowledge wherever they may be located. The CSC awarded a Fellowship to Prof. Lutfor Rahman, the Executive Director of

AAIT, to observe a training workshop arranged for women scientists, researchers and technologists of Tanzania by the Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH) at Dar es Salam, as a model for developing similar courses in Bangladesh.

Courses in the capital city The first and second stages of the IT training programmes for the women scientists, researchers and technologists of Bangladesh were successfully completed in July1997 at the Asia Pacific University and at the Centre for Integrated Rural Development for Asia and the Pacific (CIRDAP), in Dhaka. The course completion reports along with some photographs of the participants in the training programme were sent to the commonwealth secretariat. The third workshop held at the Institute of Scientific Instrumentation (ISI) laboratory of the University Grants Commission (UGC), Dhaka in May 1998 was also successful under the supervision of chairman of the UGC of Bangladesh.

Regional courses Instead of concentrating the programmes in the capital, the programmers were disseminated in the rural areas. The 4th, 5th and 6th courses specially designed for the women medical doctors and health related scientists were held at the regional cities in cooperation with the Rajshahi University and the Pundra University of Science and Technology at Bogra.

Work plan and strategies of implementation Before embarking on training activities a survey is conducted whose aim is to identify the actual training needs of the scientists in various research and development institutions. Candidates for the courses from the

These courses have led to the beginning of a team of medical doctors and health related professionals empowered to implement tele-medicine and tele-healthcare across Bangladesh institutes are contacted, some by project staff and others by questionnaires. Interestingly, at the initial stages, most of the participants were found to have no exposure of computers, which is revealed after analysing survey results. They could not learn because of shyness, social and cultural bindings, lack of opportunities and the initiatives taken by the authority. The analysis further revealed that this trend is true at all levels of educational qualifications from diploma to Ph.D. In order to benefit rural communities, participants are selected from among the applicant’s sciences, physical sciences, social sciences and engineering, from Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), private sectors, individuals, and service institutions and semi-governmental institutions. The representation covered various national economics especially health, environment, education, natural resources (mineral resources), energy, industry, agriculture, fisheries and forestry. Special care was taken in selection of the participants so that maximum number of organisations and individuals benefit from the programme. The idea and its implementation have been appreciated not only by the scientists but also by the chief executives (employers) of the candidates as well as policy makers and politicians. This was revealed by the cooperation extended by them to the project team during preparation and execution of the project. Further acceptance of the programme as confirmed by midterm evaluation whose aim was to find out how useful the pro-

gramme has been. Women scientists who had participated in the training courses and their employers were visited at their work places, and the results were that the programme was found very useful and 92 per cent of the respondents have been applying the knowledge acquired from the programme in their respective fields of research. Employers from the rural areas were highly impressed by the output of the computer related assignments given to the programme participants and indicated that they would wish to have more of their staff attend the courses in the programme.

Output of the programme The programme produced a group of women scientists, researchers and health related professionals with following skills: • Women scientists who are well conversant with the computer mediated communication (e.g. E-mail, Internet etc.) • Women participants who are computer literate and can work comfortably with standard application packages (e.g. word processing, database management, spread sheet analysis) • Women scientists who can use special software packages relevant to their activities (e.g. Bio-statistical packages, statistical analysis) • Scientists with knowledge of conducting data base searches on CD-ROMs and use of multimedia facility to integrate available information on CD-ROM and other sources. • Increased interaction among the women scientists with computer knowledge facilitated through a network of alumni of this programme • A team of competent IT trainers who ensure sustainability of the programme • An established IT training programme for rural communication development in AAIT.

Conclusions These courses have led to the beginning of a team of medical doctors and health related professionals empowered to implement tele-medicine and tele-healthcare across Bangladesh. Indigenous Science and Technology at Ikrail (ISTI) resource centre is one such centre that works as a knowledge centre for education, health care and information source for the community of 10,000 people. ISTI is located in at a remote village and surrounded by seven villages. The whole area is a river island in the form of a circle. ISTI is at the centre of the circular shaped area. The other villages are on the periphery of the circle and within the distance of two kilometres. The people of the community enjoy benefit of ISTI resource centre equally because of short distance. ISTI resource centre has bought about a tremendous change in the region in the field of education, health and other aspects. Lives of many people are now saved from sure deaths due to awareness about health care and nutrition. The other achievement is the formation of STAR (Scientists, Technologists And Researchers) association for the women of the regional community at Bogra. The members of the association are mainly women scientists, technologists and researchers who are at the moment unemployed and unmarried. They are making excellent examples in the community through utilisation of their skills and talents. i4d | December 2004

Session ICT policy/governance S UCHANA M ITRA ( THE

INFO FRIEND )

Making people partners in e-Gov The Kotmi Sonar project was first of its kind in Madhya Pradesh prior ‘Gyandoot’ of Dhar. This project was to bring the benefits of ICT to the common people and government offices situated at the block and district-level.

Amitabh Saxena AISECT, Bhopal, India aisect_bpl@sancharnet.in

Shailesh Pandey Dr. C.V. Raman University, Raipur aisect_bpl@sancharnet.in December 2004 | www.i4donline.net

Introduction The Kotmi Sonar project implemented by the All India Society for Electronics and Computer Technology (AISECT) at the village Kotmi-Sonar, district Janjgir (then in Madhya Pradesh, now in Chattisgarh); was the first of its kind in Madhya Pradesh prior to the well-publicised Gyandoot of Dhar. It was conceived in September 1993 as a pilot project to bring the benefits of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to the common people and different government offices situated at the block, and district-level. The Kotmi-Sonar was kept offline because at that time Internet was not available in the Janjgir . The project was unique for its simplicity and easy operational procedure. The AISECT students guided by the inhouse trainer developed the software using the hardware provided by the society. A detailed survey was organised to identify the users’ need in that area and there by the information was collected and digitised by local students voluntarily. The administrative support was provided by the AISECT and the local administration to implement the project. Much before the Kotmi Sonar initiative was undertaken, villagers approached government offices for ascertaining information and many times they had to return disappointed, as they were not provided with relevant information. Kotmi-Sonar project helped to change all these. Accesses to government information were made easier by the project, available at nearest location to the villagers. The overwhelming public response led the government to not only scale up the project throughout the district but also made AISECT centres as e-Governance centres. All government departments were advised to identify the kind of services that were needed to be delivered through the AISECT centres and to report

on their efficiency. These centres were called ‘Suvidha Centres’ (Facilitating centres). As a follow up to Suvidha, the Suchna Mitra software was developed.

Objectives of Suchna Mitra The Suchna-Mitra project was initiated with the mission to provide the benefits of using ICT in governance to the citizens at their doorsteps. The major objectives envisaged were: • Easy and better dissemination of government information, resulting in better awareness among rural masses about various government schemes. This would bring in transparency in governance • Redressal of complaints without physically visiting the government offices • Reduction in response time to redress complaints by the concerned departments and thus make administration responsive and accountable • Employment generation by way of allowing opening up of Citizen Information Centres (kiosks) in the private sector • Virtual extension counters for the Government, by way of using these centres for getting the departmental data entered and transmitted from rime to time • A common platform for the people to interact with each other on subjects of mutual interest like matrimonial, sale or purchases • The Suchna Mitra Kendra is a multipurpose centre and works as a nodal point in the block for providing e-Governance citizen services, electronics and IT related services under one roof

Conceptual framework Suchna Mitra is web based application software, which works in a client/server environment as an Intranet.

The software offers easy governance solution through e-Governance. Implementation of this software can save a lot of time and money of the district administration as well as of common man. This software also provides an efficient way for monitoring of developmental works and public grievances. The software is organised in two modules. The first module can be accessed from any client machine available in the district, without any password protection. The second module can only be accessed through Suchna Mitra kendras on payment basis.

Components of Module-I The first module provides general, but very useful, information of the district. The brief description of each of the components is as follows: • Jile ko pahichaniye – (Know your district) This module will provide the information about the district where the user lives. Rich traditions, culture and great history make it different from others. This module not only gives the geographic, census, agriculture information but also provide information on traditions, culture and history of the district. • Mantri parishad (Information about cabinet and state ministers) This module will provide the information about cabinet and state ministers and their department, office and residential address and phone number. In future the software will provide the direct e-mail service from panchayat/block level to the ministers. • Sachiv (Secretary) This module will provide the information about the secretaries of each department, his office and residential address and phone number. In future the software will provide the direct e-mail redirection service from panchyat/block level to the secretary • Vidhayak (Member of the Legislature) This module will provide the information about all the Vidhayak (Member of the Legislature) of each constituency of the state, his office and residential address and phone number. In future the software will provide the direct e-mail redirection service from panchyat/block level to the vidhayak • Citizen charter (Nagrik adhikar patrak) This module will provide information about the citizen charters for effective and responsive administration in terms of timebound services to the public. • Swasthya (Health) This module will provide information about the health, common decease, first aid, emergency aid, infectious diseases, childSuchna Kendra Systems

Local CD Databases

Remote Access Server

PSTN Lines

Server Sode Databases User's Request at Suchna Mitra Kendra

Server at the District Headquarter

care and other health related information. This module will also provide health-related advice in future to the public • Aage aayen labh uthayen (Government scheme details for self employment and monetary supports) This module will provide information about various governmental scheme details for self-employment and monetary support for the common people. • Jila sarkar (District Government) Madhya Pradesh is the first state of the country that implemented the Panchyati Raj in the state. Jila Sarkar plays an important role in this. This module will give detail information about the Jila Sarkar, its constitution, its rights and other related information. • Khoj khabar (District’s e-Newspaper) This e-Newspaper, ‘Khoj-khabar’ will provide developmental news of the panchayats, blocks, tehsils and district, along with the other news of common nature. This will be updated on weekly basis. The Suchaks of Suchna Mitra Kendras will work as e-Samwaddata and will feed the news for this Khoj-Khabar, which will act as district weekly bulletin. • Vargikrat (Classified advertisement) Under this module people may have various classified information like sale, purchase, lost and stolen property, livestocks etc. • Bhav taav ( Mandi rates) This section will provide rates of different commodities in various mandies (whole sale markets) on daily/weekly basis. This section will help the farmers to decide the time most suited for their crops, so that they can have maximum benefit. • Hamara bazar (Local market) This section will be the virtual market place for the people of the district. In this section local artisan will be able to put their products for marketing. Apart from it, if any other person wants to sell something, he can also put the same in this section. • Jila nirdeshika (District directory) This section of the Suchna Mitra software contains important address or telephone numbers of the district. This includes various doctors, blood banks, hospitals, government offices, factories, etc • Rojgaar samachar (Employment news) This section will give list of openings available for the unemployed persons, within the district and other places. Vivaah prastav (Matrimonial) This section will display the classified advertisement for marriage both for boys and girls. Shiksha-diksha (Education) This section will give addresses of middle/secondary/colleges/ institutions available in the district along with the subjects available in the same for study, information about the vocational institutes, scholarship scheme, education loan scheme of various organisations and will display the timetable of exams for the middle/secondary/ college level exams and other competitive examinations. As already stated, the above components of the Suchna Mitra software can be accessed from any PC, of the district which can be connected to the server by modem, but addition of these information can only be possible via the Suchna Mitra Kendra.

Figure 1 Suchna Mitra Architecture

i4d | December 2004

Components of Module –II The second module which is accessible only through the Suchna Mitra Kendra, consists of following components• Bhoo rajasv ( Land records) This section will provide the copy of the Khasra (record of land ownership), immediately to the person. The copy of the khasra is the most needed one for the farmers and they require it for taking loans before the cropping seasons • Lok shikayat (Public grievances) This section of the software provides an opportunity to the villager to launch their complaints regarding electricity, road damage, hand pump, functioning of village school, functioning of aanganwadi, ration card etc, without going to the district office. Action will be taken by the same suchna mitra kendra within seven working days of launching the complaint. • Samanya aavedan (General application) Through this section, the villager can file his application from any Suchna Mitra Kendra after paying the required fee for the certificate. The certificate will be prepared within seven working days of and once the certificate is ready the information will be send to the Suchna Mitra Kendra, from where the application has was filed. • Shaskiya yojna aavedan patra –(Government scheme application forms) In this section the user will get the desired application forms required for different government schemes along with their details. This also includes forms for First Information Report (FIR), form for various certificates etc • Visheshgya salah – (Expert advice) If any villager wants to take help of any expert regarding agriculture, he can send his question to the agriculture expert and will get the expert opinion within three working days. This facility can be extended to other departments such as law, education etc.

Hindi email With the use of this section people can send e-mail on any subject to the district administration as well as to the different Suchna Mitra Kendrs. Other appropriate modules can be added depending on local demands at a later stage.

System security Based on the security, availability and accessibility requirements of the services, e-Governance services offered by the Suchna Mitra can be classified as follows: Normal services These services primarily provide the information or perform the tasks in which security is not a requirement. The prime motive of these services is to provide information and hassle free service to the citizens. These services are open to the public and anyone can use them free of charge. The services that fall under this category are the ones, which aim at providing the information like the railways arrival time, tourist information of a place, registering an FIR and static information like the rules and regulations of the department, tourist information, details of the city, timetables and rates of Road December 2004 | www.i4donline.net

Figure 2 User Interfaces of the Suchna Mitra Software of two different districts

Transport Corporation (RTC) and trains etc. Further, these services generate dynamic information based on the parameters which could be input from user, time etc. Examples of this category are arrival timings of trains, bus, temperature of the city etc. Simple forms Simple forms which could be submitted to the government without much considerations of authenticity and security falls under this category. These services take into account security and the authentication of the invoker (the user of the service and not the end user). For the same reasons these services are exposed to an authorised few. Typically the authorisation is provided using the public key infrastructure or the password. But in case the departments have enough transactions then they may opt for a Virtual Private Network connection or a dedicated link line. Very secure services These services refer to extremely confidential information that are typically not shared either with the public or with other departments. Examples of this category could be administrative services. The sensitiveness of the information mandates the highest level of security. These services are usually not exposed except for the administrative people.

Implementation strategy To make the Suchna Mitra project successful certain groundwork needs to be done before actual implementation. This includes • Collection of information to be put under ‘Jila nirdeshika’, ‘Shiksha-deekhsha’, ‘Jile ko pahichaniye’, ‘Hamara-bazzar’, ‘Shashkiya yojana aavdan patra’. For land record section the collection of authentic Khasra information is also needed. This land record information is to be kept in MS-Access format • Database creation for the district in Hindi • A nodal officer is to be appointed to coordinate with different departments. He/She will be responsible for forwarding of complaints to the concerned department and for follow up actions. He/She will also coordinate with the server administrator for updating information

• Appropriate locations and persons are to be identified for opening up of the Suchna Mitra Kendras. These kendras can be opened in any part of district, where telephone and electricity connection is available • A necessary training to operate the Suchna Mitra software is mandatory before the actual implementation of the system. Although the operation of software does not require too much skill, but one time training will help the operator to serve the community better • An awareness campaign may be launched for the use of Suchna Mitra Kendra for its successful implementation • There is also a need to educate the officers and officials of different government departments about the project • An entrepreneurship workshop will be organised at district level to train prospective entrepreneurs for setting up block or cluster level centre at the client end

• Providing Internet connectivity wherever communication facilities are available and thereby act as a window to the global community • Providing multimedia facilities for educational and training activities in the area of agricultural extension, health-related and other awareness generation programmes

Other roles of Suchna Mitra Kendra

Social and cultural issues

The goal of Suchna Mitra kendra is not only to cater to the information needs of the community but also to act as a pro-active problem-solving group.The centres may require very little initial funding for capital equipment as loan and minimum manpower for maintenance in daily operations. These centres will be able to develop into a unit that will be sustained after some time because of the community’s need for such a resource centre. This will be achieved by developing income-generating activities around the centre. The centres will maintain the village profile on geographic, economic, social and cultural aspects as computer databases and will generally have most of the capabilities listed below: • Database management systems and management information systems for land-use management, agricultural operations, public health status • Geographical Information Systems for agriculture related land-use management • Databases on agro-climatic variables like rainfall, water availability and soil nutrient status • Developing local capabilities in the area of computer-aided resource planning • Imparting computer literacy to the community through various training programmes • Intervening in rural and tribal development by helping local level planning • Information on various development schemes and welfare programmes of the government thereby being capable of providing advice and guidance to the people in matters of employment and self-employment • Address the needs of village level community organisations, Gram Panchayats and voluntary sector working towards socio-economic development • Effective management of development programmes and streamlining the functioning of local bodies thereby increasing the pace of rural development programmes • Transparency of administration and providing free access to information which is otherwise hidden from community scrutiny • Empowerment and enhancing the role of communities in local e-Governance

Suchna-Mitra implementation leads to information sharing at each small unit level in the masses, high awareness and transparency in governmental functioning. This also needs a strong back end functional support to successfully maintain the e-governance initiative.

Implementation challenges Various implementation issues were involved in implementation of Suchna-Mitra system in the fields are:

Infrastructure issues At infrastructure front, poor rural telecommunications network, power problems in various places, and network connectivity are major problems. Unless these three areas are improved, an effective e-Governance programme cannot be implemented.

Security challenges Defining security policy can be a complicated task as each government must decide beforehand which aspects of protection are most important, thereby compromising between security and ease of use.

Hardware, software and technical challenges • Identifying the appropriate hardware platforms and software application packages for cost effective delivery of public services is an important ingredient of the e-Governance system • The mismatch between local rural telephone exchanges with the optical fibre cable causing poor or no connectivity which reduces the economic viability of the kiosk and decreases the motivation level of the kiosk manager • Unavailability of telephone lines in many village areas • Alternative power supply for the kiosk is a must considering the poor status of power supply in the state

Conclusion Indeed several lessons relating to the integrated rural development, the nodal role of the IT department, cooperation and coordination between departments have been learnt from the Suchna Mitra exercise. Inputs from the similar projects like Gyandoot of this state and many others from other states have also proved useful. This initiative has helped bridge digital divide. It has cut across age and gender and has brought the fruits of development to the doorstep, in areas where it most matters. The impact on social changes has been remarkable so much that the urban-rural divide in certain rural areas reduced considerably. The success of the project has been possible only with a drive by the champion at the highest level and ownership at the operating level. The success does not end here Suchna Mitra is poised for a continuous progress. i4d | December 2004

technologies. Sixth, communication networks exhibit unusual network economies, as there are positive returns to the growth of the network. For example, the value to an individual telephone subscriber of the telephone network increases with every new subscriber.

Impact of ICT on elements of GNH Economic growth and development Potential positive impact of ICT It has been observed that technological change ‘plays a pivotal role in long-term economic growth’, and that today the availability and use of ICT is ‘a pre-requisite for economic … development’. ICT can impact positively on economic development in at least four ways. First, ICT can enhance efficiency through its application across government and all industry sectors. In Bhutan, ICT can have an impact on the efficiency of the tourism sector through more efficient business processes, Internet marketing and electronic payment systems. ICT can also be applied to the agriculture sector , and systems, which impact many industrial sectors, such as customs and taxation systems. Second, ICT can increase the efficiency of markets, by increasing the flow of market-related information and hence removing ‘information asymmetries’. This has been supported by research in the context of developing countries. Third, through e-Commerce ICT might allow developing countries such as Bhutan access to developed nation markets by “disintermediating” markets and removing middle-men in supply chains. Fourth, the ICT industry has demonstrated extraordinary growth as an industry sector in its own right. Despite the bursting of the ‘dot-com bubble’ in 2000, indicative growth rates of the ICT sector in nine countries between 1996 and 2000 run between 30 and 55 per cent. Bhutan needs only to look south to India to see the best global example of ICT driving economic growth in a developing nation, following India’s long term support to technical education and tax breaks and subsidies. Potential negative impact of ICT By improving purchasers’ access to price information ICT can reduce the prices that local suppliers can charge for their goods. Further, a foreign company, which utilises ICT to improve its own efficiency, can underprice a local competitor. There is a risk that limited access to ICT can create an internal ‘digital divide’. ICT is more affordable and accessible to dense, literate, wealthy, urban populations than to sparse, illiterate, poor rural ones. This might pose a challenge to Bhutan in attempting to spread the benefits of ICT equitably through a society that largely consists of subsistence agricultural workers. Finally, the benefits of economic growth in the ICT sector will not automatically be shared evenly throughout society, potentially leading to lack of social cohesion. Lessons learnt The state has a strong role to play in establishing the framework in which the ICT industry will develop and benefits will be shared. There is a long list of fundamentals required for the development of a thriving ICT sector and knowledge society, including: long-term investment in technical education, skilled workers, access

to start-up and expansion capital, highest level political leadership, friendly regulatory environment for foreign investment, tax breaks and subsidies for local and foreign companies, government-funded research and development, incentives for private research and development, intellectual property protection, an innovation culture, world-class competitive telecommunications infrastructure and research facilities. Importantly, the transformation to a knowledge society depends on “the capacity of the whole society to be educated, and to be able to assimilate and process complex information”, and of the entire social organisation to encourage innovation. The Indian example also suggests that appropriate social policies need to be in place to counter the tendency towards disparities in incomes, a point reinforced by the critics. Bhutan has acknowledged the link between a progressive income taxation regime and poverty alleviation. Bhutan holds some ‘competitive advantage’ including its remote location and stable socio-economic situation (advantageous in the data warehousing industry segment) and its unique cultural inheritance that could be turned to its advantage by focusing on electronic archiving.

Preservation and promotion of cultural heritage “There are in the heart of the vast Himalayas some strange marketplaces where one can barter the whirlwind of life for infinite wisdom”. Milarepa, 11th Century Buddhist Master ICT offers great and expanding opportunities for the preservation and promotion of cultural heritage. At the same time, ICT inherently facilitates the movement of cultural content around the globe, and is a key enabler of the homogenisation of global culture. The challenge for Bhutan is to harness the many potentialities of ICT for preserving its unique culture, as well as implementing policies to limit the homogenising and potentially harmful effects of incoming global culture. Potential positive impact of ICT ICT can assist in the preservation of underlying documents, artefacts, texts and other cultural assets. Bhutanese cultural institutions can play a leading role. ICT can be used to capture, disseminate and revitalise minority cultures in Bhutan. Online distribution of cultural heritage can connect communities with their culture, foster a wider appreciation of the culture’s value and importance, and promote a more inclusive approach to the use and interpretation of these artefacts. Further, digital recording of cultural heritage may help to establish claims of custodial ownership over traditional and indigenous knowledge and intellectual property (including rights of interpretation and commercialisation). The information age provides Bhutan opportunities to assert the reality of its nationhood and sovereignty through, for example the effective control and regulation of the ‘.bt’ domain name and the creation of UNICODE-based Dzongkha font. Potential negative impact of ICT ICT is a means for opening up Bhutan to outside cultural influences. For example, the impact of television on lifestyle in urban areas has been substantial. According to a Kuensel Online survey in i4d | December 2004

2003, over 75 per cent of respondents said their lifestyle had changed partially or completely since the introduction of television. Lessons learnt The power of ICT, which brings global culture into Bhutan, can be harnessed to preserve and distribute Bhutan’s culture to the world, and “push back” against the prevailing tide of cultural flow. Intelligent application of ICT can digitise, store and disseminate Bhutan’s cultural heritage, through the Internet, television, radio and film. However, combatting the momentum of global culture requires careful policy and planning measures. Regional populations would welcome funding for Bhutanese television, regional radio, community radio and television may be utilised as cost-effective ways to increase the number of local voices being heard in local media.

Preservation and sustainable use of the Environment Potential positive impact of ICT ICT can improve environmental efficiency in industry sectors, enhance environmental information management, and help to predict and mitigate the effects of natural disasters. ICT industries are generally service industries, and therefore tend to have lower environmental impact than manufacturing industries, due to ‘de-materialisation’. Similarly, ‘de-transportation’ means that services generated by ICT industries often do not require transportation, but can be delivered through the information infrastructure. ICT can also be applied across industry sectors to improve efficiency and reduce consumption of natural resources. The role of ICT in improving the design and efficiency of cars, manufacturing processes and transportation has been linked to the constant levels of energy consumption in the US between 1973 and 2000, despite GDP increasing by 75 per cent in the same time. Environmental information systems can greatly assist environmental management, which is constantly challenged by a lack of relevant and reliable information. Similarly, environmental information systems can be used to mitigate the effects of natural disasters. In Bhutan, geological data of glacial lakes and seismic data could be gathered and analysed to help predict, and thus mitigate, the effects of bursting lakes and earthquakes. Less directly, ICT can improve processes, which are linked to environmental sustainability. ICT can help stem population growth by contributing to the education and empowerment of women. It can help stem rural-urban migration by assisting the service delivery underpinning de-centralisation efforts. It can assist in land tenure systems, increasing the degree of ownership and long-term environmental care of citizens for their immediate environments. Potential negative impact of ICT ICT can have several negative impacts on the environment. Firstly, ICT equipment itself requires high levels of resources to produce. Further, ICT equipment including television screens and batteries, can have high concentration of heavy metals such as cadmium and lead which create a waste management issue. Secondly, the installation of ICT infrastructure, such as mobile telephone towers and fibre-optic cable, can have intrusive impacts December 2004 | www.i4donline.net

on the environment, although improving wireless technologies are overcoming the requirement for large amounts of built infrastructure. Lessons learnt Given Bhutan’s rugged terrain, the remote delivery of information and ICT-enabled services can reduce the need for resourcehungry travel and support de-centralisation. Information systems can also be used to monitor Bhutan’s unique environment, to conserve biodiversity, plan best land usage, and mitigate against the effects of natural disasters. Government should consider ways to ensure that ICT is employed efficiently from an environmental perspective, including sharing infrastructure such as computers amongst multiple users. Safeguards should be put in place to minimise the potential negative impacts of installation of ICT infrastructure and disposal of ICT goods.

Good governance ICT, through its ability to improve workflows, disseminate information and allow two-way communication, provides great promise in efficiency, transparency and participation in governance. Potential positive impact of ICT ICT is designed to process and distribute information; it can increase the speed, volume, quality, and transparency of transactions. ICT also makes possible entirely new procedures, interactions between people, information, and communications, allowing the public sector to innovate in its delivery of information and services to citizens. It is therefore perfectly suited to enhance transparency, improve citizens’ access to information, and if properly applied, can improve efficiency of government services to citizens and citizen participation in decision-making. Specifically, ICT can assist good governance in the following ways. Firstly, ICT can improve the efficiency of government through improving internal business-processes, procurement and information sharing between different sectors of government. Secondly, ICT can be used as a tool for improved decisionmaking through better access to population, economic and other data, as well as a tool for accessing overseas policy experience. Thirdly, ICT can improve the delivery of public information to citizens, such as laws, statistics, land registration and health information. Fourthly, ICT can improve the provision of information to citizens in support of government services such as health, education and transport. Fifthly, ICT can improve citizen participation in decision-making by providing the information required to make decisions. Further, civil society organisations have adopted ICT tools to organise and voice their concerns, to form and work effectively, and be a conduit for the citizen’s voice to be heard. Another important impact of ICT is its ability to support the media in its traditional role as the ‘fourth estate’ in democratic systems. Potential negative impact of ICT e-Government is not without risks. The diversion of funds to ICT-enabled governance projects can inadvertently leave ‘non-virtual’ government services under-funded. This can result in reduced access to government services from citizens, such as the elderly and non-literate, who are not comfortable with, or able to access, ICT.

Further, e-Government involves the risks inherent in all ICT projects. Poor project design can lead to poorly targeted services, and cost and time over-runs. This carries the risk not only of the lost financial and human resources devoted to the project, but also the risk of tarnishing the image of ICT as a tool for development. Lessons learnt ICT holds great promise for improving good governance. For Bhutan, it can be used for the remote delivery of services in support of decentralisation, which is always a challenge given the topography. It can improve citizen’s access to information and inform citizen participation and input into decision-making. However, ICT will not of itself create a strong and efficient state; indeed it is more likely to require one as a pre-requisite for its utility. Successful programs utilising ICT for good governance require a high degree of cross-sector co-operation in setting standards to enable data-sharing, co-ordinating infrastructure needs, and sharing expertise from advanced ministries to those just starting out. Clear understanding of the potentials and limitations of ICT, as well as good project design focused on an identified development objective, will increase the chances of e-Government projects being successfully implemented.

Towards indicators for ICT and GNH Modern development practices focus on results-based management. It therefore becomes important, if GNH is to be used as a national development objective, to define indicators for how GNH can be measured, and therefore to determine which activities are contributing to the overall goal. This paper will propose two new indicators derived from the “four pillars” definition of GNH as markers for how ICT may be able to impact positively on the lives of citizens and thus increase GNH. ICT for good governance – remote service delivery Given the rugged terrain and limited road network, many Bhutanese live several days walk from their nearest district headquarters (Dzongkhag). Many crucial services are delivered from the Dzongkhag which currently require the citizen to attend, including registration of births and deaths, permits to fell trees for timber or building, and a variety of processes dealing with land registration. While the spread of ICTs in regional areas is currently quite limited, eventually these services might be able to be delivered online. As an interim, services might be able to be accessed remotely, without attendance at the Dzongkhag, by posting or faxing in applications. This remote service delivery has great potential to save many Bhutanese citizens a number of days of travel time to and from the Dzongkhag to access these services. This time could then be re-allocated by the citizen to other more productive activities towards increasing their gross individual happiness, whether it be working on their farm or spending time with their children. One proposed indicator, therefore, for ICT assisting GNH would be ‘number of travelling days saved by accessing Dzongkhag services remotely’. ICT for economic development – increasing farm incomes There is a relationship between access to telephone services and improved farm incomes. Anecdotal evidence suggests that a similar phenomenon has occurred in Bhutan, where farmers who acquire

access to telephone services increase the price earned for their staple crops. Given the predominance of agriculture in Bhutan, improving farm-level income is a good proxy indicator for economic development in regional communities. A second proposed indicator for ICT advancing GNH would be ‘average increase in farm income following access to telephone services’.

Conclusion GNH reminds us that the means must always be considered in terms of the end and that, therefore, every step in material development and change must be measured and evaluated to ensure that it will lead to happiness, not just more development. Bhutan has chosen to engage with the globalised world, so question for Bhutan therefore becomes not whether to deploy ICT, but how to deploy ICT. Bhutan’s guiding development philosophy of GNH provides some guidance for policy-makers, but a tighter definition and some agreed indicators of progress would be beneficial. Adopting the ‘Four Pillars’ approach, ICT has significant potential to advance Bhutan’s progress towards the goal of GNH. However, ICT can also impact negatively on the components of GNH. There is substantial room for optimism. Bhutan’s policy-makers have already identified many of the concerns raised in this paper about the negative potential of ICT on GNH. Bhutan is not an early adapter of ICT, so it has the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of other developing nations. The greatest cause for optimism is the fact that Bhutan’s unique perspective on development focuses on the benefit of the people of Bhutan. This will help ensure that ICT is always seen for what it is: A tool to accelerate development if deployed with care.

Acknowledgements The author would like to thank those who contributed to this paper. For general discussions on ICT in Bhutan: Lyonpo Leki Dorji, Dasho Tashi Phuntsog, Tenzin Chhoeda, Sangay Wangchuk, Karma Weezir and the PIN Project Team, members of the BIPS Policy Group, Randeep Sudan, Deirdre Boyd, Minori Terada, Marie Pedersen, Karma Hamu, Ilari Pohto, Gerald Daly, Margreet Van Doodeward, Victor Perez and Graeme Foster. For specific comments on a draft of this paper: Chris Whitehouse, Dr Ram Jakhu, Mayumi Miyata, Karma Wangdi, Renata Dessallien and first, last and always Susan Robertson. Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of UNDP. Note: References are available on www.i4donline.net

For daily news on ICT4D log on to:

www.i4donline.net i4d | December 2004

Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes

for for for for for for

All... All... All... All... All... All...

Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes

for for for for for for

All... All... All... All... All... All...

Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes

for for for for for for

All... All... All... All... All... All...

Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes

for for for for for for

All... All... All... All... All... All...

Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes

for for for for for for

All... All... All... All... All... All...

Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes

for for for for for for

All... All... All... All... All... All...

Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes

for for for for for for

All... All... All... All... All... All...

Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes

for for for for for for

All... All... All... All... All... All...

Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes

for for for for for for

All... All... All... All... All... All...

Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes

for for for for for for

All... All... All... All... All... All...

Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes

Bytes for All... Bytes for All discussion group observed the month of November 2004 with very interesting and moving discussions. The deliberations ranged from technological developments to FLOSS movement, governance, accountability to gender issues and education to Internet standards. Following is the summary of that discussion.

information regarding another such organization, Transparency, Accounting and Accountability, and effective Monitoring and Evaluation (TAAME). The TAAME strives to bring all organisations under a system that allows good accountability, and as a substitute for the prevailing high cost way of doing monitoring and evaluation. www.taame.blogspot.com

ICTs for development Shobha Warrier interviewed Prof. Jhunjhunwala where he discussed various issues and solutions to transform rural India using ICTs. This interview that was forwarded to the list triggered up a great deal of intriguing discussion. Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala an internationally reputed professor on connectivity design particularly for WLL technology has also incubated many ideas that cater to rural Indian market. In his interview he talked about, Bloomba, the search-based e-mail application which has been taken over by Yahoo recently and iSoftTech the team behind development of Bloomba, including other significant matters. He believes that until the Indian rural population (around 700 million people) is not mainstreamed in the development process development objectives cannot be achieved. Prof. Jhunjhunwala has presented vision 2010. He maintains that telephones and the Internet can have an amazingly positive impact in the development of rural India and the GDP of rural India can be doubled in the next 8-10 years. He suggested developing the rural micro enterprises by developing, the Internet kiosks, ATM machines, the medical diagnostic kit, etc. Responding to this interview most of the members appreciated Prof. Jhunjhunwala’s ideas for rural development however; there were many who did not agree with his optimistic views. Many believe that technology is not yet hassle free, and people in the rural area are not very much receptive towards change. Making ICTs work in the rural areas needs a total social re-engineering and social dynamics cannot be assessed with a set of formula. Others believe that proper capacity building initiatives for the rural communities will certainly help the development agenda forward.

Surveys for India Dr D. Rama Rao has informed Bytes for All readers that a survey on IT needs of farmers in a remote village in Nagonda district is being carried out. The results will be available in a book accompanied with CD and on a dedicated website as well.

Transparency and accountability Kris Dev (Krishnan) suggested launching a ‘Transparency & Accountability’ (TRAC) movement worldwide to invite people voluntarily to give up all cash transactions and make their dealings totally transparent and accountable. In his opinion, this can change the mindset of people and the society can be liberated of all evil thoughts and actions. In response to this call Mr Peter B shared November 2004 | www.i4donline.net December www.i4donline.net

Agriculture Agri Info Online Frederick Noronha shared this piece of information about an interesting initiative called isapindia and the site that Sunil Khairnar has been running, which provides links to agri-related info via cyberspace. To get agriculture-related information via simple, effective and low-cost e-mail, this is the place to check out. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/isapindia http://www.isapindia.org

Free/Libre software I Firefox 0.9 Firefox 0.9 is an award-winning preview of Mozilla’s next generation browser. Firefox keeps the computer safe from malicious spyware by not loading harmful ActiveX controls. Firefox is the most customizable browser. The new Easy Transition system imports all settings - Favorites, passwords and other data from Internet Explorer and other browsers. Firefox comes with a standard set of developer tools including a powerful JavaScript and CSS error/warning console, and an optional Document Inspector that gives unheard of insight into how your pages work. http://kalsey.com/blog/2004/09/why_i_dont_recommend_firefox/index.html

II Novell launches desktop Linux for enterprises Sayeed Rahman shared the news that Novell Inc. has build a desktop version of its open-source Linux operating system aimed squarely at enterprise users. Linux Desktop 9 is built on the same code base as SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9, a product used by a growing number of enterprises to run their back-office computers. Novell has been intensively promoting Linux as an alternative to Windows ever since the company acquired Germany’s SUSE Linux AG last November. http://www.computerworld.com/printthis/2004/0,4814,97337,00.html

III Realizing the promise of Open Source in the nonprofit sector Partha shared this article by Jonathan Peizer of Open Society Institute, an initiative of Soros Foundation on Open Source Software for Non-Profit Sector. The article covers various aspects of FLOSS in Non-Profit organisation e.g. its usage and need assessment of non-profit sector, investments in training, joining with technology

for for for for for for

All... All... All... All... All... All...

Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes

for for for for for for

All... All... All... All... All... All...

Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes

for for for for for for

All... All... All... All... All... All...

Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes

for for for for for for

All... All... All... All... All... All...

Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes

for for for for for for

All... All... All... All... All... All...

Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes

for for for for for for

All... All... All... All... All... All...

Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes

for for for for for for

All... All... All... All... All... All...

Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes

for for for for for for

All... All... All... All... All... All...

Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes

for for for for for for

All... All... All... All... All... All...

Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes

for for for for for for

All... All... All... All... All... All...

Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes

for for for for for for

All... All... All... All... All... All...

Bytes for All... buzz, linking social source, and financial implications. To read this interesting article please visit: http://www.soros.org/initiatives/information/articles_ publications/articles/realizing_20030903

IV UNESCO and Free Software Partha shared this piece by Richard Stallman, who is founder of the Free Software Foundation and the author of the GNU General Public License. Richard lauded the role of UNESCO towards FLOSS movement and its support to the extension and dissemination of human knowledge. His article briefly covers the development process of GNU Project and its contribution to Open Source movement. The complete article is accessible at: http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.phpURL_ID=13803&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

Internet standards in South Asia APNIC signs an MOU with ISPAK & ISPAN Kapil Chawala shared this news with BytesforAll members that APNIC has signed an MOU with Internet Service Provider Association of Pakistan (ISPAK) and Internet Service Provider Association of Nepal (ISPAN). Under the MOU, ISPAK, ISPAN and APNIC will cooperate to promote domestic and international Internet standards, infrastructure, and service developments exchange information; provide assistance to each other in organizing meetings, seminars and conferences; and provide training opportunities for ISPs in Pakistan and Nepal. http://www.apnic.net/community/docs/apnic-ispak-mou.pdf http://www.ispak.org http://www.ispan.net.np

Events and announcements I First Annual SANGONeT “ICTs and Civil Society” Conference and Exhibition The Southern African NGO Network (SANGONeT) will host its first annual “ICTs and Civil Society” conference and exhibition from 1-3 March 2005 at the Indaba Hotel in Fourways, Johannesburg. The conference will focus on ICT-related issues to the CSO sector. The conference is aimed at senior staff and technical employees in the CSO sector as well as individuals who work with these organisations, including international funding agencies, the private sector and government. Approximately 300 people will attend the event. http://www.sangonet.org.za/conference2005

II Women in e-Governance A conference on Women in E-Governance is to be held at Annamalai University, Tamilnadu, India on December 20-21, 2004. It is being organized by the Department of Library and information

Science at Annamalai University in association with Anitra Trust, Chennai. The thematic background as well as the sub-themes of the conference are available at the conference website www.witindia.org III Google’s new news service for scientists and scholars Omi Azad shared this valuable information with BytesforAll that Google is rolling out a new search service that will index academic research such as books, technical reports, and peer-reviewed papers. The Google Scholar service offers unique access to a number of publications and publishers. It is an excellent initiative giving the flexibility to find the research papers, and conference proceedings. One can access the newly launched search engine for researchers and academicians at http://scholar.google.com/ IV SciDev.Net launches new news service for South Asia The SciDev.Net South Asia gateway offers free daily news, features and opinion about the links between science, technology and development aimed at India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan and the Maldives. For more information please visit www.scidev.net/southasia. V UNESCO website on Caravanserais The UNESCO’s website on Caravanserais aims to be a forum for exchange and discussion and a gateway to free information about fascinating monuments dotted over a large part of the world stretching from Central Asia over the Middle East to North Africa. The site will mainly be of interest to researchers, art and/or architecture students, but it will also reach out to tourists and other lay people keen to learn about these monuments. It contains names, plans, photographs, maps and architectural details of various monument. http://www.unesco.org/culture/dialogue/eastwest/caravan/index.htm

VI World Summit Awards (WSA) in Bangladesh Omi Azad shared the news about The World Summit Award (WSA) in Bangladesh giving details about its launch, national selection process and the names on national expert panel. His message called for those interested to know/participate/sponsor/jury member for WSA-Bangladesh initiative to contact akzaman@gmail.com. To subscribe to Bytes for All Readers forum, please send a message to: bytesforall_readers-subscribe@yahoogroups.com (with subscribe as the subject) or contact editors@bytesforall.org Compiled and summarized by Shahzad Ahmad Bytes for All, Pakistan i4d i4d | November December 2004

Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes Bytes

for for for for for for

All... All... All... All... All... All...

Vol. II No. 12

December 2004

Information for development www.i4donline.net

Agriculture Use of Internet to get information on agriculture In Ghana the Minister of Food and Agriculture, has urged the youth who are into agriculture, to visit the Internet for information on new and appropriate farming methods. According to him the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, World Agricultural Information Centre (WAICENT) site, accessed through fao.org/WAICENT was an excellent source of information. World commodity prices, input prices, plant protection practices, soil management were all available on the website. The Ministry had set up pilot centres in six districts, which would soon pick the information from the website or receive SMS text messages on mobile phones for dissemination to farmers and traders in non-traditional export commodities. http://www.ghanaweb.com

ITC strengthening its e-Network in India In India, the rural networking IT initiative of tobacco major Indian Tobacco Company (ITC), is establishing a strong e-Network through their e-Choupal initiatives. The agri-input corporates have decided to provide their services and products through the e-Choupals or web-enabled kiosks in the rural areas. This will enable the farmer to procure his needs all under one roof just by the click of a mouse. Under this strategy, ITC has decided to bring a self-sufficient scheme, right from providing foundation seeds to marketing. The plan is to expand it to 15 states covering about 100,000 villages, e-Empowering 10 million farmers from the current 21,000 villages in six states to 2.4 million farmers. This would translate to opening six e-ChouDecember 2004 | www.i4donline.net

pals a day across the country. Apart from soya and wheat, e-Choupals will also cater to mustard, bajra and pulses, and later move over to the horticultural produce. This will be part of ITC’s strategy to help the farmers get the required scientific knowledge on cultivation practices. ITC is also working out strategies for improvement in soya productivity in Madhya Pradesh. The company is also organising a series of workshops on farm productivity improvement and is trying to arrive at a roadmap, which will help in narrowing the technology gap in soyabean production for better productivity. http://www.financialexpress.com

Education Computers for schools in Punjab In India, the IT company HCL Infosystems has bagged 760 million order from the Department of School Education, Punjab, to supply 18,200 PCs, servers, printers and UPS. As part of this project, HCL will supply, install and maintain the IT infrastructure in 1,287 government schools both in rural and urban areas across the state of Punjab. It is felt that the project will help provide Information and Communication Technology (ICT) education to the students of these schools. More than 1600 state-ofthe-art infiniti servers would be deployed for this project. Initially, students from class 6 to class 12, in the current session will be targeted through the project. The course curriculum would be based on NCERT guidelines and the CBSE syllabus. http://www.ipan.com

Intel to support IT penetration in rural India In India, Intel Corporation has announced a partnership with the Ministry of

Communications and IT to create solutions for making technology more accessible to teachers in India, especially in the rural areas, and also to develop ‘computing platforms’ to address the issues of affordability and local infrastructure conditions. Under the agreement, Intel will work closely with companies, including the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), content creation companies and channels, to help make PCs more affordable to the masses. The goal is specifically to aid in education of young people to become computer literate so that they can use IT to enhance their lives. Through campaigns and programmes, Intel also aims to promote ownership and access to Internet and PCs. It is also proposed that the Government and Intel would work jointly to make broadband wireless technologies (WiMAX), an affordable and viable last-mile option for rural service delivery. The two would also work on a special PC ownership programme to encourage adoption of computers in the country. http://www.prdomain.com

Intel-NIIT come together for ICT education initiative In India, the world’s largest chipmaker Intel, and IT training company NIIT have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to increase the usage of technology assisted learning in schools. As part of the MoU, Intel and NIIT intend to double the number of Indian schools benefiting from computer-assisted education to 80,000 by 2010. Furthermore, the MoU outlines how Intel and NIIT would work together to integrate Information and Communication Technology (ICT) into schools, across all classes from Kindergarten to class 12th. The two companies will also set up collaborative teams, with professionals from IT

The i4d News

ATMs talk local language In India, the Hyderabad-based VoiceGate Technologies India, is developing a technology to offer voice-based interactive services at ATMs. The solution will enable ATMs to talk to the users and work as a local telephone-banking server on the ATM equipment. VoiceGate, which presently has around 4,174 ATMs covering rural areas, plans to add 2,500 more soon. The company plans to provide hardware and software compatible with ATMs for this expansion plan. Sensing the dominance of regional languages, VoiceGate has also come up with a solution that provides assistance in eight Indian languages for use in states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. This way ATMs can be made to announce instructions by taking the input from the dial pad instead of the regular keyboard, could serve efficiently for the visually challenged fraternity. The solution also allows an ATM to work as a telephonebanking server where users can make a call and carry on the transactions even without inserting the respective ATM card. Cash-less transactions such as account balance, enquiry, stop check request, change of telephone personal identification number (TPIN) and request for statement of account by postal mail could be carried out free-of-cost. http://www.dqindia.com

industry, educationalists and community members to support the technology induction initiative in schools. New technologies and education models will be developed to make technology-assisted learning more affordable and accessible, and will also work with Governments and education planners to define new ICT deployment models, devise IT education standards and build replicable learning models. Intel will contribute technology strengths to NIIT’s content creation, curriculum delivery and education process management capabilities to enhance education across India. http://www.thehindubusinessline.com

Launch of i-shiksha, a low cost teaching tool In India, Wipro and Intel have jointly launched the i-shiksha, a low-cost solution and technology, to meet the needs of education segment in the country. The i-shiksha is a network of computers that enhances teaching and learning experience with latest sophisticated tools to assist educators in accomplishing their instructive goals. The i-shiksha is extensively validated, integrated and end-to-end solution with hardware and software building blocks, design support and system-level products such as servers, hubs and switches. The solution is pre-loaded with MILS (Multimedia Interactive Learning Software) teaching, learning and assessment software that enriches the learning experience

in an interactive classroom learning environment. The software contains features like screen broadcasting, video/audio broadcast and interactive communication that enhance both teaching and learning. i-shiksha helps education institutes shorten their development time and offers a high-performance, robust and low maintenance technology solution for the classroom. http://www.ciol.com

e-Governance Promoting e-Government services in Hong Kong In Hong Kong, the deputy CIO, Betty Fung, has made the case for penalising citizens who use more expensive offline channels to access government services. The government’s strategy was to use incentives and penalties to encourage residents to use more cost-effective service channels. It was stated that there is a need to strike a balance between incentivising citizens to use new government service channels, and finding suitable disincentives. As secure and reliable infrastructure, the ‘e-Option’ do not automatically migrate customers to e-Channels, the government here has found it necessary to place incentives to encourage customers to use the e-Channels, thereby achieving efficiency gains, cost reductions and other broader policy objectives. http://www.pstm.net\

AP’s e-Governance initiative to issue digital certificates Under the e-Governance initiative, Andhra Pradesh (AP) has become the first Indian state to attain a Certifying Authority to issue co-branded digital certificates. The Andhra Pradesh Technology Services (APTS), a state-owned corporation handling IT needs of the government, has signed an agreement with IT major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), one of the digital Certifying Authorities in India to public key infrastructure (PKI), to enable all the electronic applications as well as issue co-branded digital certificates to the participants. APTS will thus act as an Issuing Authority of digital certificates, for users of all e-Governance initiatives undertaken by the state government, including e-Procurement, e-Seva, paperless office, SmartGov, KM-ATOM etc. The government will introduce PKI-enabled solutions and digital certificates initially in e-Procurement, and with the launch of broadband project in the near future, the same will be introduced across all major e-Governance initiatives such as APOnline, SmartGov, e-Seva and other applications. http://www.cbronline.com

Online public sector knowledge-sharing infrastructure in U.K A new information management system, and the first online public sector knowledge-sharing infrastructure, went live on 12th November 2004, in the U.K. Thirty eight local authorities in the West Midlands have collaborated to develop the new system, known as ‘the Knowledge Engine’ or ‘KEN’. The web-based tool and one-stop information portal will allow 270,000 local government staff across the region to share their knowledge and experiences. KEN is a tool, which will help local authority employees to work more efficiently by identifying more effective ideas, as well as sharing experiences to promote the best practices and values. http://www.egovmonitor.com

Online community-based portal by Microsoft An Irish local government organisation, Local Government Computer Services Board (LGCSB), has signed up to a newly launched global e-Government initiative i4d | December 2004

The i4d News from Microsoft, the Solutions Sharing Network (SSN). The initiative is an online community-based portal where government organisations and public sector agencies can collaborate and share information on e-Government solutions, best practices, applications and architectures. The LGCSB is responsible for providing local authorities with ICT solutions and helping them to develop and implement appropriate strategies and solutions. The use of the SSN will be free of charge, and similarly the tools or solutions that the clients provide are also free to other governments that may wish to adopt them. By delivering SSN, Microsoft claims it can help to increase operational efficiencies and lower the costs of e-Government. Other government and public sector agencies who have signed up to the initiative so far include: the French Municipality of Parthenay, the German Association for towns and municipalities, ICT for Development in Arab Region project in Egypt, Municipality of Deventer in Holland, the US National Association of Counties (NACo), the Swedish SAMSET project, UNESCO, the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development in South Africa, the London Borough of Newham, the School of Policy Planning and Development at the University of Southern California, and the Department of Informatiks at University College of Boras in Sweden. http://www.theregister.co.uk

Delhi government’s latest web-based initiatives In India, in an attempt to empower people, the Delhi Government launched a software that will allow online registration of societies and small-scale firms. While applying to the registrar of firms and societies, people will also be able to check the availability of name. The system also enables people to find the status of applications online. The system will eliminate the need to visit the office for applying and for finding the status of the application. The Government has also launched web-based road cutting information system that helps the departments to check whether the road cutting and restoration programmes are being executed by the cutting agencies as per schedule. Even the position of diversion of traffic is available online which helps a motorist to choose the route. In the second phase of the project, it is planned to enable road-cutting agencies to apply and get the approvals online. December 2004 | www.i4donline.net

China leads India in ICT spending The Indian government’s spending on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is projected to decline by about 5.4 per cent in 2005, while the Chinese government is expected to spend 18 per cent more next year than it did the previous year. According to the ‘Digital Planet 2004’, the flagship publication of the World Information Technology and Services Alliance (WITSA), the Indian government sector (including all central and local government agencies) was expected to spend about 3953.2 million US dollar in 2005, compared to 4177.7 million dollar in 2004. In comparison, the Chinese government sector’s spending on ICT will touch a whopping 10,939.2 million dollar next year. The Chinese government’s spending on ICT grew by an average 20 per cent over the last four years. The ICT spending takes into account the spending on computer hardware, computer software, computer services and communications by the government, PSUs, state PSUs and other government agencies. http://www.123bharath.com

Another software was DTC bus route finder that provides online information of bus routes. People can select starting point and the destination, and the software gives all the routes passing through two points. Software that enables people to obtain khatauni (record of right of agricultural land), maintained by revenue officials, with the click of a button, thus eliminating the role of touts and middlemen, was also launched. Here selecting district, village and khasra number can make the search. The system displays khatauni in Hindi on the screen, and no special software is required to go through it except a browser and Hindi font which can be downloaded from the website. The Health Minister Yoganand Shastri, launched a web-based system that allows the people to get information on children separated from their families. The software gives details of such children along with their photographs. Search can be made not only by name, but also on other criteria such as age-group, religion and residential address. http://www.dailypioneer.com

Compulsory computer literacy for civil servants in Ghana According to Dr Alex Glover-Quartey, Head of the Ghana Civil Service, all top officials of the Civil Service, including Chief Directors, Directors and Heads of Departments, should be computer literate by the end of

this year. Moreover, even the officers just below the top echelon must become computer literate by the middle of 2005. At the e-Governance workshop, jointly organised by the A frican Training and Research Centre in Administration of Development (CAFRAD) and the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF), Dr Glover-Quartey said that all these measures are aimed at incorporating Information Communication Technology (ICT) into public sector reform and performance. http://www.ghanaweb.com

Open Source UK Government approves open source usage The UK Government has given its approval to the use of open source software on servers and desktops following the Office of Government Commerce’s (OGC) open source software trials, involving IBM Corp and Sun Microsystems Inc,. It has been stated that open source software is viable and creditable alternative to proprietary software for infrastructure implementations, and for meeting the requirements of the majority of desktop users. The OGC stated that there are “no significant obstacles... for the adoption of open source in infrastructure developments” but that a lack of complex functionality to ease migration and interoperability remained obstacles to desktop deployment. However, despite those problems, the

The i4d News

Monks to use Internet to spread Buddhism Monks will now be using information technology tools like the Internet to spread Buddhism in Muslim-dominated countries of Southeast Asia. This decision was taken at an international meet of Buddhist youths in Bihar’s Bodh Gaya (India), one of the world’s most sacred Buddhist spots. The meet saw participation of 200 monks from 29 countries including Thailand, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, the US, New Zealand, Nepal, Myanmar and Japan.

crisis prevention and an Internet platform for communications between individuals and the government will be available, making a more open and transparent government. This would require efforts from public management, commerce, city planning, communication and entertainment. Moreover, to realise this goal, Shanghai will have to strengthen infrastructure construction and to take more measures to protect the security of information. http://news.xinhuanet.com

http://www.onlypunjab.com

proof-of-concept trials indicated that significant software licensing savings can be made through the use of open source, as well as hardware savings resulting from reduced upgrade requirements. http://www.financialexpress.com

Telecommunication MTNL on the move to make Delhi Wi-Fi enabled The Indian Minister of Communication and Information Technology, Dayanidhi Maran, has inaugurated the MTNL’s (Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited) Wi-Fi service. It will be coming up with 100 hotspots for enabling a Wi-Fi connection in Delhi by December 2004. The service will enable users with Wi-Fi enabled laptops and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) to access the Internet from these hotspots. This will allow account portability and anytime-anywhere access to frequent travelers and professionals. The service opened on 14th November 2004 at the India International Trade Fair, allowing high speed downloading and browsing. The service will also be launched at the airport and other prominent locations. http://cities.expressindia.com

Boost to rural ICT in Africa In Africa, nearly $5m (sh9b) will be spent on providing telecommunication services in 154 sub-counties by the end of 2005. Works, housing and communications minister, John Nasasira said that the money would come from the Energy for Rural Transformation project under the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) component. Presently, the World Bank is being consulted to finance the second phase of this

programme, which will involve expansion of the project to cover the whole country, address targets set in the Millennium Development Goals and meet the objectives of the World Summit of Information Society. Through the Rural Communications Development Fund, 20 Internet cafes have been set up in various districts. Moreover, 26 district information websites with various information including economic activities have been established. Nasasira said that those Internet cafes and 33 ICT training centres would be established in most districts by the end of this year and another 23 by the end of 2005. It is hoped that when completed, the Rural Communications Development project will boost communications for the rural folk. http://allafrica.com

NGO.ZA to provide ICT services to NGOs Southern African NGO Network (Sangonet) and Internet service provider ICOZA, launched a joint venture, NGO.ZA, during the World Development Information Day celebrations in Johannesburg. The new venture aims to provide ICT services and support to Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs). The overall aim of NGO.ZA is to meet the South African NGO sector’s connectivity, hardware and e-Business infrastructure requirements and as a result, transform the ICT usage, capacity and infrastructure levels of the sector. NGO.ZA will initially offer connectivity, hardware and hosting solutions, expanding the range of services over the next few months, in line with the ICT needs and requirements of the NGO sector and new developments in the ICT fields.

Miscellaneous

http://www.itweb.co.za

Shanghai to become an electronic city by 2010

Microsoft and UNESCO’s joint ICT initiatives

Shanghai’s vice mayor, Yan Junqi, at the World Engineer’s Convention 2004 (WEC 2004), said that by 2010, Shanghai would be well on its way to becoming an “electronic city,” as it will have completed its “intelligent management and decisionmaking system”. Yan’s report on the development of Shanghai as an electronic city lays out targets for 2005, 2007 and 2010. By 2005, Shanghai will see its computer popularisation rate, number of online citizens, electronic-card consumption and e-Commerce reach the level of central cities of developed countries. By 2007, it will see the integration of information and free communication and information share among government, businesses and people. Lastly by 2010, an intelligent management and decision-making system on city planning, transportation and public

With an aim to support common goals of promoting socio-economic development round the world, Microsoft Corporation and the UNESCO have announced a cooperation agreement that will help increase access to ICT and ICT skills training in underserved communities. Under the alliance, UNESCO and Microsoft will collaborate on programmes that focus on the specific needs of developing countries round the globe. The aim is to establish open and inclusive knowledge societies, and accelerate the creation of social change and the expansion of economic opportunities throughout the developing world through projects like, education and learning, community access and development and cultural and linguistic diversity preservation. http://www.newratings.com i4d | December 2004

Session ICT and capacity building C HALLENGES A ND O PPORTUNITY

Emerging e-Learning in developning counturies Developing countries are suffering from the brain drain and generally low levels of education and literacy, which have together resulted in a great scarcity of skills and expertise.

Ahmed El-Sobky Distance Learning Projects Manager Regional Information Technology and Software Engineering Centre (RITSEC) Egypt asobky@ritsec.com.eg

December 2004 | www.i4donline.net

Introduction Most of the developing countries’ population is amongst the poorest in the world [Africa had US$766 in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per person in 2000], with the divide between urban and rural areas being particularly marked. Most services are concentrated in the towns, while the majority of the population resides in smaller communities scattered across the vast rural areas. Irregular or non-existent electricity supplies are common in the developing countries, especially outside major towns. Furthermore, computers and telecommunication infrastructure requirements are still treated as luxury items in many developing countries. Tax and customs are high on those items which makes these imported items all the more expensive. Education in developing countries is suffering from the low ratio of enrolment to the higher education. For example it is 4.61 per cent in Africa, and a low ratio of the public spending on education as a percentage of the GDP is about 4 per cent in Africa. The ratio of the pupils/teacher ratio in schools is about 41:1 respectively in Africa. (World Bank Knowledge Assessment Methodology [KAM]). In addition, the developing countries are suffering from the brain drain and generally low levels of education and literacy, which have together resulted in a great scarcity of skills and expertise. Rural areas in particular have limited human resources. Establishing new educational institutions in developing countries is hard and costly especially in rural areas, which are in more need for such facilities. Those institutions need investment for the buildings, for the equipments, for the labs, etc.

The e-Learning e-Learning is a groundbreaking paradigm shift in the field of learning that provides

high-speed access to knowledge and information anytime and anywhere. This happens through a wide range of electronic learning solutions such as web-based courseware, discussion groups, live virtual classes, video and audio, web chat, simulations and mentoring. e-Learning encompasses the knowledge management and electronic performance support for the beneficiaries. e-Learning is a solution to many of human development problems. Unfortunately, this solution is not very feasible, as it seems to be. e-Learning is facing lot of obstacles and challenges in developing countries.

e-Learning challenges In spite of the importance of e-Learning to the African countries as an important tool for the human development in the continent, e-Learning is facing increased challenges in almost all the countries of the continent (except for Egypt and South Africa). Those challenges can be summarised as follows:

ICT infrastructure The number of main lines in Africa (as an example for the least developing countries) grew about 9 per cent per year between 1995 and 2001, although the overall fixed line tele-density as of 2001 is still only about 1 in 40 inhabitants, and 1 in 130 in subSaharan Africa (excluding South Africa). The effective annual increase in lines is only 6 per cent Much of the existing infrastructure in Africa is out of the reach of most people 50 per cent of the available lines are in the capital cities, where only about 10 per cent of the population lives. In more than 15 countries in Africa, including Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Uganda, more than 70 per cent of the fixed lines are still located in the largest city (International Telecommunication Union [ITU] 2002).

Source : Sangonet http://www3.sn.apc.org/africa Figure1. Growth of Internet in Africa

The use of the Internet is a good indicator of the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), as such use requires the integration of many of individual components like electricity, telecommunications infrastructure, computers, and the skills to use them. As the following figure 1 shows, both the number of Internet users and the amount of international bandwidth is still growing strongly across the continent. As an example, the pattern of Internet diffusion in Africa has been similar to that of the mobile telephone networks. Although the Internet is not quite as widespread, it preceded the mobile telephone explosion; its greatest impact is at the top end of business and in wealthy families, primarily in major urban areas. Due to high international tariffs and lack of circuit capacity, obtaining sufficient international bandwidth is a major problem in most countries. Most recent estimates (i.e., 2001 data) for the number of personal computers in Africa report a total of about 7.5 million— an average of about 1 per 100 people. Much of the impact of these efforts will depend on the extent of improvements to the telecommunication infrastructure on which the networks depend. The large number of low-cost, two-way Ku-band VSAT satellite-based data services that have been launched will hopefully address the high costs of connectivity in remote areas.

Building an e-Learning strategy requires us to address: • New approaches to e-Learning including online training that provides courseware and business simulations, and knowledge management • Learning architectures, which will coordinate e-Learning with the rest of the organisation’s learning efforts. This includes building synergies with classroom training • Infrastructure, which means using all the technological capabilities of the organisation in delevering and managing e Learning. Technological capabilities to deliver and manage e-Learning • Learning culture, and management ownership, which means the creation of an environment that encourages learning as a valuable activity of the business, supported by senior managers who are truly engaged in the process. Without an e-Learning champion, the initiative may never get off the ground • Sound business cases the development of a compelling business case that supports e-Learning • Reinventing the training organisation the adoption of an organisational and business model that supports rather than limits the growth of e-Learning. New approaches to learning will require new approaches to running, professionalising, and measuring the training/learning function

The local content To develop clear e-Learning strategies, we need to define the different elements of the ‘educational and learning content market’, as each area is very different and comprehensive strategies are unlikely to be effective Citizens in developing countries first and foremost prefer to access content that relates to their environment. Unfortunately, the vehicles for producing, distributing and accessing local content are still few, especially when taking into account the rich cultural heritage of many of the developing countries (China, India, Egypt …etc). The very low presence of such content is also a major societal cost in terms of the negative image being portrayed for the developing countries by northern media to the rest of the world. To overcome such a barrier, awareness needs to be built and perhaps should emanate from our universities, schools and other incubators of creative talent. If content of sufficient quality can be produced, most of the developing countries have the potential to build demand in the international markets.

Culture, leadership and e-Learning strategy

With e-Learning, we are not just introducing new technology for learning, but also a new way of thinking about learning, a totally new culture for learning. Learning does not necessarily require training or instruction, but people can learn through access to well-designed information, by using new performance-enhancing tools, through experience, and from each other. We need to have the culture which will embrace e-Learning means and build the leadership support for that culture. Many efforts towards using the technology for learning have not been sustainable because many leaders have underestimated the complexities of the interactions between e-Learning and the working environment, and how truly difficult it is to change people’s attitude about what learning events are and what they can be.

Copyright is a legal term describing rights given to creators for their literary and artistic works. Copyright is one of the very important challenges for the e-Learning especially in developing countries. How many authors, trainers and trainees know about copyright laws and the legalities of using materials owned by others and protecting the materials that they create? Authors and trainers who make greater use of the web; often face greater risks involving copyright law. Having a clear copyright policy for the online training is mandatory. This should be followed by letting the users of the material accept this policy before having the access to the material. This gives a clear indicator that the material is protected and gives no excuse if the policy has been violated.

i4d | December 2004

Instructors and learners As mentioned before, e-Learning is not just introducing new technology for learning, but also a new way of thinking about learning, a totally new culture for learning. Hence, e-Learning may not be suitable for everyone, certain groups can better take the advantage of using it since e-Learning needs special specifications of the way of designing its content and also the way of receiving the content. The quality of e-Learning relies heavily on the preparation and the talent of the instructor. Instructors who deal with e-Learning should be able to deal with remote learners and read their needs through their typing mode and or hasty words. In addition, they should be capable of using web cameras, e-mail, chatting facilities, slides, sketches, video and audio clips. Also it would be better if they would be able to encourage the learners to communicate with each other through the discussion forum. On the other hand, the e-Learning learners should possess the following characteristics: • Being able to learn independently and view learning positively • Being able to make the best use of their time, have self-discipline, and enjoy working alone most of the time • Being able to clearly express themselves in writing • Having good computer and Internet skills • Having the need for knowledge, but incapable of attending traditional training or education • Being revel in solving problems

e-Learning opportunities Although e-Learning is facing many challenges in the developing countries, it can be considered a mine of golden business opportunitities. Those opportunities mean a lot of work and business cooperation between different partners in the developing countries. The e-Learning services are value-added technical services which can help creating lot of jobs. These business opportunities can be summerised under the following categories:

Enhancing the ICT infrastructure Since citizens in most developing countries are lacking the sufficient access to the net, they need to use community centres or private cyber cafes to access the Internet. Investors or Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries can establish such a network of centres across certain area or countries. Those centres can be learning centres which will give access to the citizens in rural areas to the educational and learning materials as well as providing other community services for the society. Also a regional project for Internet Exchange Points “IXP” will be needed. Such projects will help route the Internet traffic within the groups of developing countries instead of routing it outside those areas. This will help in better utilisation of the limited bandwidth, and will lead to reduced cost for the ISPs and lead to cooperation between the different ISPs and telecom operators in different developing coutries.

Local content development Many developing countries are rich with their cultural heritage. Unfortunately, the vehicles for producing, distributing and accessing local content are still rare. Projects for digitising the developing December 2004 | www.i4donline.net

They need to use community centres or private cyber cafes to access the Internet countries’ cultural heritage and make it available for people from around the world is a good business opportunity. Also e-Learning can be used in teaching people around the world, the famous local languages and culture of many of the developing countries. It can be used to teach local people how to preserve their culture by making handicrafts (which can be offered for sale by other e-Commerce sites). Developing local content will help in raising the level of education and help in overcoming the problem of illiteracy in developing countries. Developing the local content is not a money or technology intensive process. On the contrary, it depends mainly on the intellectual capacities of the citizens. So organising the efforts and giving some sort of support in addition to developing the human capacity will lead to good results.

Support services providers To provide local e-Learning, we will need organisations which will provide supporting services. These supporting services can be translation services to develop the content in English, French, Portuguese, African or any other local languages. Content localisation is a critical supporting service to e-Learning, since some of the content will be acquired from foreign content providers. Not only such courses need to be translated, but also they need some sort of localisations to adapt the content, the examples, and the cases to the local community. Again most of these projects do not need Hi-Technology or capital. They only need experienced manpower in different areas. Such projects can be a good example for regional cooperation and cross borders joint business.

Technical support providers Providing e-Learning services, will defintly need a support from some other technical support providers like web developers, multimedia developers, WAN and LAN administrators, data and networks security syestem specialists, data entry persons etc. Those providers will be small and medium companies, and some of them will provide their services across boarders. This will result in more collaboration between business owners and entrepreneurs in different countries and regions.

Marketing support providers Providing e-Learning services will require a support from marketing and publicity agents. Although e-Learning will be done through the net, it also needs some sort of market surveying, data analysis, marketing strategies and plans, marketing campaigns, designing publicity brochures, designing marketing and sales kits, designing the advertising campaigns, preparing mailing lists, designing the

The GC provides a framework that allows worldwide learners to utilise a universal pool of education courseware in multiple disciplines through an interactive online distance learning environment promotional materials and kits, arranging for conferences and exibitions etc.

Egyptian e-Learning efforts In June 1997, RITSEC launched the Global Campus (GC) programme (www.gc.com.eg). The GC provides a framework that allows worldwide learners to utilise a universal pool of education courseware in multiple disciplines through an interactive online distance-learning environment. It involves the development and delivery of tailored academic and professional Internet web-based courses to a worldwide student pool. It links universities, professors and students through its global platform, allowing them to customise their learning needs and requirements. In fall 1999, the GC started delivering the first distant learning Master of Computing Science in Business Information Technology (BIT) in partnership with Middlesex University, UK. In fall 2000, the GC delivered its second Master of Computing Science in e-Commerce. Those challenging and exciting master programmes combine local support and tutors with CD-ROM based materials and the Internet, enabling students and lecturers to work together across the globe. The programmes provide students with in-depth knowledge of the competitive use of information technology in modern organisations. Students and lecturers interact through the Internet local students meet once a week in their Learning Support Centres (LSC) for tutorials, support and access the library. In the United Kingdom, they interact with their professors regularly through the video conferencing sessions. Assessment for the modules is a combination of coursework and unseen written examination, which take place at the end of each semester. Coursework includes individual assignments, and project activities. The project work is assessed mainly on the basis of the final dissertation. To achieve the objectives of the GC, LSCs were established within the participating countries to: • Promote academic and professional distance learning programmes locally • Provide tutoring, alternative teaching and learning resources • Provide registration and fee collection service • Provide examination facilities conforming to university regulations

• Provide academic assistance to supervise the academic direction of individual projects Through the GC, RITSEC provides its professional skill development programmes in partnership with reputable international e-Learning and continuing education institutes. The professional skill development programme covers the following: • ICT skill development programme • ICT for young women entrepreneurs • Marketing for SMEs • Genetic resource planning • Call centres services • Arabic for non-Arab natives. • Arab film and television school

e-Learning cooperation model The conceptual framework The project aims at establishing an e-Learning network in both academic and professional tracks. The network will be supported by some complementing activities which can be as follows: • Infrastructure projects • Local content development projects • Supporting services projects • Technical support projects • Marketing support projects • Incubation projects This e-Learning network will have a hub and national nodes in participating countries to provide e-Learning to the developing countries. The project will deliver a pool of online educational and learning courseware, an e-Learning platform, communication and networking links among the network members, e-Learning programmes and courses, trained staff members of the national nodes and educated learners and scholars. As a part of the project, satellite projects for SMEs will be established and incubated by an incubation centre. This centre will be responsible for building capacity to face the challenges and grasp the opportunities of the emerging e-Learning activities, disseminating best practices and toolkits, fostering cooperation between national, regional and global e-Learning activities.

The project objectives • To catapult the developing countries into the knowledge economy by enhancing skills and performance of working professionals and executives • To establish a regional network for both e-Learning and supporting businesses in different areas • To support participating countries in developing their communication and networking infrastructure facilities required for operating the network • Maximise the utilisation of communication and networking technologies to reach a wide range of decision-makers and professionals to offer learning opportunities • To offer learning opportunities and state-of-the-art content to learners in their local languages to help them effect changes • To establish a mechanism of regional cooperation and knowhow transfer among African countries. i4d | December 2004

Session ICT and capacity building T HE U NIQUE E XPERIENCE

S RI L ANKA

Bridging the ‘analogue’ and ‘digital’ divide ‘Analogue divide’ is defined as the non-ICT based socio-economic gap that exist between the have and the have-nots in the society where as, info-rich and infopoor is referred to as the ‘Digital divide’.

Introduction For the scope of this paper ‘Analogue divide’ is defined as the non-ICT based socioeconomic gap that exist between the have and the have-nots in the society. This is not a standard term, but used for illustrative purposes. The difference between the info-rich and info-poor, in terms of their abilities to access the information and communication facilities, is often referred to as the ‘Digital divide’.

Analogue divide As far as bridging the ‘Analogue’ divide is concerned Sri Lanka has always been a success story. Its achievements in the socio-economic arena, especially in the fields of education and health are remarkable for a developing country and a third world nation. The following statistics further illustrate the developments Sri Lanka has made on the socio-economic front. In spite of its per capita GDP of US$ 947, Sri Lanka is far more with developed countries rather than developing countries. This is largely attributed to the welfare schemes carried out by the successive governments in the post independence era.

Digital divide

Chanuka Wattegama Network Systems Integrator Enterprise Technology (Pvt) Ltd. Sri Lanka chanuka@hotmail.com

December 2004 | www.i4donline.net

Internet age in Sri Lanka officially began on April 26, 1995, and it was the first South Asian nation to open its doors to commercial and unrestricted Internet access. (Computers Today, 1995) However, apart from few sporadic and isolated examples like Kothmale Internet – Community Radio, Sarvodaya multipurpose telecentre and Vishva Grama Kendras (VGKs), there were only few serious attempts to introduce the benefits of Internet in the rural communities. So, the rural sector of Sri Lanka still remains cut-off from the web. The villagers do not perceive how

the information availability could make them more productive and demandable. Neither they know how the same can improve their quality of life.

Cost of Internet access to rural communities The most decisive bottleneck that prevents the rural penetration of Internet is financial. The following cost calculations were made not only to illustrate the high cost of Internet usage in general, but also to show the urban rural disparities. In addition, this estimation also points out the most critical components of the Internet usage. The Internet usage charges constitute of five main components: • Cost of hardware equipment and system software • Internet surfing charges (To be paid to the Internet Service Provider separately) • Telecommunication charges (To be paid to the telecom service provider) • Cost of electricity • Value Added Taxes (VAT) applicable to the above services Graph (1) shows the cost of Internet usage to an urban user and a rural user respectively for selected periods of monthly usage.

Non-financial reasons preventing rural Internet penetration In addition to the financial reasons, the following have been identified as the main bottlenecks that prevent rural Internet penetration (Wattegama, 2002):

Lack of computer literacy Though PCs have been extensively used in Sri Lanka for more than a decade, many in the society still lack the basic skills even to perform a simple task like surfing. This situation has improved over the last few years,

Table (1) : More selected socio-economic indicators for Sri Lanka Indicator Population living below US$ 1 per day People have access to safe drinking water Households with electricity Average area served by a school Primary net enrolment ratio

Figure 6.6% 70% 68% 6 sq km 97.2%

Source: Annual Report, Central Bank of Sri Lanka, 2003 but still only the younger sections of the population show satisfactory computer skills.

Reluctance to attain new skills In Sri Lanka, still there are many, who believe that Internet is not for them, as they are either too old or think they are not intelligent enough. A recent survey (Shrestha & Amarasinghe, 2001) shows that only 5 per cent of the Internet users are above 55, while most belong to the 26 – 35 age range (23 per cent) followed by the 36– 45 range (21 per cent). This shows that among older generation there still exists a hostile feeling towards Internet. This prevents them from using the Internet, although they know well, how useful it can be.

Inability to handle English Only less than 2 per cent of Sri Lankans have the functional literacy in English, the de facto language of Internet. Even if Internet access is made free, the remaining 98 per cent will not be in a position to gain the benefits of Internet. As a solution to this problem, some organisations now concentrate on introducing websites done in local languages, but still they have not been successful in overcoming this difficulty entirely.

Technical bottlenecks Still many parts of the island are not served by any of the terrestrial or in Local Loop (WiLL) telecommunication networks. In some parts, though the services are available, their quality is not adequate for data transmission purposes. Most computer vendors too have their offices in Colombo and getting technical support outside Colombo is extremely difficult. These reasons have even prevented

the provincial libraries from providing quality Internet access facilities to their readers.

Lack of any need to use Internet The simple and routine lifestyle, most people of Sri Lanka are familiar with, does not call for any need to use Internet or e-mail facilities. They are content with how things go on, and see no reason why to complicate it. However, it has been observed that this scenario is changing fast. Even villagers can no more stick themselves to their traditional roles. For instance, even the relatively uneducated sometimes visit cyber cafés now, not to surf, but to call their relatives in Middle East, as voice over IP rates are more economical.

Attempts to take Internet to the villages For the above reasons, in general and also due to specific reasons in some cases, taking Internet/ICT to villages has so far not been fully successful. The following are some examples of the projects. Some of them were very successful but others failed to show the anticipated outcome.

Kothmale Internet Radio project In early 1999, an experimental project using radio as the interface between rural communities and the Internet was launched in Sri Lanka. Located in the central, mountainous region of Sri Lanka, the Kothmale Internet Community Radio initiative has been successful in demystifying the Internet to rural communities in the area. One of the main features of the project was the community radio broadcast on the Internet. A daily two-hour interactive programme allowed listeners to request (by live telephone requests or mail) specific information from the Internet. The presenters interpreted information from these sites in the local language, overcoming a common barrier to the Internet - a poor understanding of English. Based on the requests received, and by requesting further information from listeners, the project also developed a rural database, which included public domain information requested regularly by the community, for off-line use in Sinhala, the predominant local language used in the area.

Village PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) According to the reports available, the village PDA was a fundamental ICT tool sharing several features with the better-known ‘Simputer’ in India. It was a portable device that provided real time access to e-mail, contacts, calendar and messaging functions at a fraction of a PC’s cost and using only one twentieth of the bandwidth a PC needs for Internet connectivity. Again, according to the reports available, Village PDA was tested at a selected village in the North Western province of Sri Lanka. The objective in this pilot project was to provide low cost Internet access to rural communities. However, this project failed too, as the firm that developed this idea went out of business after few years.

Vishva Gnana Kendras (VGKs) under the ‘e-SriLanka’ programme Source: Author’s calculations Graph (1) : Cost of Internet usage charges to an urban user and rural user

Perhaps it is too early to predict the future of the Vishva Gnana Kendra (VGK) or Global Village Centres programme, as this is a long-term plan to connect every village in Sri Lanka to the Internet. i4d | December 2004

By the end of 2004, six such centres will be set up. Another 100 centres will be set up during the year 2005 in the down South and the North and East provinces of the island. The VGKs are intended to be multi service community information centres, which provide access to Internet, telephones and other information services along with training etc. to the rural communities. The gamut of the services to be delivered via the VGKs include the following: • e-Government services • Email services • Domestic and international voice telephony • Internet browsing and web hosting • Internet and computer education etc. • Financial services An innovative method, not used in Sri Lanka till then, had been proposed to fund the VGKs. This involved the creation of a fund named ‘Vishva Grama Fund’ or VGF (Global Village Fund), which would be managed by a private development bank, with least government involvement. The VGF would have two distinct sources of funds. One would be an annually declining per-minute levy on all international incoming calls terminated on domestic networks. The other source of funds would be donor agencies both in terms of grants and credit.

Sarvodaya multipurpose telecentres Driven by ‘Sarvodaya’, a prominent civil society organisation, which has its centres in most of the villages in Sri Lanka, the Sarvodaya Multipurpose Tele Centre (MTC) project can be termed largely as a success. However, it too has certain drawbacks. Many well-intentioned civil society initiatives aimed at bridging the digital divide have been confined to donation of computer and related equipment to rural or disadvantaged schools or groups. This is an exception and it is being tested at the district centres of Sarvodaya, Sri Lanka’s largest development oriented NGO. These MTCs are open to anyone to come and not only to surf but also to learn surfing. At present these centres operate only in few selected locations including Anuradhapura, Gampaha, Kurunegala, Kandy, Badulla, Puttalum, Galle and Ratnapura. However, if rolled out widely, these MTCs could use Sarvodaya’s extensive network of 11,400 village centres to provide a variety of ICT based services including Internet access to the community while building the local content. (Samranayake & Ratnathicam, 2002) In addition to the MTCs, Sarvodaya also operates a mobile Internet unit to bring the benefits of Internet to the rural communities. This mobile unit, which is designed by modifying an ordinary truck, consists of several computers equipped with Internet connections and CD/DVD drives. In addition, providing Internet facilities to the community, Sarvodaya staff uses the facilities to give them a hands-on training on computer usage. However, Sarvodaya too is faced with the so-called ‘last mile’ problem. The number of visitors to its MTCs is negligibly small and rarely anyone uses them for any productive work that would bring them an extra income or knowledge. The villagers are not conversant with the technology and reluctant to visit a MTC even if they need certain information. Sarvodaya addresses this in a unique approach. The field officers of Sarvodaya at the Rural Information December 2004 | www.i4donline.net

Centres assist the villagers in finding the information. In this way the villagers never have to visit a MTC to get the benefits of Internet. Needless to say, this is a cumbersome and slow procedure, but probably the only way the issue can be addressed at this moment. (Amarasuriya, 2003)

Future of bridging the ‘Digital divide’ in Sri Lanka Internet penetration in rural areas in Sri Lanka takes place at a pace much slower than what it should be, due to several complex reasons. One reason can obviously be the high cost, but it will be difficult to think that making Internet access financially viable only will be a panacea for all woes. So, introducing Internet kiosks at villages level will not help to make rural communities to get the best out of Internet. The more important questions will be what sort of benefits the rural population can gain from Internet and how convenient and economical Internet can be in that, compared to the traditional means, they are used to now. At present, the answers to both these questions are hardly satisfactory. The three players, who can contribute towards bridging the digital divide, include the public sector, private sector and civil society. These three players can act independently, but this is more a time for collaborations. If the objectives are correctly unidentified and there is a workable action plan, there would not be any unconquerable barriers on the way of making an information rich rural sector in Sri Lanka within the next 5-10 years. References 1. Amarasuriya, Palitha [2003] ‘Praja Sanvardanayata Thorathuru Thakshanaya’ (IT for Community Development), Wijeya Pariganaka magazine, Wijeya Newspapers Ltd., Colombo, July, 2003 2. Central Bank of Sri Lanka [2004] Annual Report 2003, Colombo 3. Computers Today [1995] ‘Access to Internet Available for Sri Lanka’, Living Media India Ltd., New Delhi, August 1995 4. De Silva, Harsha [2004]‘The Govi Gnana (Farmer Knowledge) Service: An ICT Info-structure to fight agricultural poverty in Sri Lanka’, in proceedings of the 23rd National IT conference, Colombo, Computer Society of Sri Lanka, 2004 5. Kularatna, A. D. V. Nihal [1998] ‘Telecommunications developments in Sri Lanka: An independent assessment’ in ‘Fifty years of Sri Lanka’s Independence: A Socio Economic Review’, A. D. V. de S. Indraratne (Ed.) Sri Lanka Institute for Socio Economic Studies, Colombo 6. Ministry of Economic Reforms Science and Technology [2003] ICT Roadmap, Colombo 7. Samaranayake, V. K., and Indran Ratnathican [2002] section on Sri Lanka in ‘The Global Competetiveness Report 2001 – 2002’ The World Economic Forum (WEF) and Centre for International Development (CID), Harvard University http://www.cid.harvard.edu/cr/profiles/ SriLanka.pdf 8. UNDP [2000] Human Development Report, Oxford University Press Inc, New York, USA, 2000

Session Knowledge sharing C OLLABORATIVE W EB -B ASED L EARNING C OMMUNITIES

Information ecology for teachers This paper provides an overview of socio-cognitive aspects of most prevalent collaborative webbased learning communities or learning ecologies, and a threedimensional conceptual framework for classification.

Percy Kwok Pui Ching Education Centre Hong Kong Institute of Educational Research The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China drpercykwok@yahoo.com

Introduction Because of the ever changing nature of work and society under knowledge-based economy in the 21st century, students and teachers need to develop ways of dealing with complex issues and thorny problems that require new kinds of knowledge that they have not ever learned or taught (Drucker, 1999). Therefore, they need to work and collaborate with others. They also need to be able to learn new things from a variety of resources and people, and to investigate questions and bring their learning back to their dynamic life communities. There have arisen in recent years learning community approach (Bielaczyc & Collins, 1999; Bereiter, 2002) and learning ecology (Siemens, 2003) or information ecology approach (Capurro, 2003) to education. These approaches fit well with the growing emphasis on lifelong, life-wide learning and knowledge building works. Following this trend, the Internet technologies have been translated into a number of strategies for teaching and learning (Jonassen, Howland, Moore & Marra, 2003) with supportive development of oneto-one (e.g. e-mail posts), one-to-many (such as e-Publications) and many-to-many communications (like video-conferencing). The technologies of Computer-mediated communications (CMC) make online instructions possible and have the potential to bring enormous changes to student learning experience of the real world (Rose & Winterfeldt, 1998), as individual members of learning communities or ecologies help synthesise learning products via deep information processing processes, mutual negotiation of working strategies and deep engagement in critical thinking, accompanied by an ownership of team works in those communities or ecologies (Dillenbourg, 1999). In short, technology in

communities is essentially a means of communication-based creating fluidity between knowledge segments and connecting people in learning communities. However, this online collaborative learning culture is neither currently emphasised in local schools nor explicitly stated out in intended school curriculum guidelines of formal educational systems in most societies.

Background Emergence of a new learning paradigm through CMC Through a big advance in computer-mediated technology (CMT), there have been several paradigm shifts in web-based learning tools (Adelsberger, Collis & Pawlowski, 2002). The first shift moves from contentoriented model (information containers) to model (communication facilitators) and the second shift then elevates from communication-based model to knowledge-construction model (creation support). In knowledgeconstruction model, students in web-based discussion forum mutually criticise each other; hypothesise pre-theoretical constructs through empirical data confirmation or falsification, and with scaffolding supports, co-construct new knowledge beyond their existing epistemological boundaries under the social constructivism paradigm (Hung, 2001). Noteworthy, only can the third model can nourish learning community or ecology, advocated by some cognitive scientists in education like Collins & Bielaczyc (1997) and Scardamalia & Bereiter (2002). Similarly, a web-based learning ecology contains intrinsic features of a collection of overlapping communities of mutual interests, cross-pollinating with each other, constantly evolving and largely self-organising members (Brown, Collins & Duguid,1999) in the knowledge-construction model. i4d | December 2004

Scaffolding supports in social constructivism and web-based applications According to Vygotsky, the history of the society in which a child is reared and the child’s personal history are crucial determinants of the way in which that individual will think. In this process of cognitive development, language is a crucial tool for determining how the child will learn to think, because advanced modes of thought are transmitted to the child by means of words (Schütz, 2002). One essential tenet in Vygotsky’s theory (1978) is the notion of the existence of what he calls the ‘Zone of Proximal Development’ (ZPD). The child in this scaffolding process of ZPD, providing non-intrusive intervention, can be an adult (parent, teacher, caretaker, language instructor) or another peer who has already mastered that particular function. Practically, the scaffolding teaching strategy provides individualised supports, based on the learner’s ZPD. Notably, the scaffolds facilitate a student’s ability to build on prior knowledge and internalise new information. The activities provided in scaffolding instruction are just beyond the level of what the learner can do alone. The more capable peer will provide the scaffolds so that the learner can accomplish (with assistance) the tasks that he or she could otherwise not complete, thus fostering learning through the ZPD (Van Der Stuyf, 2002). In web-based situated and anchored learning contexts, students have to develop meta-cognitive reasoning to learn, how to learn, what, when and why to learn in lifelike contexts, besides problembased learning contents and studying methods in realistic peer and group collaboration contexts of synchronous and asynchronous interactions. Empirical research databases illuminate that there were several levels of web uses or knowledge-building discourses from mere informational via collaborative to co-construction stages (Harmon & Jones, 2001; Gilbert, & Driscoll, 2002). Noteworthy, students succeed to develop scaffold supports via ZPD only when they attain communal levels of knowledge co-construction, at which student-centered generation of discussion themes, cognitive conflicts with others’ continuous critique and ongoing commitments to the learning communities or ecologies (by having constant attention and mutual contributions to discussion databases) are emerged.

Key concepts of communities-of-practice Unlike traditional static, lower-order-intelligence model of human activities in the industrial age, a new higher-order-intelligence model for communities-of-practice is emerged. It is a complex adaptive system, employing self-organised, free-initiative and free-choice operating principles, and creating human ecology settings and stages for its acting out during the new Information Era. Under the technological facilitation of the Internet, this new emerging model is multi-centered, complex-adaptive, and self-organised, which is founded on the dynamic, human relationships of equality, mutual respect and deliberate volition. When such model is applied to educational contexts, locally managed, decentralised marketplaces of life-long and life-wide learning take place. In particular, both teacher-student partnerships are created to pursue freely chosen and mutual agreed-upon learning projects (Moursund, 1999), and between students co-construction of knowledge beyond individual epistemological boundaries are also involved (Lindberg, 2001). December 2004 | www.i4donline.net

Unlike working and learning are alienated from one another in formal working group and project teams, communities-of-practice and informal network (embracing the above term ‘web-based learning communities or ecologies’) both combine working and knowledge-construction, provided that their members have commitment to professional development of the communities and mutual contributions to generate knowledge during collaborations. In particular, their organisation structures can retain sustainability, even if they lose active members or coercive powers (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, 2002). It follows that students engaging in communities-of-practice can construct knowledge collaboratively when doing group works.

Main focus On learning community or ecology models, there arise some substantial socio-cultural issues. Chan, Hue, Chou & Tzeng (2001) depict four spaces of learning models, namely, the future classroom, the community-based, the structural knowledge, and the complexproblem learning models, which are designed to integrate the Internet into education. Furthermore, Brown (1999, p.19) points out “The most promising use of Internet is where the buoyant partnership of people and technology creates powerful new online learning communities”. However, the concept of community is an elusive one. “It might be used to refer to the communal life of a sixteenthcentury village – or to a team of individuals within a modern organisation who rarely meet face to face but who are successfully engaged in online collaborative work” (Slevin, 2000, p.92). To realise cognitive models of learning communities, social communication is required as human efforts are the crucial elements. However, the development of a coercive learning community is different from the development of social community though ‘social communication is an essential component of educational activity’ (Harasim, 1995). Learning communities are complex systems and networks that allow adaptation and change (Jonassen, Peck and Wilson, 1999). Collins & Bielaczyc (1997) also realise that knowledge-building communities require sophisticated social engineering elements whilst Gilbert & Driscoll (2002) observe that learning quantities and quality depend on the value-beliefs, expectations and learning attitudes of the community members. It follows that some necessary conditions for altering basic educational assumptions held by community learners and transforming the entire learning culture need to be found out for epistemological advancement. So what are the intrinsic mechanisms that advance students’ learning experience in terms of socio-cognitive and socio-cultural aspects? This paper provides an overview of socio-cognitive aspects of most prevalent collaborative web-based learning communities or learning ecologies, and a three-dimensional conceptual framework for classification. While, it conceptualises crucial senses of scaffolding supports and addresses under-researched socio-cultural issues especially in Chinese societies, besides laying down some strategic development directions. In research literature, Collins & Bielaczyc (1997) describe five new models of learning using network technology, namely, knowledge-society, tele-mentoring, connected-classrooms, teacher-community and shared-passions concerning their socio-cultural

assumptions or implications. Nevertheless, for systematic classification of web-based learning communities or ecologies, a three-dimensional conceptual framework is necessarily used to highlight degree of interactivity (one-to-one, one-to-many and many-tomany), scaffolding or knowledge advancement tools (mere learning without self-reflection, self-reflection without others’ critique and a combination of self and other reflections) and modes of learning assessments (no assessment, either summative or formative assessment and both).

Future trends Three issues of cultural differences, curricular integration and reform transformation for scaffolding supports in web-based learning communities or ecologies are addressed here. Such collaborative learning communities have encountered socio-cultural difficulties of not reaching group consensus necessarily when synthesising group notes for drawing conclusions (Scardamalia, Bereiter & Lamon, 1995, p.225). Other socio-cultural discrepancies included discontinuous expert responses to students’ questions and thereby losing students’ interests, students’ over-reliance on expert advice, instead of their own constructions and disparities in the nature of collaborative discourses between school construction and experts’ constructions of knowledge (Scardamalia & Bereiter 1996). This echoes well with Collins & Bielaczyc’s (1997) critique of problematic social re-engineering aspects of the knowledge-building dream and Krechevsky & Stork (2000’s) speculation of four key socio-cultural assumptions of conventional pedagogy deeply held by community learners, which may act as great resistance for educational reforms. The first issue is influence of heritage culture upon web-based learning communities or ecologies. Educational psychologists like Watkins & Biggs (2001) and sociologists like Lee (1996) also speculate the big influence of heritage Chinese culture upon the roles of teachers and students in Asian learning cultures. When knowledgebuilding is considered as a way of learning in Asian societies under the influence of heritage Chinese culture, attention ought to be paid to teachers’ as well as students’ conceptions and Asian cultures

of learning and teaching especially in a CMC learning community. The second issue is about curricular integration. There come some possible cases in which participating teachers and students are not so convinced by CMC or do not have the conception of knowledge building when establishing collaborative learning communities. More integration problems may evolve when school curricula were conformed to the three pillars of conventional pedagogy, namely, ‘reduction to subject matter’, ‘reduction to activities’ and ‘reduction to self-expression’ (Bereiter, 2002). Such problems become more acute in Asian learning cultures, in which there has been heavy stress on individually competitive learning activities, examination-oriented school assessments and teacher-led didactical interactions (Cheng, 1997). The third issue is about student and teacher leadership in cultivating collaborative learning cultures (Bottery, 2003). Some preliminary socio-cultural research findings (e.g. Yuen, 2003) reveal that high senses of membership and necessary presence of proactive teacher and student leaders in inter-school domains are crucial for knowledge-building in web-based learning communities or ecologies.

Strategic development Based on the past experiences of putting forth some web-based learning ecologies in some Asian societies like Hong Kong. Macao and Singapore (Kwok & Tan, 2004), project-based learning approach has been infused into school culture as follows: With a given project title, facilitators (e.g. webmasters) or teachers can design a number of meaningful forums for sub-thematic discussion platform. Pupils can participate in any number of forums (related to the project title) to contribute notes that contain their findings from books, the Internet or other multimedia sources (See figure 2). There are a number of ways to generate meaningful forums. In web-based learning ecologies, before the project starts, pupils are grouped together to discuss the project. All the issues and questions raised during the discussion are to be categorised and transformed into meaningful forums.

Domain

Learning Outcomes

Skills Developed (collaborative learning strategies)

Knowledge acquisition and application

• Search, filter, categorise, digest data • See relevance and interconnectedness • Apply and transfer knowledge

• • • • •

Communication

• Communicate knowledge and ideas

• Sharing • Listening

Collaboration

• Work with other members

• Discussion • Collaboration • Teamwork

Independent Learning

• Plan and monitor his/her own work • Know when to seek help

• Planning and management • Self motivation

Exploration Investigation Analysis & creativity Perception Application

Table 1. Overview of project-based learning

i4d | December 2004

Project Title Forum 2

Forum 1 How a baby is formed?

Why are there twins?

Forum 3 Any animal twins?

How twins are formed?

Notes Figure 2. Structure of web-based discussion platform

Short-term and long-term action plans should be devised for transforming teacher-led pedagogy to student-led learning approach in the following arenas of: • Teacher and student training workshops for mastery of technical and pedagogical skills in using web-based learning ecologies • Emergence of e-Leadership in launching and evaluating projectbased approach when being integrated into web-based learning ecologies • Nourishment of learning communities or ecologies among students, teachers, parents and the general public through as a series of reform projects and extra-curricular activities • Modification of the pace of implementing learning communities approach into school culture from time to time (started from slow rate and small scale)

Conclusion To sum up, there are some drawbacks and socio-cultural concerns towards the establishment and continuation of learning communities or ecologies. They include lack of internal structures by incorporating flexibility elements, inefficient provision of focused and developmental feedback during collaborative discussion, no directions for ineffective curricular integration for teachers’ facilitations roles and establishing basic mechanisms of pinpointing and eradicating misinformation or correcting errors in project works, high degree of self-awareness among self-directed learners in learning communities or ecologies, and necessity to evaluate the process and outcomes of collaborative learning discourses (Siemens, 2003). So there is an urgent need to address some cognitive or sociocultural research agendas to investigate shifting roles of students and teachers (e.g. at primary and secondary levels), their reflections on knowledge-building in a CMC in societies and to articulate possible integration models for project works into school curricula with high student-teacher ratios and prevalent teacher-centered pedagogy, when touching socio-cognitive and socio-cultural aspects of learning communities or ecologies.

Terms and definitions Anchored learning instructions: High learning efficiency with easier transferability of mental models and facilitation of strategic problem-solving skills in ill structured domains are emerged, if instructions are anchored on a particular problem or set of problems. CMC: Computer-mediated communications (CMC) is defined as various uses of computer systems and networks for the transfer, storage and retrieval of information among humans, allowing learning instructions to become more authentic and students to engage in collaborative project works in schools. December 2004 | www.i4donline.net

CMT: Computer-mediated technology (CMT) points to the combination of technologies (e.g. hypermedia, handheld technologies, information network, the Internet and other multimedia devices) that are utilised for computer-mediated communications (CMC). Knowledge-building: In a knowledge-building environment, knowledge is brought into the environment and something is done collectively to it that enhances its value. The goal is to maximise the value added to knowledge - either the public knowledge represented in the community database or the private knowledge and skill of its individual learners. Knowledge-building has three characteristics: (a) knowledge-building is not just a process, but it is aimed at creating a product; (b) its product is some kind of conceptual artifact – for instance, an explanation or a design or a historical account or an interpretation of a literacy work; (c) a conceptual artifact is not something in the individual minds of the students, not something materialistic or visible; but is nevertheless real, existing in the holistic works of student collaborative learning communities. Learning community: A collaborative learning community refers to a learning culture, in which students are involved in a collective effort of understanding with an emphasis on diversity of expertise, shared objectives, learning how and why to learn, and sharing what is learned, and thereby advancing their individual knowledge and sharing the community’s knowledge Learning or Information ecology: For preserving the chances of offering the complexity and potential plurality within the technological shaping of knowledge representation and diffusion, the learning or information ecology approach is indispensable for cultivating practical judgment concerning possible alternatives of action in a democratic society, providing the critical linguistic essences, and creating different historical kinds of cultural and technical information mixtures. Noteworthy, learning or knowledge involves a dynamic, living, and evolving state. Meta-cognition: If students can develop meta-cognition, they can self-execute or self-govern their thinking processes, resulting in effective and efficient learning outcomes. Project learning or project works: Project learning is an iterative process of building knowledge, identifying important issues, solving problems, sharing results, discussing ideas and making refinements. Through articulation, construction, collaboration and reflection, students gain subject-specific knowledge and also enhance their meta-cognitive caliber. Situated learning: Situated learning is involved when learning instructions are offered in life-like contexts with actual learning performance and effective learning outcomes. Social community: A common definition of social community has usually included three ingredients: (a) interpersonal networks that provide sociability, social support, and social capital to their members, (b) residence in a common locality, such as a village or neighborhood, and (c) solidarity sentiments and activities. ZPD: Zone of Proximal development (ZPD) is the difference between the child’s capacity to solve problems on his own, and his capacity to solve them with assistance of someone else. Note: References are available on www.i4donline.net

Session Knowledge sharing A C ROSS -C ULTURAL P ERSPECTIVE

Community learning centres in Asia ‘The ‘digital divide’ as it relates to education, is not so much about hardware or money but about ‘attitude’, about bottom-up efficacy and ultimately about relevant and global ‘cultural changes’ in both education and society associated with the ICT revolution.

Cameron Richards University of Western Australia Australia crichard@cyllene.uwa.edu.au

There are many Information and Communication Technology (ICT) related development projects focused on poor rural communities in the Asia Pacific region being funded or supported in different ways by various local, national and even international/non-governmental agencies, and with many of these directly or indirectly linked to the educational implications and opportunities associated with the use and access to ICTs (e.g. Weigel & Waldberger, 2004; Fillip, 2004). One of the key assumptions informing such initiatives and development projects is the reasonable notion that poorer nations and rural communities face the difficult task of overcoming an emerging ‘digital divide’ defined basically by inequitable computer-based access to global ICT networks. External assistance is thus often given in terms of a merely hopeful (and largely insufficient) expectation that provision of better access to computers, ICT networks and related resources will translate into ‘sustainable’ community development. However, the presentation and inquiry briefly outlined here represent an alternative perspective on how related notions of different emergent ‘ICT community learning centres’ (ICT-CLCs) – one which also provides a basis for recognising how notions of ‘sustainable’ initiatives or development can be a matter of either negative or positive self-fulfilling prophecy. This perspective reflects my own experience of working over the last ten years in several countries with relatively good ICT access (Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong) and focusing on the challenge of ICT integration in formal schooling and education. During that time I have become aware of the extent to which - and some of the reasons why - policy and funding initiatives to guarantee access to the widest number of people have generally proved insufficient to harness the powerful educa-

tional implications of ICTs and more effectively connect theory, policy and rhetoric with actual practice (Richards, 2004). This is especially so in terms of actual teaching and learning in schools where there tends to be an oppositional debate (between naïve enthusiasm and more cynical resistance) around the notion that ICTs exemplify the requirements and possibilities of new learning models for encouraging more active construction of knowledge in authentic, collaborative and problem-based contexts of learning (e.g. Oppenheimer, 2003). From this perspective, the ‘digital divide’ as it relates to education (in turn, of course, to community development) is not so much about hardware or money but about ‘attitude’, about bottom-up efficacy (including notions of local wisdom or traditions), and ultimately about relevant and global ‘cultural changes’ in both education and society associated with the ICT revolution. In this way an emergent generic model of ICTCLCs has cross-cultural implications for local contexts of practice in both developing and developed countries – that is, which includes the significant ‘digital divides’ within as well as across different international contexts. This has been suggested for instance, by Papert & Callavo’s (2002) notion that different types of ‘ICT learning hubs’ represent a central function of the kind of global networked society described in the influential work of Manuell Castells (1996). In other words, whilst issues of access are important and tend to define a one-way view of exchange between poor and rich communities and nations where the nexus of ICTs, education and community development is concerned. Such a perspective recognises that implicitly this can and should be a two-way exchange where formal contexts of education in richer countries can learn important cross-cultural lessons, which i4d | December 2004

can assist in more effectively harnessing the educational implications of ICTs. Thus, as epitomised by the clear tensions at work within related yet distinct models of ICT-CLCs in the Asia Pacific region, the prescription or antidote for the problem of ‘sustainability’ lies in the educational function of better linking reflection or awareness with both social and individual.

ICT-CLCs and the connection between education, ICTs, and community development As indicated above ICT-CLCs exemplify how a more convergent notion is possible of the connection between functions of education, community development and the use of ICTs as a focus as well as media for extending human literacy and learning. The discussion below briefly summarises my inquiry and presentation about this at the i4d seminar.

ICT-CLCs as an emergent, generic and bottom-up model linking ‘work’ and ‘play’ The generic attributes of ICT community centres represent tensional continua between informal and formal education on one hand, and between educational purposes and commercial or developmental progress functions on the other. ICT community learning centres thus represent a convergent notion for linking the more informal, sub-cultural, and even personal and social purposes on one hand, and more directly ‘functional’ tensions between educational (i.e. in terms of teaching and learning as a mutual dialogue or transformation rather than merely linear/hierarchical transmission, persuasion or seduction) and more distinctly commercial purposes on the other. This is an ‘educational’ starting point for appreciating the potentials of ICTs tools, media and centres can be extended to embrace commercial and developmental possibilities in a balanced and convergent way – but not the reverse! The growing embrace of ICTs by societies around the world has been typically grounded in the initial interests and uses of more ‘indirect’ rather than ‘functional’ purposes. Likewise the educational implications of ICTs also precede the various commercial possibilities and idealistic top-down theories and policies. As depicted in the left column of figure 1, this is exemplified in particular by the various related models of internet cafes, online kiosks and game parlours which allow a younger, more wired generation to ‘plug’ into alternately actual and virtual global networks of interaction and community (e.g. Rheingold, 2003). The physical centres of

shared access used in different ways by travelers, workers in their lunch hour, young people for recreational or entertainment purposes, and the less advantaged also have their virtual equivalents in online forums, small message service networks, and a range of new and hybrid technologies. As reported in the i4d magazine and elsewhere, rural areas in countries such as India and China traverse a range of ICT provision of access and services extending from ‘internet café’ type of commercial provision to more structured and functional ‘telecentre’ models. Such a continuum reflects the significant connections between the use of ICTs for work and play, and for purpose of information, communication and entertainment.

A future nexus between classrooms, community centres, and ICT use Our approach here reverses the suggestion made by Papaert and Callavo (2002) that a ‘village’ model represents somewhat of an afterthought or derivative of a ‘city’ model of global learning hubs or ICT community learning centres. The ‘village’ examples discussed below exemplifies a direct convergence between both physical and virtual centres, which converge both formal and informal functions of classrooms, community centres, and ICT usage for personal or individual and social development. Figure 2 thus depicts how ICT-CLCs represents a convergent future vision of learning, community centres, and new ICTs linked together for integrated educational and social purposes. The key to such a vision is a complementary or dialogical rather than oppositional view of how learning (or the motive and process of ‘knowledge’ as understanding and application and not just information or skill acquisition) for personal and/or social purposes provides a sufficient basis for social and economic progress grounded in an ethos of community development. In terms of the so-called digital divide of rich and poor (and centre and margins), such a perspective on the potential role of ICT-CLCs is one of recasting a defensive strategy of mere survival into one a more positive one of potential ‘thriving’. The learning-development connection is thus depicted here in terms of the power of both personal and social knowledge (encouraged and supported by the potentials and possibilities of ICTs) to assist and complement community progress and commercial development. From another perspective, the failure to harness these implications of ICTs could mean falling further behind the divide between rich and poor - and in the very struggle for survival faced by many local communities in developing regions.

Indirect (informal, sub-cultural, personal/social purposes)

Functional (educational vs commercial purposes)

•

• • • • • • •

• • • •

Internet cafes/kiosks’ – Travelers/informal/ – Anywhere, anytime – Plugging into the world Virtual communities Online gaming parlors Global ICT sub-cultures Communication networks etc.

Figure 1: Indirect vs functional contexts for ICT ‘centres’ December 2004 | www.i4donline.net

new’ libraries (knowledge access) Virtual classrooms Teacher/student resource centres Telecentres Business centres Telecottages Telecommuting, etc.

Different work ‘tensions’ within ICT-CLCs This section briefly discusses and compares in outline three distinct but related models of ICT-CLCs, which have been effectively grounded so far in specific local community contexts, and their actual (or potential) use of ICTs as a purposeful community resource. The examples below have been chosen in part because of how they reflect the natural tensions in complementary top-down and

Figure 2: ICT-CLCs as a convergent future vision of education, community, and ICT integration

Yellow Sheep River model (China) http:// www.yellowsheepriver.com • Initial intervention: idea of possibility introduced and adopted by local community • Governmental support and recognition of need to encourage development in rural areas • Dilemmas – Learning vs. development? – e-Learning/distance education a supplement not a substitute – Too much top-down and selective transferability may not be enough – how to get a balance? The Jhai Village Foundation Projects (Laos) http: www.jhai.org/ • Partnerships model – initial intervention ‘seeds’ /envisions new possibilities in terms of local destiny as most powerful force • Charismatic outsider intervention/ seeding • New technologies invented in terms of ‘doing a lot with little’(the Jhai computer and its use of pedal power and wireless technologies in the jungles of Laos) • ‘Barefoot’ principle of just-in-time flexibility, problem-solving, overcoming obstacles • Local response may be (like individual learners) but power to overcome any and old possibilities • Emphases growth and critical stages – but sustainability issue really more about ‘keeping the vision’ than sufficient funding Ganokendra Centres (Bangladesh) • ‘Functional’ literacies in community learning contexts • Generally no specific use of ICT presently, but potentially so • Shared resources model (‘library’ as focus of a learning community) • Basic education for out-of school children and illiterate adults (especially girls and women) • Community centres – grounded in common purposes, interests, aspirations in different local contexts (includes extracurricular activities/programs) • Focus for top-down and bottom-up collaborations (also governmental organisations and NGOs)

bottom-up aspects and also educational and commercial or developmental possibilities. The main differences between these three models relate to the initial versus ongoing roles of supporting governments or other agencies, of charismatic outsiders or imported ‘visions’ of possibility, and local organisational models for sharing community resources and promoting related initiatives. In both the Yellow Sheep River project and the Jhai Foundation projects especially, there was an interesting contrast to be made between notions of ICT-CLCs conceived as an ‘initial intervention’ in a local community context on one hand, and on the other as a more ‘top-down’ imperative for ‘on-going viability’ associated with structures and even resources provided by governmental or nongovernmental organisations (in other examples, especially shortterm project grants by bodies such as the World Bank and UNESCO). To some extent this reflects a tension between topdown bureaucratic imperatives and the bottom-up requirements of local communities; but also relatedly between the roles of charismatic outsiders (and sometimes insiders) and their initiating ‘visions’ one hand, and both bureaucratic structures and local communities on the other. Ganokendra centres in Bangladesh are not specifically or presently ICT centres as such (Rahman, 2003). It has been included here because as a government-NGO collaboration focusing on a shared resources model of community learning (Alam, 2003). It has powerful global and future implications for a generic model of ICT-CLCs. The Ganokendra centres are focused on making basic literacy skills accessible to the poor and disadvantaged. The Ganokendra centres also offer a range of different activities around its core purposes, which converge personal, and community development in relation to different local contexts. What is clear is that ongoing viability of all these models is very much dependent on how initial interventions are transformed into sustaining structures of organization and resourcing – in other words, the extent to which initiating visions are also sufficiently sustained and not lost (an everpresent possibility). This will also reflect the extent to which the inevitable interplay between global and local imperatives and knowledge remains an open, dynamic, and convergent relation. Thus, the above three examples are not ‘completed’ models and will still need to be constantly refined and renegotiated in terms of new and changing factors at work as well as the implicit stages of process to sustain ongoing viability. This is one of several ways in which there is interplay of necessary and sufficient conditions (as well as top-down and bottom-up dimensions) of both ICT integration and development grounded in learning – in addition to the circular relations between the necessary conditions of basic access to ICT resources and sufficient strategies of use for effective deployment and applications.

Organisational nexus As indicated in figure 3, which depicts a dynamic or dialogical ‘organisational nexus’ between virtual and actual dimensions. There are related tensions at stake in terms of how ICT-CLCs exemplify a convergence between education, community, and new ICTs. The basic educational tension lies between informal and formal aspects of learning and schooling. Some of the most effective uses of different types of ICT-CLCs are in the context of directly supporting i4d | December 2004

existing schools or providing a mode of formal schooling for those unable to access this for reasons related to either isolation or poverty. Yet many see the informal and even extra-curricular activities and purposes of some ICT-CLCs as outside or unrelated to education – not appreciating the indirect connections and possibilities of how such everyday ‘literacy’ uses of ICTs can be connected to and complement more formal learning in (e.g. Freierian) terms of interest or motivation and authentic purposes. Likewise, there is a related tension between the use of ICT tools and media as either a mere set of skills or information in a vacuum on one hand, and in terms of authentic applications and transferable knowledge on the other. However, the strongest tensions perhaps lie in terms of how local communities (like individuals) are often torn between tradition and the past on one hand, and new possibilities and future prospects on the other. This is typically seen as a conflict between existing social values and individualistic economic interests. The very premise of how ICT-CLCs have the potential to link learning and development – as well as converge a range of related interests, activities and functions – is that a convergent, complementary approach can be achieved in terms of strategic visions which are both open and innovative and yet grounded and supportive of local community needs. Hence figure 3 outlines a dynamic view of how the convergent ‘virtual’ dimensions of both human imagination and ICT as a new media might be grounded in new and changing contexts of actuality; thus also how ICTs represent a tool/media for people around the world to both literally and metaphorically ‘plug’ into and engage in dialogue with a more global consciousness. As indicated, ICT-CLCs represent a powerful strategy for overcoming various notions of a ‘digital divide’ conceived in terms of how ICTs have increasingly important economic and developmental functions in the age of globalisation. Indeed, commentators are generally agreed that the key to survival in the emerging global economy and knowledge society is the ability of education systems to produce learners who are innovative, flexible, collaborative and problem solving in their knowledge and understanding. Yet formal educational systems in developed as well developing countries generally remained entrenched in old paradigms of teaching and learning and typically fail to harness well the learner-centered, authentic, collaborative, and problem-solving implications of ICTs projected by the most insightful critics and theorists (e.g. Jonassen et al, 2003).

Figure 3: The organisational nexus between virtual and actual dimensions of ICT-CLCs

December 2004 | www.i4donline.net

This article has briefly attempted to sketch an alternative perspective that the real digital divide at stake here has perhaps more to do with the inherent tension between ostensibly ‘old’ and ‘new’ cultures of education and society, and thus with implicit links between learning and community (as well as personal) development. Where ICT community learning development projects and initiatives are concerned, the concept of sustainability’ can be approached as either a negative or positive reinforcement of ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’. In other words, a merely linear, hierarchical and oppositional (or ‘inevitable’) notion of the digital divide fails to appreciate the power of dialogue, motivation and local context to ‘sufficiently’ transform limitations, restraints, and obstacles. Models which innovatively and flexibly encourage ‘doing a lot with little’ provide an antidote to bureaucratic notions of possibility. Thus a generic, emergent notion of ICT-CLCs in the Asia Pacific region especially exemplifies the importance of sharing different kinds of learning resources or cultural capital, and two-way, collaborative dialogue – even both ways across the so-called ‘digital divide’. Ultimately, the approach taken here is one which is based on the understanding that genuine dialogue, collaboration, and community sharing (at both local and global levels) can and should make a real and productive difference. References Alam, K. (2004) ‘Reaching the Unreached: Collaboration of Government Sectors and Bangladesh Literacy Resource Centres’, Dhaka Ashsania Mission. http://www.accu.or.jp/litdbase/pub/dlperson/pdf0106/rpp12.pdf Anderson, N. (2004). Pedal-Powered Wireless Internet in the Laotian Jungle via Open Source Software. In Marshall, S., Taylor, W. & Xinghow, Yu. Encyclopaedia of Developing Regional Communities with Information and Communication Technologies. Information Science Publishing, Hershey, P.A. Bhatnagar, S. et al (2004) ‘ICT4D: Some lessons from the Indian Experience’, Information Technology in Developing Countries, Volume 14, No. 2 http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/egov/ifip/august2004/article7.htm Castells, M. (1996) The Rise of the Network Society, Blackwell Publishers: Malden (Mass) and Oxford. Fillip, B. 2004 Ensuring universal access to knowledge and services through telecentres, Community Informatics listserves, Jonassen, D. et al (2003) Learning to Solve Problems with Technology: A constructivist perspective, 2nd edn., Prentice Hall: Columbus, Ohio. Papert, S. & Cavallo, D. (2002) ‘The learning hub: Entry point for 20 th century learning’, MIT Media Lab. http:// learning.media.mit.edu/courses/mas713/readings/ml_learning_ hub_ manifest.pdf Rahman, E. (2003) ‘Ganokendra – An Innovative Programme for Poverty Alleviation with Gender Bias’, Dhaka Ahsania Mission. http://www.gdnet.org/pdf2/gdn_library/awards_medals/2003/ m_i_p/rahman_paper.pdf Rheingold, H. (2003) Smart Mobs, Perseus: Cambridge (Mass). Richards, C. (2004), ‘From old to new learning: Global dilemmas, exemplary Asian contexts, and ICT as a key to cultural change in education’, Globalisation, Societies and Education, Vol. 2. No.3

ICT

AND

E DUCATION

Rural India benefits from digital initiatives ‘If a society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.’ So how would India go about saving the 70 per cent of its population that resides in rural areas with no adequate electricity, water supply, or even a sustainable means of income generation – forget exposure to technology? The first step here, perhaps, should be to arm this marginalised majority with information and education, not through the traditional means of teacher-school building mode but via e-Learning. And this is not an impossible dream we are scaling. It is very much an achievable target and India is showing all symptoms of success. It will be heartening to know that the Indian e-Learning industry is estimated to grow upto $182-billion space by 2009. The Indian government has also taken significant steps towards dissemination of information through a number of e-Learning projects, not only for rural students but for the community at large. These projects can be divided into three heads – social development projects to provide informal IT training to the rural illiterate mass, community information services project for people who have minimum knowledge and finally school based curriculum projects imparting computer education to rural students.

What all are happening? Social development projects like Akshaya, Aqua Choupal, Gramin Gnan Kendra (village knowledge centre), focus on generating network of information centres, employment and investment opportunities in rural areas. Community information s ervices like e-Choupal and PlantersNet have been designed to disseminate information on rural farm-gate price realisation, cut transaction costs, supply of high quality farm inputs etc. Finally, school based projects like

SchoolNet India, Uttaranchal’s Aarohi and Mapping the Neighbourhood support education infrastructure for enhancing the quality of human capita and community mapping and local content development involving school children, respectively. [Details from http://www.i4donline.net/ elearn.asp]. Further, there are certain recent developments in the e-Learning initiative for the underprivileged. Wipro and Intel have jointly launched a low-cost solution and technology project to meet the needs of education segment in India, called ‘i-shiksha’. [http://www.thehindubusinessline. com/2004/11/24/stories/200411240 3060503.htm] Moving on, Microsoft Corporation India Pvt Ltd announced its plans to spend $20 million on its ‘Project Shiksha’, which will be rolled out in ten states across the country in a phased manner. [http://www. hinduonnet.com/thehindu/thscrip/print. pl?file=2004112502020700.htm&date =2004/11/25/&prd=bl&]

Some pinching facts However, there is still a lot more to be done. The above projects might read fascinating, but the rural reality speaks a different language. There is a considerable disparity between rural and urban literacy percentage. Compared to an almost 80 per cent literacy rate in urban India, that in rural areas is only 56 per cent. Added to this, India has 192 million illiterate women, which is nearly one-third of all illiterate women in the world. Bringing them into the fold of e-Learning will be a humungous task. Further, the average teacher:student ratio at primary level is 1:58 in rural regions. The current e-Learning initiatives are yet to narrow this gap. Improvement of connectivity is

another area of concern. With a PC density of 4.94 per 1,000 people and a tele-density of 32 fixed lines per 1,000 people, India needs to increase penetration in terms of PCs and communication lines for any e-Learning project to be successful. The high cost of ownership, which proves a barrier towards proliferation of access devices, needs to be lowered. Due to high tariff levels, the cost of hardware in India is significantly higher as compared to the rest of the world. For instance, a PC in India costs around 24 months of average per-capita income as compared to China’s 4 months and USA’s 12 days. Local contents, adequate funds for better rolling out of the projects, affordable software technology are other areas of concern.

What can be done Following steps could help in arresting the above problems: • Connectivity options to the rural areas can be improved by using wireless access. For instance, CORDECT is an advanced, wireless access system developed by the TeNeT group of IIT Madras, Midas Communications and Analog Devices. In addition, cybercafes and village information kiosks will enhance the reach of IT. • Need to reduce the tariff levels. • Inventions such as the Simputer can reduce costs by providing affordable computing. At $ 200 a piece, the Simputer offers computing facilities at a drastically lower cost compared to $ 650 for a PC. Further, it has a local language interface. • Use of open source software will not only be cost effective but can also meet the localisation demands of the huge linguistic diversity of India. Further, open source software can also be used on old hardware. i4d | December 2004

What’s on

Tunisia 16-18 November, 2005 WISIS: World Summit on the Information Society: Phase 2 Tunis

Australia

India

http://www.itu.int/wsis/

18-19 January, 2005 Open Content Licensing (OCL): Cultivating the Creative Commons Brisbane

18-20 January, 2005 Education for a sustainable future Ahmedabad

The Netherlands

http://www.ceeindia.org/esf/index.htm

http://www.law.qut.edu.au/about/news.jsp#ocl

01-03 February, 2005 Information Online 2005 Sydney http://conferences.alia.org.au/online2005/

Belgium 18-20 April, 2005 ISCRAM 2005 Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, Brussels http://www.sckcen.be/iscram/

Canada 13-16 April, 2005 Museums and the Web 2005 Vancouver, British Columbia http://www.archimuse.com/conferences/ mw.html#mw2005

27- 02 July, 2005 ED-MEDIA 2005 Montreal

07-09 February, 2005 Map India 2005, New Delhi

02-04 February, 2005 CALIBER 2005 Multilingual Computing and Information Management in Digital Networked Environment, Kochi

The United Kingdom

http://web.inflibnet.ac.in/caliber2005/ callforpapers.jsp

http://lttg.lse.ac.uk/LILAC/default.asp

21- 25 February, 2005 International Conference on Information Management in a Knowledge Society (ICIM 2005), Mumbai

South Africa 02-04 March, 2005 ICTS and Civil Society Conference Johannesburg

Spain

http://www.comp.hkbu.edu.hk/~eee05/home/

Denmark 20-21 January, 2005 A New Kind of Access Copenhagen TNI@bs.dk

04- 06 April, 2005 LILAC 2005: Librarians’ Information Literacy Annual Conference London

First International Conference on e-Social Science 22- 24 June 2005 Manchester http://www.ncess.ac.uk/conference_05.htm

http://www.icim2005.org/

http://www.aace.org

29 March–01 April, 2005 2005 IEEE International Conference on e-Technology, e-Commerce, and e-Service, Hong Kong

http://www.clubofamsterdam.com/ press.asp?contentid=373&catid=61

http://www.mapindia.org

http://www.radio.oneworld.net/article/view/ 76307/1

China

26-28 January, 2005 Summit for the Future - a European conference about the Knowledge Society Amsterdam

06-08 July, 2005 7th ISKO-Spain Conference Barcelona http://www.bd.ub.es/isko2005/

10-12 July, 2005 Euro Conference on Mobile Government Sussex University, Brighton http://www.icmg.mgovernment.org/ europeanmg.htm

United States 01-05 March, 2005 SITE 2005 Phoenix Arizona http://www.site.aace.org/conf

Switzerland

14-17 March, 2005 The O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference (ETech), San Diego

21- 23 February, 2005 The 4th IASTED International Conference on Web-Based Education (WBE 2005) Grindelwald

02-05 April, 2005 e-Learning 2005 Dallas, Texas

http://www.iasted.org/conferences/2005/ switzerland/wbe.htm

http://www.conferences.oreillynet.com/etech/

http://www.144.162.197.250eLearning 2005glance.htm

Get your event listed here. www.i4donline.net/events December 2004 | www.i4donline.net

I N F ACT

Afro-Asian digital access Information technology in African countries (Data for 2003) Internet Hosts Total 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

Algeria Angola Benin Botswana Burkina Faso Burundi Cameroon Comoros Congo Egypt Equatorial Guinea Ethiopia Gambia Ghana Mali Mauritius Morocco Mozambique Nigeria Senegal Seychelles Sierra Leone South Africa Sudan Tanzania Uganda Zambia Zimbabwe

Hosts per 10’000 inhab.

866 17 854 1,920 442 22 477 11 46 3,338 3 9 568 389 187 3,985 3,561 3,249 1,094 672 264 277 288,633 5,534 2,561 1,880 4,501

0.27 0.01 1.22 10.91 0.36 0.03 0.29 0.14 0.13 0.49 0.06 4.16 0.17 0.17 32.64 1.18 1.73 0.09 0.65 33.00 0.56 62.25 1.57 1.00 1.68 3.83

PCs Users (k)

500.0 41.0 70.0 60.0 48.0 14.0 60.0 5.0 15.0 2,700.0 1.8 75.0 25.0 170.0 25.0 150.0 800.0 50.0 750.0 225.0 11.7 8.0 3,100.0 300.0 250.0 125.0 68.2 500.0

Users per 10’000 inhab.

[02] [02] 99.64 [02]

[02]

[02] [02] [02] [02]

[02]

[02] [02] [02]

[02]

159.78 29.42 348.84 39.16 19.67 37.90 62.58 42.86 393.31 35.64 10.81 188.30 78.43 23.52 1,228.50 265.57 27.65 60.82 217.20 1,452.10 16.16 682.01 90.13 70.80 48.83 60.88 429.75

Total (k) 242 27 26 70 26 13 90 5 15 1,500 4 150 19 82 15 180 600 82 853 220 13 ... 3,300 200 200 103 95 620

[02] [02] [02]

[02]

[02] [02] [02] [02] [02] [02] [02] [02] [02] [02]

Per 100 inhab. 0.77 0.19 0.37 4.07 0.21 0.18 0.57 0.58 0.43 2.19 0.69 0.22 1.43 0.38 0.14 14.87 1.99 0.45 0.71 2.12 16.08 ... 7.26 0.61 0.57 0.40 0.85 5.27

Source: ITU (Internet host data: Network Wizards, RIPE).

Comparison of internet costs, income and Internet penetration ranked by cost of monthly internet access Country

ISP subscription (per month in

Telephone call charge

Total cost of

GDP per

(per month in US$) Internet access capita (US$)

GDP per capita

access as % of

(US$)

GDP per capita

1928.1 322.4 69.5 38.3 19.9 81.4 35.6 73.5 2011.3 61.5 836.3 168.2 29.3 3128.7 59.6

0.5 3.8 20.3 42.2 97.1 23.9 55.8 27.7 1.1 37.2 2.8 15.3 106.6 1.3 72.9

US$) Singapore Malaysia China India Nepal Philippines Pakistan Sri Lanka Hong Kong SAR Indonesia Korea Thailand Bangladesh Japan Bhutan

0 5.26 9.78 5.98 13.34 19.42 9.69 5.59 17.69 11.45 23.24 5.4 12.9 42.07 30.73

10.56 7.11 4.35 10.17 6 0 10.17 14.77 4.62 11.4 0 20.3 18.28 0 12.71

Source: ICT Policy: A Beginner’s Handbook, Association

10.56 12.37 14.13 16.15 19.34 19.42 19.86 20.36 22.31 22.85 23.24 25.7 31.18 42.07 43.44

Cost of Internet Internet penetration

per month

23137 3896 834 459 239 977 427 882 24136 738 10036 2018 351 37544 715

(%) 36.3 27.31 2.56 0.68 0.26 2.55 0.35 0.8 38.48 1.91 52.1 5.77 0.19 43.93 0.43

for Progressive Communications, 2003 i4d | December 2004

1 ST A N N U A L M I D D L E E A S T C O N F E R E N C E A N D E X H I B I T I O N O N G I S , G P S , A E R I A L P H O T O G R A P H Y & R E M O T E S E N S I N G

Map Middle East 2005

23-25 April, Dubai, UAE Al Bustan Rotana Hotel

Theme

Geospatial Technology and Knowledge Economy

Come...Join us! Discover the Who, What, Where, How, Why and When of the Geomatics community in the Middle East!

GOLD SPONSORS

SECRETARIAT

ROLTA O R G A N I S E R S

In India GIS Development, G-4, Sector-39 Noida 201 301. U.P. India Phone +91-120-2502180 to 87 Telefax +91-120-2500060 Email info@mapmiddleeast.org Website www.mapmiddleeast.org

In UAE Dubai GIS Centre, Dubai Municipality P.O. Box 67, Dubai, U.A.E. Phone +971- 4-2064880/28 Telefax +971- 4-2064846 Email info@mapmiddleeast.org Website www.mapmiddleeast.org

Dubai Municipality