Promoting local content in global market : June 2004 Issue

Vol. II No. 6

June 2004

The first monthly magazine on ICT4D

It’s a lonely road out there...

Creating content Information for development www.i4donline.net

Promoting local content in global market The case of Rural Bazar

New possibilities for local content distribution

ISSN 0972 - 804X

LOCAL CONTENT

Role of media and communication

April 2004 | www.i4donline.net

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V OLUME II N UMBER

6, J UNE 2004

Contents Features Creating Content

A lonely road out there ............................................................................................................................................................. 6 Frederick Noronha Role of media and communication

New possibilities for local content distribution ................................................................................................ 11 Rosa M. Gonzalez RuralBazar

Promoting local content in global market ............................................................................................................. 13 K. J. Balan and S. P. Nautiyal Information Systems for rural communities

Content Management System for communities .............................................................................................. 15 G. L. Ganga Prasad Pan Localisation regional initiative

Developing local language computing ..................................................................................................................... 27 Sarmad Hussain

Columns Quiz ....................................................................................................................................................................................................... 18 News ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... 19 Book Review ................................................................................................................................................................................... 31 Frederick Noronha Insight

Local content, local people, local languages ......................................................................................................... 35 Tori Holmes and Britt Jorgensen ‘ICTs for poor’ Quiz Answers .......................................................................................................................................... 40 What’s on .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 41 In Fact

The world of languages ......................................................................................................................................................... 42

Rendezvous GKP Annual Meeting ............................................................................................................................................................ 33 Global ICT Summit 2004 ................................................................................................................................................. 34

Acknowledgement: We would like to acknowledge the assistance of Manish Kumar in planning this issue.

Read magazine online at www.i4donline.net

Information for development www.i4donline.net

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i4d News

ing m o C th is up a r ! ye

i4d Editorial Calendar 2004 & 2005 Month

Theme

Submission of articles

The first

June

Local Content

May 31

July

Water/Agriculture

June 15

August

Community Radio

June 30

September

Tele-centers/Kiosks

July 31

October

daily news service on ICT4D Subscribe at

FLOSS

August 31

November

Disaster Management

September 30

December

Land Records

October 31

January 2005

e-Governance

November 30

February 2005

e-Culture

December 31

We invite editorial contributions from our readers in the above mentioned fields.

While no guarantee is made or implied, we will make every effort to incorporate all views and experiences in the relevant issues so as to better serve the ICT4D community at large.

Please be sure to read and follow the Editorial Guidelines on page 39. Note that contributions may be edited for space and/or clarity. Unsolicited manuscripts and artwork will not be returned.

Send your articles to info@i4donline.net

www.i4donline.net 4

i4d | May 2004

Editorial Information for development

Will it be Hinglish, Esperanto or a Romanized Information Society?

www.i4donline.net

Advisory Board M P Narayanan, Chairman i4d Amitabha Pande Department of Science and Technology, Government of India Chin Saik Yoon Southbound Publications, Malaysia Ichiro Tambo OECD, France Karl Harmsen Centre for Space Science and Technology Education in Asia and the Pacific, India Kenneth Keniston Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA Mohammed Yunus Grameen Bank, Bangladesh Nagy Hanna Information Solutions Group, World Bank, USA S. Ramani Research Director, H.P.Labs, India Walter Fust Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Switzerland Wijayananda Jayaweera UNESCO, France

Editorial Board Akhtar Badshah, Digital Partners Fredrick Noronha, Bytesforall Madan Mohan Rao, Consultant Editor Ravi Gupta Editorial Consultant Jayalakshmi Chittoor Research Associates Anuradha Dhar, Gautam Navin

Group Directors Maneesh Prasad, Sanjay Kumar i4d G-4 Sector 39, NOIDA, UP, 201 301, India.

Phone +91 120 250 2180-87 Fax +91 120 250 0060 Email info@i4donline.net Web www.i4donline.net Contact us in Singapore 25 International Business Park, #4-103F, German Centre, Singapore - 609916 Phone +65-65627983 Fax +65-656227984

India alone boasts of 15 official languages (English being the associated 16th Official language) and has officially recognized 1,683 mother tongues. An estimated 850 of them are in daily use.

With so many people still not literate, and having little or no formal education, is the digital world going to neglect them forever or send them to oblivion in the landscape of the Information Society?

With chat becoming a very popular tool among the urban middle class youngsters, there are innovative languages being created, Hinglish being one of them, even though most Internet users are forced to use Roman letters to communicate and bridge geographical barriers.

It is not a moot discussion whether the global Anglicization (or romanization) of the Internet and the digital world accelerating or slowing the extinction of cultural and linguistic diversity of the world. While the champions of these causes have been articulating their concerns, it is true that the majority of software developers, at least in their early stages, of the Internet have made it largely Roman alphabet friendly.

With the existing global plurality of written and spoken languages slowly disappearing, the new world information order poses new challenges to preseve this diversity, and with it the wide traditional knowledge that is resident among the people who speak different languages and dialects. Making a principled distinction between one language and another is usually impossible. For example, the boundaries between named language groups are in effect arbitrary due to blending between populations. It is only when this vast diversity of people become part of information and knowledge contributors of local content that we can really appreciate what we are missing in the world of Internet.

Esperanto is an “artificial” language first published in 1887 by Ludovik L. Zamenhof (1859-1917) after extensive thought and experimentation. Zamenhof sought to create an easy to learn and politically neutral means of communication for use by people whose native tongues were different. He probably did not expect it to become a universal medium of communication in the English sense of “universal,” but he did think that broad availability and use of the language could facilitate life and elevate the human condition. His efforts were brilliantly successful in that Esperanto is the only deliberately created language to have generated and sustained a body of fluent (or even semi-fluent) speakers which number over 2 million people around the world.

Would Zamenhof have created a different “universal language” if he was born in the 21st Century, that respected local content in local languages and yet worked as well as esperanto for the world?

Designed by Deepak Kumar Printed at Yashi Media Works Pvt. Ltd. New Delhi, India i4d does not necessarily subscribe to the views expressed in this publication. All views expressed in this magazine are those of the contributors. i4d is not responsible or accountable for any loss incurred directly or indirectly as a result of the information provided.

February | www.i4donline.net © Centre2004 for Spatial Database Management and Solutions, 2003

Ravi Gupta Ravi.Gupta@i4donline.net

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C REATING

CONTENT

A lonely road out there The new technology has also made us slaves of a new type of ‘information colonialism’. One, which encourages us to think that the centre of the world is somewhere in Europe or the US.

Frederick Noronha Freelance Journalist Goa, India fred@bytesforall.org

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In one small room of this infrastructure strapped newspaper, sits a plush new computer. For a few thousand rupees each month, little more than the salary of a midlevel journalist in a small city, this direct link via satellite brings in hundreds of snazzy photographs from across the world, and thousands of new stories every few weeks.

It’s easier and cheaper, to learn about Tahiti, Paris, Timbucktoo, Hawaii and The Hague, rather than the small state where most of the newspaper’s readers live and work.

For someone who comes from the world of content itself and has spent half one’s life as a print journalist, it’s painfully clear how the gap is growing.

Thanks to ICTs we now have the tools that give us the chance of having a New International Information Order. (Does anyone remember these debates from the seventies?) At the same time, the new technology has also made us slaves of a new type of ‘information colonialism’. One, which encourages us to think that the centre of the world is somewhere in Europe or the US. One that makes us feel that it’s not work generating content about our own societies, but just pick up what flows so easily from the so-called ‘developed world’. One, which threatens to convert large parts of the planet into ‘downloading’ societies and consumers of information, instead of ‘uploading’ ones and producers of information.

Our gap between connectivity and (tech) capacity on the one hand, and content on the other, keeps growing even more vast.

More so, in countries like India, where the mastery of technology seems to be an end in itself, almost wholly divorced from the need to solve the many problems of our deprived millions.

India boasts that it is surging ahead on the tech front — never mind if we are largely working for the export-dollars and hardly utilising our skills to meet the needs of our own countrymen. Connectivity too is becoming less of an issue, at least in the cities.

But what about the content? For a country

of over one billion, many of whose states are of comparable size to the larger European nations, content is in amazingly short supply here.

Lack of affordable local language solutions is still a major bottleneck. Those in a position to create content have been slow in taking to the Net. The what’s-in-it-for-me syndrome blocks us from making progress where it’s needed most.

For a country of India’s size, new technologies on the ICT front offer an unusually good and affordable opportunity to communicate, whatever their current limitations; but we first need to wake up to their possibilities. In the recently-published book ‘e-Content: Voices from the Ground’ (Osama Manzar and Peter A Bruck, eds, 2004, Digital Empowerment Foundation), Manzar himself makes an important point.

He says “It is a paradox that India, being a non-English speaking country, has more than 1.5 million websites in English, and a paltry 20,000 or so in various Indian languages. Incidentally, only 5 per cent indians of speak English.”

There are other aspects too. Large sections within India speak languages which are not considered to be among the “major” or dozen-and-half “national” languages in the country. India needs to communicate and create content (in howsoever small a dialect this may be), to be able to communicate with each other (without feeling a sense of domination of the larger languages, whether an alien one like English or a dominant ‘desi’ one like Hindi) and to be able to communicate with the outside world.

In the latter case, a large section of which still speaks languages other than English.

When asked about the major bottlenecks in the development of content in India, Manzar (ibid) pointed to eight factors — the large section still below the poverty line, non-availability of software tools in the local language, illiteracy, corruption in the government and bureaucracy, lack of leadership “at all levels”, poor planning and ini4d | June 2004

frastructure, a lack of vision on “exploiting Indian knowledge power to create an information society” and the lack of self-confidence.

To this list one could add (i) the fact that India has long been a largely oral society, (ii) the fact that older ICT tools like radio have not been opened up and sufficiently democratised for use by the common man, (iii) the profits-before-people approach that has grown more acute in post-liberalisation India, (iv) the fact that India’s tech elites are, for the most part, quite comfortable in English and hence don’t seem much of a pressing need to create digital content in the local languages, (v) the large size of the internal domestic Indian market, which is largely untapped and even possibly unaware of its own full potential, given the lack of communication. This is like a vicious cycle: there’s little content, because the ‘market’ (not just in the commercial sense) for it is yet to be explored. The lack of content means that there’s inadequate awareness about its potential.

On the other side of the balance sheet are certain initiatives.

These need to be taken note of, lest we miss the potential which is unfolding just now.

Manzar sees certain pillars on which e-Content could be built.

These include the talent of the people, innovation in media, market access, use of emerging ICTs and growing connectivity (cross-sectoral, cross-industry and multi-national).

In the Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) community, volunteers are working hard and fast to make computers work in regional languages. This is particularly promising, since the easein-sharing FLOSS skills makes it more useful than would be a proprietorial software solution (For more details see the Localisation Newsletter). The aim of this newsletter is to highlight localisation activities based on Free/Open Source Software, present a complete picture, and to serve as a mouthpiece for all localisation teams and their volunteers. G. Karunakar, one of the young men spearheading this initiative, recently announced that a complete issue is available at http://www.indlinux.org/nl/nl150404.html To conclude, could we look at some of the lessons emerging from our experiences in countries like India? A few pointers that strike one’s mind: Government should open-up on regulation: India, where we proudly and repeatedly claim to be the “world’s largest democracy”, is today still bottlenecked by an unfair policy of restricting information and content from travelling where it is needed most.

Community radio is one major issue, and a campaign for the last decade notwithstanding, it is yet to be opened up to the citizen.

This is the issue for debate in a forthcoming issue of this magazine.

The growth of radio has been stunted by laws and regulations and government control for decades. Given factors like illiteracy, the strong oral tradition in India and great diversity among different parts of the country, the opening up of radio could work wonders for the generation of relevant local content.

Yet, today, we’re moving from a government-dominated to a commercial-dominated radio broadcasting scenario, and till date the latter too is restricted to music-only non-news broadcasts. To find out more about the community radio debate, see the archives of the mailing-list CRIndia at https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/cr-india/ Bandwidth is perishable, we don’t have much time left. Either June 2004 | www.i4donline.net

we use it, or lose it. If we don’t open up low-powered FM broadcasting to the communities fast enough, it’s simply going to be wasted. Spectrum on the airwaves can’t be hoarded. What’s more, technological changes and the shift towards digital broadcasting could kill the immense possibilities thrown open by low-powered, localised broadcasting that FM offers.

Films are another area of concern. In a country where an estimated 15 million watch a movie daily and there are an estimated 16,000 cinema houses, the creation of content by this media is still stymied by regulations.

Entertainment is fine, but reality is a thing apart-or so the official policy seems to suggest. Recently, documentary film-makers from across India launched a campaign against censorship of their medium. See http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vikalp The Central Board of Film Censors till June 1983 has subsequently been renamed as the Central Board of Film Certification.

Whatever the label, questions need to be raised about the functioning of such institutions, specially when it comes to spheres outside entertainment.

Likewise, the domination of the industry by entertainment blockbusters has probably meant the side-lining of films that could be classified as useful ‘content’ making a difference to the lives of the millions. The difficulty of India’s documentary-makers-many of whom are world-class-in finding an audience and suitable distribution channels only underlines this point. Perhaps they too need to look at alternative means of distribution, not necessarily following the ‘all rights reserved’ copyrights-encumbered model.

Create the platforms, and leave it: My own learning came from a 17-year-old college kid, who set up a simple mailing-list (no rocket science, this) in August 1994. Today Herman Carneiro’s Goanet (http://www.goanet.org)-with which I am still involved-has 5000 readers each day. It sparked off in this writer the realisation that community networks can indeed be very useful and helpful in generating and sharing both information and knowledge. In turn, it led me to start others-including the BytesForAll network (co-founded by Partha Sarkar of Dhaka), which is today read by a divers audience in varied parts of the globe (http://groups.yahoo.com/ group/bytesforall_readers).

Herman was encouraged to set up the mailing list, when he was a student at the North Eastern University (NEU) in Boston.

That the subject of the list-India’s smallest state, Goa, and its

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Local content, global prespective Defining local content In a study commissioned by DFID on local content- the main findings stated that the major challenge was to “define ‘local content.’

Depending on the perspective adopted, one person’s ‘local’ content is another’s ‘global’ content. Some people define it as content for people in a certain locality, or content for people speaking a language or from a certain culture. Others say it is content that is relevant to a given community. However local content is just not these. Instead of seeing local content as content for local communities, it can be seen as content from local communities. Thus local content can be “….the expression of the locally owned and adapted knowledge of a community - where the community is defined by its location, culture, language, or area of interest” Thus local content is the content of a community. However this may include global content that has been transformed, adapted and assimilated into the community’s knowledge base and this local content can be exchanged and shared, locally or globally, in various formats, packages and media. However before going into the details of what constitutes local content, we must understand what is the need for local content in the first place, i.e. “Why local content?”

Need for local content New media technologies are only meaningful if their content reflects local needs and conditions. The panel discussion on World Summit on Information Society (Geneva 2003) recognised that ICT can be used to promote, distribute and create local content, moving from one-way media in which poor and marginalised people are information recipients to interactive media, in which they participate actively in its creation and dissemination. It envisaged a future where traditional knowledge would contribute fully to global development while recognising the need to promote the value of local content and minority languages in a global ICT environment.

Studies have demonstrated that the assumption that the supply of information created by the global network of ICTs will be sufficient to enhance livelihoods of the poor - as long as the poor have access – is fanciful and even unlikely. Encouraging collection, production, exchange and dissemination of relevant content in local languages can not only provide learning opportunities for the target population but can also provide an opportunity to the target local population to help shape the decisions being made in their community. In fact Internet access would be useful to the local people only if they are able to find/view local content of relevance.

Thus the concept of local content highlights the importance of moving beyond a quantitative and purely technology-driven approach towards people-centered and demand-driven solutions. In fact the benefits of producing unique local content can go beyond satisfying the mission of providing ICT for developmen. It can enhance ties within the community itself... it can define the image of the town/area/region, provide a sense of place, pride in common history and build a reputation for the community. By providing contents that connects directly with community, the local content website can forge critical ties with the people who may become dedicated viewers of such information. It will also widen the scope and viewers for Internet/websites use.

However for local content to be relevant the content should be sufficiently focused or specific to be relevant to the local people.

What forms the local area material or local content?

Material must have a local emphasis or significance to qualify as ‘material of local significance’. Some examples of local material may include material that: • Has been collected and prepared in the local area • Deals with people, organisations, events or issues (economic, political, social and environmental) of that particular area • Issues that are of particular interest to people in the area, in a way that focuses on the interests of people in the area (local knowledge) • Issues of development (rural, urban, health etc) It also is: • About an individual about whom people in the area are particularly interested because of an association with the area, such as the individuals’ having grown up, or lived, in the area • About a sporting event that involves a team from the area or that involves a team from a nearby area, whose principal support base includes the area, or a significant part of the area • About market conditions that closely affect a major business activity in the area, such as prices of a commodity in an area where that commodity is produced on a significant scale • About the effects in the area of an event that occurs elsewhere

Relevance of local content Creating products more targeted for the local market and hitting the cultural expectations of a region can make a big difference to the overall scenario for ICT for development. However since the simple act of having a website exposes the local area to a global audience, both global and local needs should be addressed when delivering content to a worldwide audience.

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i4d | June 2004

Those uploading the content also have to keep in mind that the content should be worth producing and worth viewing. It should showcase a local culture or tap the resources found in a particular community in the hopes of benefiting a larger audience. When users load content, they should select what levels of readership that content is for.

Scope of local content creation in Almora Almora district, covering an area of 5400 sq kms is situated in the Kumaon region in the state of Uttaranchal. Located at an altitude of 1600 m (approx), Almora town falls within the Hawalbag development block in the Almora district. With a population of over 20000 (2001 census), the town accounts for over 30% of the total population of the district. The nearest railway station is Kathgodam, which is almost 100 kms away. Hindi and Kumaoni are the main languages spoken in Almora. The literacy level of Almora district is 82.7 % (2001 census) and that of Almora town is almost 90%. The district has reasonably well administrative and education infrastructure. Kumayun University is located in Almora town.

Most of the information available for Almora are the ones that has been uploaded/floated by the travel and tourism agencies and departments. General information about Almora is available in Almora.nic.in. But this information is inadequate and it neither satisfies the local user nor the global.

Local content that can be generated for Almora • Information on demography (with males-females ratio) (at the village level is available with the chief election office (voter’s list)-this information can be utilised and made available to the common people.

• There is very little information available on health and the available information is neither organised nor documented. The anganbari workers also keep records of health and otherwise of all children below 6 years. Information from the Anganbari workers can be combined with the information from primary health centers and the district hospital to form a health service networksomething that is missing.

• Communities in many hill regions have their own storehouse of indigenous or traditional knowledge that has been handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation. In Kumaon too valuable information exists on indigenous biodiversity, traditional remedies and medicine, lost history and customs, innovative and indigenous farming techniques/practices, of indigenous crop etc. Few people outside the Kumaon are aware of such knowledge. The local people can document these facts in collaboration with academicians and researchers.

• There is very little information available on the education system and the schools. There is absolutely no information available on the number of students and teachers in each school. Information on enrollment rate, pass-out rate and dropout rate is also not available for the common public. These schools have been graced by eminent academicians. Recording such information will provide inspiration for the other students.

• None of the available websites on Almora give adequate history about the town. Most travel sites and others start with the establishment of the town during the Chand dynasty rule, tell very little about the development during British period and even less of the development after independence. A huge part of history has been left out – although books on the British rule in Almora are available, very little is in digital format.

• Information on unique local features is also not available. One of the main sources of water in Almora are the naulas i.e. springs. But very few people outside Almora are aware that there was once over 200 naulas within the town itself...which are now on the verge of extinction and the block had another few hundred probably? Although the local newspaper (Dainik Jagran, published from Meerut) does publish articles on the depletion of naula water due to misuse and increasing urbanisation, it has still not been able to generate mass movement or even a local movement to protect these naulas from fast disappearance.

• There is also a considerable lack (almost non-existent), of information on the local culture, cuisine, local songs, customs etc.

Mapping the Neighbourhood-an effort The above sounds very ambitious, however, a small endeavor in this respect has been attempted through the Mapping the Neighbourhood project being implemented in Almora by CSDMS. As a part of this project, sponsored by the Department of Science and Technology, students from several schools in Hawalbag block in Almora district of Uttaranchal state, has been initiated to prepare maps of their neighbourhood and in the process prepare a repository of information about their locality. Students are involved in collecting local information. Later on they would not only be archiving their experiences of the project and their outputs (maps, information repository of villages collected through primary surveys) but they would also document facts about their town, history of development, local culture and other interesting facts. Thus considerable local content can be generated by the initiative of the students, which can be regularly updated by the students themselves and new content added. Mapping the Neighbourhood is a fresh initiative to sensitize the school students (and the immediate community) about their locality/area and in the process generate local content of relevance. An example of “uploading community” rather than the typical “downloading” users of the web.

Rumi Mallick, rumi@csdms.org

June 2004 | www.i4donline.net

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Building up local content is a huge task. This means, we need to rope in the skills of volunteers, who are willing to generate local content for the love of it, not the lure of money alone. diaspora-was of little relevance to the NEU’s priorities was hardly seen as a reason for not having the list. Today, initiatives such as these have thrown up content that the mainstream media simply couldn’t have dreamt of.

Man does not live by profits alone: In countries which have a latent market, but not quite an existing one, this is a lesson we need to look at closely. Unless the people in the content field are willing to keep aside the pecuniary initiative, the hundreds of millions of Indians (and other Third World citizens) who need it the most, are never going to get access to relevant content. In addition, a whole lot of initiatives need to look at content in a way that goes beyond just the traditional model of trying to make it into yet another commodity that can churn out profits.

Further, the power of communities and voluntary networks in generating suitable content need to be suitably recognised and tapped better. We’ve hardly touched the tip of the cliched iceberg in countries like India.

Use whatever technology, even if it’s just an old-fashioned e-mailing list or the Usenet newsgroups that were popular in the seventies and eighties: In India, we seem to be making a fetish about keeping up with the latest technology. In many cases, specially when were talking about reaching to the unreached, we don’t need it. It’s probably not the most suitable and simply too costly.

In the case of content, one continues to be amazed how few mailing lists countries of the South really have. Mailing-lists have a wide range of desirable features — low-cost, push-technology, easein-setting-up, accessibility, low-bandwidth requirement. Lists also encourage collaborative and volunteer-based working. Only in recent months, countries like India are experimenting with setting up more mailing lists on issues of their choice. Whether it deals with the Internet, telephony, journalist-based lists, other professional lists, environmental lists, and even a mailing list specially devoted to the Indian Railway fans. This is a welcome sign, but a lot more needs to be done.

Networks like http://www.freelists.org offer free mailing lists for any technical subjects. dgroups.org, set up by OneWorld.net, Bellanet and other international organisations, offer free mailing-lists to discuss developmental issues. Strangely, there seem to be few takers. Clearly, a gap in perception by possible beneficiaries of what this technology can offer and an inability to bring together the ingredients needed to make it work. Keeping a list active and alert is

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another issue; this can be a problem sometimes in a society better known for its oral, rather than written, culture.

Have a holistic view of digital content: When we talk of digital content, should we be looking only at Internet-based content?

NIIT’s hole-in-the-wall experiment found that accessing the Net was a distant dream in the villages of coastal Maharashtra. They put up local mirrors of locally-relevant website related to the Konkan region - as coastal Maharashtra, where this project was situated.

CDs can be another powerful tool of sharing information, what with prices hovering to an affordable USD 0.25 or so for 600MB of data. But copyrights can act as a stumbling block.

Likewise, the challenge of creating local content is also very much present in the field of music, audio and video. Looking at these opens up new possibilities, just as technology suddenly seems to be becoming less unaffordable and within reach in other ways too.

Seeking alternatives to copyrights: It is heartening to see a number of international organisations, NGOs and alternative media-persons put out their work in a copyrights-unencumbered format.

This makes for easier sharing of digital (and other) content.

Given that we already have such a large amount of information and knowledge, the challenge is to share the same, to deploy it to solve very real problems, and to classify it in a way that it doesn’t get wasted. The creativecommons.org is an excellent license that makes content (whether text, books, films, music or more) sharable. http:/ /gutenberg.net is another interesting example of converting copyright-expired books and making these sharable. We need similar initiatives for the Third World. Lawyer Lawrence Liang, based in Bangalore, was recently making a strong case why alternative documentary makers in India need to consider some kind of a creativecommons.org license for their work.

Harnessing the power of volunteers: Building up local content is a huge task. This means, we need to rope in the skills of volunteers, who are willing to generate local content for the love of it, not the lure of money alone. In Thailand, a schools project created a platform which makes it easy for teachers to create webpages and put up their content, in a free-to-share format on the Net. (http:// www.school.net.th/library/create-web - content is in Thai.) While the copyright remains vested in the creator of the content, other teachers across that country are free to use this for educational purposes. Such ideas indeed make sense. These are the points to be considered as we embark on the lonely road of content creation. i4d | June 2004

R OLE

OF MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION

New possibilities for local content distribution It is important to understand the dominant socioeconomic and cultural patterns underlying the creation and distribution of the entertainment and information content, massproduced to feed the different traditional and new media.

Rosa M. Gonzalez Communication Development Division, UNESCO, Paris, France R.Gonzalez@unesco.org

June 2004 | www.i4donline.net

“Culture takes diverse forms across time and space. This diversity is embodied in the uniqueness and plurality of the identities of the groups and societies making up humankind. As a source of exchange, innovation and creativity, cultural diversity is as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature. In this sense, it is the common heritage of humanity and should be recognised and affirmed for the benefit of present and future generations.”

These words come from Article 1 of UNESCO’s Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity and express very eloquently the need for diversity in all aspects of human activity.

With the tremendous development of the communication and information sectors, particular attention has been paid in recent years to the need for cultural diversity in the media as a way of preserving concepts of identity and social bonds within communities and cultures while promoting local cultural expression and local languages.

There is no doubt that today’s media environment increases choices, provides opportunities for cultural expression and dialogue, and facilitates the flow of information at the planetary level. But during the last decades we have also witnessed a concentration of ownership and a limitation of access and content sources.

One of the main lines of the plan of action of the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity clearly stresses the importance of encouraging the production, safeguarding and dissemination of diversified contents in the media and global information networks and, to that end, promoting the role of public radio and television services in the development of audiovisual productions of good quality, in particular by fostering the establishment of cooperative mechanisms to facilitate their distribution.

The importance of creating and distributing culturally diversified and local content for the new and traditional media is therefore formally recognised as a crucial factor in the promotion of cultural and linguistic expression.

Local content is the expression of a community’s knowledge and experience, and the process of creating and disseminating, it provides opportunities to the members of the community to interact and communicate with each other, expressing their own ideas, knowledge and culture in their own language.

A community may be defined by its location, culture, language or area of interest and can comprise a whole region, a sub-region, a nation, a village or a group of people with strong cultural, linguistic, religious or common interest links. Thus, a community may include a handful of people or millions; its members may share the same location or be geographically dispersed. Communities are not static or exclusive and individuals may belong to many communities at the same time.

In this context, it is important to grasp and understand the dominant socioeconomic and cultural patterns emerging on the back underlying the creation and distribution of the entertainment and information content that is being massproduced to feed the different traditional and new media. The dominant trends are obviously the top-down flow of content from economically and socially powerful groups to less privileged and disadvantaged ones; from the more developed countries and more sophisticated media production houses to the less developed countries and networks.

With the exception of community radio, which has traditionally allowed more local content production and dissemination,

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the content made available to billions of people worldwide through television and the Internet, comes from a very limited number of sources. A recent research study conducted by UNESCO in the Pacific region shows that, despite tremendous improvements in the recent past, some island countries are still trying to reach a 10% of local content on their television screens.

Known important local content producers are - India in Asia; Brazil and Mexico in Latin America; Nigeria in Africa but the success of these industries has often sacrificed quality and public service for commercial considerations, often reducing the potential of the medium to its entertainment and advertising dimensions.

There is yet another problem that has been proved to be more difficult to overcome than content production, it is its distribution.

Broadcasters worldwide, but particularly in developing countries, public or commercial, prefer buying low-price Western packages than purchasing the broadcasting rights of content made in the region, the latter being more costly and requiring an effort of accustoming their audiences. Even if broadcasters often have no choice because of weak or non-existent production and programming budgets, it is also a matter of lack of commitment at the decision-making level, where the importance of local content for the promotion of cultural diversity is not yet fully recognised.

The consequence of current audio-visual distribution practices is that neighbouring countries ignore the content produced beyond their borders, contributing to the lack of understanding between their populations.

As for the “new content” made available through the Internet, this comes often in languages which are not understood by billions of people. The English language has become a pre-requisite for having access nearly to half of the overall knowledge and information available through the net, let alone in search engines, metadata, indexes, catalogues, site directories etc.

UNESCO’s strategy to promote content development relies on creating proactive partnerships with content creators, media organisations, NGOs, distribution and broadcasting outlets and professional international organisations. For this, the Organisation launched two years ago the Programme for Creative Content, which aims at boosting the production and distribution of local content for television, radio and new media.

The search for new tools, with which poorer countries and communities can develop their creativity and reach wider audiences and markets while safeguarding their cultural identity, has become

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easier with the latest technological developments.

Internet delivery, for example, provides new energy to this sector and a whole new range of possibilities in terms of audiences. It is true that the economy of some sectors (e.g. the music industry) is being threatened by these new developments and the negative consequences of the abuse being made by some users (e.g. piracy).

This is unfortunately inherent to every new technological development and an effort of adjustment to the new landscape will be necessary for many. But one cannot deny the fascinating avenues that are being opened for small groups and individuals to communicate and deliver their contents.

In this spirit, UNESCO has just launched an Audiovisual e-Platform, a multicultural, on-line catalogue for independent producers and broadcasters. The e-Platform, now fully operational, intends to increase the flow of content among countries that are unusual content providers, empowering local, independent producers to reach international audiences, and creating a new space for intercultural communication and dialogue.

In other words, the platform aims at becoming an alternative communication channel, offering very diverse approaches to audiovisual story-telling and content production.

The programming available through this system consists of recently directed television productions, including documentaries, short fiction films, children’s programmes and TV-magazines, that are innovative in form or content, going beyond conventional forms of television language as well as a genuine expression of different cultures in the world. All these challenging and creative productions can be fully screened on-line and acquired by contacting the right-owner. Moreover, the system provides a forum for discussion as well as e-mailing and news services.

The system is highly secured and restricted to professional use.

It works at two different levels. At an individual level, independent directors, producers and distributors are able to use this tool to promote their work on their own by giving access to their contacts to their personal catalogues. At an institutional level, UNESCO and its partners are able to stimulate the distribution of the platform’s materials with broadcasters, distribution networks, festivals, cultural institutions and other partners.

And I should stress that UNESCO is very interested in strengthening its collaboration with these “other partners”, such as local associations, media libraries or cultural centres, as they can become a significant new audience for this kind of materials. The addition of all these local players at the international level can result in an important, unprecedented network of professionals interested in content generated in every region of the world.

To sum up, the idea is to empower local content producers while enhancing the effectiveness of the Internet as a medium for communication and delivery.

We hope that in one-year’s time we will have an important community of users and that their usage will translate into benefits for the local content producers.

The next step may be to open this kind of initiatives to the general public for a modest fee, following the pay-per-view principle, which can then replenish the independent authors’ content production budget lines, ensuring some sustainability and keeping creativity alive in the audiovisual sector. i4d | June 2004

R URAL B AZAR

Promoting local content in global market This article presents a web based application software package RuralBazar, which could become the means for sharing local content produced by rural communities with global consumers.

K. J. Balan Senior Systems Analyst jbalan@tn.nic.in

S. P. Nautiyal Senior Systems Analyst sp_nautiyal@hub.nic.in National Informatics Centre (NIC), New Delhi, India

June 2004 | www.i4donline.net

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have enabled various information or content to be placed over internet in order to share it all over the world, thus opening the doors for content globalisation. Today, huge information is available over the internet in text or document form like market prices, poverty alleviation government schemes, hospital, weather, educational institutes directory, telephone directory and much more. While urban netizens increasingly upload content available with them due to greater awareness on part of urban centric organisations, what is still ignored or not available is local content available with and for rural communities.

Local content is invariably available in the form of indigenous knowledge that has been inherited by the community over centuries. One important aspect of this indigenous knowledge is the content about the various products that the rural communities produce. These products are part of the our village economy that used to have various industrious facets and one of the important elements was rural artisans, their creative space and economics associated with it. The products that are produced by rural producers vary from handicrafts, handloom to sericulture. Sharing this information with the global community is the first step towards introducing an effective e-Commerce solution in rural areas. This article discusses how an e-Commerce solution can act as a medium for sharing local content with the global community and also discusses the advantages and challenges associated with the collection and sharing of such content.

Domain description The people in rural areas are mostly involved in works related to farming, food processing, handlooms and handicrafts and other cottage industries. These people are very

skilled in producing high quality decorative items, cosmetic items, edible items and various utility items. These products reflect the local culture, tradition and indigenous knowledge handed down over centuries and are generally produced from the raw material that is easily available in the area.

For example, in India, a wide range of products is available, from north to south and east to west. The varieties include products created using locally available raw materials like bamboo, silk, seashell, coconut etc.

The products developed by these people are generally sold in the local market to the people mainly belonging to the same or surrounding locality or sometimes even to the visiting tourists. To sell the products to remote or urban markets, the producer has to depend on the middlemen. The middlemen generally collect the products and also information about these products (such as how it is made, how it can be used, how it should be maintained etc.) from these producers and market it in urban centers. In return, the rural producers get a very meager amount, in comparison to the profit they actually make out of selling the product.

Many government agencies and NGOs have come forward with many strategies for the promotion of these products. They have established number of haats or markets in urban areas and sometimes exhibitions are arranged to showcase the products. But the sustained availability of such outlets with sound distribution channels is not assured.

Challenges The present scenario is that the rural market is more or less saturated for these products due to lack of innovation which is due to limited local demand At the same time, they are unable to expand their customer base to urban and global markets, mainly because they have neither the means to reach the

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markets nor do they have the salesman skills in organised manner, to articulate well in the customer’s language. The middlemen and government agencies/NGOs are also able to play only a limited role, particularly in publicising the products in global markets.

At the other end of the spectrum is the potential customer who has both the desire as well as the capacity to pay but who has no knowledge about even the availability of these products, let alone access to them.

It is clear that the first and foremost requirement for promoting these products is to share the information about these products.

The ICTs and the Internet have opened up huge possibilities for sharing this local content with the global market. E-Commerce solutions have helped in opening global markets for remote producers. This article presents a web based application software package i.e. RuralBazar (http://RuralBazar.nic.in) which could become the means for sharing local content produced by rural communities with global consumers.

RuralBazar – A solution by National Informatics Centre (NIC), India RuralBazar is a simple, web based e-Commerce solution that allows efficient and cost-effective showcasing and marketing of rural products. Though primarily designed to work as an e-commerce solution, RuralBazar addresses some of the issues related to rural areas.

In view of the limited (or practically unavailable) e-readiness in rural areas, their first and foremost requirement is to publicise content about their products to the potential customers using internet.

RuralBazar facilitates this by simply allowing the rural communities to share content about the products and associated metadata with search facility. Detailed information about the products can be shared with global community along with high quality pictures. As a showcasing site, RuralBazar does not allow any online order placement. Along with information about the products, it also shares contact information about the producers so that the potential customers can directly contact them.

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The RuralBazar has two internet-enabled interfaces. The first interface (also called SiteManager) is meant to be used by community representatives (such as SHGs, NGO and other civic organisations engaged in community development) for managing producers’ profile, products profile, prices/discount management, order management etc. The second interface, which is public/home page of RuralBazar website, showcases the products to customer on internet. In RuralBazar, a product can be classified according to three broadly defined categories purpose of use, raw material used or product type.

These broadly defined categories can further have any number of catalogs. Also one of the important features of RuralBazar is creation of data entry operators login, who will be able to enter data sitting at district or block level using the RuralBazar Site Manager interface. The implementing or community support agency (government or NGO or SHG or Rural Local Body or civic organisation) can collect the information about the available rural products and categorise products according to the broadly defined product categories and catalog. Then this categorised information can be stored and showcased using the RuralBazar.

The Rural development department of government of Tamil Nadu launched Ruralbazar (http://www.ruralbazar.tn.gov.in) website to strengthen the marketing of products produced by rural people in July, 2003. The site presently showcases more than 700 products created by Self Help Groups (SHG). Goa (http://www.ruralbazargoa.nic.in) and Tripura (http:// www.purbasha.nic.in) have also undertaken similar initiatives.

Conclusion World over, urban agencies/entities are putting their best effort in publishing content related to their activities for respective interest groups. It is high time that rural communities are encouraged to make appropriate use of ICT tools and technologies to publicize the content/information about their occupation, ideas and solutions with rest of global village to their advantage.

There are certain issues which need to be addressed before maximum benefits could be drawn from such solutions. For eg., government organisations, which have initiated the introduction of RuralBazar in certain states need to built in mechanism to handle market events once order is placed by internet customer. Also, collection of content (product profile) and packaging of the same is not an easy job. The community representative agency (NGO or SHG or Civil society organisation etc) will have to play the role of a “knowledge worker”. The knowledge worker will not only have to understand the villager’s expression of what his product is but also translate it into an international language such as English and present it in a manner that will best appeal to the global customer.

RuralBazar is a small and yet significant step, from NIC, offering an opportunity to channelise the rural content into the vast ocean of internet. i4d | June 2004

I NFORMATION S YSTEMS

FOR RURAL COMMUNITIES

Content Management System for communities CMS4C is a platform for building e-Communities where information is generated, stored and shared by the local rural communities.

‘Digital Divide’ describes the demarcation between the haves and have-nots with respect to access to information and communication technologies and its consequent role in ameliorating the general levels of the quality of lives of people. Much of the problem of the digital divide is related not only to availability and access to ICT, but also to the adaptability of these technologies by the society and people across the world.

As in software engineering approach, importance is associated to a process that successfully meets the requirements of the customers and thereby satisfies him, we strongly feel that process is more important for the successful exploitation of new technologies by the rural people.

Process will act as an instrument to gather and analyse interdependencies of providing content to rural communities from various information sources. It would also support in selecting and setting of ICT applications according to the requirement of the beneficiaries.

The adaptability of ICT, especially in developing countries like India gets affected by several factors including that of local needs, cultural factors and language barriers, which compounds the problem.

Content Management System (CMS)

G. L. Ganga Prasad Central Head C-DAC, Bangalore, India gpr@ncb.ernet.in

June 2004 | www.i4donline.net

Information in the Internet media, in general is provided through websites. If the website provides new information regularly and upgrades its contents quite frequently, then they require an efficient system for managing those contents. However maintaining and managing content would become a cumbersome task after a point of time. So, people move on to automate these tasks using software. This software is generally called as the Content Management System (CMS).

Content Management Systems are aimed at facilitating the process of uploading, publishing, archiving, searching, and removing of the website’s content in an easier and manageable way. They also facilitate to place the content online in real-time without specialist help.

Currently existing content management systems have the following weaknesses: • Content collection is an ongoing process and hence needs effective ways to organise, manage and publish them; • None of the existing content management system address the specific needs of the local community; • Current solutions are not cost effective • Lack of processes in place to make CMS more useful; • Lack of coordination and contribution from public, private and people; • Lack of personalisation and customisation facilities; • None of them aim to move the content in a effective way near the user; We have developed CMS4C, a Content Management System for community that addresses the above-mentioned weaknesses of the existing solutions. The uniqueness of CMS4C is that it is evolving as a platform to build e-Communities.

Content Management System for community CMS4C has been developed with the aim to provide user-friendliest system for the management of content, enabling users even without technical knowledge to publish on the Internet and administer it. Figure 1 illustrates the system in brief.

The main goal of CMS4C is to encourage the rural community to contribute, consume, and encash their local knowledge by enabling them to produce, manage, organise, publish, archive and distribute local con-

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CMS4C aims to provide user-friendliest system for the management of content, enabling users even without technical knowledge to publish on the Internet and administer it. tent. Rural communities could make use of this system as a dais for information sharing and thereby reaping the benefits of ICT. Any ICT development should have a sustainable model for its continuous existence and hence we have incorporated an optional cost model. As shown in the figure, the content is grouped into two types based on their sources: local and global. The local content sources are identified as governmental offices, local vegetable markets, local commodities trading markets, local transport information, society information like temple festivals, and also radio to some extent. The system, in addition to these sources, also has easyto-use interface for collecting information through community participation. The global content sources are the radio, television and Internet. General contents of interest are collected from these sources and put up in the system. All these sources of information are pooled and collected by the content collection module. The content classifier module classifies and organises the content collected from various sources. The classification is based on the category to which the content belongs to like, agriculture, health, education etc. This form of organised content makes it easy for retrieval and searching and also to do management activities like publishing of the content and archiving of the contents in the repository.

All the classified contents are then stored up in the repository and are served from there to the user.

CMS4C has been developed using open source platforms tools and technologies. The system runs in Linux environment (also would work fine on Windows environment), and was developed using PHP, uses MySQL database and Apache Web Server for serving up the communities.

Features of CMS4C

• Community Contents The system has provisions for the community users to contribute to include their own content along with other contents like tomato cultivation, organic farming, women and health care etc.

• Employment Information The system lists out the local and general employment opportunities available. It also has tools for collecting local employment opportunities from the employers.

• Discussion Boards Community members can start up a debate on topic and/or participate in debates of their interest. At a later stage, we foresee that CMS4C would be hooked on to the Internet and this feature would be of immense use.

• Market Information This includes the local vegetable market rates information, local commodities trading information like the prices of various cereals, local gold and silver rates.

• Local Conveyance The system also provides the local bus and train schedules.

• Other Services The system provides other services like Weather information, Astrology etc.

Global Content Sources Television

Internet

Radio

Local Content Sources Government Officers

Radio

CMS4C provides the community Local Market Society Information user with the following information: News Paper Local Transport • Community News Community Participation News covers the local community happenings as well as the general headlines. The general information is obtained from daily news papers.

• Community Events Covers the general public events such as the polio immunisation programme. These are announced to the community members through a special service.

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Training in the process

Content Collection Module

Content Classifier Module

Content Repository

Figure 1 Content Management System

Community User

i4d | June 2004

Cache

Content Management System for Community

QoS

Security

Visitor

Kiosk Operator Content Delivery Network Content Provider

Content Organiser

Figure 2 Content Devlivery Network

Simple and easy-to-use interfaces and processes for information collection are devised in order to provide all of the above features.

Users can thereby easily contribute contents to the system, thereby making it as an active forum for communication among them.

The above are some of the screenshots of the system and the deployment & training photograph.

Users of CMS4C The users of CMS4C are categorised into four types: Visitor, users (Members of a community), data providers and administrator. There is no limit to the number of users but authority to approve, publish and remove contents lie with the administrator. So, the system attempts to address the needs of all the four types of users.

A visitor is a casual user who browses through the system to know what is happening in the community. That is he can view the community news and events. Users can provide news article, events, upload content and participate in the discussion forum. Data provider provides specific information such as current market price, weather information etc. Any number of data providers can administer the content but each of them is responsible only for their specific contents (for which they had been chosen; for example, Gold market rate data provider is a person who is authentic and is responsible for fixing the market rate for gold at that particular locality. He provides only the information for gold market rates.).

Administrator has to take responsibility for the overall management of the system. He also performs routine management activities like publishing the information uploaded by users, archiving the information etc.

CMS4C also serves as a common ground for announcing community events such as Pulse Polio Programme through an easyto-visualise calendar-based user interface. It also acts as an electronic meeting place where members and experts can share their knowledge.

CMS4C deployment CMS4C has been pilot tested and as a first step deployed at DHAN Community Centre, Melur, Tamil Nadu, India. The DHAN community members, kiosk operators and administrators are being trained for using the system at varied user roles.

Taking content near the user Constraints in the available infrastructure for the target group are a handicap. Community-based Content Delivery Network (CCDN) explores solution to address the infrastructure constraints by using a community network. The community network enables access to information by moving the content near the target group.

CMS4C – The next step In future CMS4C would evolve as content distribution network by enabling knowledge sharing between communities and builds an electronic network of communities with possibly strong interaction among them thereby realising our dream of empowering the local communities. The community members, who are the direct beneficiaries, should be made to realise the benefits and potentials of these ICT tools. With the interest and involvement from the target community, the promoter need not swim against the current.

Rather they can flourish as team, heading towards a common objective.

Acknowledgement Value contributions to this article were given by R. Sreekumar, N. Subramanian, V. Neela Narayanan, R. Balaji, NIC Bangalore.

June 2004 | www.i4donline.net

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Quiz

ICT and local language content D. C. Misra Former Development Commissioner, Delhi, and Chairman of the Taskforce for IT Policy, NCT of Delhi, India dc_misra@hotmail.com

CoIL-Tech and when was the programme launched?

10. (a) What is the present size of the local language applications market in India? (b) What is its expected size by 2005?

11. What are the following? (a) Anusaaraka, (b) Microsoft Bhasha, (c) Shakthi, (d) Shubh Labh, and (e) Akruti?

2. When did the Web search giant Google launch its interface in four Indian languages and which are these Indian languages?

12. If these are among pioneering Web sites in Indian languages, what are the following: (a) Vishva Kannada, (b) Prabhasakshi, (c) Indianlanguages.com, (d) Ramrampavna.com, and (e) Kaavvyaalaya

3. If these are different standards, what are the following: (a) ISCII, (b) UNICODE, (c) INSFOC, (d) INSROT, and (e) PASCII?

13. If it is a digital library and e-scholarship portal and has searchable 15,000 records in Hindi and 600 records in Kannada, what is vidyanidhi? Who started the programme and when?

4. What are the following: (a) IndoBase 1.0, (b) IndoWord 3.0, (c) IndoWeb, (d) EXACT, (e) IndoMail, and (f ) JULI?

14. When were the following launched? (a) Webdunia.com - world’s first Hindi portal, (b) epatra.com - world’s first language email service in 11 Indian languages, (c) evarta.com - world’s first chat in 11 major Indian languages, (d) Webulagam.com - world’s first Tamil portal, (e) Webprapancham.com - world’s first Telugu portal, (f) Weblokam.com – world’s first Malayalam portal

1. If this is a regional initiative to develop local language computing capacity in Asia, what is Pan Asia Networking (PAN) programme?

5. What do the following have in common: (a) Hindipatra, (b) Malyalipathram, (c) TamilAnjal, and (d) Telugulekha?

6. This retired railway engine driver in Ratlam, Madhya Pradesh has made most of the contribution to this page of the Web site by translating literary works from one Indian language to another.

Name him.

7. (a) What is Indic-Computing project and when was it started, and (b) When and where was the first Indic-Computing workshop held?

8. What is TDIL and when was the programme launched?

9. (a) What is CoIL-NET and who started it, and (b) What is

Here is an opportunity to prove your intellectual mettle!

Send your answers at the earliest to info@i4donline.net The first three all correct answers will receive exciting prizes.

The decision of the editorial team will be final.

The answers will be published and the winners will be announced in the July 2004 issue of i4d. Online readers can view the same issue on www.i4donline.net in July.

15. What is common between the following? (a) LEAP Mail (b) IndoMail (c) Apnamail (d) AnkurMail 16. What is krishiworld and was set up by whom?

17. What are the following? (a) Anglabharti (b) Anubharti (c) Gyan Nidhi (d) Chitraksharika (e) Lekhika and (f ) Swarnakriti 18. If it represented a major breakthrough in tackling the complex problem of man-machine linguistic interface for Indian languages, what is GIST and who developed it?

19.What are the following and who developed them? (a) (i) Avishkar (ii) Roopa (iii) Suchika (b) (i) Patrika and (ii) Smarnika 20.(a) This mailjol – a free multilingual email service after three years of service - has ended. Why did the company discontinue the service? (b) It says: I Langoo, You Langoo….We all Langoo.

What then is Langoo? © DC Misra, 2004

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i4d | June 2004

Vol. II No. 6

The i4d News

June 2004

Information for development www.i4donline.net

India ranks 46 in e-Readiness The Economist’s Intelligence unit along with computer giant IBM’s Institute for Business Value published the global e-ready list for the fourth consecutive year. A country’s e-Rediness is a measure of its e-Business environment and a collection of features that indicate how amenable a market is to Internet based opportunities.

This report says that these rankings provide a valuable insight into how governments can influence the rate and nature of adoption of technology and applications.

Here India has secured its last year’s position at 46. This puts it in the third tier.

Denmark was found to be most aggressively taking advantage of the Internet and pushed last year’s leader Sweden to third position.

The UK came second

June 2004 | www.i4donline.net

and Norway and Finland are fourth and fifth respectively. Some of the 2nd tier countries includes Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic as the report said that these are the countries that do not yet have dense communication and Internet infrastructure, or have less well coordinated e-Government policies, but nevertheless have significant and quickly growing e-service industries.

In the 3rd tier, a mix of developing countries is between Columbia in 41st place and Russia in 55th including the large and increasingly e-ready powerhouses India and China (52nd).

A paragraph in the segment on “Digital Divides” said, “Consider India and Brazil, for instance, both of which have thriving IT-enabled services markets.

India’s software and related business process outsourcing services industry is worth an estimated three per cent of GDP. The two markets rank low in overall e-Readiness (46th and 35th place, respectively), but have better-than-average scores in the supporting e-services category. A combination of backoffice facilities and

competent, cost-competitive workers has given rise to thriving IT businesses.”

Meanwhile India has improved its position by one notch to 10th in the Asia-Pacific region.

The countries that lead are Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, South Korea, New Zealand, Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia and Thailand.

Those that follow India are the Philippines, China, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Vietnam and Pakistan.

The reason given for disappointing showing is that until recently India’s business environment was indifferenteven hostile-to the thriving niches of programming, customer business and business process outsourcing. Basic connectivity remains abysmally low and has only in the past year started to receive significant investment. International bandwidth into India is set to double this year; it has already increased ten fold over the last two.

While many of India’s other e-ready components are not world class, the demand created by the e-services sector will eventually pull them into line. When will India move to tier one? www.thestatesman.net

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The i4d News

e-Governance DDA gets IT-savvy To check corruption and bring transparency, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) is planning to put all its documents and files on the computer to ensure the public is not “harassed and fleeced” on the pretext that the files and papers are missing.

All papers and files related to one’s house allotment, purchase of lands, licences and complaints would be computerized.

It will ensure that no paper or file goes missing and thus save the public from harassment they have to undergo otherwise.

The computerization of files is being seen as a potential corrective measure. As per a rough estimate, over 40 per cent complaints that the DDA receives from the public are about non-initiation of action even after the officers concerned have been apprised of the problems by the complainants in writing due to mishandling of the files.

The high-tech file management does not only aim at minimizing the people’s woes, but also keeping a tab on the DDA’s own properties in the capital. www.thepioneer.com

Register FIRs online The state government of Punjab, India has given green signal to an e-Governance project of computerised registration of FIRs (first information reports) at all its police stations. This reform is a part of the bigger ambitious project wherein all the police stations in the country will be connected with each other through satellite based communications. Any SHO of a police station can access status and contents of every case registered in any part of the country.

The complainant will also be able to access the status of the case. This will definitely add transparency to the whole process of investigation and administration of justice to people. www.thehinduonnet.com

www.ameinfo.com

Microsoft in Lebanon for eGovernance Microsoft signed agreements with the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Economy and Trade to develop an online tax service and to co-operate in public/private ICT initiatives respectively.

For the e-Taxation service, Microsoft will work with the Ministry to establish a secure, fast and reliable online taxation sys-

Delhi Municipal Corporation’s e-Governance initiatives A government department with 0.04 per cent computer literacy embarks on one of the most ambitious e-governance projects and gives itself just two years to get it off the ground. Even the die-hard IT optimist might think that it’s a joke, but that is exactly what the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) is talking about.

In less than two years of deciding to implement e-governance applications, MCD has already computerised its engineering department, hospital information system and started computer education in over 1,000 out of the 1,800 odd state government schools under project ‘Sharda’.

Delhi’s citizens can now pay their house tax, apply for licenses, book marriage halls and parks, and register births and deaths simply by logging on to the MCD’s Web site www.mcdonline.gov.in. Very soon, several other applications will be rolled out by MCD. These include an ambitious solid waste management system using trucks fitted with Global Positioning System (GPS) and Global Information System (GIS) technologies.

MCD will be able to accurately track the distance travelled by the trucks, the garbage load collected and thereby make the correct payment to contractors involved in garbage collection. Another project involves the computerisation and inter-connection of six major state-run hospitals.

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi has decided to take a step further its efforts in adopting e-Governance in totality. The Corporation will be signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with a Bangalore firm, e-Governance Foundation, later this month.

The firm has assisted civic agencies in Bangalore in streamlining their functions and introducing e-Governance on a major scale. One of the major projects that will be undertaken by the firm will be that of putting all of corporation’s data online. It will also create a common database for the MCD. This project also aims to make a difference to the education and health departments. www.thehindubusinessline.com

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tem. e-Taxation will be the start of an eservices framework as part of the government’s plans to deliver other public services in a collaborative online environment. With the Ministry of Economy and Trade, Microsoft committed to participate in the Ministry’s national awareness campaigns and promote ICT public/private sector partnerships aimed at building ICT capacity for economic development. Microsoft will also co-operate on the frameworks needed for e-services and assistance in economic planning for the ICT sector, statistics and assessment.

Microsoft will also share similar experiences from countries where Microsoft had a similar contribution and will collaborate to scope the Ministry’s needs in infrastructure, through an IT enablement of selected internal processes of the Ministry.

Uzbekistan launches a portal on e-Governance A portal on e-Governance has been set up focusing on Uzbekistan under the Digital Governance Initiative. The portal lists e-Governance case studies, publications, events, forums and links of relevance to Uzbekistan. The link to the portal is http://65.110.68.184/artman/publish/index-uzbekistan.shtml www.developmentgateway.org

Education Educational technology in Egyptian schools Educational Technology in Schools (Ed Tech) is a school level program being to be implemented in Egypt is creating a practical and competitive educational environment using modern methodologies and computer technology. The objective of this project is to provide classroom teachers with the tools and techniques they need to educate a new generation of computer-literate students.

These enhanced educational environments are models for other schools that wish to create a new, competitive workforce generation. In the initial demonstration project, 7,050 PCs will be installed at 14 public and private schools, and 2,000 teachers will be trained impacting 25,000 students in seven governorates. www.digitaldividend.org i4d | June 2004

The i4d News Textbooks on CD

The buses take e-Route in the Indian state of Karnataka

10th standard students of Kerala schools in India are going to get the prescribed books- geography, history, physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology and information technology - in a single compact disc.

This will also be soon availabe on the website of the State’s Education Department. As planned the project, IT@School, will extend progressively to all classes. The content of the CD is available in four different languages: Malayalam, English, Tamil and Kannada.

For the students of classes 8 to 10, a paper of information technology has been introduced and soon they will be working in projects on creation of web resources.

IT@School project has also brought out a CD called “Softexam,”where the software randomly generates question sets in theory and practical skills in word processing, spreadsheets and presentation, to match the Microsoft Office and other Open Office tools.

Taking a cue from the airline industry, the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) is planning an eTicketing initiative. The project will enable customers to get printed tickets in the comfort of their homes, without the intervention of a third party. The project, which would be launched by August this year, is expected to help the corporation to get more customers in the upper middle class segment, where people are reluctant to stand in queues to secure or book tickets. KSRTC has already over 100 online reservation centers in Bangalore, from where customers can book tickets. Such centers would soon be set up in six major districts in the state.

To manage its 4500 strong fleet of buses, KSRTC is also shortly expected to tender global positioning system (GPS). As per plans, GPS track and trace solution (that will map the bus route right through its entire path and furnish reports on the exact number of stops, the load it carried, etc) would be installed in 2000 buses on a trial basis. This would make accident control easier and help to provide more efficient service to the commuters.

www.thehinduonnet.com

www.financialexpress.com

A practical guide integrating ICTs into education UNESCO Bangkok has published “Integrating ICTs into Education: Lessons Learned”. It seeks to present the cream of countries efforts to integrate ICTs into their education systems. This practical guide, now available for download, synthesizes and analyzes experiences in connection with specific lessons learned and highlights best practices and the need for further improvements, based on the experiences of six Asian countries, namely, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, the Republic of Korea and Thailand.” The distilled wisdom garnered here is aimed at providing a key foundation and framework for setting up ICT for education programmes.

The publication also serves as an advocacy tool to gain support of policy-makers and other stakeholders for the use of resources in the integration of ICT in education. www.unescobkk.org

Telecommunication VSNL provides Bandwidth on short-term contracts Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd announced the introduction of telecom bandwidth on

June 2004 | www.i4donline.net

short-term contracts through a new product called Tata Indicom-Bandwidth-onDemand. This corporate data product has been designed to meet short-term urgent additional bandwidth requirements and also enables Tata Indicom’s Internet leased line customers to significantly upgrade their bandwidth to almost double its capacity within a 48-hour timeframe.

Customers can provision for “bandwidth on short-term contracts” for as low as seven days and VSNL has set up a fully automated online process to deliver bandwidth upgradation requests. www.thehindubusinessline.com

MTNL and BSNL to launch broadband services Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) are planning to capture the lucrative and largely untapped broadband market before Reliance makes an entry in India.

MTNL is set to launch its broadband services in June in Delhi and Mumbai. The company has already issued non-exclusive letter of intent (LOI) on revenue share basis to Indian telephone Industries (ITI) for installation of equipment, operation and marketing the services. BSNL, India’s largest telecom operator, is also tying up with franchisees on non-exclusive basis

with private operators for providing services. It has already launched services in Gurgaon, Bangalore and Kolkatta.

Both the companies have an advantage of a large subscriber base of fixed line services and a strong band. They are following franchisee route to enter into this field.

The franchisee would use their local loop to provide broadband services. Both the companies would share revenue with the broadband providers. www.thehindubusinessline.com

CTO calls for more partnerships On the occasion of World Telecommunication day on 17th May CTO has invited collaborations from all the ICT stakeholders to fulfill the pledge of this year’s theme “ICTs: Leading the way to sustainable development”. At the CTO, the technical assistance work goes back over 100 years with the laying of the first transcontinental submarine cable. They aim to reduce the width of the information divide by extending our knowledge-sharing programmes and expert capacity-building assistance to all ICT stakeholders, including non-Commonwealth countries. They are encouraging new partnerships in ICT programmes with other international institutions. And they have resolved to assist governments, busi-

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The i4d News

HP bridges digital divide HP and Relief International – Schools Online (RI-SOL) launched their first joint initiative for the creation of digital communities in Jordan. Under the initiative, a number of Digital Community Centres (DCC) will be opened in several locations across the country. These DCCs are the cornerstones of a programme that aims to provide local communities with greater accessibility to the Internet and information technologies, as a means to learn, work and benefit from the most appropriate technological advances.

The first DCC will open at the popular Wahdat Youth Club where 30 computers serve the core training and service programmes at the community center. In an innovative approach linking the community with surrounding schools, a further 40 computers are installed in four schools in the neighborhoods surrounding the club. Two of these schools are government run and two are UN Rehabilitation and Work Agency (UNRWA) that serve Palestinian Refugees. A major objective of the DCC programme is to ensure access to high-skills jobs in the ICT sector by providing equal training opportunities to both women and men. The RI-SOL workshops supported by HP include meetings with successful businessmen and businesswomen to show youth of both genders their range of opportunities and possibilities. www.cpilive.net

nesses and civil society organisations to implement policies and plans that help developing countries to more effectively achieve their targets within the Millennium Development Goals and build an inclusive global information society for all. www.cto.int

e-Commerce Emirates Airline starts global e-Ticketing system In the first phase, customers will be able to book e-Tickets from Dubai to any of Emirates 75 other destinations, as well as from another 26 cities in 19 countries. The other destinations on the airline’s network will become e-ticket enabled over the next 12 months. Emirates e-Tickets can currently be obtained through its own centres. The airline’s e-Tickets will be available to the travellers in the Indian subcontinent via Galileo, the reservation system for travel agents by July 15. In a year’s time, the airline will make e-Ticketing available worldwide through most other Global Distribution Systems as well. The use of e-Tickets would end worries about forgotten or misplaced tickets, as passenger details would be stored in the Computer Reservation System. e-Tickets can be ordered at all times, either online at www.emirates.com or through an Emirates Call Centre. www.thehindubusinessline.com

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Indian banks to cut e-Fund transfer charges To promote electronic transfer of fund settlement, commercial banks are poised to reduce charges levied on electronic transfer of funds (EFT). This is following the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) decision to waive service charges on banks for ETF and electronic clearing service (ECS). The RBI used to charge banks Rs 5 per transaction as processing fee for EFT and 50 paise per transaction as processing fee for ECS. The central bank announced the waiver of processing charges on ETF and ECS transactions till March 31, 2006.

At present, the bank provides this facility to elite clients (privileged customers)

free of cost, while others pay Rs 10 per transaction irrespective of the amount transferred. This mode of fund transfer is popular among few corporates. www.business-standard.com

Online train ticket booking shoots up in India The number of tickets booked on the Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation Web site (www.irctc.co.in) has shot up 70 per cent to cross the 0.1 million during March and April this year.

The IRCTC group General manager said that the number of tickets booked is 70 per cent higher than February and more than double the number recorded in April last year. The company sold nearly 0.73 million tickets in 2003-04 and logged a sales volume of Rs 1.02 billion.

The Web site became operational in August 2002 and sold 3,343 tickets in the first month. The IRCTC Web site has emerged as the largest in terms of online cash transactions, leaving behind several high-profile e-Commerce Web sites in the country. The company delivers tickets in over 100 cities across the country. Delhi and Mumbai account for the largest share of ticket sales (40 per cent each), and Chennai and Bangalore come next. A large number of tickets are sold in smaller towns as well.

To simplify the process of booking a ticket on the Net the company has already tied up with as many as nine banks, it is in talks with mobile operators to offer the service on the mobile phone. Reliance Infocomm is already in an advanced stage of testing and is set to offer the service to its subscribers soon. www.thehindubusinessline.com

Department of post enters the e-World Today, e-post is a reality all over India and a large share of the credit goes to Andhra Pradesh for pioneering it. The department of posts for the Andhra Pradesh circle has spearheaded the ‘e’ revolution through the launch of e-post on January 30 this year. This aims to bridge the digital divide by saving both time and costs.

The way e-post works is rather simple - the customer gives a handwritten message to any post office in any language with the name of the addressee(s). The post office scans the message and sends it to the e-post centre, nearest to the addressee via the Internet, which is then delivered by the postman to the addressee. The software for this has been put in place by Hyderabad-based Netlinks. www.financialexpress.com

i4d | June 2004

The i4d News e-Payment takes off in Nigeria The idea of e-payment in Nigeria has come at a time when the country is trying to transform its economy along the lines of global information and communication technologies (ICTs). Following the approval by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) of the first switching firm to provide e-payment transaction services in Nigeria, the country has jumped another step towards the development of cashless transaction in the economy.

The first licence to operate e-payment services in the country has been issued to Cash Technology Limited (CTL) recently by the nation’s apex bank. CTL has been appointed as the first master card international member services provider in the African region some two years ago but since then, the company was unable to transact effectively its services in the country due to lack of approval by CBN and collaboration between switch operators within the system. This recent approval to the company is seen as significant in the evolutionary trend of e-payment system in Nigeria.

Daily Trust (Abuja)

India will have 46 million net users by March 2005 The Indian Internet and E-commerce dream is still far from realisation. The Internet sector has improved vastly due to improving telecom infrastructure, better bandwidth availability and multiplicity of Internet service providers.

However, a major jump is still required before India can achieve “anytime, anywhere” connectivity and the stage where enhanced Internet penetration translates into high volumes of online transactions.

UNCTAD’s 2002 study says that India’s Internet population will be second to China’s by 2006 while E-commerce activity is expected to remain modest. Estimates show that E-commerce activity in 2002 was around $300 million, almost half that of the Chinese market.

At the end of March 2002, India’s Internet population was around 10 million users and is expected to hit 46 million users

by March 2005. The users predominantly use the Internet for e-mail applications and do few online transactions.

It appears India’s E-commerce market is still bogged down by issues such as high cost of Internet access hardware, low PC and telephone penetration and limited June 2004 | www.i4donline.net

ICAR to start e-Linkage programme Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has proposed to network all its multi-discliplinary krishi vigyan kendras (KVKs) (agriculture extension centres) through its e-linkage programme, enabling the farmers to access to the information to carry out agricultural operations. It has selected about 200 KVKs across the country for this.

The e-linkage programme is being intiated under the ongoing National Agricultural Technology Project (NATP).

Under the programme it has proposed to connect KVKs through the ‘INSAT-1D’ through a hub at the district level.

The institute is also talking to private agencies to use the KVK model through a publicprivate-partnership besides other participating agencies like the ISRO and VSAT supply agencies. The new models will have both online and offline touch screen kiosks to facilitate the use by the farmer. ICAR has already created Agricultural Research Information System (ARIS), a WAN connecting 28 state agricultural universities and their 120 zonal agricultural stations, 49 ICAR institutes, 10 project directorates, 25 NRCs and its headquarters in Krishi Bahwan and Krishi Anusandhan Bhawan, a total of 233 ARIS cells. There are 44 Agricultural Technology Information Centres in ICAR institutes and state agricultural universities (SAUs). www.financialexpress.com

competition among ISPs. Early adopters and implementors of B2B E-commerce are automobile companies and banking and financial service providers.

Nasscom: Strategic 2003 Review, The IT Industry in India. www.financialexpress.com

Agriculture India’s first electronic tea auction system Electronic Tea Auction system was inaugurated on 29th May at Coimbatore. Information on traded volumes and prices would be available online and thus act as an effective management tool in the hands of all stakeholders, including the industry, trade, Board and the Government.

The system has a centralised hardware for hosting the application software and is based at the data centre in Delhi, which gives the Internet hosting and communication services to enable the application software to be accessed from anywhere in the world.

This project costed Rs 23 crore and took four years. It is expected to generate income through user charges, subscription and other revenue streams. Electronising of auctions was expected to lead to a greater transparency in the bidding process and fair price discovery for tea. www.thehinduonnet.com

National Virtual Academy in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu The Chennai based M.S.Swaminathan Foundation has established the National Virtual Academy (NVA) at Thiruvaiyaru in Thanjavur district. The project Officer stated that the academy would disseminate information to farmers and rural masses with the aim to ensure food security and rural prosperity. It will have Internet, HAM radio and newspapers. It will disseminate information on agiculture, rural development, education and employment potential. Responsive villages are to be selected and integrated with the academy and will be promoted as a hub. The NVA has also been established at Annavasal in Pudukottai district and Sembatti in Dindigul district. Services of self-help groups will be utilised for the academy. A website ‘Valam’ is also being created. www.thehindubusinessline.com

Open Source Largest Open Source software development website SourceForge.net is, according to its website, “the world’s largest Open Source software development website, with the largest repository of Open Source code and appli-

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The i4d News cations available on the Internet.

SourceForge.net provides free services to Open Source developers. It has 81,203 hosted projects and 847,838 registered users.

The URL of this website is http:// sourceforge.net www.developmentgateway.org

Partnership JCCI, MDC to Boost Joint Projects in ICT The Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI) and Malaysia’s Multimedia Development Corporation (MDC) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to set up an MDC office at the chamber in Jeddah. Its function will be to coordinate joint projects in the development of Information Computers Technology.

The objectives behind the alliance is to help Saudis wishing to establish businesses in Malaysia and also provide opportunities for Malaysian businessmen in Saudi Arabia through the chamber in ICT sector services and production services.

The cooperation would benefit the Jeddah, Saudi and the Malaysian economy and

set an example of the cooperation that can take place between Muslim countries. It is the first of the global bridges in the region and it could well be a model for success. www.arabnews.com

Egypt, Nigeria team up on ICT Egypt’s ministry of communications and IT has signed a two-year memorandum of understanding (MOU) with its Nigerian counterpart, with the aim of promoting business and investment opportunities in the ICT sector.The two nations have agreed to promote collaboration in capacity-building and human resource development through exchange programmes between Egypt’s National Telecommunication Institute (NTI) and the Digital Bridge Institute in Nigeria.

On the regulatory front, the MOU will support cooperation among African regulatory associations through sharing of experience in terms of regulatory activities, policies, practices and know-how, while seeking to harmonise technical standards and regulatory policies across the continent. www.allafrica.com

ITC’s e-Choupal now in six states of India ITC Ltd has extended its e-choupal initiative to Rajasthan and has added two more commodities, pulses and mustard, to its trading basket. Thus, ITC has extended its network to six states covering more than 21,200 villages through 4,100 e-choupals, providing access to over 2.4 million farmers. e-Choupal, the unique web based initiative of ITC’s International Business Division, offers the Farmers of India all the information, products and services they need to enhance farm productivity, improve farm-gate price realisation and cut transaction costs.The choupals are trading in soya, wheat, mustard and pulses. Farmers using e-choupals are able to align farming to domestic and international market trends because the system provides advance information on demand besides expertise on crop quality and productivity. Higher quality farming inputs are also delivered through the system.

The e-choupals in Rajasthan have been set up at Kota, Bundi and Jhlalwar and are being rolled out elsewhere in the state. In addition, the network is being extended in Maharashtra with the Vidharba area being covered as of now. In Andhra Pradesh, the company had been negotiating with the state for extension of its basket of products beyond the existing aquaculture products. ITC is planning to take up trade in chillies and turmeric in collaboration with government agencies in Andhra. Recently the e-choupal initiative bagged the ‘World business award’, instituted by the International Chamber of Commerce and the United Nations Development Programme on May 18 in Paris.

More information can be found at their website http://www.echoupal.com www.business-standard.com

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Wireless SMS reaching new benchmarks in India This year for the first time in education and wireless history, class X and XII students got their results on their mobile phones via SMS in India. This development pleased students and parents no end, they didn’t have to stand in long queues or bear the scorching sun.

The interactive mobile service of Indiatimes.com, introduced a new service of providing school results through SMS via number 8888. Students of class X and class XII received their results anywhere at the touch of a few buttons. The service was available to students appearing in any Board (CBSE, ICSE or any of State Boards).

This service is available across all mobile service operators. Indiatimes.com is also planning to create a similar service for professional exams like AIIMS, IIT, etc. www.thetimesofindia.com

TRAI of India favours news broadcast on FM stations The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is in favour of news being allowed on FM stations. At this stage, news is not allowed to be aired on the FM radio stations. “We are of the opinion that news should be allowed and that it should not be restricted” said TRAI’s Chairman Pradip Baijal. He explained that there was a lot of news content that was particular to an area. Mr Baijal was in Mumbai at TRAI’s open house on the consultation paper for FM radio. At this stage, FM stations largely have an entertainment focus on account of the restriction on news content being aired.

Mr Baijal said that the recommendations will be presented to the information and broadcasting (I&B) ministry after which a decision is expected to be taken. Among the issues that came up for discussion at the open house were the migrations to a revenue sharing regime. This is a shift from the current situation where FM players pay an annual license fee which is increased each year.

The overall consensus in the industry is that the players are suffering huge losses due to the high licence fee structure apart from radio itself constituting a small part of total advertising spend in the country. Responding to a query on community

i4d | June 2004

The i4d News radio, Mr Baijal maintained that it should be facilitated and also added it should not be restricted. www.financialexpress.com

Miscellaneous Chile on the fast track Chile’s government has launched a wideranging programme to increase the use of computers and boost the role of information technology (IT) in the country’s economy. As part of the initiative, the government aims to establish fast Internet connections in all universities, and at least 80 per cent of schools, by 2006. The Digital Agenda initiative, which aims to transform Chile into a digital country by the year 2010, will seek to attract foreign investment into the country’s technology sector in order to promote IT development. It also includes projects to increase Internet access, improve computer training, and develop eCommerce activities. As part of the initiative, the country’s laws and regulations on new technologies will be revised to make each of these goals easier to achieve.

At least one million people will be trained in digital technologies in the next two years. Initiative will be taken to reduce the price of computers and broadband services by increasing the number of homes with Internet access. As per the current report, the IT sector represents just 1.2 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), well below the 3.5 per cent of GDP invested by industrialised nations. www.SciDev.Net

UCLA releases first findings of World Internet Project University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) released first findings of the World Internet Project which portrays the gender gap in Internet usage, impact on television viewing, how Internet information impacts urban and rural lifestyle around the world, and effects on social, political, economic and religious life in China. Among many major findings, the study reveals:

• Television viewing is lower among Internet users than non-users in all of the surveyed countries • Information on the Internet is viewed as generally reliable and accurate by a large percentage of users in most countries • Surprisingly high levels of online use June 2004 | www.i4donline.net

Kiosks coming up big way in Tiruvallur district In 539 panchayats of Tiruvallur district,a Chennai, India based company is planning to put up Internet kiosks. The kiosks themselves will be put up by local entrepreneurs. It would cost about Rs 60,000 to put up one kiosk. There is 50 per cent subsidy from the Government if the kiosk is put up by a self-help group. Bank loans are available for funding the other half of the requirement. Minvalai will provide the hardware, software and training support, and do the hand-holding for the entrepreneur through his business. At least two banks — Indian Bank and State Bank of India — have offered assistance to make this possible, according to Mr V. Varadarajan, Managing Partner of the company, Minvalai, a franchisee of n-Logue Communications (P) Ltd. The technology for making available bandwidth to villages through the ‘wireless in local loop’ route has been developed by n-Logue Communications, a company formed by a group of professors of the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. Villagers can pay and use the Internet. Typical uses are sending and receiving e-mails, telemedicine, browsing for job opportunities and video games. www.thehindubusinessline.com

among the poorest citizens in all of the survey countries — in spite of major divisions in Internet use between the richest and the poorest • Important effects on social, political, economic, and religious life in urban China, where the world’s largest population finds increased ability to reach out to others, in spite of government restrictions.

Overall it was seen, an average 8 percent gap between men and women using the Internet. The gender gap in Internet use was as high as 20.2 percent in Italy (men, 41.7 percent; women, 21.5 percent) to as low as 1.6 percent in Taiwan (where 25.1 percent of men are Internet users, compared to 23.5 percent of women). http://ccp.ucla.edu/pages/internet-report.asp

Vaishno Devi shrine of India goes hi-tech One of India’s most revered religious pilgrimages, the Vaishno Devi shrine, has gone hi-tech this year. In an effort to make Vaishno Devi yatra more comfortable, the Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board is now adding facilities of reservation through Internet.

Pilgrims can now book a room, reserve a chopper ride from Katra to the shrine or book the special poojan and parshad packets online. www.ndtv.com

Directory of Indian Websites A Chennai based organisation, MJ Net Services, has released a directory, which has Internet websites in place of telephone numbers. Titled the ‘Indian Internet Directory 2004,’the book contains more than 15,000 website addresses which leads to over 1 million web pages of information on India. The directory in a CD form will be released soon. It will be useful for industrialists, foreign and Indian tourists, students, NGOs and others. The Internet directory first of its kind initiative in India has been compiled after five years of extensive research by MJ Net services. Most of the online international and Indian directories available like Google, DMOZ, www.india server.com, www.123india.com refer to web pages inside a website and thus same site is referred to many times.

This is not the case with this directory, which groups the sites under categories such as arts, business, computers, education, government etc. Most importantly the directory includes six percent of international website addresses. One major disadvantage at present is its periodic updating. www.financialexpress.com

Indian railway software bags prestigious award Indian Northern railway's unreserved ticketing system (UTS) has been selected as

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The i4d News

e-Procurement catching up in India The Northern Railway is going to implement a pilot project on e-procurement services soon. This is a part of the Rs 60 crore project which will cover the entire Indian Railways gradually. Under the project all tender documents will be uploaded on railways web site. There will be provision for bid submission with digital signature to ensure confidentiality, a payment gateway for online transaction for bid money and security deposit.

Another public sector, Indian Oil Corporation, is taking up a technology framework to make available the e-procurement services. IOC had started inviting tenders on the dedicated website four years ago. Since this February, the company has also started reverse auctions as part of the standard procurement process. A web based e-tendering and document exchange system has also been started. www.thehindubusinessline.com

one of the five best softwares in the transport category in the world at the Computer World 2004 Awards. The UTS was developed by the Centre for Railway Information System. The centre has also designed, developed and operated the passenger reservation system as well as the Freight Operations Information Systems, a Rs1,100 crore project. www.theindianexpress.com

ICT survey report of Bangladesh Japan External Trade Organisation (Jetro) Dhaka, the official trade and investment promotion agency of the Japan government set up in 1973, has recently published a survey report on Bangladesh’s software industry. The report briefly analyses the strength, weakness and opportunities of and threats to the software industry. The report can be a good reference book for the ICT industry in Bangladesh, which will help the Japanese investors with further information on the country’s software market.

The report cited the presence of skilled workforce, cost value proposition, convenient time gap between Japan and Bangladesh and the government’s tax incentives and other benefits as the main strength of Bangladesh’s software industry. However, inappropriate governing laws and logistics, lack of proper exposure to international markets, power and telecommunications infrastructure, among others, are its main weaknesses. The report, which surveyed 99 firms, says more and more firms are outsourcing their ICT-related functions to

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companies in South East Asia. With the ever-increasing development of the global ICT sector, demand for ICT service is always on the rise. The report also mentions that the rise of neighbouring nations in the ICT sector that led to achievement of a bigger international market share of the outsourced market. The report says Bangladesh’s exports of ICT products may cross $10 million by the end of 2005. It also predicts that the link-up with the submarine cable by the middle of next year may dramatically increase export potentials. Bangladesh’s ICT market comprises software development and its maintenance, call centre, ICT consultancy and processing services. Bangladesh recorded only around 1.5 percent ICT business growth in 2003.

Dhaka News

e-Cinema: faster reach to smaller cities e-Cinema is a very simple and efficient solution, using digital technology, to cut the problem of film piracy. Adlabs Films Ltd, India's largest film processing company, have already helped 130 cinema halls to upgrade to `e-cinema' using digital projection. The investment required per screen is Rs 10-12 lakh and is done entirely by the Adlabs. The cinema owner is only required to share revenues for the next three years.

One of the main reasons for film piracy in India is the time that it takes for Bollywood films to reach smaller towns.

Given the total number of cinema halls in the country at over 16,000, it takes six months to a year for the last cinema hall in

the chain to get a new release. Adlabs digitises every new film and downloads it into the servers of 130 cinema halls that it has helped retrofit with digital projectors and servers. That enables the viewers in small cities to watch the movies at the same time as their counterparts in the metros. Soon, the process is set to become faster with the company tying up with VSAT (very small aperture terminal{rcub} operators to download the content via satellite directly into the cinema hall's servers. It has another benefit. If you don't want to shell out Rs 100 for a movie in a top multiplex all the time, opt for eCinema theatre. The highest ticket cost at an e-cinema is Rs 22.

The company has not only upgraded halls in smaller towns in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and West Bengal, it is also taking the concept to metros where people are not willing to shell out in excess of Rs 100 to watch a movie at a top multiplex. www.thehindubusinessline.com

Computerised database on natural resources The Haryana State Remote Sensing Application Centre (HARSAC) at Hisar, India has launched a project to create computerised database on the natural resources like land use, land cover, soil, ground water potential, ground water quality and their integration with socio-economic data. The project is called National Natural Resources Information System (NRIS).

It is launched in 17 districts of the state.

Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing techniques will be used to develop a high-resolution digital database on natural resources at the block level. www.thehinduonnet.com

A Guide to Community Multimedia Centres The handbook “A Guide to Community Multimedia Centres: How to Get Started and Keep Going” gives an overview of all the different aspects in setting up and operating a Community Multimedia Centre (CMC). It was developed by UNESCO to complement a series of workshop-ready, open access tranining materials called the Multimedia Training Kit. The book is available www.unesco.org/webworld/cmc/ handbook/full_book.pdf. www.developmentgateway.org i4d | June 2004

B OOK R EVIEW e-Content: Voice From the Ground Version 1.0 Osama Manzar, Peter A Bruck (Eds) Digital Empowerment Foundation & World Summit Award www.econtentworldwide.org Pp 332 * US$20, 2004 Technology does not inspire. Contents do....

Post-industrial societies pay lots for equipment, gadgets and ‘tech things’. They pay far too little for stories, knowledge and insight.... Hardware and software can be marketed globally. Content is tied to culture and language. — Peter A Bruck.

There are probably a couple of ways you could write a nonfiction wide-canvas book in 40 days flat.

Firstly, adopt a highly collaborative and de-centralised model for collating information.

Secondly, taking that logic further, set a standard questionnaire, distribute the same widely, and get responses to it. This title attempt adopts both these strategies.

There are two authors - should we say, editors? and seven sponsors for ‘e-Content: Voices From The Ground’. India’s high profile official S Ramakrishnan (“Ramki” to the many who know him in the electronics and IT circuit) writes the brief forward.

The book is ‘brought to you by’ the Digital Empowerment Foundation (http://www.defindia.org) and the UN’s World Summit Award Office (http://www.wsis-award.org). All this is typical, perhaps, of the hype that today surrounds the ICT4D debate.

Having begun on a rather cynical note, let’s admit straightaway however that even if the haste and hurry sometimes shows (“this book is a result of only 40 days of work, from storyboard to printing”) this has the potential of being a rather useful book, all in all. For anyone interested in the subject, and many more of us need to be, this brings in ideas and inspiration from a wide diversity of voices and viewpoints, with a diversity that makes a difference.

It’s a matter of additional pride that this book comes out from India, a country whose contribution to the ICT4D debate is June 2004 | www.i4donline.net

appreciated worldwide - if only we could be much more discerning in separating the wheat from the chaff.

Delhi-based Osama Manzar, known for his writings and initiatives on the New Media, teamed up with World Summit Award’s Prof Dr Peter A Bruck of Austria, to put together this 332-page hardbound book. It consists of interviews with 30 ‘country experts’ who each explain the situation of e-content in their diverse geographical regions.

For someone from the ‘developing’ world (ouch, to use that term hurts – is the gap really narrowing, and are we presuming that we all want to, or can indeed, reach levels of consumption and lifestyles of the ‘developed’ without sending the planet on a tailspin?) the stories that come in from Asia, Africa and Latin America are really interesting.

It’s probably time to raise some basic questions. Does the uniform label of e-Content make sense to all? (Burundi, with 6 million population and 1000 Internet connections, lacks even the basic infrastructure like electricity and phone lines. Burundi is not alone.

E-content can, at best, be a distant dream for such countries for quite some years to come.)

Can we talk, in the same breath, of countries as disparate as Cameroon (16 million population, just 100 websites, and “the country is starting from the scratch... everything has to be done”) and the Netherlands (“a country with an extensive content industry even before the advent of the Internet... three of the largest international publishers were located in the country...”)? Are we talking about comparables? Or, is this like the elephant of Hindoostan and the six blind men, neither of whom could decipher what part of the animal really was comprised it?

Countries which had a head-start since a century or more, had greater access to information and education, and inherited the legacy of the written word, are obviously in a different world. The confidence of Europe and North America stands out, together with a handful of more affluent nations in the other continents. Is it just ego-pandering to have the title of one chapter read then: “India is the idea of the 21st century”?

There are lessons to learn from countries as distant as Italy and Ireland, and the former East Bloc. But, one found the ‘stories of the South’ to be often inspiring, as they sometimes throw up valiant stories of battles against limited resources, and the daily struggle that is life.

Sub-consciously perhaps, one was picking out lessons which could be replicated back home, in our part of the world. Take the case of Brazil, with a website for journalists only, another from the post-office, one which allows registered users to create content (by ranking restaurants, hotels, movies, etc), and sites for blood-donation or senior citizens.

Sprinkled across this heavy-margined book are useful websites from diverse nations. Cultures which we otherwise don’t get a chance to interact with-mainly due to language barriers in a world where two non-English cultures have to necessarily communicate in English-were interesting to encounter here. Take China’s www.ssreader.com.cn-a digital e-library offering over 250,000 digital books, with 20 million downloaded free since the year 2000.

Each chapter also begins with some interesting key statistics.

Take some telling figures from India. Population: over 1050 million.

31

Internet connections, 7 million, phone lines 20 million, mobile connections/users 3 million. PCs installed 5 million. ISPs 43, websites 20,000 (in Indian languages) and 130,000 (in English). Oddly, a country like Indonesia, roughly one-fifth India’s size, has more Internet connections and nearly four-times more mobile phone users.

By sheer comparison of the reality in different parts of the globe, one gets a good idea of where we’re headed. Andy Carvin, a wellknown name on ICT4D mailing lists from the Benton Foundation, makes some interesting points about the situation in the US. The US, says he, probably produces more online content than any other country in the globe. But this is also a “curse” - there’s so much information being churned out, that they find it impossible to “sort through the morass of it all”. Besides, a lot of content in the US is “driven by profit”. So, producers “will only create content that sells well to a mass audience ... that’s generally rather bland and not ground-breaking”. It also means that non-commercial content, as well as content of interest to smaller audiences - ethnic minorities, small towns or rural areas, etc - simply has less of a chance of getting produced.

Canada has an interesting attitude. It has “more institutions” than can be mentioned what enable e-Content through critical ways. These include funding, collaboration or network enabling, and mentorship. In many parts of the globe, we seem to believe this will happen by serendipity.

From Egypt comes a common Third World complaint: subjectmatter specialists are often unaware of the value of converting their knowledge into e-Content. They’re thus simply not motivated enough to do the job.

Zambia and Ghana are among the few countries where the local experts put the cost of software and hardware firmly on the agenda.

This seems to be an issue many simply presume doesn’t exist. Ghanian expert Guido Sohne, the active-in-cyberspace and articulate freelance software developer, is alone a lone voice in this volume that talks about how Free/Libre and Open Source Software. He calls FLOSS “an initiative needed... to accelerate the adoption of current technology...”

This book tackles a wide canvas. From the confident Mauritius (“we, in Mauritius, have the necessary ingredients to ensure a successful passage to this new world... the highest literacy... an enterprising spirit.. and a culture of innovation”) to the 32-million strong Sudan, suffering from the woes of a typical Asian-AfricanLatAm nation (“The availability of most of the material necessary for creating content on the Internet is in English, a language which deprives a large proportion of the real content-creators from

expressing themselves directly”). Co-author Dr Bruck (bruck@research.at) points out that technologies, systems and tools to generate, distribute and store content has grown rapidly; yet, content markets are neither transparent nor open. Says he: “Rather, concentration has reached a global scale with the likely scenario of five to seven dominant content providers, creating a cultural oligopoly of a new magnitude.”

Ireland reminds us: “Without inventive and creative people, there is no e-content. Without commitment, there are no results.

Without careful planning, management and patience, projects fail.

Many projects fail because they are far too ambitious and unsustainable.”

And another from Italy: “Modern governance is not just about delivering services. The notion includes democratic and cooperative policy formulation, citizen and civil society involvement, transparent and participative implementation of policies as well as continuous independent evaluation of results. However, these aspects are still terra incognita for the vast majority of e-Solution providers.”

Besides its contents, the story of this book is interesting in itself.

In December 2003, e-Content experts from 36 countries gathered to select 40 best e-content practices out of more than 800 nominations from 136 countries. This was part of the UN’s World Summit Award formed under the WSIS (World Summit on the Information Society).

Recognising the “best in the world” can be a task fraught with dangers. The best way to kill an innovative e-initiative is to give it a global award, it’s said. Maybe the skepticism is not misplaced, as one continues seeing well-packaged awards keep winning prizes, while deserving ones with the potential impact hardly make the splash.

But, that apart, this book is a compilation of snapshots of the e-Content scenario in two-and-half dozen countries of the globe.

Its jacket says that cyber version 2.0 of the book is being produced on the Web to “cover all 136 participating countries in the WSA”. If completed, this would be interesting indeed.

For Rs 750 in India - maybe it shouldn’t have been hard-bound - this books seems a bit overpriced by domestic standards.

But it’s surely worth reading, and contains some rather useful insights... even if, like Reviewed by much of the content on the Net and about Frederick Noronha Freelance Journalist the Net, it’s doomed to get outdated fred@bytesforall.org early.

Book reviews are invited!

If you have read any book on ICT4D that you may like us and our readers to know about, we invite you to write a review of the same. Please send your reviews, as recommended in the editorial guidelines on page Page 39

info@i4donline.net 32

i4d | June 2004

Rendezvous M AY 13-14, 2004, S AN J OSE , C OSTA R ICA

GKP Annual Meeting

Did the recent ‘cyber summit’ really advance the cause of the emerging information society?

Can we realistically talk of a digital dividend when a majority of humankind has no easy or regular access to information and communications technologies, or ICTs? Which ICTs can be strategically used to reduce poverty, enhance quality of life and increase sharing of knowledge worldwide?

Who governs the Internet, on what basis and how does that affect free flow of information and issues of global equality?

Five months after the first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) ended in Geneva, Switzerland, a recent meeting of governments, civil society, private companies, donors and UN agencies addressed these and other key questions.

The occasion was the seventh Annual Meeting of the Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) held in San Jose, Costa Rica, from 13 to 14 May 2004. Attended by more than 100 representatives from GKP member organizations and specially invited guests, the meeting both looked back at the recent Geneva summit, and looked forward to its next phase to be held in Tunis, Tunisia, in November 2005.

The meeting, hosted by the Omar Dengo Foundation (FOD) of Costa Rica, June 2004 | www.i4donline.net

was declared opened by the Vice-President of Costa Rica, Madam Lineth Saborio Chaverri.

GKP annual meetings are a lot more than a business meeting of this worldwide network of organizations committed to harnessing the potential of ICTs for sustainable and equitable development.

Participants engaged in wide ranging discussions and debates on core issues and concerns shaping the information society.

Says Rinalia Abdul Rahim, Executive Director of the GKP: “There was certainly a great deal of information and experience sharing, which always happens at our meetings. But the GKP is a network that is more than the sum of its parts. We were able to discuss broader issues of ICT policy and practice from a variety of perspectives.”

The meeting sessions focused on eight thematic areas of the GKP: Multistakeholder Partnerships; Poverty Reduction; Youth; Gender; Financing; Media; Internet Governance; and Local Content, Indigenous Knowledge and Intellectual Property Rights. Participants also discussed the many outcomes of the ICT4D Platform, the single largest parallel event of the WSIS in Geneva, which GKP co-organised with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

This was the first time that the GKP held its annual meeting in the Americas. The meeting was preceded by a day-long event that focused on ICTs in the Latin America and Caribbean region, with several practitioners and researchers from the region making presentations.

Participants reflected the multistakeholder composition and philosophy of the Partnership. Overall, 92 participants from 40 countries attended (excluding specially-invited guests) of whom 22 came from the Latin America and the Caribbean region.

Eight new organizations were admitted to GKP membership during this meeting, bringing the total membership to 95. The membership currently consists of organisations from North America (8), Europe (9), Eastern Europe (3), Asia (34), Africa (6), Middle East and North Africa (4), Oceania (6), and Latin America and the Caribbean(9), with a total of 16 members being international organizations.

The GKP’s governing body, the Executive Committee, which began its twoyear term in May 2004, also held its first meeting in San Jose prior to the Annual Meeting. It comprises: Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) Switzerland (Chair), Association for Progressive Communication (APC), International Development Research Centre (IDRC), M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), MIMOS Berhad, Omar Dengo Foundation (FOD), United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and Young Asia Television (YATV).

The Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) is a worldwide network committed to harnessing the potential of information and communication technology (ICT) for sustainable and equitable development having the head-office at Kuala Lumpur. http://www.globalknowledge.org

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11-15 M AY 2004, H ONG K ONG

Global ICT Summit 2004

As we all know that Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have great potential for the development of any society world over. What it needs is the unaffected flow of information and unfettered interactions between the ICT communities to share their experiences, ideas and opinions for the development. Hence, it is very important that conferences and summits should take place all over the world. Global ICT Summit organized by Internet Professionals Association Limited (iProA) indubitably severed the purpose of bringing the minds at a single common platform for development.

In the short few days of the Summit there were 91 speeches delivered to a total of 1,162 participants. ICT Ministers and Secretaries from 9 countries together with over 70 renowned speakers from 22 countries were able to share their view and experiences on best practices in e-Content and e-Creativity that will shape the future of global ICT development.

They covered a wide range of subjects such as “Corporate social responsibility and the digital divide” which broadened the spectrum of building a true information society. Moreover, opportunities were presented to forge global partnerships for development between governments, the private sector, civil society, and the United Nations system.

In addition, the Global Alliance for Bridging the Digital Divide has launched the Global Web Accessibility Promotion programme that will help members to enhance web accessibility in their respective country. Likewise, the Euro-Asia e-Entertainment Alliance was formed and cross-continental collaboration in research and

34

development in smart media, mobile entertainment, digital contents, and games were established. The Mainland - Hong Kong ICT Business Development Centre also succeeded in forming bilateral partnerships with 12 countries, thus laying the foundation for matching business opportunities among companies from these countries.

The Summit was heavily and effectively promoted through the Organizers’ Global Network and it has successfully promoted Hong Kong’s IT infrastructure and enhanced Hong Kong position as a leading digital city globally connected as well as being the gateway to China.

Achievements from the event are expected to add momentum in e-Content development in Hong Kong, which will benefit the general public as well as the local ICT and creative industries. iProA, formerly known as the “Webmasters (Hong Kong) Association”, is a non-profit making professional organization founded in December 1999. On 25 May 2001, it was incorporated in Hong Kong by guarantee with limited liability under its present name “Internet Professionals Association Limited”. It represents over 500 professionals from Internet related industries, including CEOs and senior executives from leading information technology enterprises. The members have made contributions in areas like innovative design, sales, marketing, infrastructure, e-Commerce, consultancy, investment and other Internet related professional services, aiming to further develop the Internet industry in Hong Kong.

The presentations of the Summit as well as related photographs can be viewed at www.iproa.org. i4d | June 2004

I NSIGHT

Local content, local people, local languages Poor people must be able to express and communicate locally relevant knowledge in local languages if they are to shape the decisions that affect their livelihoods.

Tori Holmes Programme Development Coordinator, OKN, Brazil tori.holmes@oneworld.net

Britt Jorgensen Programme Support Executive, OKN, London, UK britt.jorgensen@oneworld.net

June 2004 | www.i4donline.net

The Open Knowledge Network (OKN) is a human network, which collects, shares and disseminates local knowledge and is supported by flexible technical solutions. OKN is not something new. It is a synthesis of tried and tested ideas; building on what is already happening in different fields and joining up the dots.

Poor people must be able to express and communicate locally relevant knowledge in local languages if they are to shape the decisions that affect their livelihoods. Local content development is closely tied to human development, and the ultimate aim of OKN is the empowerment of local communities.

OneWorld International coordinates the OKN programme, which is funded by the UK Department for International Development, the Canada Fund for Africa and CATIA (Catalysing Access to ICTs in Africa).

How does it work?

Using the OKN system, people in Africa, Asia and Latin America can create digital content in their own language, which is exchanged with others through networks of existing community Access Points staffed by what OKN calls ‘Community Reporters’.

Community Reporters play a very important role in OKN, serving as ‘infomediaries’, and linking the community with OKN and vice versa. Reporters carry out content needs analyses in their communities, assist in content generation and dissemination, and link the OKN system to other community media as well as to key people and organisations in the community. The reporters generally enjoy working with OKN, stressing upon the fact that they have more opportunities to interact with people in the community. Others stress the international dimension and enjoy being part of something global.

The Access Points channel their content to and from ‘Hub’ organisations for wider exchange. As most of the Access Points are not online on a regular basis, exchanging information with the Hubs happens with the help of a range of technologies including satellite transfer or short bursts of email or internet connectivity. OKN is designed to be compatible with all kinds of information and communication technologies, both low and high tech.

The Hubs are located in existing organisations that support the exchange of knowledge at grassroots level, and are staffed by what OKN calls ‘Knowledge Workers’ (a mixture of sub-editor, electronic librarian and development worker). The Hubs are linked to each other through shared standards and open source software tools.

Using a wide range of community dissemination tools, such as radio, drama, puppetry and simple drawings (among many others) is very important to increase the impact of OKN. As Community Reporters build and exchange skills in handling and disseminating information, the value of the human network grows. In Kibera, Nairobi, the largest urban slum area in East Africa, OKN Community Reporters work on advocating for important issues like the rights of girls. Their success has led to members of that community confessing to girl child abuse, and subsequent court cases to prosecute offenders.

To extend the potential of this human network, OKN is also working with mobile phones as a new two-way channel to encourage communities to create and share vital, up-to-date messages cheaply and quickly. Mobile phones are booming in the global South and the technology is providing increased flexibility in reaching audiences within specific geographic areas.

The mobile programme is funded by the

35

OKN activities and plans

“The power of being connected at the local level with authorities, researchers, experts and our fellow communities make us feel that we are indeed a part of the global society.”

Vodafone Group Foundation and is currently being piloted in Kenya. OKN is not trying to reinvent the wheel, since many communities and projects in the South were working in similar ways before OKN. OKN can support and strengthen these local and regional knowledge networks, and offers the advantage of using global standards to organise and exchange local content. This gives Access Points the possibility of being able to share information with other Access Points locally, regionally or globally. OKN also offers its partners capacity building on local content creation and stimulation and other related issues such as intellectual property rights and business planning. OKN is joining up the dots and working to enhance existing initiatives to create a knowledge network that is sustainable.

Africa Today OKN is active in three regions of Africa. In East Africa OKN is working with two Hub organisations, Arid Lands Information Network (ALIN) www.alin.or.ke and AfriAfya www.afriafya.org (a health information consortium) and their associated 12 Access Points (partner organisations).

The first West African pilot project with ENDA CYBERPOP www.enda.sn/cyberpop, based in Dakar, Senegal, has now started and will go live by mid-June. ENDA is working with 7 Access Points, including rural women’s savings collectives, support centres for craft micro-entrepreneurs, and traditional healers.

The third region is Zimbabwe, where OKN has begun working with the Southern Alliance for Indigenous Resources (SAFIRE) www.safireweb.org. They work with 5 Access Points, including resource centres, a school, a refugee camp and a women’s knowledge organisation, and OKN content creation and exchange coordinated by SAFIRE is expected to go live by the beginning of July.

Their aim is to test the many underlying assumptions of the OKN programme to see what works and learn from the different social and informational practices of OKN partner organisations.

Mali, Mozambique and South Africa are expected to be the next countries where OKN will start up joint projects. In South Africa, OKN plans to take a different approach from that of other countries because there are dozens of potential information providers and hundreds of potential Access Points (telecentres, phoneshops, multipurpose centres etc). The idea here would be to run the OKN as a ‘many-to-many’ project, aiming to link around 100 Access Points

Background OKN grew out of the Digital Opportunity Task Force (DOTForce) set up by the G8 Heads of State to make a decisive contribution to bridging the digital divide. The G8 Genoa Plan of Action called for “national and international effort to support local content and applications creation”. As a result of this high level commitment, the process of defining solutions began in 2000 through the DOTForce’s Local Content Working Group, chaired by OneWorld International.

OKN was designed around the following seven principles, based on extensive research into successful projects as well as existing barriers to local content creation and exchange: • building on the experience of others • building capacity in communities to support knowledge sharing • working offline for free, but synchronizing with the Net • peer-to-peer networking of existing Knowledge Workers • standards for metadata using XML • agreed open content copyright licenses • sustainable business models adapted to different contexts In early 2002, the OKN concept was tested in a short pilot with the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) in South India, in the first collaboration with an existing local-level

36

knowledge sharing initiative. This experience was based on and supported by the MSSRF’s existing activities and infrastructure.

The OKN concept was refined according to the results of the pilot and then presented to an international workshop held in Chennai, India, in May 2002.

The set-up phase of the full OKN programme began in October 2002, with a series of workshops held in different parts of Africa to present the OKN framework to a range of actors and to see how it could be adapted to fit different realities. The first African pilot began in East Africa in July 2003.

OneWorld International coordinates the OKN programme and the project’s global Steering Group brings together representatives of Accenture, Berkman Center of Harvard Law School, IICD, IDRC, OneWorld International and M.S Swaminathan Research Foundation.

OKN is funded by the UK Department for International Development, the Canada Fund for Africa and CATIA (Catalysing Access to ICTs in Africa). The Vodafone Group Foundation funds OKN’s work with mobile phones.

For more information about the OKN please visit www.openknowledge.net or write to okn@oneworld.net.

i4d | June 2004

with many information and service pr oviders, supported by a small central coordinating body of Knowledge Workers. This would test some of the organisational models and problems for any kind of future OKN scale-up.

OKN Africa now publishes a quarterly newsletter, Access Point, about local content issues in Africa (to subscribe contact Eddie Ramirez at eddie.ramirez@oneworld.net.)

South Asia In India the Hub partner is M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), www.mssrf.org. OKN works with some of MSSRF’s Access Points in Pondicherry, using the Tamil language. The latest success from OKN in India involves work with radio, and shows how the communities there are taking advantage of the opportunities offered by OKN. As of May 2004, the communities are involved in producing a 15-minute radio programme broadcast every fortnight on the state radio. This programme is produced by local people, for local people and about local people - realising the Indian tradition. Village volunteers who act as rural reporters across villages in Pondicherry have started using the OKN tool to its potential. Their reports, averaging 10 a day, are being aggregated and edited by Dr. R Thiagarajane, the content coordinator at MSSRF, on a daily basis. Dr Thiagarajane then collates these reports and, with the help of the community, turns the stories into a well-narrated audio programme that goes live to hundreds of villages in and around Pondicherry. A newspaper is also published every fortnight using the local knowledge, local news and local information generated by the reporters of OKN. Kasthuri, an OKN reporter in Embelem village explains how OKN works: “When I came to know that someone in my village was trying to sell 100 bricks, I encouraged him to put an advert in the OKN newspaper generated by the village volunteers. The advert was processed by our content manager in Villianur and was circulated to all the villages connected to the OKN within hours.

There were requests from other villages for the bricks on the same day, and the villager was able to sell those bricks immediately”.

Packialouchmy, a Knowledge Worker on the project explains: “The power of being connected at the local level through the OKN with authorities, researchers, experts and our fellow communities make us feel that we are indeed a part of the global society.”

The importance of local content is now well recognised in South Asia. Local people are encouraged to act as content producers, not just content recipients. During the next few months, the South Asian leg of the OKN programme will be extended to activities in Sri Lanka and to include content in Hindi and Sinhala languages.

Latin America There are no OKN projects so far in Latin America, but OKN has begun networking with a range of organisations in the region with the aim of identifying local needs and developing joint projects to respond to the local context. A communications strategy was developed so that information about OKN and its activities in other parts of the world is available to organisations in Latin America, both in Spanish and Portuguese. OKN Africa is soon to begin work in Lusophone countries, the link to projects in Brazil is of particular interest. There is great potential to share content in Portuguese.

June 2004 | www.i4donline.net

Local, regional and global knowledge OKN supports knowledge sharing at different levels. Most importantly, it facilitates the sharing of local knowledge at the local level.

OKN is also, however, about creating a global network and maximizing the impact of those pieces of local knowledge which can be useful in other parts of the global South, where people are sometimes living under similar conditions or struggling with the same kind of issues.

OKN software has been built with this South-South knowledge sharing in mind. So far, however, it is difficult to know how much traffic involves global versus local content – this will become clearer with time. OKN may ultimately have the greatest impact by enabling more effective sharing of local content at the local level, but there is interest from Hub and Access Points in exchanging some content with other parts of the network and there are already early signs of some content being used outside of its place of origin.

Community reporters tell us that people in their communities are generally willing to share information and are empowered to do so by the reporters. One reporter from Kenya explains, “People feel very much excited, they feel they are part of the world if the information can be shared by people in the next district or country”.

Siaya, in the Nyanza district of west Kenya, is home to the Luo community and is an area where 32 per cent of the population is infected by HIV/AIDS. OKN Community Reporters there state that, on average, they download 6 or 7 out of 10 items available on the OKN system which come from other Access Points. Depending on whether they expect the information from the other Access Points to be useful, they print it and disseminate it among the community. There are many things in common like for instance the drug abuse in Kibera. We also have drug abuse by youths in Siaya, so the information coming from Kibera can be equally applied to the Siaya community. Health and, in particular, herbal treatment for people and livestock seems to be an area where the knowledge sharing between Access Points is taking off in East Africa. One example comes from the Shinyanga Access Point in Tanzania where the Community reporter found information on OKN about a cure for livestock with ticks that neither he nor his community knew about before. “You take leaves from the tree, you soak in water and then you mix with the other tree species. The water is used to spray on the cattle and then the ticks die immediately. The people appre-

37

ciate the method and are still using it,” says the Shinyanga Reporter.

If South-South content sharing is to be successful, OKN will need to come to grips with a range of challenges around translation.

However, there is scope for some South-South content exchange without too high a burden of translation because, as the network grows, there will be clusters of Hubs using the same ‘international’ languages (English, French, Portuguese) alongside their own specific set of local languages.

Another way in which OKN plans to enrich the local content pool is through the development of content partnerships at different levels within the network. These could be relationships with international organisations, governments, regional or national centres of expertise or local media organisations. OKN would provide the tools for these organisations to disseminate their information to their target groups. Often the content would need to be reformatted or translated by OKN Knowledge Workers in the appropriate way. OKN could also facilitate an innovative feedback loop for these information-providers, direct from OKN users at grassroots level, as well as enabling OKN users to have access to a network of experts on specific topics such as agriculture and health.

JT Maps Simplifying GIS

Developing a robust network The OKN is working to develop, trial and test methodologies and systems in the range of areas it works on so that the network can be more robust in the future. These include guides and training materials for Community reporters (working at the Access Points) and Knowledge Workers (working at the Hubs); materials on the social process of information; the development of a learning system for OKN based on community participatory techniques; and studies on approaches to financial sustainability.

A major technical review of the OKN system is now underway.

This will lead to a specification for the next version of the OKN which should be ready in the first quarter of 2005. Review of other systems to see whether they can be used as a platform for the development is underway.

The specification should be completed by August 2004. In parallel, Bellanet is working on a metadata review for OKN. On intellectual property rights approaches, the OKN will be working with the Creative Commons in producing open licenses that are appropriate to African legal jurisdictions. In this OKN is collaborating with Bridges.org, which is leading the formation of Creative Commons Africa.

After the initial set-up of the OKN network and the various projects, the ultimate aim is to establish a governance structure based on the Hubs themselves making decisions for the direction of OKN. Local Steering Groups have been set up in each region where an OKN project is happening, to assist in the selection of Hub organisations.

The initial planning of the OKN projects happens jointly between the Hub organisation and the OKN team with the aim of ‘co-creation’. In those projects which have been running for a longer period, as in East Africa, Hubs have developed plans so that they can manage the OKN project themselves to meet the needs of their organisations. A workshop for OKN Hubs will be held in South Africa in October 2004 and the agenda will include discussion of the governance of the overall OKN structure.

38

A powerful & easy to use GIS software development kit JT Maps SDK E-mail: info@jtmaps.com, Web: http://www.jtmaps.com i4d | June 2004

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Answer to Quiz in May issue, 2004 1.

2.

Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions was set up in 1993. It aims “to strengthen the creativity of grassroots inventors, innovators and ecopreneurs engaged in conserving biodiversity and developing eco-friendly solutions to local problems.” Prof Anil K. Gupta of Centre for Management in Agriculture, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad is its President. It is associated with the well-known Honeybee Network, which has more than 30,000 ideas. For details, visit the Web site http://www.sristi.org/.

TARAhaat is a Delhi-based company dedicated to continuous innovation and product development. It was launched in late 2000 in Bundelkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. In 2001, TARAhaat expanded its operations into Punjab. Today, TARAhaat has 22 centres and is in the midst of a major expansion in Punjab, and in the Bundelkhand region.

7.

8.

Its current products are focused on education, communication and e-governance. It delivers its services through a network of franchised community and business centres owned by individual entrepreneurs. For details, visit the Web site http:/ /www.tarahaat.com/tara/aboutusEnglish.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Poorest Areas Civil Society (PACS) programme. The programme aims to support “civil society organisations in assisting people in the poorest and most backward districts of India to realise their entitlements more effectively and sustainably.” The PACS Programme concentrates on the hundred poorest districts located in the geographically contiguous areas of Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Centre-West (Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Maharashtra). The Development Alternatives (http:// www.devalt.org/)- PricewaterhouseCoopers(P) Ltd. consortia are implementing the programme with the support British Government’s Department for International Development (DFID). For details, visit the Web site http:// www.empowerpoor.org/about.htm.

Conceived by Satyan Mishra, its Chief Executive Officer (CEO), it has genesis in Gyandoot project on February 26, 1999 in Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh. It started its second project under its own brand in Sirsa district of Haryana. Its software platform enables e-governance and provides access to education and health services, market-related information, and private information exchanges and transactions. It is capable of creating 50,000 information kiosks all over India in six years. These kiosks would serve a market of 500 million (50 crore) people, with a purchasing power of Rs. 100 billion (Rs. 10,000 crore). In less than two years, it has set up 300 kiosks six Indian states. For details, visit the Web site http://www.drishtee.com/nd/index.htm.

Launched in June 2000 by ITC Limited, one of India’s largest consumer product and agribusiness companies, as an Internet kiosk for e-commerce and run by a lead farmer selected by the company called the sanchalak. e-Choupal services today reach more than a million farmers growing a range of crops soyabean, coffee, wheat, rice, pulses, shrimp - in over 18,000 villages through 3000 kiosks in five states of Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. [choupal means village gathering place in Hindi]. For details, visit the Web site http://www.itcportal.com/agri_exports/echoupal_new.htm.

These are village information kiosks in Nellikuppam town in Cuddalore district of Tamil Nadu set up by the E.I.D.Parry (India) Ltd., Chennai, which has a sugar factory there. E.I.D. Parry has a turnover of $600 million and has operations in farm inputs, sugar, confectionaries and sanitary ware. A Parry corner is a low-cost telecom system for accessing voice and the Internet through kiosks and consists of a PC, printer, touch screen, telephone, and a power back up system. Trained personnel who are employees of EID Parry manage the kiosks.

(Source: The Financial Express, April 24, 2001, cited at http:/ /www.tenet.res.in/Press/24042001.html; and http:// www.uncrd.or.jp/ict/nellikuppam.html).

40

9.

For-profit Internet kiosks, for whole of India except top 100 or 150 cities, set up by n-Logue Communications Private Limited, Chennai (PG Ponappa, CEO), one of several companies incubated by Telecommunications and Communications Networks (TeNet) (http://www.tenet.res.in) Group of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai. The kiosks are based on corDECT, a wireless in local loop (WLL) system pioneered

by Prof Ashok Jhunjhunwala and jointly designed by TeNet, Midas and Analog Devices, USA. So far more than 500 kiosks have been set up in Tamil Nadu and other states. For details, visit the Web site http://www.n-logue.co.in/aboutus.htm.

Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas (PURA) programme announced by the Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on Independence Day (August 15) 2003. The programme envisages four types of connectivity for these rural clusters — road transport and power connectivity; electronic connectivity in the form of reliable telecom, internet and IT services; knowledge connectivity in the form of good educational and training institutes and market connectivity that would enable farmers to get the best prices for their produce. (Source: The Hindu, August 16, 2003, http:// www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2003/08/16/stories/ 2003081603421100.htm).

The Baramati concept is “the enormous potential for digital technologies and the Digital Economy to help poor communities leapfrog out of poverty” and the purpose of Baramati initiative is “to showcase examples of how ICT is being employed to provide sustainable solutions to the needs of poor communities.” Baramati is 99 kilometres from Poona in Maharashtra. Annual workshop on ICT and Development have been organised in Baramati since 2001. The fourth workshop – Baramati 4 (February 19-23, 2004) – focused on information kiosks. For details, visit the Web sites http:// www.baramatiinitiatives.com/ict04.htm and http:// www.digitalpartners.org/new_baramati_4.html#top.

10. Rajasthan. Computer aided design (CAD) and computer aided machining (CAM), introduced in 2000, have helped the carpet weavers of Rajasthan to almost double their exports to Rs 403 crore in 2002-03 from Rs 223 crore in 2000-01, according to a case study by Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI), Hyderabad for the Planning Commission. The software has been developed by Delhi-based software company, PLC Consultation. (Source: Somasekhar, M. (2004): ICT – a boon to Rajasthan carpet weavers, The Hindu Business Line, February 17, Tuesday, Internet Edition, Dateline: Hyderabad, February 16, http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2004/02/ 17/stories/2004021701270400.htm).

11. The Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), Ahmedabad founded by Elaben Bhat (http://www.sewa.org).

The organisation donating the computers is World Computer Exchange (WCE) ( http://www.worldcomputerexchange.org) funded by its strategic partner, Digital Partners (DP) (http:// www.digitalpartners.org). ASHA, a New Haven, CT-based all-volunteer organisation (http://www.ashanet.org/yale) will assist SEWA and WCE in setting up the computer centres.

12. Swayam Krishi Sangam (literally, self-effort collective or cooperative in Telugu). SKS’s mission is to empower the poorest of the poor to become self-reliant. Its vision is to cover 100 poorest districts of India. Founded by Vikram Akula (Chair, SKS) in 1997, it operates in Medak and Nalgonda districts of the Telangana region in Andhra Pradesh. Its working is based on peer-lending model and it advances loans only to women.

It had reached 21,372 families and opened 821 sangams (centres) by February 2004. For details, visit the Web site http://www.sksindia.com/.

13. Warana Wired Village project. Warana is well-developed rural area, 30 kilometres northwest of Kolhapur in Maharashtra.

About 50,000 farmers live in 100 villages spread in 25,000 square kilometre area covered by Warana Group of Cooperatives (WGC). The WGC has 25 co-operatives with total turnover of US $130 million. (Source: Cecchini, Simone and Monica Raina (2002): Village Information Kiosks for Warana Co-operatives in India, July, http://www.egov4dev.org/

warana.htm). Visit http://www.mah.nic.in/warana/ for further details of the project.

14. Media Lab Asia (MLA). For details of Hisaab, visit the Web site http://www.medialabasia.org/mlaShow.php? fileR=20020830132112&dir=2002/08/30&format=htm& typeId=6&subTypeId=5.

15. Basix (http://www.basixindia.com/), a new generation rural livelihood promotion institution set up in 1996. Since 1996, it has disbursed over 1.25 lakh loans worth more than Rs. 150 crores with the repayment rate exceeding 95 per cent and generating more than 50,000 livelihoods in terms of wage and self-employment. Basix operates in 19 districts of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Orissa and Jharkhand covering more than 4,500 villages. (Source: Reddy, Ravi (2003): 14 MACS create history by going online, The Hindu, December 19, Saturday, http://www.basixindia.com/ the_Hindu.htm).

16. The software (module) has been designed and developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), New Delhi. The Viswa Gram project module e-Gram Panchayat Monitoring System is for maintaining record of village information of all families’ data and issue of necessary certificates to citizens. It has been implemented in 32 villages of Bhavnagar district.

(Source:http://informatics.nic.in/newsonline/n-view.asp?

NewsID=185).

17. M.S.Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF). The Foundation has established an experimental network in India that will soon connect more than 20 isolated villages to a wireless Internet service. The project won Stockholm Challenge Award 2001under the Global Village category giving it further visibility 18. It is an ambitious project launched by Aksh Optifibres Limited for setting up multimedia Internet kiosks in 2,50,000 out of 6,50,000 villages in India in the next 10 years with a capital outlay of Rs 12,500 crore. Each kiosk will be manned by a local villager called a gramdoot (literally, village messenger in Hindi). Services like telemedicine, e-governance, cable TV, voice services, distance education and web camera will be accessed from the kiosk. (Source: Verma, Prachi (2002): Aksh to Target 2.5 Lakh Villages With ‘Gramdoot,’ The Financial Express, March 22, Monday, front page, Net edition, http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_archive_ full_story.php?content_id=5258). The first Gramdoot kiosk was inaugurated by Rajasthan Chief Minister, Ashok Gehlot, at village Dabri Rampura on January 2, 2002. (Source: The Hindu Business Line, January 5, 2002, http:// www.thehindubusinessline.com/2002/01/05/stories/ 2002010500550700.htm). This initiative has already been implemented in 200 villages in Rajasthan (The Sunday Express, November 23, 2003, http://www.indianexpress. com/full_story.php?content_id=35844).

19. Working Group on information technology (IT) for Masses. It recommended, among other things, that information technology (IT) yatras (journeys) should be launched under the leadership of prominent citizens / celebrities in different parts of the country. Its report was accepted by Government of India in 2001. It led to the announcement in Parliament of a National IT Mission (NITM) on April 26, 2001 to oversee the implementation of its recommendations. The NITM was reconstituted on April 23, 2003. (Source: http://www.mit.gov.in/ E-rural/recommendations.asp#4).

20. The Indian Prime Minister dialled 1551, the toll-free number of the call centre, and was greeted by the words “Jai Kisan” (Victory to the Farmer) and asked for his name and address.

Thereafter the Prime Minister asked about the impact of Wednesday’s rains on crops, to which the call centre replied good, particularly for unirrigated areas. (Source: The Times of India, January 22, 2004, as quoted at http:// www.kisancallcenter.net/PMs_call.htm. [ 1 Lancaster, John (2003): Village Kiosks Bridge India’s Digital Divide, Washington Post, October 12, Sunday, http:// www.washingtonpost.com].

i4d | June 2004

What’s on

publishing and dissemination Dakar www.codesria.sn

Sweden Argentina

Korea

22-27 August, 2004 World Library and Information Congress: 70th IFLA General Conference and Council Buenos Aires

08-12 September,2004 ITU Telecom Asia 2004 Busan

www.esof2004.org/index.asp

www.itu.int/ASIA2004/

www.ifla.org/IV/ifla70/index.htm

Tanzania London

China

30 October -1 November, 2004 Access to health information in developing countries: the role of information and communication tech eHealth 2004, West End Conference Center,

11-13 October, 2004 Global Mobile Congress Shanghai www.delson.org/3g-4g/main.htm

26-29 August, 2004 Map Asia 2004 Beijing

harry@ihn.info

www.mapasia.org

Mauritius

27-28 August, 2004 2nd i4d Seminar Beijing

07-09 September, 2004 ACT 2004: Building Partnerships to Mainstream Africa’s ICT Sector Mauritius Cybercity

www.i4donline.net

www.aitecafrica.com/act2004/index.htm

Ethiopia

Mexico

11-14 October, 2004 ADF 4: Governance for a progressing Africa Addis Ababa

04-07 October, 2004 Youth Employment Summit Veracruz www.yesweb.org/mexico

www.uneca.org/adf/adfiv/About.htm

16-20 October, 2004 Global Forum for Health Research Mexico City

India 24 July, 2004 Information Technology And Sustainable Development Kolkata www.csmworld.org

www.globalforumhealth.org/pages/index.asp

16-19 November 2004 Global Indicators Workshop on Community Access to ICTs Mexico City www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/mexico04/index.html

Kenya 04-08 October, 2004 25th African Health Sciences Congress Nairobi www.kemri.org

25-28 August, 2004 EuroScience Open Forum 2004 Stockholm

Senegal 01-02 September, 2004 CODESRIA Conference on electronic

05-07 August, 2004 Women and ICT Arusha www.aitecafrica.com/events/2004/WomenICT/ womens-ict.htm

Thailand 09-12 August, 2004 World Congress on Computers in Agriculture and Natural Resources, Bangkok www.afitaandwcca2004.net

21-24 November, 2004 Libraries - Gateways to Information and Knowledge in the Digital Age Bangkok www.alic2004.org/

United Kingdom 07-10 July, 2004 Transform 2004 UMIST, Manchester www.transform2004.org

30 September-1 October, 2004 Access to health information in developing countries: the role of information and communication tech, eHealth 2004, West End Conference Center, London harry@ihn.info

United States 21-25 July, 2004 EISTA 2004 Orlando, Florida www.confinf.org/eista04

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

41

I N F ACT

The World of languages World Language Statistical Facts • There are approximately 172 million English speakers and 163 million non-English speakers online • 50.4% of Web users speak a native language other than English • Web users are up to four times more likely to purchase from a site that communicates in the customer’s language • Site stickiness is doubled when a web site is translated - visitors stay for twice as long • Almost one-third of web sites are presented in a language other than English • Over 100 million people access the Internet in a language other than English

Online Language Populations Total: 729 Million (March, 2004) Dutch 1.8%

English 35.8%

Russian 2.5% Italian 3.3% Porluguese 3.5% French 3.8% Korean 4.1%

Useful Links

German 7.3%

Helping people to work with local languages on the Internet The case of India: http://www.indianlanguages.com/

Spanish 9.0%

Chinese 14.1%

Japanese 9.6%

Fonts in Cyberspace http://www.sil.org/computing/fonts/

www.global-reach.biz

Language teaching http://www.frenchteachers.org/technology/cyberspace.htm http://www.becta.org.uk/ Cultural policies and multilingualism http://www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/axl/index.shtml http://www.unesco.org/most/ln2lin.htm Translation in Cyberspace American National Standards Institute (ANSI) http://www.ansi.org/ Multilingualism and digital documents http://www.info.unicaen.fr/bnum/jelec/Solaris/d06/6loupy.html http://www.alfa-redi.org/gic/monterrey.asp http://www.iecat.net/inici.htm and http://www.iec.es/recerca/jornades/ciberespai/inici.htm htpp://www.star-ag.ch/eng/aktuelles/links.html htpp://www.indlinux.org htpp://www.PANL10n.net UNESCO publication for WSIS, 2003

42

Major languages spoken in US Estimate

Lower Bound

Upper Bound

Total

254,571,610

254,533,446

254,609,775

Speak only English

210,058,515

209,762,505

210,354,525

26,632,994

26,461,373

26,804,615

French

1,435,444

1,372,272

1,498,616

Gujrati

217,037

191,295

242,779

Hindi

317,070

287,104

347,036

Urdu

285,369

253,356

317,382

1,971,649

1,915,361

2,027,937

Japanese

483,676

452,643

514,709

Korean

888,232

832,271

944,193

Spanish of Spanish Creold

Chinese

Note: The Census 2000 Supplementary Survey universe is limited to the household population and excludes the population living in institutions, college dormitories, and other group quarters. Data are based on a sample and are subject to sampling variability. The degree of uncertainty for an estimate is represented through the use of a confidence interval. The confidence interval computed here is a 90 percent confidence interval and can be interpreted roughly as providing 90 percent certainty that the true number falls between the lower and upper bounds. www.factfinder.census.gov

i4d | June 2004

Information for development www.i4donline.net

27-28 A UGUST 2004 I NTERNATIONAL C ONVENTION C ENTRE , B EIJING , C HINA

2nd i4d Seminar in conjunction with Map Asia 2004 Theme ICT for Development: Is Asia ready for the challenge?

The prime concern in most of the developing world is today on expanding the digital opportunities to bridge the digital divide. The promise of the information economy—of tremendous possibilities for human development, of rapidly growing economies, of empowered communities and responsive polities—is but a dream for the vast majority in the developing world.

There are several initiatives at the global, regional, national and the local levels all across the globe. But these efforts are proving to be much less than what is required to reach to downtrodden and the underserved people in the society. The requirements, such as for the basic ICT infrastructure alone, are enormous. The necessary resources will not flow automatically from the technology-rich countries to the technology-poor countries. Unless the global community responds to the challenge of the digital divide in a coordinated and determined manner, the developing world will wake up to the horrible reality of being left behind once again.

The seminar will be held in conjunction with Map Asia 2004, the largest conference and exhibition on Geographic Information Technologies in Asia.

Sub-themes: • ICT’s Infrastructure policy and action plans • Legal and regulatory mechanisms • Capacity building • Applications • Building public-private partnership Venue : International Convention Centre, Beijing, China Contacts Subsmission of paper gautam@i4donline.net

Important Deadlines Abstract Acceptance

31st May 2004 15th June 2004

Full Paper

15th July 2004

Participation and Presentation confirmation

31th July 2004

Registration niraj@i4donline.net Contact Information info@i4donline.net www.i4donline.net www.mapasia.org

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