Vol. VI No. 1
January 2008
The first monthly magazine on ICT4D
GK3 overview Experencing the global knowledge
India as a trendsetter An emerging digital India Information for development
i4d film festival@GK3 ICT4D in motion
ISSN 0972 - 804X
Global Knowledge Conference (GK3) special
w w w. i 4 d o n l i n e . n e t
knowledge for change
i4d Film Festival was an associate event with GK3
GKP-GALA party on 10 December 2007 felicitating supporting partners of GKP
Over 22 participants joined the video training workshop-supported by IDRC, as part of i4d film festival
GK3 Opening Ceremony on 11th December 2007 with traditional drums by the honourable chief guests and organisers
Mark Surman addressing the Telecentre Leaders Forum
AMARC @ GK3 were actively recording experiences from the global ICT4D community present here
Professor MS Swaminathan shares some happy moments with GKP members at the GKP-GALA party on December 10th
Gender was an important cross cutting issue at GK3
Contents
Vol. VI No. 1
January 2008
Mail box
Features
et
online.n
27 News Rendezvous 2007 and IDRC Research 34 ICTD Methodologies Workshop Studying the impacts of ICTs on society Jayalakshmi Chittoor
5
Editorial
6
GK3 Overview
10
i4d Film Festival @ GK3
13
India as TrendSetter
16
telecentre.org @ GK3
20
GK3: The hub of global knowledge community
Experiencing the global knowledge Ritu Srivastava
ICT4D in motion Sulakshana Bhattacharya
A vibrant movement takes centre stage Vignesh Sornamohan, Jayalakshmi Chittoor, Christine Prefontaine
Telecentre Magazine Launch Innovative exercise of documentation
Pragati Maidan, New Delhi
The 3rd World Electronic Media Forum (WEMF-3) New vision for world electronic media
eAgriculture: Continuing Dialogue to Action Putting farming first Anaam Sharma
32 Unveiling unlimited potential for India Microsoft Press Release
Interview 21
38
Second National Consultation on ‘Sustainbility of NKN Telecentres’
Empowering the rural communities Vignesh Sornamohan
Building capacities of NKN telecentres Vignesh Sornamohan
40
Right to Education-Actions Now Right to Education Narinder Bhatia, Shambhu Ghatak, Annam Sharma
Columns 42 Bytes for All received 44 Book ICTs releated issues Shambhu Ghatak
29-31 July 2008
31
CPR
An emerging digital India Rachita Jha
24 26
36
Akhtar Badshah
In conversation with Jayalakshmi Chittoor and Ravi Gupta
45
What’s on
46
In Fact ICTs Statistics: India
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Photo credits: GKP (www.globalknowledge.org); and CSDMS (www.csdms.in)
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Just wanted to send out a small note of appreciation to the i4D team for consistently bringing out fresh stories from across the globe. With every issue we have something new to learn and the content shows that a lot of thinking and effort went in the making of the issue. On another note, I read a small piece on Page 24 of the November issue about a new Digital Library Project of UNESCO. I was wondering if you would have more information or if you could connect me with the concerned person at UNESCO. Digitizing libraries is something our rural BPOs have skills and experience for. Saloni Malhotra CEO, DesiCrew Solutions Pvt Ltd, Chennai saloni@desicrew.in Due to the courtesy of some friend I regularly receive your magazine and read it end to end as this is the most definitive journal relevant to our part of the world. I make us of the articles and information in my papers and presentations. I did a report for the World Bank on the Telecenter initiative in Pakistan where I have used references for i4d journal. The last issue on ICTs in an unequal world and on Governance issues was a useful perspective from the eyes of South Asia. A suggestion: I may be able to drum up a few thoughtful writers, practitioners, technologists and people from the civil society to write for a section dedicated to updates from Pakistan. We have a lot to learn – at this time with some degree of asymmetry – from each other in the planning and implementation of appropriate technologies, business and developmental strategies. Separating hype from reality. Look forward to receiving this excellent magazine Compliments on doing a great job! Salman Ansari Pakistan salman@super.net.pk
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i4d | January 2008
n Editorial
With the overarching themes of Emerging Markets, Emerging Technologies and Emerging People, the Third Global Knowledge Conference (GK3) held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from December 10-13, 2007 became the meeting ground for the information and communications technologies community. Three key associated events, viz., i4d Film Festival, the World Electronic Media Forum, and telecentre.org’s Telecentre Leaders Forum preceded/ were held parallelly, providing further opportunity for learning, sharing and showcasing. The GKP members met; several organisation’s conducted their own business, stakeholder, and board meetings; demonstrations of innovative solutions showcased; announcements and inauguration of products and alliances held; books and publications released; etc. Putting together this current issue on GK3 is a tribute to the partnership of Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies, who are knowledge partners to the GK3 conference. As a part of the commitment to make this event the most valuable and memorable one, CSDMS engaged in the last two years, showcasing the conference, mobilising participants, highlighting the core theme, serving on the international advisory committee, and contributing its bit for the preparations for this fantastic conference. Three special thematic issues were released in 2007 on the theme of the conference. Two key objectives of GK3 were: Expand and build partnerships, and grow the global knowledge community. Both objectives were overwhelmingly fulfilled and the sense of solidarity among the participants, the renewed friendships and alliances built showed the ability of the organisers, the supporters, sponsors and most importantly, the participants to unleash new and creative energies to take forward the Global Knowledge Community to strive better for fulfilling their objectives. Walter Fust, Director General, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Switzerland, and visionary leader of the GK3, highlighted the key outcomes of the conference. “During these days we have witnessed the initiatives, youthfulness and drive of the 100 young social entrepreneurs. They showed us that investing in them leads to a great return on investment. What they need is the proper skill, access to networks, dedicated mentors and financial resources. We have to increase our efforts to provide young people with opportunities. They simply deserve it, and they are our future.” The most successful aspect of the entire conference remains the networks and the partnerships forged over the 3-day experience. A majority of the audience whole-heartedly raised their hands when asked to show whether they have fostered partnership. Many of them also concurred and stated that they had received valuable knowledge and advice given by the experts during the 3 days of talks. The CSDMS contingent came back, as did many of the over 1500 delegates, from the conference satisfied, renewed and thank the GKP and the organising committee, including all the sponsors for making it a once in a lifetime learning experience.
i4d is supported by:
We wish our readers a very happy new year as we renew our commitment to bring the best of global ICT4D experiences, theories and methodologies for research.
Ravi Gupta Ravi.Gupta@csdms.in December 2007 | www.i4donline.net
n OVERVIEW
Experiencing the global knowledge ‘K
‘nowledge is Power-Experience it!’, was the key theme of the GK3 conference held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from December 11 to December 13, 2007. More than 2000 global visionaries, innovators, practitioners and policy-makers were gathered in a threeday conference to share their knowledge and build partnerships on a platform created by and for stakeholders from every sector: private companies, governments, international institutions and civil society groups. With the outcomes of the Second Global Knowledge Conference (GKII), held in Malaysia from March 7-10, 2000, the Third Global Knowledge Conference (GK3) was based on three cross-cutting themes, called Emerging People, Emerging Markets and Emerging Technologies. The GK3 conference had expert panels with interactive debates about the latest trends, innovations and future perspectives. Apart from these cross-cutting themes, there were more than 20 hands-on workshops and an array of parallel and associated events took place before, during, and after the conference. The GK3 conference was inaugurated by Yang Amat Berhormat Dato Sri Najib Tun Razak, Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia on December 11, 2007. Rinalia Abdul Rahim, Executive Director, Global Knowledge Partnership and Chair of the GK3 Working Committee, Walter Fust, Chair of the Executive Committee, Global Knowledge Partnership and DirectorGeneral, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Minister of Education, UAE were other panelists during the opening ceremony of the conference. While sharing her moments at the Opening Ceremony of the conference, Rinalia Abdul Rahim st have found new
GK3 Conference Opening Ceremony, from the left: Walter Fust, Chair of the Executive Committee, Global Knowledge Partnership and Director-General, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation; Yang Amat Berhormat Dato’ Sri Najib Tun Razak, Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia and Rinalia Abdul Rahim, Executive Director, Global Knowledge Partnership and Chair of the GK3 Working Committee
partners and initiatives, I think that gives us encouragement to move forward.”
Day 1 – December 11, 2007 After the inauguration of the conference, the Day 1 started with the plenary session called Emerging Markets (EM): Is There a Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid? with the following parallel sessions: • ET1: ICT for a Multilingual Knowledge Society • EM1: Electronic Banking with the Poor: Emerging Technologies for Financial Inclusion • SS1: Financing Change in ICT4D: Innovative and Emerging Social Investors and Donors • EM2: Supporting ICT Innovators Creating an Ecosystem for Innovation
• • • • • • •
and Entrepreneurship: From Policy to Reality EP1: Engendering the Knowledge So c i e t y : Me a s u r i n g Wo m e n’s Participation EP2: Creating Opportunity: Basic IT Skills as a Springboard to Jobs EP3: Making Community-Driven Networks a Reality EM4: Connecting the Diaspora: Migration as an Opportunity SS2: The Future of Knowledge Management and Web 2.0-Visions and Challenges EP4: Linking Education - Experiences with National ICT Programmes for Education ET4: Making Communities Disaster Resilient i4d | January 2008
At the end of the Day 1, there was an exciting programme on the Young Social Entrepreneurs’ Forum. The sessions were interactive and made use of innovative formats to cover different aspects related to Financing [F], Mentoring [M], Networking [N] and Knowledge [K] – 4 key areas in which young social entrepreneurs need support in. Along with the 150 participants of the Young Social Entrepreneurs’ Forum, there was an unique and interesting session called Idea Factory: IdeaCity with participants of Creative Team, organised by the Swiss-based innovation company IdeaFactory BrainStore. The goal of this IdeaProduction process was to make ‘A world of entrepreneurs - 20 ideas to make it happen by 2020’. The process followed nine key steps and many of these steps actively involve different groups of GK3 participants. The BrainStore management team developed thousands of inspirations through ingenious inspiration techniques which harnessed viewpoints from participants. Day 1 ended up with the Stockholm Challenge - GKP Awards 2007, African Information Society Initiative (AISI) - GKP Media Awards 2007 and Gala Dinner. The Stockholm Challenge - GKP Awards 2007 were distributed in four ICT4D categories:Culture, Economic development, Education, Public administration On the same day, the winners of the African Information Society Initiative (AISI)-GKP Media Awards 2007 were also announced at the GK3 Gala Dinner party. The Awards were organised by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD). The Awards were of different categories of media; including Print Category, Radio Category, TV/Video Category and Multimedia/Web Media Category.
AISI GKP Media Awardees 2007 • • • • • • • •
Print Category: Bamuturaki Musinguzi, Daily Monitor Newspaper, Uganda Radio Category: Chabi Godefroy Macaire, Office de Radiodifussion et Television du Benin (ORTB), Benin TV/Video Category: Bayero Agabi, Africa Independent Television, Nigeria Multimedia/Web Media Category: Emily Nyarko, TV3 Network, Ghana AISI-GKP Media Award for Reporting on ICT Research and Innovation, supported by IDRC: Evelyn Tagbo, Businessday, Nigeria AISI-GKP Media Award for Reporting on ICT Policy, supported by IDRC: Adetokunbo Abiola, The Hope Newspaper, Nigeria AISI-GKP Media Award for Reporting on Local Content Applications, supported by IICD: Haytham Ahmed Abd El-Wahab Dardeer, Al Mal Newspaper, Egypt AISI-GKP Media Award for Reporting on Local Content, supported by IICD: John Mireny, The Guardian, Tanzania
January 2008 | www.i4donline.net
Winners of the African Information Society Initiative (AISI)-GKP Media Awards 2007
Day 2 – December 12, 2007 Prof. M.S. Swaminathan, Founder and Chairman of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, also known as the ‘Father of the Green Revolution’ opened with the ‘Emerging People Plenary on New Jobs and Employment Opportunities’. There were other parallel sessions which were held on the second day: • EP5: Pushing the Envelope: New Media, Citizens Journalism, Human Rights and Development • EP6: Creating a New Strategy for Gender in the Information Society: Empowering Women in ICTs • EP7: Knowledge Transfer for Development - Approaches to Community Empowerment and Future Strategies • EM5: Partnerships, Networks and Telecentre 2.0 • EM7: Emerging Knowledge Opportunities (The Progress of ICTs in the Asia-Pacific and other parts of the World) • ET9: Transforming Publishing Practices to Enhance Access to Knowledge for Development • EP9: India as a Trend Setter for Successful Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships • EM8: Social Outsourcing and Fair Trade in IT • EP10: BBC World Debate - The Future of Learning: Appropriate Technology • EM9: ICT From Village to Country and Country to Globe • ET7: The Future of Access • SS3: The Future of Innovation - A Powerful Driver of Economic and Social Development • SS4: Volunteerism in the Digital Age Started with the cross-cutting Emerging People Plenary session, the Day 2 was full of other interesting and exciting sessions like ‘India as Trend Setter for Successful Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships’, ‘e-Agriculture-Continuing Dialogue to Action’ and ‘Visions of the Future’. The session, ‘India as Trend Setter for Successful Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships’ was based on the concept of ‘Think Globally, Act Locally’. The session called ‘eAgriculture-Continuing Dialogue to Action’ was talking about the unique factors related to empower agriculture development and food security with the use of Information Communication and other associated Technologies. On the Day 2, the magazine on telecentres wad launched which is produced by the Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS), in partnership with telecentre.org, a global community of people and organisations committed to increasing the social and economic impact of grassroots telecentres. The first issue of the magazine
•
ET13: Hello Regulator? Regulatory Authorities’ Information and Communication Practices • SS6: Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships in E d u c a t i o n : A St e p Forward • E M 1 2 : Op e n Fo r Business: The Emerging Collaboration Economy The Day 3 was closed with the presentation of IdeaFactory - ‘A World of Entrepreneurs: 20 ideas to make it happen by 2020’ and closing remarks by Walter Fust and Rinalia Abdul From the left: Radhika Lal, Policy Advisor, ICTs for Poverty Reduction, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); Prof Rahim. Apart from the MS Swaminathan, Founder and Chairman, M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation; Asish Garg, Programme Coordinator, GeSCI conference, the ‘market India; Basheerhamad Shadrach, Senior Program Officer, International Development Research Centre; Partha Sarker, Ravi Gupta, of opportunities’ was Executive Director, Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS) the live exhibition hub which provided networking, launching brings awareness about telecentres, serving a platform for and showcasing opportunities for many partners. The GK3 advocacy and the development of a stronger telecentre ecosystem. conference was concluded with following key points: An inspiring and interactive IdeaExhibition was opened for all • Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is participants on the second day. Participants were urged to attend to not only important for early age education but also for view the material, experience the interactivity as well as contribute lifelong learning. their valuable ideas. The Day 2 closed with the parallel session • A globalising world economy is producing new flows called Hakuna Matata: A Social Entrepreneurs’ Night. It witnessed of migration. ICTs are playing pivotal role in helping an interaction with Malaysian social entrepreneurs and youths. migrants to be stay connected with their countries and origin. Day 3 – December 13, 2007 • It is expected, more than 5 billion people would be able The Day 3 started with the introduction of the Emerging to access Internet by the end of 2015. This will create Technologies Plenary session culled by the Vice President & enormous market opportunities for hardware supplies and Chief Internet Evangelist of Google Inc., Vint Cerf. The session software services. It will also create huge numbers of new addressing the future of Internet and the sustainability of Internet jobs and opportunities. architecture in the increasing demand of bandwidth was entitled • ICTs will reduce the cost of transaction for doing business The Future of the Internet: Opportunities and Risks. and also provide new business services, local, regional and The other parallel sessions are as follows: global levels and create new markets. • ET10: Health Outcomes: The Role of ICT Applications, • There is also need to address the dangers of misuse of Standards and Practices ICTs as well as to solve the issues of cyberzzzwaste. Cyber • EP15: e-Agriculture - Continuing Dialogue to Action security and cyber crime are themes that deserve special • SS5: High Level Panel on ICT Policy and Knowledge attention. n Societies Summarised by Ritu Srivastava, ritu@csdms.inz • EP16: Bringing a New Generation on Board More information is available this issue of i4d and in: • ET11: Exploring the Future of E-Government: Knowledge Engineering for Results http://www.gkpeventsonthefuture.org/GK3/dsp_page.cfm?pageid=670#epp • YSEF3: Young Social Entrepreneurs Pitch for Scale-up http://www.gkpeventsonthefuture.org/GK3/dsp_page.cfm?pageid=582 Funding http://www.gkpeventsonthefuture.org/GK3/dsp_page. cfm?pageid=503 • ET12: Building a Cybersafety Partnership • EM11: Rural Societies, Technologies and Languages in Africa Photo Credits: Global Knowledge Partnership / Sasa Kralj
i4d | January 2008
ICT4D in motion Introduction The i4d Film Festival first came into being during the annual ICT4D event of Centre for Science Development and Media Studies (CSDMS) at New Delhi in the month of August 2007. Over the last 10 years, CSDMS has been delving in the online and offline media through its magazines, portals and conferences. In the year 2007, it has decided to add a new dimension to its scope of work and explored the visual medium through the first i4d Film Festival held on 3rd August 2007. The film festival was an enormous success, bringing together over 20 films on a single day. The film makers ranged students from a local school in Uttar Pradesh, India to street children from the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. GK3 is the largest ICT4D event in the world bringing together over 1500 delegates from across the world. The second film festival was held along with GK3 at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on the 9th and 10th of December 2007. The event was supported by GeSCI and IDRC. The film festivals are a part of the larger Community Media initiative of CSDMS. The second i4d Film Festival expanded the horizons of the initiative. Along with the screening of over 30 excellent films, it also hosted the first capacity building effort – Participatory Video Training – of this initiative.
Inauguration The event was inaugurated by Anbalagan K, Under Secretary, International Relations Division, Ministry of Energy, Water and Communications, Malaysia. The inaugural panel also hosted Walter Fust, Director-General, SDC; Abdul Waheed Khan, Assistant Director-General, UNESCO; Ashish Garg, Country Coordinator – India, GeSCI; Michael Clarke, Director, ICT4D, IDRC; and MP Narayanan, President, CSDMS. The panel discussed the various Millennium Development Goals
i4d film festival audience
10
i4d | January 2008
i4d Film Festival inaugural panel (from left): Michael Clarke (IDRC), Ashish Garg (GeSCI), Abdul Waheed Khan (UNESCO), K Anbalagan (Ministry of Energy, Water and Communications, Malaysia), Walter Fust (SDC), and M P Narayanan (CSDMS)
from their organisational perspectives. The discussions also took account of how the visual medium can contribute to development and communication.
Panel discussion – bottom up approach On the afternoon of the 9th, a session on bottom up approach was held– Participatory video lending a voice to the voiceless. The session was moderated by Mirta Lourenco, Chief of Section, Media Capacity - Building, Communication Development, UNESCO. The panellists represented diverse backgrounds in media and communication. They consisted of – Heather Ford, Executive Director, iCommons; Rana Ghose, PhD Scholar, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex; Denis Jaromil Rojo, Open Source Developer, Dyne.org Foundation; Sajan Venniyoor, Prasar Bharati; and Upendra Prasad Aryal, Equal Access Nepal. The session examined the opportunities and challenges of the use
Upendra Prasad Aryal , Rana Ghose, Denis Jaromil Rojo, Mirta Lourenco, and Sajan Venniyoor, panelists listen to Heather Ford’s presentation January 2008 | www.i4donline.net
of the visual medium as a tool for development. Video as a tool can be an empowering tool not only to communicate information to the masses but also to provide a voice to the unheard. New developments in Internet technology allows for such content to be made available globally, easily. However, this content faces regulatory, accessibility and IPR challenges. The session has experts from the field of IPR (Heather Ford), open source (Denis Jaromil Rojo), grassroots application of participatory video (Rana Ghose), community radio (Upendra Prasad Aryal) and broadcast (Sajan Veniyoor). Over the two days, over 30 films were screened.
Participatory video training Profile of trainers The capacity building session on participatory video had 22 participants. The trainers – Denis Jaromil Rojo and Rana Ghose were supported by IDRC. Denis Jaromil Rojo is the author of various free software applications (GNU/Linux/BSD), known artist in the emerging fields of net-art and software-art, as well as activist for various social concerns and radical way of life. Being online since 1991 (BBS CyberNet 65:1500/3.13), he co-founded in 1994 the Italian non-profit association Metro Olografix for the diffusion of telematic cultures, then later migrated out of Italy and gave birth to the Dyne.org software foundry (now legally registered as an European Foundation in Amsterdam). He follows the ideal of creating FOSS software for the freedom of expression, to let people communicate free from capitalist speculations and expensive hardware. Since 3 years he is employed by the Netherlands Media Art Institute, active on Open Source Research & Development. Rana Ghose is currently pursuing doctoral research at the Institute for Development Studies in Brighton, England. Prior to this, he had spent two years freelancing as a filmmaker, video trainer, and photographer for IDRC in a variety of countries, and prior to that, he was involved in full time academic research, first as a graduate student in economics and then as an intern with IDRC. His research interests
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address genetically modified crops in India and the regulation that surrounds their management, while his experience over the past two years has convinced him of the power of using video as a participatory research tool. Objectives The objectives of the training seminar were as follows: • To provide participants with a one day intensive training session of how to shoot, script, and edit a story using digital video as the medium. • In order to make this session effective and sustainable in terms of skills being applied in the future, participants were asked to bring a laptop each and a device capable of capturing video (i.e; a MiniDV camera or a digital still camera capable of capturing video). The one-day session aimed to facilitate a process whereby participants would be able to capture video from the device onto their computers and edit a short twominute piece, scripted and storyboarded by participants, by the end of the day. • To apply these skills via shooting and editing a scripted story based on GK3 over the three days of the conference. • After the one-day intensive session, participants were expected to shoot and edit a three-minute piece on a theme of their choice over the course of GK3. To edit, a space was provided in the GK3 venue, the Interactivity Support Desk, to allow participants to drop in and edit their content on either their own laptops or the six laptops that were provided to all GK3 participants as a component of the Desk.
Video training workshop at i4d film festival with trainers Rana Ghosh and Denis Jaromil Rojo
List of 32 films screened in the i4d Film Festival 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. 29. 30. 31. 32.
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The Quickest Way Out of Poverty After the Wave Africa Online Beyond Boundaries Building Livelihoods in a Conflict Zone using ICTs Compassionate Data Connecting Islands Computing in Cambodia Dragon Online Eradicating Digital Poverty in the State of Perak From the Global Village to the Multi-Service Village From the Dusk to Dawn Glue Made Me a Ghost Hot off the Press!/Taza Khabar Programme Schedule I am Shakti ICT Harvest: a Konkan Story IKON-When Teleradiology Shortens Distances Integrating Technologies to Ensure Fair Trade Making ICT Work for the Poor Mayfield School Meewala Moving Mountains No Shit, Please Password: Women Right to Food/Ann Ka Adhikar Right to Rural Livelihood Information/Abolombon Rural Internet Center Technology based Agri “Culture” Transforming Communities through ICTs Voices of Kutch/Kutch Lok ji Vani Weaving Locally, Trading Globally
Outcomes While there were more participants than initially expected (22 in total), and those participants were all capable of creating their own content as per the programme of the first day (December 10), the main challenge faced by the trainers was ensuring that participants undertook the three day applied component at GK3 (December 11-13) due to the busy nature of the GK3 programme.
Future plans The film festival will evolve into a comprehensive Community Multimedia Initiative. Through our online and offline activities we are hoping to expand the reaches of our festival. We hope to see a wider participation in the coming events. i4d magazine is going to publish theoretical content on the progress and application of citizen’s media across the globe. The next film festival is going to held along with the annual ICT4D event of CSDMS – eINDIA2008. We are also developing a portal which will act as the knowledge base for all community. Content from our magazines, festivals and blogs and news items will constitute this portal. n Sulakshana Bhattacharya, sulakshana@csdms.in
Further information about the films and ways to get involved can be obtained from: www.i4donline.net/filmfestival www.i4dtv.org
i4d | January 2008
An emerging digital India
India as a Trendsetter: From left to right: Radhika Lal, M S Swaminathan, Ashish Garg, Basheerhamad Shadrach and Ravi Gupta
Session overview Multi-Stakeholder Partnership (MSPs) which engages active stakeholders in development, especially in the applications of ICT for Development, is emerging as an important model of working, and replacing the much understood public-private partnership model. The obvious question following this trend would be ‘Can MSPs deliver and where does the value of MSPs go?’ This workshop attempted to show how MSPs can achieve several benefits including facilitating a conducive environment for monitoring and evaluation, ensuring the mandate of good governance and citizen’s participation, and further democratic principles of equitable and sustainable development, while addressing social, cultural and economic inequities. Session objectives The Panel has showcased India as a trendsetter in the concept of ‘Glocalisation’ i.e. ‘Think Globally, Act Locally’. Glocalisation, in the Indian setting, is grounded in valuing local communities, empowering them and enabling them to be catalysts for positive social changes in areas which affect them directly. This workshop has addressed the following key questions: • What is the key learning and value of multi-stakeholder partnerships in linking technologies, resources and services for development? January 2008 | www.i4donline.net
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How can we replicate the learning and leverage on uniqueness and commonalities across communities to build a coherent network of practitioners for spreading benefits of the MSP model? How can we design ICT4D programmes that address marginalised communities, gender sensitive and which accommodate existing cultural ethos? How does networking and knowledge sharing enable communities of practitioners to build a network for continuous ‘peer-to-peer’ learning?
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The panel participants Moderator:
Radhika Lal, Policy Advisor, ICTs for Poverty Reduction, United Nations Development Programme, New York, USA Session Lead: Ravi Gupta, Jayalakshmi Chittoor, CSDMS, Noida, India
Panellists: • Prof M S Swaminathan, Founder and Chairman, M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai, India • Shri R Chandrashekhar, Additional Secretary, Department of IT, Government of India, New Delhi, India (was unable to attend) • Ms Ashish Garg, Programme Coordinator, GeSCI India, New Delhi, India • Dr Basheerhamad Shadrach, Senior Programme Officer, International Development Research Centre and Asia Programme Lead, telecentre.org, New Delhi, India • Dr Ravi Gupta, Executive Director, Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS), Noida, India
Session proceedings Radhika Lal, Policy Advisor, UNDP (Moderator) Why do you think India is a trendsetter? What are the characteristics that make Indian leaders in ICT and innovation? What type of conditions prevails for successful and sustainable partnerships and what are the lessons from India? Prof. MS Swaminathan, Chairman, MSSRF Partnerships must be sustained over a period time and exchange of interests and ideas in the partnerships and should be based on common interest. India has all the elements to be called a trendsetter for MSPs. Our country has been fortunate to have continued strong political commitment towards investing and building technology-sciencedevelopment, and taken step towards knowledge dissemination. ICT is now providing applications-based solutions in almost all the development sectors. Ashish Garg, Programme Co-ordinator-India, GeSCI In India, the school system is the second largest to China in the world. An enabling policy and a regulatory environment is key in providing access to basic ICT infrastructure, accelerated development of basic IT skills, content development, capacity building and other areas o f a p p l i c a t i o n . A s w e m ov e a h e a d
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towards the digital age, the entrepreneurial spirit of Indians has made a paradigm shift towards integrating ICT to school education. GeSCI has global experience in assisting countries to build a ICT for education policy framework. We encourage MSPs mechanism for leveraging achievement of educational goals and collectively to build a participatory process for ICTs in school education policy. The partnerships have been instrumental to develop guidelines and standards, also in monitoring and evaluation tools for ICT in education. Basheerhamad Shadrach, Senior Programme Officer, IDRC India is known for IT revolutions. The need of the hour is to leverage the benefits of technology to the rural community in the creation of jobs, making informed decisions, and improve and upgrade traditional practices. Knowledge should serve as a means to empower people, upgrade their skills and help them to take right decisions at the right time by creating livelihood opportunities to bring them out of the poverty trap. Ravi Gupta, Executive Director, CSDMS There are numerous projects, programmes, experiments, initiatives and innovations across the country, and the ICT community and practices continue to expand with the technology landscape. Today, there is a need for a knowledge platform where ICT and its domain applications can come together and learn from each other. ‘i4d Magazine’ is providing such a conducive platform for ‘knowledge- sharing’ and ‘knowledge-building’. i4d | January 2008
Interactive session Radhika Lal: Mission 2007 Alliance, as an unusual and innovative exercise for mass mobilisation of partnerships with a framework of bottoms-up approach and with up-scaling facility and focus ensures that IT does not remain with the elite alone and the industry reaches the villages. What are the components of the alliance that allows it to achieve to the vision of reaching villages and, allow participation of government and stakeholders? MS Swaminathan: A movement is largely directed by the people themselves. The principle is to develop a technology that will help people to improve their quality of life and income. Technology does not go to the field unless there is a symphony in the approach with the needs and requirements of the end-users. The centres setup under the Mission 2007 are demand-driven, location-specific and dynamic in providing information services, for effective adoption of technology. Radhika Lal: Usually IT in education policy is treated as topdown approach focussed on infrastructure needs of the schools. Could you highlight the framework and features of the end-to-end holistic approach adopted by GeSCI in India for development of the National Policy on ICT in school education? Ashish Garg: GeSCI’s mandate is to collaborate with Ministries of Education of the partnering countries for capacity-building and be supportive in building a holistic National ICT policy in education. The adopted approach is end-to-end, weaving the individual components such as infrastructure, content development, and teacher training twined as a part of a larger policy framework. The approach aims to build partnerships with major stakeholders in the country for a participatory and inclusive policy building process. Radhika Lal: Elaborate on the Evergreen Revolution and the vision of digital transformation of the rural areas? Basheerhamad Shadrach: Evergreen revolution is a vision that lays importance on knowledge as a means for enhancing productivity. India is setting a trend in connectivity solutions and is committed to a broadband policy and low tariffs. This is followed by supply of relevant content to people. Rural BPOs are a good opportunity for urban sector to extend services to rural sector, also by transferring the services of rural sector to the urban sector. In the years to come, India will lead the world rural BPO revolution. The third pillar is the capacity building to transform mission to a reality. The government is using its satellite resource systems, in addition to multimedia and has introduced the interactive and virtual classrooms. India is also setting the trend in connecting Africa through the e-Africa initiative. The project aims to connect 53 universities with the Indian institutions in providing distance learning and digitised learning. January 2008 | www.i4donline.net
The fourth C is communication management and India is a trendsetter in creating opportunities to learn about the ways and means to transact knowledge and promote communications process in rural areas. The fifth C is the co-ordination for knowledge. Co-ordination is very important based on demand-driven and need-based approach. India is setting the trend for a new form of revolution in developing rural entrepreneurship, and rural knowledge intermediary professions as torch bearers and change-makers in the society. The formula is very attractive with the idea of collation of concerns, by bringing all the actors together in MSPs, as a network of people for a common goal. And finally, India is also a trendsetter in building conducive and people-friendly policies to enhance the physical knowledge infrastructure framework across the country. The most challenging task is to guide the policy and
The centres set-up under the Mission 2007 are demand-driven, locationspecific and dynamic in providing information services, for effective adoption of technology. A movement is largely directed by the people themselves. The principle is to develop a technology that will help people to improve their quality of life and income. Prof M S Swaminathan
its approach towards people-centric, providing knowledge and connectivity to the people. Radhika Lal: One of the most valuable contribution of CSDMS has been in the direction of documentation of new ideas and innovations across the country. What is your experience when looking at the magazines and other related events organised by your organisation while strengthening the mechanism of knowledge sharing for upscaling the pilots? Ravi Gupta: Government should be open to adoption of new trends and innovations, especially, the initiatives at grassroots level. The policy landscape has changed over the years, and is more consultative and participatory. MSPs are now setting trends as models of collaboration in various development sectors such as telecentres, rural banking, hospitals, education etc, that were not existing a few years back. We at CSDMS envision to provide a platform for knowledge on ICT and applied domains through our websites and publications. In the knowledge sharing map and peer-to-peer learning, we have to realise that there is a distinct need for building communities of practice in thematic areas. n Rachita Jha, rachita@csdms.in
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A vibrant movement takes centre stage Overview The telecentre movement has grown rapidly since its emergence in the mid-1980s — fueled by the power of its ideas, values, and relevance. The scale and magnitude of this growth was apparent to all at the Global Knowledge Partnership’s GK3 conference, which took place from December 11 to 13, 2007, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Conference participants were able to feel the movement’s energy and momentum — and learn how telecentres are working to advance social and economic development, particularly in poor, marginalised, and underserved communities. Over the last two years, the telecentre movement has been nurtured, strengthened, and championed by the telecentre. org community, which brings together national telecentre networks, activists, content and service providers, governments, and organisations that fund telecentre initiatives. telecentre.org emerged from a grassroots call for more attention and resources to be dedicated to the resources that telecentres need to succeed: locally relevant content and services; support, learning, and knowledge-sharing opportunities; and networks that help telecentre activists connect to each other. In 2005, a consortium of organisations, each with a long history of supporting telecentres — Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Microsoft, and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) — responded to this call, collectively investing $CAD21 million and creating a multi-stakeholder partnership dedicated to supporting telecentres worldwide. GK3 was a major milestone for telecentre.org. Two days before the main event, on December 9 and 10, telecentre.org hosted the Telecentre Leaders Forum (TLF), a participatory gathering that created deeper relationships among community members; provided an opportunity to share skills, experiences, and strategies; and resulted in the development of a community charter outlining shared values and priorities for the future. Then, within the main GK3 programme, telecentre.org organised a series of workshops and panels that showcased innovative approaches and successful programmes, highlighted gaps and implementation challenges, and provided learning opportunities through peer assists, case studies, and research presentations. But the movement’s vitality was most tangible in the telecentre.org village — a huge, lively space within the exhibition hall featuring seven demonstration telecentres, a community multimedia centre, a presentation stage, and a lounge filled with people chatting, using public computers, and browsing posters, brochures, and publications from telecentres around the world. The village was special because it showed what 16
a telecentre is and what it can achieve. It was itself a telecentre — a social space where people can connect, share, learn, work, and together find ways to create a better future.
Telecentre Leaders Forum (9-10 December 2007) The Telecentre Leaders Forum was based on participatory and bottom-up approach. In the first session, the participants were invited to share their ideas and topics that they wanted to be discussed. Participants used sticky papers to paste their ideas on the wall. Over 300 items and ideas went up on the wall, reflecting the confidence and expectation of the participants. The ideas were then classified under thirteen categories ranging from the role of telecentre.org in the movement to sustainability, certification, training, etc. The second interesting session was ‘Spectrogram’, in which the facilitators asked the participants to rate ‘Whether ten years from now, will telecentre be required to serve the community?’ About 90 percent of the participants believed that communities they serve need telecentres for next decade. The third session was called as ‘Speedgeeks’. This was a showcase of some interesting projects that telecentre.org supported or was involved with. Each participant could spend some time to go round these projects and to learn more about the projects. These projects are: Telecentre Helpdesk- Afrilinks in Mali, Telecentre Times- Ugabytes in Uganda, Telecentre Academy by PhilCeCnet in Philippines, Telecentre Network - BTN in Bangladesh, Online Knowledge Sharing - CEPES in Peru, Project Harmony in Russia, Sustainability First by Sarvodaya in Sri Lanka, Social Appropriation of Telecentres by Colnodo and COMPARTEL, Sustainability in Brazilian Telecentre Network, Social Entrepreneurship in Malaysia, Multi-stakeholder partnership of Mission 2007 in India, Convergence of Community Radio and Telecentres in Nepal. This session helped the participants to better understand the various projects telecentre.org involved, within a short span of time. It also enabled the participants to learn and understand the various activities of the individual partners. In the final session of the day one, the participants were invited to join anyone of the seven thematic brainstorming sessions namely, Multi Stakeholder Partnership, Social Enterprise Model, Financial Sustainability, Knowledge Sharing, National Networks, Global Network, Training and Capacity Building. All the subgroups were requested to come up with three major action ideas in their areas. At the end of the session, all the sub-groups leaders presented their brainstorming results. i4d | January 2008
On the second day, an enriching and stimulating session on five thematic areas of telecentre.org was planed covering the following themes: Networks, Sustainability, Research: Impact Initiative, Training, and Knowledge Sharing. The discussion enabled the participants to know what has been achieved so far and how else the participants could get involved. The following guiding questions were asked: What have we achieved? Where are we going? What should be next? How else can you get involved and what are your suggestions? The participants actively engaged themselves in all the thematic discussions and provided valuable insights and realised new opportunities to work with telecentre.org. This session was followed by a brainstorming session based on the discussion of the first day and on the categorisation of main ideas pasted on the wall, the participants selected a number of areas that they think telecentre.org should focus in the coming days. Participants prepared a list of action items for the next few days. These areas include Certification, Peer to Peer Learning, Support and Capacity Building of Network Leaders, Content and Services, Volunteer Exchange Programme, Training Materials Library, Cookbook for National Telecentres Network and Sustainability Research Scope. In order to understand the key values that binds the global telecentre community, the participants were asked to paste their ideas on the wall and these ideas were once again regrouped. The key values identified are: creating new opportunities, capacity building, empower community leaders, inclusion, use of technology, evaluation and training, networks, multi stakeholder partnerships, knowledge and content. The key highlight of TLF was the final session where the lead representatives of the social investors (Microsoft, IDRC and SDC) of telecentre.org programme were present. All the seven individual groups showed the outcome of the two-day deliberations followed by a brief interaction with the social investors. The two-day event had come to an end with concluding remarks from Florencio Ceballos, who heads the telecentre.org head office in Canada. The participants left the hall with more solutions, enthusiasm and optimism. It gave them a new direction to work towards. Overall, TLF is another milestone in the global telecentre movement.
telecentre.org village at GK3 The telecentre.org village was one of the key highlights at the third Global Knowledge Conference. It displayed a variety of telecentre models, programmes and technologies. Created for the 3rd Global Knowledge Conference in Kuala Lumpur on the 11-13th December 2007, the telecentre.org village operated from the GK3 Exhibition Hall. The telecentre.org village was a lively place for everyone at GK3 who cares about telecentres and public access computing. It acted as both an exhibit of different telecentre models and a socially oriented space — a place to play, relax, regroup, and network, launch and announce new initiatives and collaborations. One could easily locate the telecentre.org hub, an informal lounge where visitors could surf the net, watch videos, browse materials, and meet grassroots telecentre leaders and activists. On one side of the wall, a global map depicting the various partners January 2008 | www.i4donline.net
of telecentre.org was displayed and the other side, the partners showcased their work and activities. On all the three days, the lounge was full and lively and it resulted in various developments in the global telecentre movement. The knowledge sharing team of telecentre.org located at different parts of the globe played a key role in keeping the lounge lively and active Seven demonstration telecentres highlighting a range of models — from multi-stakeholder to government and private sector to grassroots telecentres — and the programmes, technology, and content and services they deliver to communities worldwide were shown. The participants were Alcatel, Grameen Phone, IDRC, Intel, Microsoft, Mission 2007, and One Roof. They showcased their individual models and their activities. A demonstration stage was set up for the launch of telecentre. org and its partner publications like ‘telecentre magazine’ and ‘Telecentre Times in Arabic and French’. It also acted as a platform for several telecentre.org partners and others to conduct workshops, case studies, and demos of new telecentre technologies. Alongside was the UNESCO hub, with a working radio station using “radio-in-a-box” technology to broadcast coverage of GK3 (with help from the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union) had shown their work in the domain. Overall, the telecentre.org village acted as a knowledge hub and where the telecentre leaders learned tips and techniques by seeing each other’s models, general GK3 audience gained an understanding of telecentres and learned different telecentre models. telecentre.org partners strengthened their community and accessed new partnerships, corporate partners, and emerging markets groups had ready access to grassroots telecentre leaders, and people at GK3 and around the world had access to radio and podcast coverage of event. The telecentre.org village was cosponsored by the Global Knowledge Partnership and telecentre. org, a collaborative initiative supported by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Microsoft Corporation, and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.
Telecentre related workshops and panel discussions organised by telecentre.org Workshop on Sustainability First: Making Telecentres Work On 11th December 2007, the opening day of the GK3, telecentre. org organised the Sustainability First: Making Telecentres Work panel discussion. The session aimed to understand the key challenges in making telecentres sustainable and find out how are these models different from past telecentres. Are these new
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The telecentre leaders forum members after a fruitful workshop
approaches really a long-term solution? Will they create a vibrant information ecosystems and market at the base of the pyramid? This panel looked into the ‘sustainability question’ by looking at a combination of research and case studies from the field, drawn from Asia, Latin America, Africa and Europe. The session was moderated by Mark Surman, Former Director, telecentre.org, and the panelists were: A.M.M. Yahya, Director, Grameen Phone, Bangladesh, Harsha Liyanage, Director, Fusion – Sarvodaya, Karishma Kiri, Manager, Unlimited Potential, Microsoft Corporation, Reshan Dewapura, Chief Operating Officer, ICT Agency of Sri Lanka, Miguel Raimilla, Vice President, One Roof, Sulah Nduala, Executive Director, Ugabytes (NESsT Process). Panel Discussion on Partnerships, Networks and Telecentre 2.0 On 12th December, a panel discussion on ‘Partnerships, Networks and Telecentre 2.0’ took place. As the telecentre movement shifts its focus from access to a new generation of value-added rural services, there is a deeper emphasis on building partnerships across sectors. It is becoming commonplace to see global corporations, international funders, national governments and grassroots organisations collaborating on a daily basis. This panel drew on four successful partnership stories that demonstrate different collaborative models – telecentre.org, red. es in Spain, Mission 2007 in India, and the TechSoup product donations programme. The session was moderated by Mark Surman, Former Director, telecentre.org and the panellists included: Akhtar Badshah, Senior Director, Global Community Affairs, Microsoft Corporation, Marc Botella, Director, Fundación Esplai, Rebecca Masisak, Co-Chief Executive Officer, TechSoup/ 18
TechSoup Global, Basheerhamad Shadrach, Senior Programme Officer, telecentre.org. Workshop on telecentre.org Academy: Certifying Grassroots Telecentre Workers On 13th December, telecentre.org conducted a workshop on ‘telecentre.org Academy: Certifying Grassroots Telecentre Workers’. The session was conducted in two parts, with the first one involving speed geeking to understand telecentre operators’ training initiatives across the globe. Shikha Shreshtha from Bellanet, Nepal moderated the first session of the workshop. In this session, a panel of telecentre.org partners showcased their approaches to sustaining their academies in India, the Philippines and Colombia, the training efforts of Ugabytes, and the collaborative curriculum development work of Mission 2007 partners. The second half was a panel discussion, moderated by Basheerhamad Shadrach. It focused on issues related to the telecentre managers’ training; its certification and the ‘telecentre academy’, which is telecentre.org’s global initiative coordinated by Shaddy. The dicussants were Karishma Kiri, Manager, Unlimited Potential, Microsoft Corporation, Jose Avando Souza Sales, Director General, Associação Telecentro de Informaçãoe Negócios, Richard Fuchs, Regional Director, Regional Office for Southeast and East Asia, International Development Research Centre and Randy Zadra, Faculty Member, MIT Programme on Developmental Entrepreneurship. n Vignesh Sornamohan (vignesh@csdms.in), Jayalakshmi Chittoor (jchittoor@csdms.in), & Christine Prefontaine (cprefontaine@telecentre.org) i4d | January 2008
The telecentre.org Community Charter
GKP South Asian Partners Collaborative Initiative
The Kuala Lumpur TLF provided an unique opportunity for people leading grassroots telecentre networks around the world to deepen relationships, share skills, and shape the future of the telecentre.org community. Most importantly, network leaders got involved in shaping, leading, and growing the telecentre.org community. Together, they explored what it means to belong to the telecentre.org community and developed a concrete vision that will guide this community into the future. The outcome of this was the creation of the telecentre.org Community Charter, a document that reaffirms the role of telecentres in economic and social development, clarifies shared values, and defines priorities for strengthening and expanding the community. We, the participants of the Telecentre Leaders Forum (TLF) at GK3 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, believe telecentres can play a catalytic role in helping poor, marginalised and underserved communities make use of ICTs to fulfill their full potential, and recognize the vital role of telecentre networks in helping the people who work in telecentres solve their challenges, share experiences and resources, and support each other. It being understood that a telecentre is a public place where people can access computers, the Internet, and other digital technologies that enable people to gather information, create, learn, and communicate with others while they develop essential 21st-century digital skills. We assert that strengthening, deepening and intensifying on-going relationships amongst telecentre networks and support partners through a vibrant, sustainable telecentre.org community is critical to enhancing the social and economic impacts of telecentres around the world. We commit to upholding the following values as the foundation of the telecentre.org community • A passion to help empower the poor, marginalised and underserved utilize technologies to assist in improving their lives • Openness to sharing experiences, information and knowledge • Transparency • Inclusiveness • Technology neutrality • Innovation • Collaboration • Equity • Continuous learning • Localisation and local content creation We identify the following as priorities for strengthening and expanding the telecentre community: • Strengthen and expand telecentre networks • Strengthen the capacity of telecentre managers • Support telecentre sustainability • Promote and support research and advocacy around telecentres • Intensify knowledge sharing Embracing these shared values, we encourage other like-minded people and organisations to join our community.
D.Net and other GKP South Asia partners jointly launched ‘Towards Knowledge Society: A Handbook of Selected Initiatives in South Asia’ during the third global knowledge conference (GK3) at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on December 13, 2007. The first copies of the handbook were handed over to Walter Fust, Director-General, Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC), Rinalia Abdul Rahim, Executive Director, Global Knowledge Partnership, Ananya Rainha, D.Net, Ravi Gupta, Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS), Harsha Liyanage, Sarovdaya, and Shikha Shreshtha, Bellanet. This handbook is a partnership effort conceived during the Annual Meeting of GKP in Colombo, Sri Lanka in May
To join the community log on to: www.telecentre.org January 2008 | www.i4donline.net
The book launch at GK3 members closing meeting on December 13, 2007
2006. The handbook was a collaborative project coordinated by D.Net with support from Global Knowledge Partnership. CSDMS, India; Bellanet, Nepal; and Sarvodaya, Sri Lanka, were the country coordinators responsible for compiling country cases, conducting research, contributing sections of the book and publishing. The need for the handbook had arisen from the fact that South Asia is one of the most active grounds of ICT4D initiatives. In many instances, South Asia is the pioneer in innovative ideas and their realisation on the ground. The instances of successes and failures are often discussed in various seminars, workshops and other forums organised in different parts of the world, and some times power point presentations and short write-ups are also available. However, there is a severe dearth of detailed information and insights about the initiatives. The publication of this handbook is a step to meet the deficit and share selected ICT4D initiatives of South Asia among practitioners, policy makers, development partners, academicians and students. For requesting copies of the book please write to: Ananya Raihan, ananya@dnet-bangladesh.org D.Net Development Research Network 6/8 Humayun Road Block B, Mohammadpur Dhaka 1207, Bangladesh www.dnet-bangladesh.org
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Innovative exercise of documentation The ‘telecentre magazine’ was launched on December 12, 2007, at the telecentre. org Village, within the Global Knowledge Partnership’s GK3 event in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The quarterly magazine, produced by the Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS), in partnership with telecentre.org, a global community of people and organisations committed to increasing the social and economic impact of grassroots telecentres. The magazine aims to provide an indepth review and analysis of the role of public access to technology. The magazine will raise awareness about telecentres, serving a platform for advocacy and the development of a stronger telecentre ecosystem. Built on CSDMS and telecentre. From left to right: Akhtar Badshah, Michael Clarke, Ravi Gupta, Basheerhamad Shadrach, Partha Sarker org’s deep commitment to collaboration, the magazine will act as an interface between telecentre “The telecentre magazine is important because it will document leaders,technology solution providers, knowledge repositories, and analyse the rapid and exciting advances in addressing access and decision makers. It will also act as a repository of knowledge questions,” said Dr Ravi Gupta, Editor-in-Chief and Executive with various success stories, failures and lessons learned from the Director of CSDMS. “This is part of CSDMS’s commitment to field. Ultimately, this will help in sustainability and upscaling of build thematic communities of practice, which also includes the telecentres around the globe. well-received monthly i4d magazine.” he added. “The Telecentre Magazine responds to a long-standing demand from practitioners, investors, researchers, policymakers, and emerging market leaders,” said Dr Basheerhamad Shadrach, from telecentre.org, “to have a source of information and real examples of innovative uses of shared-access technologies. This magazine highlights how ordinary people solve the problems most critical to their daily needs and lives. It creates a feedback loop that can provide ideas for new and better products.” Akthar Badshah, Senior Director, Global Community Affairs, Microsoft, Michael Clarke, Director, ICT4D, IDRC and Mark Surman from telecentre.org were present during the launch of the magazine. The magazine aims to stir in disucssions and debate, but also focus on research and analysis.n You may download the complete version of the magazine here: http://www.telecentremagazine.net. You are invited to send feedback, editorial ideas, and contributions to editor@telecentremagazine.net. 20
i4d | January 2008
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Learning by doing In conversation with Jayalakshmi Chittoor (Programme Co-ordinator) and Ravi Gupta (Editor-in-Chief) i4d, CSDMS, India the curriculum through IT, student empowerment where we are bringing a far more effective learning environment for the students, and building the capacity of administrators so that they can use IT to enhance the learning environment per se. This is a way to bring digital learning in the formal environment. Digital learning in the community-based environment is all about basic IT skills. Here we partner with organisations as centres of knowledge and capacity building. To deal with kids dropping out of school, and there are lots of people – CTskills – we want to emphasise that IT skills are not stand alone training programmes but with NGO’s, work in complementarty with other skills.
Akhtar Badshah, Senior Director, Microsoft, Global Community Affairs Greater Seattle Area Please tell our readers a bit about the efforts Microsoft is making towards digital learning. Microsoft as a company is focussed on bringing the benefits of Information Technology (IT) to the underserved community around the world by supporting non-profits that are providing basic IT skills for economic and social empowerment. Operating in over 101 countries, with over 1000 non-profits, we have now supported about 33250 initiatives. Since its launch in 2003 with a five-year, US$250 million January 2008 | www.i4donline.net
commitment, the Partners in Learning programme has touched the lives of more than 80 million students, teachers, and education policymakers in 101 countries. How do we go beyond IT training? ‘Partners in Learning’ is the Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential Skills Development programme. ‘Partners in Learning’ focuses on students, teachers and policy makers servicing classes ranging from Kindergarten to Class 12. Here we are focussed on teacher development, where we are able to enhance
Are any specific skills imparted through these programmes? C o m m u n i t y Te c h n o l o g i e s S k i l l s Programme is not a placement programme. It is a programme for social and economic development. There are programmes that support solely empowerment of the marginalised communities to be able to get the basic skills that people thought were unattainable. It gives them a social profile, gives them a confidence, and mainstreams them. Globally the programme ranges from basic introduction to computers, to a variety of training, that gets people to jobs, as it is a specifically focussed programme which includes language training and provides entrepreneurial skills. It focuses on the constituency of services. We are trying to create employment potential in people. We provide a range of trainings on IT skills, life skills, and the ability to deal with formal situations. For
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example, in Gujarat, after the training in IT, women are getting a social status. In Japan, we work with a group who work with domestic abused women, these women are getting trained, so that they are able to overcome their situation. It is not just about job placement, but also about empowerment and the hope to live. Breaking gender and social barriers, providing training, and opportunities for economic empowerment: these are the range of skills that the partners have, and IT skills enable them to do their jobs better.
is another global programme that we support. It is the non-profit organisation that builds the partners. A third global partner is Net Hope, which is a relief and humanitarian organisations’ network with consortium of supporters. We will continue to partner – wherever there is a possibility. Even though we may work with a local NGO, since we are funders, it carries a weight psychologically, and otherwise. We have to work with sensitivity, and delicately decide how we implement these with different partners. For any project that we undertake to be successful, we want to make sure that the funders, the implementers, and the catalysers each understand the value of their roles. That does not mean there is no overlap of roles. We can be funders, and also catalysers, we can also bring other partners and instruments to the table. It is not just writing cheques. For the implementer as well, they are providing value added input into the other two aspects. Each one should be playing a deeper role. We are not implementers. But we support implementation, advice, and employee base. Partners in Learning in India has trained about a tenth of 2 million persons trained globally, and we have found that learning improves retention in schools.
The challenge for us is, how do we create systems through programmes that build safety nets for these individuals. The way I look at this is in the digital inclusion space, there is a particular way in which IT companies can think about it
How do we ensure sustainability of efforts? Are there any transitional mechanisms in your funding strategy? We are looking at multi-year commitments. We are clear as to when we will phase out. The phase out does not mean that we don’t play a role. More importantly, it has to be determined on how successful the programme is. Sustainability is a challenging issue to grapple with. Don’t just think of Microsoft as a funder. Try other partners, other new ways to implement, not just transactional ways to raising money. Sustainability will always require some revenue-generating component. I don’t believe that if you are serving the underserved, you cannot be revenue generating. You may be dealing with a slightly higher level of incomes. You may cross-subsidise by charging different rates for different levels of people in the society. These don’t necessarily mean you are deviating from the social cause. The partners have to deal with issues relating to scale, population, catchments area, and other competitors.
What has been the experience in Rajasthan with the Rajasthan Education Initiative? I would like to talk about the Partners in Learning programme, in general. Working with the government and the private sector is critical. When we talk about education – we have to talk with the government, and for scaling up we need to link with existing government programmes. It is critical that we partner with government. Building partnerships requires time. That is what we have learnt. How do you nurture these partnerships? You have to see this as a long-term effort. We have also to make sure that it is a win-win case for all. We want to be very careful that we are working with the right organisations that have the commitment to see it through. It requires time, patience, and building things together. Not all partnerships will be on equal footing. Sometimes we will have lead partner, and others will play. These experiences show that partnerships are a local issue. There are several regional experiences, in Europe, Eastern and Central Europe, Latin America and Asia. Some partnerships are good, and some are facing challenges. One country may be easy to work with, and another may be difficult to work with. It all depends on the state of affairs at another point.
You care therefore talking of social sustainability, value beyond money. Yes, absolutely. Can you share with us your perspective of the poverty issue? There are many dimensions to poverty. People are going to get in and out of poverty. Health is one of the major drivers. When a person falls sick, they tip over the threshold of poverty. There is no safety net for them. The challenge for us is, how do we create systems through programmes that build safety nets for these individuals. As they fall off some aspects of the cliff, that there is some safety net, and they do not have to fall too deep. The way I look at this is in the digital inclusion space, there is a particular way in which IT companies can think about it. If you consider Microsoft’s Programme – is putting money at the bottom of the pyramid to push people up, as the tide comes down, where few stay, others come down. There is an economic engine
How does the partnership work? We do not want to overstate the partnerships. With the telecentre.org, we work in partnership with three organisations. telecentre.org is a great and most important partnership, and the launching was done with major buy-in from all three partners, which is setting up these networks around the world. Tech Soup
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that fuels people out of poverty. It is important to focus on the relevance of the products, accessibility of the products. If you have interventions, both from a market mechanism and community investment mechanism, if they are aligned, they are likely to be successful in fulfilling both objectives. The sweet spot to work in, is where the bottom of the middle, the cusp, and helping to push them up, above their current status. That is a challenging thing to do. Unlimited Potential group is driving value in development and championing this engine. So that there is not the deep fall, and it becomes a shallow, and creates the buffer. How has the programme evolved, and what are the innovations? The four years that this programme has been running, it has innovated considerably. It has moved from being grantors to become partnerships. We have learnt to work with the partners and to use their grants effectively. We have moved from single-year commitment to multi-year commitments; from a non-data base driven application process to one where we can track all of the projects in an effective way. We have the operational engine to do our grants. The entire grant application system is online. We can monitor and evaluate, enable the partners to submit quarterly progress reports, evaluations at the end of the project cycle. How are the interventions different in each continent? The programme is global, but in each case the application is relevant. There is a concentration of projects on disability. In North America, it is workforce development; in Europe, it is employability; in the Middle East, it is youth and women empowerment; in Asia, the focus is on women and women’s empowerment. These are based on issue areas that are relevant to the country, and with a local flavour. How does one deal with multiple languages needs of the diverse communities that you work with? The implementing agency need to make this decision about the relevance. In many cases they want Arabic and English. They can’t really understand English, but want to use Arabic to make it understood. We are careful about imposing these. The local partners determine what is the language they want to work with. Our training modules are localised in 21 different languages. It covers the large swathe of languages. But for a local community, they still may need to adapt these to suit their specific requirements. The good thing is that these resources are likely to get used by other communities as well. Over the four years, has there been any impact analyses done? We are one of leading organisations in the field. India exemplifies that. A lot of our activities converge on India. Community Technology Skills Programme, Innovation Fund, Education Strategy, etc. India focus than what it was four years ago. It is the key space where India has shown leadership since 2000. There have been analyses. Clearly I have shared the changes that we have incorporated based on the learning, and impact on the programme January 2008 | www.i4donline.net
itself. It cuts down the cost and makes more resources available locally to partners. The University of Washington is creating a model to monitor, and evaluate the projects. They have looked at the effectiveness of the curriculum. Local researchers from around the world are being brought together to document this process. There are still sceptics who say – does ICTs work or not? Stand-alone programmes are not going to be as effective as programmes integrated around social and economic empowerment. ICT plays a key role simply because knowledgebased economy and its ancillary agencies is where the growth is. If you want them to become a receptionist, for example, they need to be IT enabled person. IT is at the edge of opportunity, and it is not just getting to be part of the IT industry. In Taiwan, for example, due to awareness of the Internet, people got better health facility. There is clearly a paradigm shift that has happened due to ICTs. In the global scenario, do you think people are still interested in ICT4D? Will the wave of ICT4D continue? Will we still be in the attention of global decision makers? I don’t know, I don’t like to predict this. Climate change is an important issue. But in some ways, lot more people have moved to the knowledge economy. You will have an impact on the environment and climate. IT should not be seen as a hype or current flavour of the month, but because it is so entrenched in the global economy, its importance will continue to be there. It may not be the huge issue for all agencies, as it was from 20032007, from the time of the first meeting of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) held in Geneva to the recently concluded Global Knowledge Conference 3 (GK3) held in Kuala Lumpur. Warana, Baramati, Gyandoot, Dhristee, N-Logue, ISAP, SEWA, are all still there. What is interesting is that there is a huge layer of new initiatives that have rolled out, and a number of them are private sector initiatives. What’s unique about India? From a developing country perspective, there are certain things: i. India has a very strong NGO base ii. Clearly the strong software industry got people to think about ICT for Development – the youth started thinking about it. iii. The Central Government also started getting interested, with the Media Lab Asia initiative. iv. There was already a computer science base in this country, with technology databases and the NIIT revolution that created para-professional (middle and tertiary level) work force for middle and SME. v. The National Informatics Centre (NIC) already existed; these were already established. vi. The bursting of the bubble also helped India. People began thinking about India. Markets were slowing in US, but growing in India. It happened after the bubble burst. The brains returned and gave a new ethos to the IT industry in India. n
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New vision for world electronic media The 3rd World Electronic Media Forum (WEMF3) was held at Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre as an associated event of GK3 on10-11 December 2007. The purpose of the meet was to look at the new and fundamental changes that are taking place in the global information society. It aimed at discussing how these changes are going to affect the role of the electronic media, and also in the dissemination of knowledge, economic and business practices, political engagement and other aspects of society. It brought together broadcast executives, policy-makers, academics, journalists, visionaries and decision-makers from around the world. The first two WEMFs were held in Geneva in 2003 and Tunis in 2005, in conjunction with the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).The aim of the WEMF is to establish ties between the WSIS and the broadcasters. The discussion focused on the role the media can play in achieving the objectives of the WSIS – in particular the freedom and independence of the press–and in overcoming the ‘digital divide’ between North and South. WEMF-1 in Geneva affirmed the vital importance of radio and television in the
information society and produced a report that was distributed to public broadcasters around the world, and WEMF-2 in Tunis built on this affirmation through focused discussions on the role of the electronic media in the digital age, for example, in achieving the Millennium Development Goals, in guaranteeing cultural diversity, in preserving audio-visual archives, and in promoting the safety of journalists in zones of conflict. The WSIS concluded in Tunis, thus recommended that the WEMF continue to be held every two years, and it was suggested that it be held in Asia in 2007 and Latin America in 2009. T h e Fo r u m s a r e Wo r l d Broadcasting Union ( http://www. worldbroadcastingunions.org) events and this third Forum was organised by the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU) (www.abu.org.my) in collaboration with the Asia-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development (AIBD) and the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) (www.amic.org.sg). The event was supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) (www.sdc.admin.ch) and the Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP)
as cooperation partners. Some of the eminent speakers of the meet were Genichi Hashimoto, President, NHK Japan, and President, ABU; Fritz Pleitgen, President, EBU; Nigel Parsons and Veronica Pedrosa of Aljazeera English; Richard Porter, Head of News, BBC World; Cesar Gerbasi, Chairman, Technical Committee, OTI; Edwin van Huis, President, FIAT/IFTA; Sharmini Boyle, Chief Editor of Young Asia Television, Sri Lanka; Rodney Pinder, Director of the International News Safety Institute; Seema B Nair of UNESCO in India; James Deane of the BBC World Service Trust; and Lieven Vermaele, Technical Director, EBU.
Recommendations WEMF-3 concluded with a series of recommendations, including: • A call for greater efforts to preserve the world’s endangered audio-visual archives. • An appeal to the United Nations Secretary-General to appoint a Special Rapporteur on the Protection of Journalists in peace and war. • A call for broadcasters to maintain their core values and principles in the face of rapid technological change. • A full report on the meeting is being prepared and will be posted on this website soon.n Source: http://www.wemfmedia.org/
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Information for development www.i4donline.net
n Agriculture Gramin Suvidha Kendra empowers farmers Gramin Suvidha Kendra, a joint initiative of Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX) and Indian Postal Department is empowering rural farmers by providing them spot and future prices of farm commodities. Currently, Gramin Suvidha Kendra is providing services from four centres—at Jalgaon and Dhamgaon in Maharashtra, Unjha in Gujarat, and Itarsi in Madhya Pradesh. Farmers can pay a one-time registration fee of INR 11 and they can pay INR 10 for each query on issues like weather patterns, pest management, and use of fertilisers. The blackboards and printouts contain information about local spot prices, all-India spot prices, and futures prices on the existing contracts. In 2006, MCX has partnered with Indian Postal Department to create an electronic price link between small village post offices and the rest of India. Apart from India Post, MCX has roped in National Bulk Handling Corporation and major seed, fertiliser, and pesticide companies, and are also planning tie-up with insurance companies.
n Community Radio More campus radio stations in Nigeria The Nigerian government is to provide licenses to more radio stations for the tertiary institutions, as disclosed in a four-day workshop, which was organised by the Institute of Media and Society (IMS) and the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA). The workshop also observed that the government has to reform this policy in this regard. The workshop attendees also commended the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) for its sterling work in creating a conducive regulatory environment for campus radio stations and for the community radio stations to thrive. The workshop also demanded to open more community radio stations in Nigerian educational institutions. January 2008 | www.i4donline.net
n e-Commerce
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Deployment of ATM machines on mobile Molue (buses) in Nigeria The Nigeria Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) will install 1000 ATM machines at various locations of Nigeria in partnership with a Private Business. NITDA will provide Mobile Internet Units, which are minivans specially fitted with Internet access to the CHAMS Consortium. Each MIU will be equipped with five computers and three kiosks/ATMs, so that users have the opportunity to browse the Internet and also use ATMs. NITDA is installing these ATMs due to high number of bank robbery and crimes in Nigeria. The physical security of ATM implementation in Nigeria is very critical to the success of ATM installation in Nigeria. Not only is the general crime rate very high, there have been numerous attacks on the so called ‘Bullion Vans’. Bullion Vans are transportation vehicles used to move cash from one location to the other by Nigeria’s financial institutions. Nigerian mobile Internet units, are basically buses fitted with VSAT technology and personal computers. These vehicles will meet with the requirement of physical security protection and also ensure the security of ATM personnel and equipment.
n e-Governance egov National awards for eGovernance 2007-08: Focus on agriculture sector, India National e-Governance Awards is going to expand with the introduction of two new more categories. In addition to six categories, the Government of India decided to award exemplary work in a ‘focus sector’ which would be selected every year. This year, the Central Government has selected ‘Agriculture’ as the focus sector. The other category called ‘Special Award’ has been introduced in 2007 for significant work done in other areas. So, now the total award
categories has increased from six to eight. The Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DAR&PG) will jointly present the award in collaboration with the Department of Information Technology, Government of India in order to recognise and promote excellence in implementation of e-Governance initiatives. In the year 2007-2008, a total of 24 awards would be presented, i.e. Golden, Silver and Bronze icon in following categories, (i) Excellence in Government Process Re-engineering; (ii) Exemplary Horizontal Transfer of ICTbased Best Practices; (iii) Outstanding Performance in Citizen-Centric Service Delivery; (iv) Innovative Technology Usage in e-Governance; (v) Exemplary Usage of ICT by PSUs; (vi) Best Government Website; (vii) Special Award for significant work done in areas not specifically covered by other categories e.g. Knowledge Management, Project Management, Information Security etc. and (viii) Specific Sectoral award – Agriculture.
Singapore’s ultra-high speed digital highway by 2015 Government of Singapore is planning to launch Next Generation National Broadband Network (Next Gen NBN), which will provide ultra-high speed connectivity by 2015. The Government will open bid for all interested parties to submit their bid to design build and operate the passive infrastructure layer of the Next Gen NBN. The Next Gen NBN project will offer various services like high-definition video conferencing, telemedicine, Grid Computing-on-Demand, security and immersive learning applications on the Next Gen NBN from about 2010. The Government has formulated Request for Proposal (RFP), in which government has selected Network Company (NetCo) to design, build and operate this passive infrastructure that will carry the traffic for Next Generation Services. The company, called Operating Company(OpCo), will deploy active electronics like switches and routers to manage the flow of traffic on the passive infrastructure. The Government is prepared to provide a grant of US$ 750 million for the project.
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Broadcast Bill by Uruguayan Senate, AMARC The World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC), the Uruguayan Senate has approved a Community Broadcasting Bill that recognises community broadcasting in its own right and says television and radio frequencies should be more equitably distributed. The Bill acknowledges the importance of the third broadcasting sector alongside the state and private sectors, and stipulates that one third of the AM and FM radio airwaves and television broadband will be reserved for community-based media outlets. A new council includes, government, media, university and free expression representatives and they will play a part in granting and renewing frequencies and ensuring that the government does not use frequency allocation to indirectly censor broadcasts. The bill does not impose limits on the geographical range and signal strength of community media outlets, unlike laws in Brazil and Chile. Instead, the bill says the range of coverage will depend on the outlet’s purpose and the audience it is trying to reach.
n Education ADB grants US$ 50 million loan to promote secondary education in Vietnam The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is lending US$ 50 million to help the most disadvantaged groups of Vietnam, especially in terms of lower secondary education with its efforts to promote greater social and economic inclusion in the country. ADB is granting US$ 50 million loan for the Lower Secondary Education in the Most Disadvantaged Project to improve education of ethnic minorities and girls in the 103 most disadvantaged districts from the Northern Mountain, Central Highland, and Mekong River Delta regions. Vietnam will contribute US$ 14 million for this project. The Ministry of Education and Training is the executing agency for the project, in which the agency will provide ethnicity-responsive teacher training, pilot testing of school feeding and awareness raising, provision of scholarship for smallest population ethnic groups, and capacity development of educational planning for targeted assistance for disadvantaged groups. It is expected that the project will be completed by June 2014.
Kerala state in India poised to achieve total IT literacy Education Minister in Kerala M.A. Baby has said that the state was poised to become the first State to achieve total IT (Information Technology) literacy. He said that the initial efforts to promote ICT (Information and Communication Technology)-based education have been promising. Several schools have responded well to the IT@School initiative. At present, Kerala is trying to focus attention on schools where the infrastructure provided under the project is under utilised. The Minister said that the decision to equip high schools with broadband Internet connectivity
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would open up immense possibilities in the education sector. The Free Software Project was based on free software. Under the proposal, 2,800 high schools in the state will be provided with broadband connection by August 2008.
n Health Bangalore (India) telemedicine co picked as ‘technology pioneer’ by WEF Sameer Sawarkar and his team developed a telemedicine product that connects rural patients with doctors in cities. Sameer Sawarkar who works in Neurosynaptics Communications Pvt. Ltd has developed multi-function device, which takes an electro-cardiogram test of a patient and also measure the individual’s temperature. Now, the World Economic Forum (WEF) recognised the device as one of the 39 technology pioneers from a list of 273 nominees. Neurosynaptics, which developed its products along with TeNet group of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, embarked on a field study that lasted 18 months, across Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra. The company has developed a new model involving pharmaceutical companies and healthcare service providers. Neurosynaptics is now developing 25 telemedicine centres in Tirupattur, a town in Vellore district of Tamil Nadu. Neurosynaptics will itself distribute the medicines to the telemedicine centres which, in turn, will sell them to patients.
Japan and ADB helping Bangladesh to prepare urban health care programme The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Japan are assisting Bangladesh in laying the groundwork for a proposed urban health care programme. The Japan Special Fund will provide $650,000 for the technical assistance to Bangladesh for preparing the Urban
Primary Health Care Sector Development Programme. While the Government of Bangladesh will contribute $165,000 to complete funding for the technical assistance, ADB will manage the funding. The technical assistance will design a sector development programme to explore policy, legal, institutional and municipal financing aspects to strengthen urban public and primary health care in Bangladesh. The proposed programme will enhance access to urban health care and also improve municipal public health governance. The programme will increase the strength of urban local bodies to implement their food safety, hospital and solid waste management system in partnership with private sector.
n General A new alternative to the World Bank in South America Six South American presidents on 9 December, 2007 launched the Bank of the South, as an alternative to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. After the bank was signed into being, the economy ministers of the member countries have 60 days to draw up an agreement on how the bank should be run. The bank will be run by a Board of Directors made up of the economy ministers of member states. The calendar for the Bank of the South’ creation was agreed to in October, 2007 at an economy ministers’ meeting. Presidents Nestor Kirchner of Argentina, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Nicanor Duarte of Paraguay, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Evo Morales of Bolivia and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela signed the bank into being. The Bank of the South is considered as an ideological alternative to the World Bank. The creation of the new bank is considered as a huge step on the road to Latin American integration. It is believed that the bank would help South America develop its own currency and resist the pressures of international lending institutions that demanded the privatisation of state-owned companies in return for their loans. The bank will start its operation in 2008 with an initial capital of seven billion dollars. Based in Caracas, the Bank of the South will have regional offices in Buenos Aires and La Paz.
n Livelihood Bloggers are helping to ensure food security in Africa An innovative United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) online fundraising campaign will connect farmers in rural Africa to food bloggers worldwide. The ‘Menu for Hope’ initiative, which is now in its fourth year, was launched on 10 December, 2007. It is one of the world’s most popular food blogs. i4d | January 2008
The i4d News The funds raised by the online raffle will support World Food Programme’s work in the tiny Southern African nation of Lesotho, where the agency has been helping rural communities by purchasing surplus grain from small-scale farmers. This grain is then used in programmes such as in a scheme to supply school lunches to children in Lesotho. Conceived by food blogger Pim Techamuanvivit, who uses her popular site for the fund raising campaign, the raffle in 2006 raised more than US$ 60,000, which was more than double its target, for WFP programmes through the sale of US$ 10 tickets online that give purchasers a chance to win ‘foodie’ items such as invitations to join world-famous chefs for personal cooking lessons, rare cooking books, opportunities to dine in restaurants around the world and a pizza tour of New York, among others. Michelin-starred restaurants and internationally renowned chefs, including Ferran Adria of Spain and Heston Blumenthal of the United Kingdom, are among those supporting the initiative.
Mobile PCOs to differentlyabled persons, India The Delhi Government, India distributed mobile Public Call Offices (PCOs) to 20 differently-abled persons recently. The mobile PCOs mounted on tricycles were provided by the Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited in collaboration with the Delhi Government as a self-reliance initiative for the benefit of the differentlyabled from the weaker sections of society. In order to make the PCO owner’s life easy, mobile PCO service will be provided on a pre-paid basis so that the operator does not have to deposit fortnightly or monthly bills. Depending on one’s need, the PCO operator can purchase recharge coupons of flexible denominations ranging from INR.500 to INR.10,000 from any of the 56 ‘Sanchar Haats’ of MTNL across Delhi. In addition, there are provisions of up to five extra PCO lines on the same rickshaw on request, depending on business necessities. In order to further increase the income of the differently-abled, MTNL would be giving them preferential treatment for grant of franchisee-ship of MTNL and for sale of ‘Trump’ and ‘Garuda’ re-charge coupons and MTNL calling cards. While MTNL provided each PCO operator with free-of-cost phone equipment, the Delhi Government provided tricycles on finance basis.
n m-Serve Sony Ericsson brings motion control technology to mobile phones Sony Ericsson has filed patent application, in which future camera mobile phones will include the revolutionary motion control technology. It means that soon users would January 2008 | www.i4donline.net
Eve, the virtual teacher in New Zealand A breakthrough for e-Learning. Scientists in New Zealand have created Eve, a virtual teacher that can detect whether the student is frustrated, bored or confused, and respond accordingly Eve is what is known in the information sciences as an intelligent or affective tutoring system. It can adapt its response to the emotional state of people by interaction through a computer system. The ability of virtual Eve to alter her presentation according to the reaction of the child facing her at the keyboard has been hailed as an exciting development in the $25 billion global e-Learning market. Because one-to-one teaching is known to be the most effective teaching method, the researchers wanted to create a virtual teacher that could pick up body language and facial expressions – just like a real teacher – to interact and to ensure they are holding the attention of students. Eve was developed for one-to-one maths teaching with eight-year-olds. Linked to a child via computer, the animated character or virtual tutor can tell if the child is frustrated, angry or confused by the on-screen teaching session. It then adapts the tutoring session appropriately. The animated Eve, who has a human-sounding voice can ask questions and give feedback. be able to command the handset’s functions like answering calls, taking pictures or anything else just by gesturing in front of it. A software would be implemented in the phone’s camera chip, which will analyse incoming images and recognise them as commands. So, now just pointing their finger up, users can answer an incoming call and by pointing down, users can reject the call. In addition, users can also set their phone to perform different commands for different corresponding gestures. In the past also, Sony has already implemented motion control technology in other phones like the W580i Walkman phone, which comes with a ‘shake’ function that enables users to change songs by shaking the device. Similarly the W380 model also comes with ‘Gesture Control’ technology that allows one to answer the phone or turn off its alarm by simply waving their hand.
Battle for spectrum allocation India has more than 250m fixed and mobilephone connections. But the government is sadly unprepared. It has till date not given India’s mobile operators enough space on the radio spectrum to carry calls crisply and reliably. India today faces a ‘spectrum crunch’. However, there exists ‘extreme anguish’ caused by the ‘pitiful’ amounts of spectrum granted to operators using GSM technology, the dominant standard that is used by three-quarters of Indian subscribers. The speed of mobile telephony’s spread is amazing. Operators are now using new technologies such as smarter antennae. One way to squeeze more calls into limited space is to reduce the quality of service. The Government of India has earmarked space in the spectrum for ‘third generation’ (3G) networks, which use more advanced technology to pack in more calls, as well as making possible fancy data services.
n Open Source UN partners with MSUGensan for development of first FOSS centre United Nations (UN) funded organisation has partnered with the Mindanao State University (MSU) for promoting the use of the free and open source software. Under this partnership, both organisations will develop the first OpenHUB or accessible FOSS resource centre for South Asia. MSU will initially cater the needs of small and medium enterprises, nongovernment organisations, and government organisations for further build up of their ICT capabilities with FOSS. UNDPIOSN is a Centre of Excellence for Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in the Asia-Pacific region. In its project, called OpenHUBS project, UNDP-IOSN is building capacity through FOSS training and support involving state universities and colleges in the country. The project aims to establish a viable FOSS ecosystem with small and medium enterprises, nongovernment organisations, and government organisations to sustain and strengthen linkages and reach out to the community that it is mandated to serve.
n SME/SMB IBM websphere tops application software market The research firm IDC has ranked IBM’s Websphere as the market leader in the Application Deployment Software market in India. IBM Websphere’s market share stood at 28 per cent in 2006. IBM has bagged significant customers. IBM has emerged as the most preferred partner in application software. Websphere has been one of the fastest growing areas
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The i4d News
BTN targets to set up 40,000 telecentres in Bangladesh Bangladesh Telecentre Network (BTN) is coming up with the laudable initiative of Mission2011, in which BTN is targeting to set up 40,000 telecentres by 2011. While inaugurating ‘Mission2011: Building a sustainable information and knowledge system for the poor and the marginalised’, organised by Bangladesh Telecentre Network in Bangladesh, Fakhruddin stated that the Mission-2011 will play a significant role in unleashing the immense power of ICT for poverty reduction and development. People’s participation is a key to the success of the mission. The initiative of Mission-2011 aims to build an information and knowledge system for the poor and the marginalised who live in urban slums or in rural areas. These telecentres would not only minimise the digital divide by improving access to technology, but will also provide invaluable support through appropriate content and advisory services in the livelihood struggle of large number of population. for IBM Software Group and more than 9,000 independent software vendors from across the globe write applications on top of Websphere. The study by IDC noted that technology adoption has seen a substantial growth with Indian companies scaling their operations to take on competition at international levels. The domestic market for Websphere grew significantly due to increased globalisation and integration activities that drove the deployment of web-enabled applications. In emerging markets like India where competition is becoming intense and organisations are increasingly scaling up operations, application deployment software as a category is expected to grow at an year-onyear rate of 27 per cent.
n Technology Guide to Greener Electronics targets e-Waste The latest edition of Greenpeace’s quarterly ‘Guide to Greener Electronics’ assesses for the first time TVs and the rapidly growing games consoles market. Guide to Greener Electronics focuses on toxic chemicals and takeback policy because of the rapid growth in quantities of toxic e-Waste being dumped in developing countries like China and India. Nintendo—the game, completely fails to show any environmental credentials and Microsoft and Philips do little better. The Greener Electronics Guide is considered as Greenpeace’s way of getting the electronics industry to face up to the problem of e-Waste. The Guide ranks companies according to their policies and practices on toxic chemicals and takeback. Along with mobile phone and personal computer companies, Greenpeace has now added the biggest makers of TVs and games consoles. Old TVs are a large part of e-Waste and the games console market is one of the fastest
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growing in consumer electronics. Nintendo is considered as having the dubious honour of being the first company to score 0/10 in the Guide to Greener Electronics. Microsoft did little better, scoring only 2.7/10, while Phillips is the lowest TV-maker scoring only 2/10. Sony Ericsson has taken over number one spot from Nokia while Samsung and Sony have surged ahead to now occupy second and third positions. Nokia and Motorola have each had a penalty point deducted after Greenpeace found their claims of global takeback were not being matched by actual practice. Companies making the most progress with new products without the worst toxic chemicals are now ranking higher than companies who have only committed to remove them in the future. Toshiba has laptops free of toxic chemicals like vinyl plastic (PVC) and has reduced the use of brominated flame retardants (BFRs). Apple’s score improves slightly due to new iMacs reducing the use of PVC and BFRs. All new mobiles from Sony Ericsson and Nokia have been free of PVC since the end of 2006.
n Telecommunications Indian Communications Minister rules out auction of 2G spectrum to new players A. Raja, Communications Minister, India ruled out auctioning 2G spectrum to new players in order to maintain level between new and existing service providers. The Communications Minister stated that the government cannot adopt auctioning route for existing 2G spectrum due to legal barriers. Since the government has already announced the 3G policy, government will allocate frequency on that basis only. Bids by Bharti Airtel followed by Idea Cellular for 4.4 MHz additional spectrum has raised spectrum speculations. Bharti
had offered INR 2,650 crore reserving the right to increase the bid further, while Idea had written a letter to telecom secretary expressing its willingness to participate in the bidding process. Raja stated that the auctioning of 2G spectrum will create a level of playing in favor of existing GSM players.
n Wireless The Yobe State government launches Integrated Wireless Telephone and Internet Access project The Yobe State government has launched the Integrated Wireless Telephone and Internet Access project based on the cutting edge ‘World Interoperability for Microwave Access’ (WiMAX) technology. Yobe State is the first government to deploy WiMAX technology in Nigeria. The project has also received an operating licence from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC). The Yobe State Government is also talking with the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) to facilitate a massive e-Learning human capacity building drive in the state. The Yobe State Government has also commissioned a 50 PCs resource centre. In addition to this, over 100 civil servants in the government are undergoing technology and related training in the UK, Ghana and the Administrative Staff College (ASCON) in Lagos, Nigeria. The state government will also facilitate the acquisition of laptop with spread out payments and at 30 percent discount for certain categories of civil servants.
Indian Government opts WiMax for Common Service Centres (CSC) The Government of India has opted for WiMax technology to connect rural India for the common service centres, as part of the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP). In this project, the government will invest INR 750 crore to connect more than 1000 blocks in the country. In the first phase, the government will provide an over-the air-point-to-point connectivity to common services centres. The government will set up one-base station in each block to provide the P2P access. Once the basestation is established, around 5000 blocks will also be connected using WiMAX technology. State-owned telecom operator BSNL will be implementing the project, which will be funded by the Department of Information Technology. Universal Service Obligatory (USO) fund will be contributing for connecting the rest of 5,000 blocks. After the implementation of the WiMax project, the government is looking at taking citizen services such as in the areas of education and health. i4d | January 2008
Putting Farming First A session on e-Agriculture – Continuing Dialogue to Action was held during the GK3 event by the Global Knowledge Partnership in Kuala Lumpur on 13 December 2007. The eminent panel constituted of the following: (i) M.S. Swaminathan, Founder and Chairman, MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, India (ii) Aida Opoku-Mensah, Director, ICT and Science and Technology Division (ISTD), United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Ethiopia (iii) Anton Mangstl, Director, Knowledge Exchange and Capacity Building Division (KCE), Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (iv) Manish Pandey, Deputy General Manager, KATALYST, Bangladesh (v) Matt Keller, Director for Europe, Middle East and Africa, One Laptop Per Child, USA. Highlights of the discussions M.S. Swaminathan: ICT is particularly relevant in developing small agriculture ventures. Communication centres (information kiosks) are imperative to reach everyone in the agriculture community. For example, in the Avian bird flu case, farmers should be able to relay information to the relevant authorities immediately. The communication should be two-way and in real time. It is not enough for governments to put money on hardware and infrastructure – more needs to be done for software development. Also, to bridge the digital divide, India is working towards training one million knowledge workers who will be from the communities itself. Aida Opoku-Mensah: In the African experience, community radios have been the most effective tools in bringing knowledge to the agriculture community. We need to create an environment where innovation can flourish in the agricultural sector. Many opportunities can be created January 2008 | www.i4donline.net
in ICT development among the agricultural communities. Anton Mangstl: ICT is an enabling tool in the agriculture sector as it is in other domains. Even governments can be by passed in agricultural ICT developments, though the governments have a crucial role to play. Anton agreed with Swaminathan that in the process of ICT developments in agriculture, knowledge workers are necessary to keep the rural community informed. Manish Pandey: Political will is required in the implementation of ICT policies and infrastructure. Though technology can cause disruptions in the lives of the agricultural community, these are mostly positive. The benefits of technology in agriculture are too great to be ignored. For example, a telecentre in a rural farming community could provide assistance in terms of presenting a wide range of choices for farmers. Matt Keller: The local content is the most important in information exchange. When everyone is connected with each other, and information is disseminated quickly, we can help avert crises. During the open discussions, the point of knowledge exchange with in the farming community was raised by Argentine Association of Regional Consortiums for Agricultural Experimentation. The organistaion is engaged for past four decades and is interacting with farmers in taking new technology or related information to them through community meeting and group discussions. It was observed that for centuries, farmers have learned from each other. This is not expected to change even with the implementation of ICTs. So knowledge transfer should occur not only vertically (between policy makers and farmers) but also horizontally (among the farming community). In fact it is the horizontal communication at the grassroots level
that sustains agricultural developments in rural communities across the world. Local or indigenous knowledge should be a key feature in ICT considerations for the agricultural community. It may happen that one technology may work very well for a particular ecosystem and not in the other. For example, the German experience in agricultural development is very different from that in Africa. Individual farmers in Africa usually work in a collective group, sharing information whereas farmers in Germany are often in competition with each other, sharing little or no information with each other. Several other points were also raised during the discussion, which include: • Agriculture needs to be treated as a whole, with fisheries, forestry, crop and animal husbandry, etc. being integral part of it. • Another aspect was raised on user generated content and the capacity building. The need of training local people was realised who later on can work as a link between the policy makers and the community. • Put the agriculture first, and the technology should come there after. It should be an enabler to the existing processes and systems. The need of improving upon the existing infrastructure, systems and the process was also flagged. • Will farmers’ voices be actually heard? Traditionally, the mainstream media does not pay much attention to rural agricultural communities. • What happens to the middlemen who are bypassed in the ICT revolution, when farmers can communicate directly with the market? • Accessibility, which is a key concern now, is only one facet of the ICT revolution. n Anaam Sharma, anaam@csdms.in
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Unveiling unlimited potential for India New Delhi, 27 June 2007: In a country with a population of over one billion, access to Information Technology is available to only a 100 million people. Microsoft India, with the overriding objective to enable IT access for the vast majority of Indians today announced the roll out of Unlimited Potential in the country. The effort - the announcement of which comes close on the heels of the global launch of Microsoft Unlimited Potential by Bill Gates in Beijing, China - will focus to create innovative ways for deploying technology to transform education, foster local innovation, and enable jobs and opportunities to sustain a continuous cycle of social and economic growth for everyone. Unlimited Potential will draw on the substantial resources and business expertise of Microsoft and its partners to create a model that enables new market opportunities as one billion consumers, in India and elsewhere, join the global economy in the next decade. The news was unveiled by Orlando Ayala, Senior Vice President of the Emerging Segments Market Development Group, Microsoft, and Ravi Venkatesan, Chairman Microsoft India, in the presence of several partners. Speaking at the launch, Ayala said, “Our founding vision of ‘a computer on every desk and in every home’ has reached the first billion people, and with Unlimited Potential, we are determined to reach the next billion people by 2015. India is one of the most exciting and important markets in the world. In addition to being a growth sector of the Indian economy, Information Technology (IT) is also a key enabler of social development. In India especially, the progress on many fronts is already well underway and continues to mature.” Elaborating on Unlimited Potential, Ravi Venkatesan, Chairman, Microsoft India, said “The task that we have today is to make technology pervasive and useful in
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the everyday lives of more and more people. The growth of IT penetration in India, currently, might be rapid, but it is not rapid enough. Affordability is critical and goes far beyond low-cost hardware. Affordable solutions must account for individual needs and means, and use creative ways to deliver technology, through different devices, access models or financing options. It is imperative for technology to be relevant and accessible. Only when we meet these criteria will the adoption of technology grow exponentially. And this is exactly
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Creates relevant, accessible and affordable technology solutions with a focus on transforming education, fostering local innovation and enabling jobs & opportunities Launches Microsoft IQ PC and MSN IQ (http://education.in.msn. com/) Beta education portal
what we seek to deliver through Microsoft Unlimited Potential”. Outlining the focus areas in India, Ravi Venkatesan added, “Education at every level remains crucial for India’s continued growth. The investments made in it over the years have propelled India’s growth in the knowledge economy; and it will be critical to continue the focus on education. And, likewise, for any sustainable progress on India’s socio economic index, a focus on jobs and opportunities will be essential. Last but not least, if India has to continue to exert an even greater influence in the emerging global knowledge economy, it will have to foster the creation and ownership of that knowledge. Innovation will not just be a prime way to address the unique needs of the India market but also to give India that edge.”
Transforming education Over the past several years Microsoft has been using a combination of quality content, partnerships, training, and broad access to transform education In India. Under its programme, Project Shiksha (the global Partners in Learning program) Microsoft has worked with state governments, and other key stakeholders to offer a spectrum of education resources including tools, programmes, and practices. To increase IT literacy amongst teachers and students at the government school level, Microsoft has to date, trained over 100,000 teachers impacting over 5 million students. In higher education, its efforts have included providing professional development training and tools and resources to over 1000 IT and engineering faculty members across 51 colleges in India. Going forward, Microsoft will both scale up the existing initiatives and broaden the opportunity beyond institutions to enable access for individuals under a ‘Connected Learning framework’ called IQ. IQ is essentially a combination of an online and offline content tied into all aspects of a student’s learning process and growth. A key offering announced today included a pilot programme for the IQ PC in partnership with AMD. The announcement is the latest milestone in the ongoing relationship between Microsoft and AMD to bring solutions to India and other markets around the world. Aimed at school going children from Kindergarten to class 12, the PC will be built on AMD hardware in partnership with Zenith as the designated OEM. Additionally, Microsoft and AMD are also working towards collaborating with WIPRO to deliver IQ-PC on Wipro’s ultra-value. The IQ PC will include Windows, Office/Works, Encarta, Student 2007 and specialised education solutions from a host of key partners. The content focuses i4d | January 2008
on the key concerns of families, be it the learning of English as a language, tutorials for competitive examinations, or ensuring a seamless transition from class work to homework. Microsoft also announced the launch of the MSN IQ Beta Education Channel which will be a repository of educational as well as edutainment content. Students access curriculum for classes Kindergarten to 12th, avail of online tutoring; competitive exam coaching; online entertainment; referencing and online counseling. Leading industry personalities will also provide some specialised editorial content for the channel. Initially, Microsoft will launch the IQ offerings – both the PC and the Education Channel - in Bangalore and Pune starting 1st July and will roll out to the rest of the country by November. Microsoft is catalysing a network of industry, government and development leaders to form and strengthen partnerships at the local, regional and global level that create the scale necessary to achieve the goals of Unlimited Potential. For content the partners include Brilliant Tutorials, Junior Achievement, Pacsoft, Karadi tales, Gurujiworld, Edurite and TutorVista. For hardware globally, Microsoft is supported by Intel and AMD through their respective programmes, World Ahead and 50/15. The companies are working to align common objectives to achieve maximum impact for ICT growth in India. Tied into relevance is accessibility, and to achieve that, Microsoft announced a strategic partnership with Sify Corporation: The Sify iWay countrywide chain of Internet cafes will have special provision for enabling access to Microsoft’s initiatives for students, job seekers and small businesses.
Enabling jobs and opportunities With a seven to eight million new entrants into the job market in India on an annual basis, it is imperative to grow and support segments that will address the growing demand of this talent pool. Microsoft is working with partners in government and industry to build an employability portal that will aid the country’s nearly 400,000 engineering students who graduate each year to improve their technology, business and communication skills through online training and verification. It will aim to address the growing need expressed by the IT and ITEs industry. The portal is scheduled to launch by the end of 2007. Microsoft India announced the roll out of Project Vikas, an initiative which aims to enhance the competitiveness of SMEs in twenty three pre identified economic clusters via IT adoption in partnership with NMCC. The programme got underway with the launch of an SME portal and a successful IT adoption programme in the Tirupur cluster. These programmes are in continuum of the success Microsoft has already enjoyed with the work it has been doing in partnership with non-governmental organisations to help foster entrepreneurship and support job creation. Project Jyoti, which began operations in 2004 is committed to providing IT jobs and skill training to the underserved communities across the rural landscape through community training learning centres. It has already setup around 500 Community Technology Learning Centre (CTLCs) across the country. January 2008 | www.i4donline.net
Fostering local innovation Recognising the unique need of the Indian market, Microsoft Research and the India Development Centre are working to develop tools, technologies and solutions that will address issues relevant to India and other emerging markets. Some successes in this area include MultiPoint - a simple yet powerful technology which will enable multiple children to share a single PC using multiple mice. For the purposes of primary education, it can multiply the benefit of a single computer by three, four, five, or more. Equally inspiring is Digital StudyHall (DSH), an independent research project primarily supported by Microsoft Research, which aims to overcome both the problems of staff shortage and availability of standardised study material among underserved communities. Simply put, it records and distributes DVDs of subject classes led by India’s best grassroots teachers. Underserved areas can access the DSH database via DVDs, while areas that are more developed will be able to access the content via the Internet. Cognizant of India’s vast needs and the talent availability in the country, Microsoft works with industry bodies like NASSCOM and TiE to ensure the local IT ecosystem contributes and benefits from IT adoption. Under a programme titled ‘India is Innovation’ Microsoft is working with over 300 ISVs in India to address the growing Indian and international applications market. It works with them to on quality certifications, business skills, VC funding, opportunity identification, marketing programmes and alignments to global technology roadmaps. Microsoft India also opened an innovation centre with the National Institute for Smart Government for accelerating the application of IT in the area of e-Governance. Microsoft Innovation Centres provide customers and partners with a comprehensive set of programmes and services, with a goal of fostering innovation and growth in local software economies. Microsoft will set up a Microsoft Innovation Centre to provide local software developers and IT companies a comprehensive set of programmes and services to expand work-force skills, create jobs, strengthen innovation and improve competitiveness. Summing up, Venkatesan said, “The task we have set ourselves – of bringing technology to peoples so far on the other side of the divide – is a mammoth one, and we recognise that. This is just the beginning and we are confident we will succeed; and our confidence stems from the support we get from our partners. By bringing together the creative power of local governments, ISVs, universities, small businesses, investors, individuals, we can help foster an environment for innovative ideas”.
About Microsoft Founded in 1975, Microsoft is the worldwide leader in software for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software - any time, any place and on any device. Microsoft Corporation India Private Ltd is a subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation USA. It has had a presence in India since 1990 and currently has offices in ten cities - Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, New Delhi, Pune, Nagpur, Ahmedabad and Chandigarh. n
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Studying the impacts of ICTs on society Pan Asia Networking (PAN) PAN is a programme initiative of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada (www.idrc.ca/pan) which helps researchers and communities in the developing world find solutions to their social, economic, and environmental problems. People in Asia are increasingly aware of the critical role that information and communication technologies (ICTs) play in the global economy. Whereas Asian economies once depended on raw materials for industrial production and commercial exchange, now innovation in the use of ICTs is fueling trade and commerce in the region. Asian institutions are recognizing the complex issues relating to the information society and their implications for people’s well being. Building on IDRC’s 25 years of supporting research on information sciences in the developing countries of Asia, the PAN Asia Networking programme initiative has helped institutions to adopt ICTs as a means to address development problems. All its activities are based on the premise that ICTs can offer people living in poverty an opportunity for better lives. ‘Connecting people – changing lives in Asia’, the PAN programme organised a two-day workshop for potential principal investigators and researchers on 14 and 17 December 2007 at Bangalore. This workshop was held at the Microsoft Research Lab premises and in collaboration with them. The two key resource persons were Kentaro Toyama (MSR) and Chaitali Sinha (IDRC). The workshop was sandwiched with the Second ICTD 2007 conference held from 15-16 December 2007, also held at Bangalore. The design of the workshop enabled the researchers from Asia to also take part in the conference to learn from other international academic researchers who were presenting their findings.
IDRC workshop objectives The objectives of the workshop were: 1. To convene Asia-based ICTD researchers to discuss and develop inter-disciplinary and rigorous social science research proposals; 2. To foster ongoing collaboration between principal investigators and senior researchers; and 3. To explore opportunities in addressing all elements of the overarching framework. The participants had each worked on a research question, and written a concept note, which was tabled for review, discussions 34
and refinement through a mentoring process, over the two days of mentoring and refining their research methodologies. The process enabled the ideas to be analysed, critiqued and scaled to a two-year proposed study, as a part of the PAN programme, which would have an open call for proposals in the coming months. The research designing workshop also provided an opportunity to work in clusters, and to potentially find senior researchers as mentors in an ongoing way. The final outcome of the workshop was a one-page background and refined research question that the potential principal investigators came away with, and the formation of a discussion group, enabling the formation of an ongoing workspace for continuing to dialogue with each other.
PAN programme of IDRC Vision of the PAN programme of IDRC is:
Empowered communities who have addressed their key development challenges through effective access to information and communication technologies The current programme cycle of PAN prospectus is five years (2006-2011) outlines the three thrust areas of work, viz., policies, technologies and effects. (1) Under the policy area, the thrust is to build evidence and promote dialogues to inform policies that affect the societies in Asia; the focus is to build evidence for telecom and IPR policy reforms and to build networks of researchers and advocates for effective dialogues. (2) Under the technologies area, the thrust is testing applications for development; some very interesting examples are how people have responded to innovative use of ICTs after Tsunami, or how SMS is being used effectively in Philippines to link up migrant workers. Other expected outcomes under this area is to build evidence on solving health, education, governance, and livelihoods issues, supporting R&D in innovative development applications and to strengthen the capacities of researchers and practitioners. (3) Under the effects area, the thrust is to build research capacity for understanding s socio-economic impacts of information society i4d | January 2008
on communities. The expected outcomes include development of methodology for rigorous ICTD research; build capacity of Asian researchers; and to have a better understanding of negative and positive effects of information society on Asian communities. Further details of the prospectus and strategy can be obtained from the following website: http://www.idrc.ca/uploads/userS/11700792731prospectus_final.pdf The PAN programme has already created five thematic networks, Health (PANACeA), Regulatory Environments (LIRNEasia), Localization (PAn/10n), Education (PANdora), Censorship (ONI-Asia). Two other networks are under development, one on Livelihoods and the other on Research Methodologies. In future, one more area where the programme will work on relates to Governance.
The conference sessions were held over two days in a plenary format and there was sufficient time for networking, interactions and clarifications. The highlight of the conference was the time given to young researchers whose full length papers were peerreviewed and posters presented in a creative way. The poster presenters were given an opportunity in a ‘Fast Forward’ 90second per person pitching time to invite expert participants to visit their posters and time was slotted to enable the participants to interact with the poster presenters. This was indeed a creative and effective way for one to decide which posters to see and discuss in detail with. At the end of day one, there was a thought provoking panel discussion – ‘Meaningful research for ICT and development’.
ICTD2007 Conference, 15-16 December 2007, Bangalore The second IEEE- ACM International Conference on Information and Communications Technologies for Development (ICTD2007) provided a critical opportunity for the workshop participants and researchers from Asia, as well as over 220 delegates to learn from the deliberations. Microsoft Research Lab’s head, Kentaro Toyama was the conference Chair, and was assisted by an international Advisory Team. MRL and IDRC were the platinum sponsors of the conference. Department of IT and BT, Government of Karnatka was the silver sponsor, and ATLAS institute, Colorado was the bronze sponsor. This conference was held in association with IIIT Bangalore, IEEE and ACM, with i4d as media partners. The support of all these partners was critical to make this conference a huge success and duly acknowledged. The first plenary on Poverty Measurements was by Anirudh Krishna, which focussed on how people move in and out of poverty and developing ways to ‘stages of progress’ measure poverty. Two key points that Arirudh raised in his keynote was the desire of the poor with aspiration to get out of poverty. However, their socio-political and economic barriers/situations prevents them from aspiring big. This scenario could change with the opportunities that technologies create in an information society. The other key point raised in the keynote address was the dynamics of the poverty flux – as many people get out of poverty, several also slip into it each year. This dynamics is important to study and strategies are needed to help people from getting further impoverished, with health costs being the biggest cause for this downfall. The final keynote address was by Paul Polok of IDE who shared his experience over 25 years of enabling communities with technology and promoting entrepreneurship among the rural people, and helping them get out of poverty. There is a difference between poverty and extreme poverty. And, he asked for researchers and innovators to listen to these people, their experience and creative potential. When we co-design solutions and give priority to those identified by the people for whom we work, there is a possibility of solving the problems in a better way. In February 2008, his book “Out of Poverty” is likely to be published which is worth looking out for, as it brings his experience with statistics. January 2008 | www.i4donline.net
Annalee Saxenian (Moderator), Pankaj Agrawala, Govt of Uttar Pradesh, Karishma Kiri, Microsoft, Richard Heeks, University of Manchester, and Anita Gurumurthy, IT for Change
The session was moderated by Annalee Saxenian, with Pankaj Agrawala, Govt of Uttar Pradesh, Anita Gurumurthy, IT for Change, Richard Heeks, University of Manchester and Karishma Kiri, Microsoft, as panellists. The discussions highlighted the need to try and build theoretical perspectives and to find commonalities in the methodologies of research. The multi-disciplinarity of the domain, and the nascent nature proves to be a challenge and the ICTD conference is aimed at building a community of researchers who could learn, and refine their methodologies as ways of effectively measuring impacts are also challenging issues. A detailed report of the panel discussion will be published in another issue of i4d magazine. The proceedings of the conference have been made available to all participants in printed book, an electronic (CD) format, which was distributed to the participants in the kit. An online version is also available at: http://research.microsoft.com/workshops/ ictd2007/ICTD2007_Proceedings_CD.pdf The readers are encouraged to visit the website, and also to send their feedback. An interactive living technology film was also made at the banquet, which covered four persons in India. This is a project of Microsoft Research Lab and Interactive Filmmaking Inc, has been uploaded at the http://alwayswithyou.tv To join the PAN research community, please visit: http://www. dgroups.org/groups/PAN-IDRCICTDRM n Jayalakshmi Chittoor, Programme Coordinator, CSDMS, jchittoor@csdms.in
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Empowering the rural communities Introduction LIRNEasia, in association with the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and Rural Technology and Business Incubator (RTBI) of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, organised the CPRsouth2 (Communication Policy Research) conference, in Chennai, India between December 15 and 17, 2007. The conference aimed to provide a forum for senior, junior and mid-career scholars to meet face-to-face and exchange ideas, establish networking opportunities and improve the quality of their scholarly work in ICT policy and regulatory reform in the region. CPRsouth is intended to be a vehicle for building capacity in communication policy research in the Asia-Pacific in the first instance, and then in the South. The core functions of CPRsouth are to organise an annual conference and to provide a virtual platform for interaction among communication policy researchers in the South. The objective is to create policy intellectuals capable of informed and effective intervention in ICT policy and regulatory processes in specific country contexts, within the larger context
to initiate CPRsouth and a leading group of scholars from Asia have agreed to serve on the CPRsouth Board. The three day CPRsouth2 conference offered researchers the opportunity to discuss their research on ICT regulation and policy in the South with a largely academic, international audience and obtain useful feedback. The event included pre and post conference tutorial sessions on December 14 and 18, 2007, for young scholars which will focus on the fundamentals of technology, markets, regulation and policy with insights on how to develop practical solutions to problems of empowering rural and marginalised populations. On the third day of the event, the participants were taken to Madurai, southern part of Tamil Nadu, for a field visit to understand the practical issues of the rural community.
Proceedings
of communication policy research as a field flourishing in the universities and research institutes of the South. The inaugural conference, CPRsouth1, was held in January 19-21, 2007 at Manila, Philippines, in association with the National College of Public Administration and Governance, University of the Philippines, Diliman. LIRNEasia has received funds from IDRC 36
The conference was designed to accommodate 22 paper presenters spanning over 8 thematic sessions. Each session was chaired by an expert in the domain and a discussant. The chair introduced the theme followed by the presentation of the scholars and the discussant closed the sessions by making their observations about the papers. The conference was focusing on deployment of innovative technologies to reach the bottom of the pyramid. It provided an opportunity for the young scholars to present their case and mentored by senior scholars to improve their research skills. Daniel Fink of Brazil, presented an interesting paper on 窶連nalysis of feasibile connectivity solutions based on Power Line i4d | January 2008
Launch of ‘ICT Infrastructure in Emerging Asia : Policy and Regulatory Roadblocks’ LIRNEasia has launched its new book entitled ‘ICT Infrastructure in Emerging Asia: Policy and Regulatory Roadblocks’ on the second day of the CPRsouth2 (Communication Policy Research) conference, held in Chennai between December 15 and 17, 2007. The conference, CPRsouth2 was organised by LIRNEasia in association with the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and Rural Technology and Business Incubator (RTBI) of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras. LIRNEasia’s new book is edited by Professor Rohan Samarajiva, Executive Dircetor of LIRNEasia and former Director General of Telecommunications, Sri-Lanka and Ayesha Zainudeen, Senior Researcher at LIRNEasia. Sage Publications and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) have co-published the book. The IDRC and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) have co-funded for the publication of the book. The book brings together scholars, practitioners, former regulators and policy makers to address the problem of expanding ICT connectivity in emerging Asia. The books talks about regulatory reforms, ongoing regorms, emerging trends and its correlation with development over recent years. Communication (PLC) to rural and remote areas’. The authors developed deployment options for PLC in rural areas and presented a rural broadband analysis model, focused on South Asian countires, with policy and strategy recommendations to municipalities. But it failed to look into the critical challenges involved in the deployment like electromagnetic intereference. Helani Galpaya of Sri Lanka, presented a paper on ‘Taking e-Gov to the bottom of the pyramid now: Dial-a-gov’. In this paper, the authors were advocating for a combination of mobile phones as the delivery channel and targeting the parts of government services that are simple/easily delivered to reach the bottom of the pyramid early. Other than this, many other presentations were focusing on deployment of mobile technologies to reach the masses. “But,
when we talk of using mobiles, reaching bottom of the pyramid, more than 70 percent of the people are living in the rural areas, where the teledensity is less than 2 percent compared to 20 percent in the urban areas. I feel that the role of public access to technology through telecentres cannot be underminded when we talk of serving the base of the pyramid”, the authors have argued. Rajendra Kumar, presented his case on ‘Why institutional partnerships matter’. The author compared the social development model and franchise model of telecentres in the rural parts of southern Tamil Nadu. He argued that social development model is serving the community better than franchisee model. “This provided an insight to my dissertation. In this study, I realised that the sustainability of a telecentre is not depending on mainly on the willingness of all the three stakeholders namely the state, civil society, and private sector”, he said. On the second day of the conference, LIRNEasia’s new book, ‘ICT infrastructure in emerging Asia: Policy and regulatory roadblocks’ was launched. The book is based on research in five emerging Asian countries. The first copies of the book were handed over to Chief Guests of the event, Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala and Prof. William Melody. The key highlight of the conference was the field visit to Madurai, southern part of Tamil Nadu, to understand the practical issues of the rural community. The final session of the conference was on ‘Problems and prospects of regulation in the context of democratic governance systems in the Asia Pacific. Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala chaired the session. Rekha Jain of India and Yuli Liu of Taiwan shared their experiences. The conference came to an end with the feedback from the participants to improve the quality of CPRsouth conference. The conference had seen particpation of more than 70 scholars involved in the field of ICT policy and regulation from different parts of the globe, including 15 young scholars. It provided a platform for young scholars to learn and improve the quality of research on ICT interventions. n Reported by Vignesh S, vignesh@csdms.in
January 2008 | www.i4donline.net
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n RENDEZVOUS
Building capacities of NKN telecentres Introduction NASSCOM Foundation (NF), conducted its Second National Consultation on ‘Sustainability of NKN telecentres’ between 19 and 21 December, 2007 at the Vishwa Yuva Kendra, New Delhi. NF has been formed with a vision to provide technology assistance to NGOs and leverage ICTs for development. NF is also mandated and aims to promote corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the IT industry. NASSCOM Foundation’s key activities are geared to contribute to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). NF focuses on poverty reduction through improved access and opportunities to education, health care and livelihood. The Consultation was supported by
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NASSCOM and Intel and participated by key leaders from the IT industry, NGO leaders and over 100 grassroots managers from the NASSCOM Knowledge Network (NKN) telecentres. The aim of the three days workshop and the training programme was to build capacities of the NKN telecentre managers to evaluate and reinforce their efforts to make their telecentres sustainable in the long run. Currently NASSCOM Foundation impacts over 30,000 community members including youth, women and children across the country through technology assistance, adult literacy, health awareness, IT skills development, micro enterprises, life skills, and women empowerment.
Inauguration The National Consultation was inaugurated by Kiran Karnik, President, NASSCOM and Trustee, NASSCOM Foundation and Chaired by Sourabh Srivastava, Chairman, N A S S C O M Fo u n d a t i o n . R u f i n a Fernandes, CEO, NASSCOM Foundation moderated the Inaugural Panel. Other key panelists included Dr. Akhtar Badshah, Senior Director, Global Community Affairs, Microsoft, Amit Goel, Advisor, Ministry of Panchayati Raj, Government of India, Ashok Chandravarkar, Regional Marketing Programme Manager, Intel and Pranav Roach, President, Hughes Network Systems India and Director, Hughes Communications India Ltd. The three day consultation begun with the
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address of key leaders from IT industry, government, this session was followed by an ‘Introduction to NKN telecentres’, later Hughes Communications India conducted their workshop.
A critical study Many ICT-based projects flounder because of insufficient attention to the training, not only of the users or clients, but of the managers and staff responsible for such projects. This has also been found to be the case with telecentre projects, where it is not the availability of the technology that is crucial, but its acceptability and appropriate application. It was observed that the quality of the staff and their skills, attitudes and ability to work with people from a variety of different backgrounds were paramount to the success of telecentres. For a sustainable telecentre, the telecentre managers, need to develop a range of business, administrative and community support skills. Training the operator continues to be critical in the telecentres being set up around the world, particularly in the developing world as the least-advantaged have to fight to avoid becoming even more disadvantaged in the Information Age. A scale-up of telecentres and information kiosks cannot happen without a large cadre of qualified local operators. High-quality ongoing training is crucial to ensure that the operators are familiar with these technical resources, aware of their strengths and weaknesses, and capable of using them to maximum advantage. Management skills and computer skills were the ‘necessary January 2008 | www.i4donline.net
prerequisites’ to making telecentres work. But it is clear that business and financial skills are high priority. NF’s training Given this backdrop, NASSCOM Foundation realised the importance of training NKN telecentre operators and organised the three day long training on management and financial trainings. It had also released an ‘Infomediary training handbook for telecentre managers and staffs’. The aim of the three days workshop and the training programme was to build capacities of the NKN telecentre managers to evaluate and reinforce their efforts to make their centres sustainable in the long run. The telecentre managers, who came from NKN centres located in twelve different states in India, participated with enthusiasm, shared their experiences and concern, and were very keen to implement the principles and processes in their telecentres. The workshop involved an interactive, participatory and activity based training. The training was focused on understanding issues in entrepreneurship and skills needed to be an effective entrepreneur. The workshop also involved training on budgeting, keeping accounts, resource utilisation, managing risks, problem solving marketing and selling services and community mobilisation. The workshop was primarily conducted in English and Hindi, but for the benefit of NKN telecentre managers the whole training programme was translated by
the language translators (volunteers from the telecentre lead coordinators and the NF team) in seven Indian languages that included Marathi, Gujarati, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Oriya and Bengali. Anirban Gupta and Nidhi Arora from Dhriiti (www.dhriiti.org) conducted this workshop. Dhriiti is an effort, a venture to change, an innovative concept by the youth for the youth of this country. In Hindustani, Dhriiti means ‘Courage’.The courage to change and make a difference. Dhriiti is a progressive measure to build and motivate a culture of entrepreneurship and set up sustainable small-scale enterprises. Dhriiti’s primary objective is to promote micro enterprises through a creative and professional approach. The consultation ended with two brief sessions on ‘Optimal Utilisation of Search Engines’ by Jayalakshmi Chittoor of CSDMS folowed by an introduction to ‘BiG Tech’ programme by Manasi from NASSCOM Foundation. BiG Tech (www. bigtech.in) assists non-profit organisations and charities by offering access to the software donation programmes of NF’s donor partners. It saves the ICT budget of non-profit organisations. In India, this programme is delivered by NASSCOM Foundation in partnership with TechSoup (www.techsoup.org). Currently, BiG Tech is offering Microsoft products and has plans to add other software and hardware donation over a period of time.n For more details please visit: www.nasscomfoundation.org
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n RENDEZVOUS
Right to education The seminar titled ‘Right to Education-Actions Now’ was organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Shiksha India, Aspen Institute and Institute of Quality, on 19th December, 2007 in Maurya Sheraton, New Delhi, India. The main sponsors of the seminar were: Ambuja Cement, Bajaj Group of Companies, Bharti, GMMCO, Haldia, Thermax, Sona, SRF, Organosys and Patton. The centre of attraction of this seminar was Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, who called for accountability in delivery of elementary education and public healthcare services, effective use of resources and co-operation with unions in these sectors. Prof. Sen underlined the importance of expansion of inclusive growth. He suggested deployment of more economic resources in education and better organisation of public services. Prof. Sen said that resources generated from economic growth should be used for public services and public goods in general, rather than being absorbed only in private consumption. He also highlighted the issue of diversity. He said that India should ensure efficiency and accountability in delivery of public services through organisational reforms. Despite economic reforms, the slowness of progress on school education has been taking much longer to remedy. He observed that there has been some reduction in the proportion of poverty-stricken people. But the process could have been much faster if growth achievements are combined with ways and means of more widespread sharing of economic opportunities. Prof. Sen said that India has been catching up with China in life expectancy and infant mortality, but there is still a long way to go. Prof. Sen expressed concern at the shocking incidence of absenteeism and neglect on the part of many teachers, who come from elite background and who care less for students from disadvantaged sections of
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the society. He pointed out the poor state of school inspection system in India. To tackle these problems, he suggested positive collaboration with other social groups and particularly the unions of primary school teachers and health care workers. He said that an educated population can make even better use of democracy. He talked on the importance of democracy. He asked for the need for female literacy as it can have positive impact on their economic and social status. He said that education can have powerful effects on quality of life of even the poorest of the poor. Prof. Amartya Sen mentioned that the nature of education is extremely relative. He also praised the $100 computers-for-kids initiative by MIT Media Lab. He said that peer learning is essential. He said that the quality of food provided in the mid-day meal scheme (MDM) is poor in certain states of India. He said that there is need for looking at education for producing skilled labour force, which can be tapped by the IT, ITeS
and other services sector. He said that poor people should be provided coupons, which can be helpful in accessing education. He said that education is something more than literacy. He mentioned that in Bangladesh, there is a law which says that the wife of every husband should read and write. Rakesh said that public-private partnership for constructing school buildings is need of the day. He said that there is need for concentrating on the ‘Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan’. Vijay Bhakara talked on the accountability of the education sector. He said that there is need for measuring the quality of education. He mentioned about one census assessment report on quality of education. He said that the competency level of the children needs to be assessed, which has happened in Karnataka, India. He also mentioned about the School Adoption Scheme, which is running in Karnataka. Kalyan Banerji said that the quality of textbook is very poor in India. There is thus the need for good i4d | January 2008
quality content, so that it enhances the quality of the children-the future of India. S Bhattacharya said that there is need for better implementation of already existing educational schemes. Governmental schemes cannot be substituted by other initiatives. Teachers’ commitment and empowerment is extremely essential. India produces less number of engineers. There is a need to check why more and more students are taking commerce and management related subjects, instead of science/ technology. There is also the need to see why the system of Aanganwadi has collapsed in most states of India. He also mentioned that the pre-nursery school education system has collapsed. Drop-out is happening due to socio-economic reasons, he added. Students coming from rural background have hidden talents. Teachers must have the potential to tap the talent present in school children. There is also need to assess why there exists much focus only on English. He said that there is need to look at how to ensure accountability in educational schemes. S Bhattacharya said that the unhealthy competition in education need to be reduced. One of the biggest problem in Rajasthan is the transfer policy for teachers since every teacher want to be transfered to his/her native place. However, Rajasthan has performed well in implementing the mid-day meal scheme successfully. During the 11th Five Year Plan, more allocation of financial resources with have been made on education, he added. He asked for passing of the Right to Education Bill by the Parliament of India. Jamshyd Godrej, Chairman, Shiksha India, talked on the importance of e-Learning tools to impart education at primary and secondary levels. He asked for the need of inputs from all sections of the population in order to make concrete progress in the field of education. He said that CII has been making positive efforts to promote education. Gautam Thapar, Vice-Chairman, The Aspen Institute India, said, “In the context of globalisation, education assumes greater meaning. Greatness of a nation should not be measured by its ranking in global economic order, but by its ability to provide quality education. If we don’t address the issue of education, our demographic dividend may turn into demographic disaster.” He added January 2008 | www.i4donline.net
Childreen: The future of India that the Aspen Institute India is ready to contribute to the promotion of education. The day-long session was attended by 200 participants from Indian industry, NGOs, principals of various schools across the county, teachers and students. The session included an interactive session with Prof. Sen during which he dwelt on an array of issues. The participants discussed future course of action to improve elementary education in India. Madhav talked on the need for educational initiative in rural India. He said that there is need for employing the rural unemployed in educational sector. In this respect, the educational initiative of the the NGO Pratham, was mentioned by him. But there is need for scalability of the Pratham initiative, he said. Anil Bordia, talked about the need for working with the Anganwadi workers. He mentioned about the Lok Jumbish. There is need for contribution by the citizens, he said. Education should not be made absolutely free, he added. During the conference it was mentioned
that the National Sample Survey is one of the the best surveys conducted by the Government of India, which provides a different picture than the statistics provided by the Department of Education. Motivation of teacher is extremely important for having a good quality education system. There is the need for developing a transparent and accountable institutions in the area of education. The focus of the discussion was on the mid day meal scheme and the purposes it serves. During the post lunch session, group discussions (comprising more than 15 groups) were held, which revolved around several topics. Suggestions were provided by various groups on various topics, which include: ensuring better school adoption system, bridging gaps in education in rural India, developing teacher skills, team learning, etc.n Reported by: Narinder Bhatia, narinder.bhatia@ciionline.org, Shambhu Ghatak, shambhu@csdms.in Anaam Sharma, anaam@csdms.in
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Bytes for All... only to Goa’s knowledge sector but also to its infrastructure. The Central Government will bear this in mind while locating new institutions for higher learning as envisaged in the 11th Plan. He added that he is confident that this digital capability combined its high human development indices will take Goa to higher levels of excellence and prosperity.
ICT4D One laptop per child: a relook into Negroponte’s vision When Nicholas Negroponte, a tech guru at the celebrated Media Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, launched the initiative in 2005, the vision was grandiose. Indeed, Mr Negroponte’s vision was brilliant. He planned to blanket the developing world with tens of millions of $100 laptops for kids. The low cost would come from a tripartite ‘perfect storm’. First, economies of scale: sales would be directly to governments, who could only buy quantities above 1m. Second, the machines would bypass Intel’s processors and Microsoft’s software in favour of open-source stuff. Third, commodity parts would keep the price low.
http://www.pib.nic.in
Broadband initiative in Pakistan In order to spread the benefits of the telecom revolution to all corners of Pakistan, Universal Service Fund (USF) has been established. USF aims to promote development of telecommunication services in un-served and under-served areas throughout the length and breadth of the country, to make available affordable voice telephony and basic data services to progressively greater proportions of the country’s population at their home locations. To bring significant advances towards enhancement of e-Services, both in rural as well as urban areas of the country is the goal. USF has recently launched its concept paper on its Broadband initiative. The concept paper is available on the following website for public feedback: http://www.usf.org.pk
Open Source Frederick Noronha seeks constructive comments A copy of a 40-page text has been developed by Frederick Noronha on the issue of Free/Libre and Open Source Software, and schools. This was done for the International Open Source Network (IOSNSouth Asia). He solicits feedback, comments and criticism. http://fn.goa-india.org, http://goalinks.livejournal.com/
Analysing the instinct of programmers Infrastructure Development Company Limited (IDCOL) shares the comparative analysis of open source software veterans and corporate houses of software designing who take two conflicting positions. The repeated argument of the corporate houses is- software designing is highly connected to business and profits gaining. Today’s software development houses like Microsoft and Oracle came at the mammoth level for the intention of profit making. Creative works in computer science will be impaired if we do not facilitate extreme form of software business. The open source software leaders think sharing codes of programme with everybody can enrich software due to participation of uncountable programmers in improving the software, which is not possible in the corporate software design. In fact, their works are surrounded with limited programmers. So many brains are working behind that software in comparison to corporate software and day by day that software keeps getting better and better. Linus Torvalds was only 21 year old, when he wrote out the operating system software Linux, which is beating Windows’s worldwide influence. When writing out the Linux programme over several days in a dark apartment, the young
A few trials in places like Haiti and Rwanda, together with orders from Peru and Uruguay collectively fell far short of even 1m machines. A clever holiday promotion in North America that offered two laptops—one for the buyer and one to donate to a child in a developing country—for $399 similarly fizzled. Production lines at Quanta Computer, a Taiwanese manufacturer, were left idle. http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10472304
Prime Minister of India addresses at the launch of broadband network in Goa Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh launched the Goa Broadband Network at Porvorim, Goa. Speaking on the occasion, he told “I am happy to be associated with the launch of the 1st Phase of the Goa Broadband Network. This is a pioneering project, an important milestone in the use of modern telecommunications and IT capabilities for improving public services and also the quality of lives of our people...”. He offered the Central Government’s support to improve not
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i4d | January 2008
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Bytes for All... programmer, Linus, was unconscious about how his time was going on, and when it was time to take food and bath. He was not even aware that he is one of the world’s famous programmers. So money and business is not the only driving force behind the making of talented programmers of quality software. Open access for the non-English-speaking World Language barriers in scientific communication still poses a problem despite recent successes of Open Access Movement. Four options for English-language journals to overcome the language barrier are suggested: 1) Abstracts in alternative languages provided by authors, 2) Wiki open translation, 3) International board of translator-editors, and 4) Alternative language version of the journal. The ‘Emerging Themes in Epidemiology’ announces that with immediate effect, it will accept translations of abstracts or full texts by authors as additional files. http://www.ete-online.com/content/5/1/1
Events/ Announcements Third Knowledge Fair in Bangladesh Amader Gram ICT4D Project is organising Third Knowledge Fair on 20-21 February 2008 at Sreefaltola village High School field of Rampal under Bagerhat District in Bangladesh. Knowledge Fair is a culmination of ICT tools and local knowledge sharing of experiences in rural development of Bangladesh society. The Fair will focus on disaster preparedness and knowledge management. It also plans to hold workshops and seminars on the thematic issues including essay competition, knowledge sharing and through cultural events. A book fair will also be organised. www.amadergram.org
A workshop on how websites work by FAT, India Feminist Approach to Technology (FAT) announces it’s first workshop on: Website designing for dummies - Understanding how websites work on1st February 2008 in New Delhi. Women in the development sector, who need to maintain their organisation’s website but do not have skills on website designing or maintaining, who need to work with the technical staff on the website and face difficulties in communicating and, who are keen to understand the technicalities of a website in general are encouraged to attend. www.fat-net.org
Books/Articles Copy South To read more, get a copy of the 208-page Copy/South Dossier produced in May 2006 by the Copy South Research Group after more than 18 months of research. Available at no charge, this unique dossier contains more than 50 articles examining many dimensions of the issue across the global South, such as access, culture, economics, libraries, education, software, the Internet, January 2008 | www.i4donline.net
the public domain, and resistance. The dossier is available for download, with eight posters in the poster corner. http://www.copysougth.org
Primer on ICT for disaster management The first important steps towards reducing disaster impact are to correctly analyse the potential risk and identify measures that can prevent, mitigate or prepare for emergencies. ICT can play a significant role in highlighting risk areas, vulnerabilities and potentially affected populations. This primer outlines the importance of ICT in managing disasters. Covering all aspects of disasters from prevention, mitigation and preparedness to response and recovery, the guide details the differing roles ICT can play in the management of disaster situations. Illustrative case studies are provided to exemplify these roles. These include the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004, the 2005 Pakistan earthquake, and the Turkish earthquake of 1999. Specific aspects examined include: • Channels used for disaster warning • GIS and remote sensing is disaster management • Internet usage • Specific disaster management software • Disaster information network • GIS in disaster recovery. A detailed list of global and regional organisations working in disaster management is also provided. Author: Wattegama,C. Produced by: Asia-Pacifiic Development Information Program (2007) Available online at:http://www.eldis.org/cf/rdr/?doc=33445 Guide to managing ICT in the voluntary and community sector The guide is aimed at staff and volunteers from voluntary and community organisations (VCOs) from small and medium-sized organisations who want to manage their Information Communication Technology (ICT) better. It also intends for those people who don’t have access to ‘paid for’ technical advice and support. The main sections reflect some of the key issues that VCOs face in managing ICT, from policies and procedures to keep things running; from how to produce an ICT strategy to putting realistic costs into funding bids. Case studies help to illustrate how others have taken up the challenge of ICT and there is plenty of signposting to other information, especially to useful websites. Author: Walker,M; Produced by: ICT Hub (2007) Available online at: http://www.eldis.org/cf/rdr/?doc=33411
Bytes for All: www.bytesforall.org or www.bytesforall.net Bytes for All Readers Discussion: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ bytesforall_readers To subscribe: bytesforall_readers-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Bytes for All Discussion summary compiled by: Ajitha Saravanan and Ritu Srivastava, i4d, CSDMS, India.
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ICTs related issues Digital Review of Asia Pacific 2007-2008 Publishers: Orbicom, International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Sage Publications ISBN: (e book) 978-0-7619-3674-9 Pages: 373 The biennial Digital Review of Asia Pacific is considered as a comprehensive guide to the state-of-best practice and trends in the world of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) in the Asia Pacific region. The present third edition for the period 2007-2008 covers ICT4D initiatives and trends in 31 countries and economies, including North Korea for the first time. Each country chapter, which have been authored by experts from the government, academia, industry and civil society, presents key ICT policies, applications and initiatives for national development. In addition, five thematic chapters provide a synthesis of some of the key issues in ICT4D in the region, including: Overview of emerging issues in the field of ICT4D; Mobile and wireless technologies for development in Asia Pacific; Role of ICTs in risk communication in Asia Pacific; Localisation in Asia Pacific: Key policy issues in intellectual property and technology in Asia Pacific; and State and evolution of ICTs: A tale of two Asia’s. The book finds that in the era of globalisation, the spread of ICTs in the Asia-Pacific region is greatly influenced by an entire gamut of factors, which include: impact of ICTs on economic and social development; policy issues and regulatory framework related to broadband, Internet governance, convergence, et al. Digital Review of Asia Pacific provides a deeper analysis on the interconnectedness between ICTs and education, in the sense how investment in ICTs and education can lead to human capital formation, and how that leads to inclusive and equitable growth in the long run. The report finds that the dominant approach to ICT4D in Asia Pacific tends to be patterned after the approach adopted by advanced economies, with its focus on new technologies that might make older structures obsolete, limited discussion of potential risks or unexpected consequences, and little attention to cultural and social issues that are critical to project success. The report explains that the wireless local area network (WLAN) is a relatively new technology, which got started
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developing in 1990 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., a US-based professional engineering society, to exploit the Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) frequency band for high-speed networking. Unlike mobile phones where the equipment supplier base is relatively small, the number of manufacturers supplying WLAN equipment is much longer. It also says that the simplest Wi-Fi system is just a Wi-Fi card plugged or pre-built into a computer, establishing radio contact with a nearby Access Point (AP), which then provides onward connectivity to the global Internet. It has been said in the report that the countries hailing from the Asia-Pacific region should develop its own set of culturally sensitive and national priorityconsistent policies. There is the need to take into account non-ICT related factors (political, social and cultural) while formulating policies, the report argues. The report has provided some highly innovative applications, especially of mobile phones, in Asia Pacific, including distance education via SMS, small value transactions and e-Governance. There are barriers to use of mobile and wireless technologies in many parts of Asia Pacific, which are caused by language and literacy, according to the report. The report highlights the importance of ICTs in disaster management. ICTs are used in various countries from the Asia Pacific region to deal with serious public health emergencies such as the SARS and avian flu outbreaks and natural disasters such as the Asian Tsunami, volcanic eruptions, typhoons and other natural disasters that have recently occurred in the region with dramatic and tragic dimensions. The report asks for governments’ attention in creating ICT infrastructure. The report highlights on the unavailability of affordable hardware and connectivity in the Asia Pacific region. The issue of localisation of content has been stressed in this particular report. Giving attention to content created in local languages has been one of the main challenges before countries from Asia Pacific. The issue of copyright and intellectual rights, which is going to have impact on access to knowledge and technology, has been discussed. The importance of flexibilities despite having strong intellectual property enforcement, has been well discussed in the report. The importance of regional and multilateral approach to trade negotiations too has been discussed. n Shambhu Ghatak, shambhu@csdms.in i4d | January 2008
ICTs related issues Digital Review of Asia Pacific 2007-2008 Publishers: Orbicom, International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Sage Publications ISBN: (e book) 978-0-7619-3674-9 Pages: 373 The biennial Digital Review of Asia Pacific is considered as a comprehensive guide to the state-of-best practice and trends in the world of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) in the Asia Pacific region. The present third edition for the period 2007-2008 covers ICT4D initiatives and trends in 31 countries and economies, including North Korea for the first time. Each country chapter, which have been authored by experts from the government, academia, industry and civil society, presents key ICT policies, applications and initiatives for national development. In addition, five thematic chapters provide a synthesis of some of the key issues in ICT4D in the region, including: Overview of emerging issues in the field of ICT4D; Mobile and wireless technologies for development in Asia Pacific; Role of ICTs in risk communication in Asia Pacific; Localisation in Asia Pacific: Key policy issues in intellectual property and technology in Asia Pacific; and State and evolution of ICTs: A tale of two Asia’s. The book finds that in the era of globalisation, the spread of ICTs in the Asia-Pacific region is greatly influenced by an entire gamut of factors, which include: impact of ICTs on economic and social development; policy issues and regulatory framework related to broadband, Internet governance, convergence, et al. Digital Review of Asia Pacific provides a deeper analysis on the interconnectedness between ICTs and education, in the sense how investment in ICTs and education can lead to human capital formation, and how that leads to inclusive and equitable growth in the long run. The report finds that the dominant approach to ICT4D in Asia Pacific tends to be patterned after the approach adopted by advanced economies, with its focus on new technologies that might make older structures obsolete, limited discussion of potential risks or unexpected consequences, and little attention to cultural and social issues that are critical to project success. The report explains that the wireless local area network (WLAN) is a relatively new technology, which got started
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developing in 1990 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., a US-based professional engineering society, to exploit the Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) frequency band for high-speed networking. Unlike mobile phones where the equipment supplier base is relatively small, the number of manufacturers supplying WLAN equipment is much longer. It also says that the simplest Wi-Fi system is just a Wi-Fi card plugged or pre-built into a computer, establishing radio contact with a nearby Access Point (AP), which then provides onward connectivity to the global Internet. It has been said in the report that the countries hailing from the Asia-Pacific region should develop its own set of culturally sensitive and national priorityconsistent policies. There is the need to take into account non-ICT related factors (political, social and cultural) while formulating policies, the report argues. The report has provided some highly innovative applications, especially of mobile phones, in Asia Pacific, including distance education via SMS, small value transactions and e-Governance. There are barriers to use of mobile and wireless technologies in many parts of Asia Pacific, which are caused by language and literacy, according to the report. The report highlights the importance of ICTs in disaster management. ICTs are used in various countries from the Asia Pacific region to deal with serious public health emergencies such as the SARS and avian flu outbreaks and natural disasters such as the Asian Tsunami, volcanic eruptions, typhoons and other natural disasters that have recently occurred in the region with dramatic and tragic dimensions. The report asks for governments’ attention in creating ICT infrastructure. The report highlights on the unavailability of affordable hardware and connectivity in the Asia Pacific region. The issue of localisation of content has been stressed in this particular report. Giving attention to content created in local languages has been one of the main challenges before countries from Asia Pacific. The issue of copyright and intellectual rights, which is going to have impact on access to knowledge and technology, has been discussed. The importance of flexibilities despite having strong intellectual property enforcement, has been well discussed in the report. The importance of regional and multilateral approach to trade negotiations too has been discussed. n Shambhu Ghatak, shambhu@csdms.in i4d | January 2008
What’s on Africa 6-8 February 2008 International Conference on eEducation and e-Learning EEEL’08 Cairo, Egypt http://wahss.org/
2-4 June 2008 The First International Conference on Security, Privacy and Confidentiality Issues in Cyberlaw Cairo, Egypt http://www.crime-research.org/events/
18-20 June 2008 3rd National Conference on Peer Education, HIV and AIDS Nairobi, Kenya http://www.nope.or.ke
Globalisation and the Right to be Read Jaipur, Rajasthan http://www.siyahi.in/events-translating.htm
4-5 February 2008 Techshare India 2008 India Habitat Centre, New Delhi http://www.barrierbreak.com
7-8 February 2008 XI National Conference on e-Governance Haryana http://darpg.nic.in/arpg-website/egov_conf.htm
8-9 February 2008 National Seminar on Information, Communication and Intelligent Systems Cochin, Kerala
8-11 July 2008 2nd African Council for Distance Education( ACDE) Conference and General Assembly Lagos, Nigeria
http://www.mec.ac.in/news/attached/41150_sem.doc
http://www.nou.edu.ng/noun/acde2008
http://www.pravara.com
Australia 10-11 March 2008 Somerset Conference for Librarians, Teachers, et al Queensland http://www.somerset.qld.edu.au/conflib
29 June 2008 The 2nd International Workshop on Web Mining for E-commerce and Eservices (WMEE2008) Melbourne
22-24 February 2008 11th Asian Congress of Agricultural Medicine and Rural Health Aurangabad, Maharashtra
Singapore 9-11 April 2008 eCommerce Asia Summit 2008 Suntec City http://www.terrapinn.com/2008/ecommerce/
14-17 April 2008 Biomedical Asia 2008 Suntec International Convention and Exhibition Centre http://www.terrapinn.com/2008/biomedasia/
25-27 April 2008 Mobile Content World Asia 2008 Suntec International Exhibition & Convention Centre http://www.terrapinn.com/2008/mcw08%5Fsg/
Thailand 7-11 March 2008 Amazing E-Learning II Bangkok http://www.elearning.dusit.ac.th/conference2008/
27-29 March 2008 The 2008 International Conference on eEducation, Bangkok http://www.e-case.org/e-Education2008/
United States 21-22 February 2008 USDA Agricultural Outlook Forum Virginia
Italy
http://www.usda.gov/oce/forum
30-31 January 2008 I Convegno eLearning Point 2008 Cassino
24-26 October 2008 The University of Atlanta’s First International Symposium on Online Teaching and Learning, Georgia
http://www.elearningpoint.org
http://www.UofA.edu
Oman 3-5 March 2008 International Conference of Educational Technology ICOET2008 Muscat
United Kingdom
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~derrick/ WMEE2008/
http://www.icoet,.com
http://www.aptn.org/Events/802era.htm
Germany
11-12 April 2008 e-Learning and Software for EducationeLSE 2008 Bucharest
25-27 June 2008 Code Generation 2008 Cambridge
http://adl.unap.ro/else/
http://www.codegeneration.net/conference/index.php
Med-e-Tel 16-18 April 2008 Luxexpo, Luxembourg http://www.medetel.lu/index. php?rub=home&page=defaut
India 21-22 January, 2008 Translating Bharat : Language, January 2008 | www.i4donline.net
Romania
eINDIA 2008 29-31 July, 2008 Pragati Maidan, New Delhi www.eindia.net.in
12 February 2008 Achieving Compliance with the EuP Directive Leatherhead, Surrey
United Arab Emirates 14-17 January 2008 e-Learning Excellence in the Middle East 2008: Define. Design. Deliver Dubai http://elexforum.etqm.ae/
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ICTs Statistics: India The table below provides various Indian ICT related facts for the years 2000 and 2005 ICT sector structure Separate telecommunications regulator Status of main fixed line operator Level of competition: International long distance Level of competition: mobile Level of competition: Internet service provider Government prioritization of ICT (scale 1-7) ICT sector performance Access Telephone main lines (per 1,000 people) International voice trafic (minutes per person)a Mobile subscribers (per 1,000 people) Population covered by mobile telephony (%) Internet users (per 1,000 people) Personal computers (per 1,000 people) Households with television (%) Quality Telephone faults (per 100 main lines per year) Broadband subscribers (per 1,000 people) International Internet bandwidth (bits per person) Affordability Price basket for fixed line (US$ per month, residential) Price basket for mobile (US$ per month, 2006) Price basket for Internet (US$ per month) Price of call to United States (US$ per 3 minutes) Institutional efficiency and sustainability Total telecommunications revenue (% of GDP) Total telephone subscribers per employee Total telecommunications investment (% of revenue) ICT applications ICT expenditure (% of GDP) E-government readiness index (scale 0-1) Secure Internet servers (per 1 million people, 2006) Schools connected to the Internet (%)
India
Low Income Group
2000
2005
Yes
Yes
South Asia Region
2005
2005
Public Public M
C
P
C
C
C
--
5.6
--
4.9
32
45
37
39
2
3
5
4
4
82
77
79
--
--
--
--
5
55
44
49
5
16
11
16
30
32
15
32
165.5
126.0
--
88.1
0.0
1.2
0.9
1.0
1
18
15
18
6.0
3.3
8.7
5.1
--
2.4
9.6
2.4
--
6.8
30.1
8.1
3.36
1.19
1.99
2.02
1.5
1.9
0.7
2.0
85
--
141
125
19.3
--
30.9
15.4
3.6
5.8
5.9
5.7
--
0.4
0.24
0.29
0.1
0.7 --
0.5 --
0.6 --
--
Source: The World Bank, http://devdata.worldbank.org/ict/ind_ict.pdf
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i4d | January 2008
Education was a cross cutting theme addressing issues of how new collaborations could be forged for achieving the goals
telecentre.org Village enabled several launches and partnership announcements, the lead partners proudly launch the telecentre magazine
Open access sharing research, expanding resources, and enabling free sharing of knowledge is the thrust of the future
telecentre.org Village attracted many a members to experience the hub of networking and knowledge sharing
India as trend setter explored opportunities for upscaling, south-south collaboration and knowledge sharing
The Idea Factory was a unique endeavour to support ICT entrepreneurs to find partners, supporters and innovators
Fostering friendship, promoting interactivity and celebrating partnerships were the high points of GK3
Young entrepreneurs catwalk was a unique demonstration of innovative projects - A creative way to sell an idea!