Vol. IV No.9
September 2006
The first monthly magazine on ICT4D
Untapped resource: amazing potential TeNeT’s rural BPO in initiative
Information for development
w w w. i 4 d o n l i n e . n e t
The innovative power of telecentre networks Community based e-Commerce
Women entrepreneurship in IT
ISSN 0972 - 804X
ICTs and SME
SEWA, India
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Contents
Vol. IV No. 9
September 2006
Mail box
Features
6
ICT in public information system Database integration for information management S. S. Hasan and A. K. Sah
10 13 15 17
May a thousand e-Entrpreneurs bloom Vikas Nath
Rendezvous
43
Adoption of ICTs in SMEs Kaushalesh Lal
48
Building women’s ICT social enterprise
Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) India
‘KICCS’ 2006, Ayuttaya, Thailand Knowledge discovery Paola Di Maio
Tenet’s rural BPO intiative Untapped resources: amazing potential Saloni Malhotra, Sreejith N N, Sangamitra Ramachander
Indian Telecentre Forum (ITF) 2006 Knowledge sharing through telecentres
ICTs in e Business
Improving trade, securing livelihoods, with ICTs Reema Nanavaty
23
Columns
33
Interview
46 49
Bytes for All
50
Books received
Imran Chaudhry
What’s on
New step in telecentre movement in Bangladesh SEBA – GP Partnership Md Shahid Uddin Akbar
36
Community Based e-Commerce The innovative power of telecentre networks Christoph Roessner
39 ICTD project newsletter
2007
25
et online.n info@i4d
e Entrepreneurship
Social outsouring: creating livelihoods Richard Heeks
20
29 News
Asia 2007
Conference Preview 6-8 February, 2007 Palace of the Golden Horses Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
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Cover image credit: Christoph Roessner
I find i4d Magazine very interesting. Particularly since I am moving more towards research in the last few years, I find it as a great contribution in terms of a feedback from people who are actively involved in ICT4D. At the same time, I hope that it will be a good venue to defuse my ideas (and those of my colleagues) to the same crowd. My only concern is that sometimes I find the articles a bit ‘light’. Kind of a straight forward promotion of a given project without deeper insight and/or analysis. At the same time, I think this may be a strength in somebody else’s eyes. Dmitry Epstein, The Human Network dmitry.epstein@gmail.com
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i4d Editorial Calendar 2006 Month
Theme
January
ICT and evolution process
February
ICT and rural development
March
ICT Policy
April
e-Health
May
ICT and Microfinance
June
Cultural diversity, localisation and ICTs
July
Open content
August
Media and ICTs
September
ICTs and SME
October
Gender and ICT
November
ICTs for the disabled
December
HIV/AIDS
i4d | September 2006
Editorial Information for development
www.i4donline.net
If SMEs be the will, ICT may show the way
ADVISORY BOARD M P Narayanan, Chairman, i4d Chin Saik Yoon Southbound Publications, Malaysia Karl Harmsen United Nations University Kenneth Keniston Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA Mohammed Yunus Grameen Bank, Bangladesh Nagy Hanna e-Leadership Academy, University of Maryland, USA Richard Fuchs IDRC, Canada Rinalia Abdul Rahim Global Knowledge Partnership, Malaysia
What ICT can do for development? ICT can’t do magic. There are many factors associated with development. In the countries where the number of people suffering from the poverty increases day by day, nothing matters even if the statistical data shows a decline in the percentage of poor. India still houses more than 30 per cent of the world’s poor. Jobless growth is the greatest concern. It’s clear to all that curbing poverty and reducing unemployment are not very easy tasks for any country like India. Extreme poverty leading to starvation, deprivation and death might be under control, but relative poverty may continue.
Walter Fust Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Switzerland Wijayananda Jayaweera UNESCO, France EDITORIAL BOARD Akhtar Badshah, Frederick Noronha EDITORIAL TEAM Editor Ravi Gupta Editorial Consultant Jayalakshmi Chittoor Sr Assistant Editor Saswati Paik Assistant Editor Dipanjan Banerjee Research Associates Ajitha Saravanan, Dipsikha Sahoo Designer Bishwajeet Kumar Singh Web Programmer Zia Salahuddin
At this stage, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) must be considered as the engines of innovation and employment. Integrating with large enterprises at one end and micro enterprises at the other end can positively address the issue of joboriented growth in the underdeveloped regions in a more sustainable manner. So, reshaping of the existing policy frameworks is required. The Town and Village Enterprises (TVEs) of China have aggressively moved from their domestic economy to the global arena. It resulted in reduction of rural poverty in China from about onethird of the rural population in 1978 to about 8 per cent in 1996. Manufacturing TVEs constituted largest generator of employment opportunities. It’s high time for South Asia to draw lessons from them.
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 Printed at Yashi Media Works Pvt. Ltd. New Delhi, India i4d is a monthly publication. It is intended for those interested and involved in the use of Information and CommnicationTechnologies for development of underserved communities. It is hoped that it will serve to foster a growing network by keeping the community up to date on many activities in this wide and exciting field. i4d does not necessarily subscribe to the views expressed in this publication. All views expressed in this magazine are those of the contributors. i4d is not responsible or accountable for any loss incurred directly or indirectly as a result of the information provided.
Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies, 2006
If SMEs be a solution, ICT must play a big role as a service provider to support that initiative. In European countries, business-to-business electronic marketplaces (‘B2B e-Markets’) are an important means for purchasing activities of enterprises. They bring buyers and suppliers together and enable them to trade online. Take the example of Pakistan’s first B2B (business-to-business) and business information portal, ‘Industrial Information Network’ (IIN) www.iin.com.pk, launched last year. This portal is designed specifically to cater to the online trading and information needs of businesses from various industrial sectors in Pakistan. In the developing countries, microfinance is being available to the community for employment promotion and income generation. i4d has already focused on role of ICT in microfinance sector in its May issue. Now let us see what we can do for the development of SMEs, holding the hand of ICT. The issues related to poverty and rural employment problem in all the developing countries must be addressed on SMEs development platform. “If there is a will, there is a way”!!
Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License
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August 2006 | www.i4donline.net
Ravi Gupta Ravi.Gupta@csdms.in
5
‘i’ Opener ICT I N P UBLIC I NFORMATION S YSTEM
Database integration for information management Public data and public information system must be recognised as valuable input resources in planning, implementation and monitoring of policies.
With billion plus population, India is the second most populous country of the world, only after China. Today it is facing diverse problems such as terrorism, illiteracy, corruption, lack of infrastructure, malnutrition, health hazards, natural disasters, etc. Since independence, many social welfare programmes were introduced for the well being of citizens and the upliftment of society. Large amounts of financial and human resources were being employed for social welfare, security, infrastructure development, education, etc. Despite the continuous commitment shown by the government towards social responsibility, desirable results have not been achieved due to lack of information access to stakeholders in planning and monitoring. To achieve the target of desirable accountability, public data and public information system must be recognised as valuable input resources in planning, implementation and monitoring of policies.
Present scenario
S. S. Hasan Scientist sshasan@iisr.ernet.in
A. K. Sah Scientist aksah@iisr.ernet.in Indian Institute of Sugarcane Research, Lucknow, India
6
Most of the government/private sector organisations are automating their activities at full pace in India. It has taken a boost in last decade with the technological advances and reduction in cost of hardware and software. Banks, insurance companies, telecom departments, electricity departments, development authorities, railways, airport authorities, etc are some examples, where major work in automation of activities has already been completed in major parts of the country. They have created their networked database system to provide quick and reliable services to customers. Some of them have started online services to customers via Internet. For example, Indian Railways has launched its website through which customers can see the reservation status, arrival/departure time, fares, etc. from any global position.
Customer information is retrieved from the database, using some customer key, viz., account number in bank database, policy no. in insurance database, PNR number for reservation enquiry.
Problems Customer key in databases differs from organisation to organisation. Thus, if a customer wants information from banks, insurance company and telecom department, he needs to check individual databases with different customer key or searching patterns. Customer has to remember all the keys to access different databases, which is cumbersome. Moreover, a lot of exercise and time is required to get a consolidated report of a customer from different databases. There is no way in the present system to gather all the information with a single key. The proposed system tries to sort out these problems to a greater extent. The following things need to be done for the same. • Every Indian citizen should be identified with a Citizen ID. • A citizen database should be maintained consisting of basic information of citizen like Citizen ID, name, date of birth, sex, community, native place, etc. • Database of organisations having public dealing, should modify/develop their public database with insertion of Citizen ID and provide accessibility on the Internet. • All the organisations, where public information is required, should be equipped with facilities to access public data via Internet. • A citizen website should be launched.
Citizen ID Citizen ID is a code like one’s bank account number or railway reservation PNR number. Selection of Citizen ID is most important i4d | September 2006
aspect in this system. Citizen ID consists of four parts as suggested below: • code for death/alive and sex status, • code for place of birth, • code for date of birth, • birth serial number. In order to reduce the number of blocks (columns) in Citizen ID, all the four parts of Citizen ID should be coded in 32 base number system, called ‘Duotrigecimal Number System’. A duotrigecimal number system consists of numbers 0,1,…,9,A,B,C,…,V. Decimal to duotrigecimal conversion method is to be used for converting codes from decimal number system to new duotrigecimal number system. Current census data (Table 1) was considered while deciding the number of blocks needed for Citizen ID. A total number of 13 blocks are required to make the Citizen ID. Number of blocks (columns) needed to code four parts of Citizen ID are as follows: Death / Alive Sex Code
Place of Birth
Date of Birth
SI. No.
Death/alive status and sex code (block 1): First block (column) of the Citizen ID gives status of the citizen for Male or Female and Death or Alive. For example, Male Alive (0), Female Alive (1), Male Dead (2), Female Dead (4). In duotrigecimal number system, utmost 32 characters 0,1,2…,9,A,B,….,V can be used in this block. Therefore, up to 32 different statuses can be coded in this block. Additional characters can be added in this block such as marriage, caste, religion, etc. If we take only three characters death/alive, sex, marriage, then the code for different status may be kept as follows: Place of birth (block 2-5): All Indian places can be coded (decimal number system) with six digit pincode, in existing system. Alive Male
Dead Female
Married (0) Unmarried (2) Divorced (4) Separated (6) Widow/Widower (8)
Male
Married (1) Unmarried (3) Divorced (5) Separated (7) Widow/Widower(9)
Female
Married (A) Unmarried (C) Divorced (E) Separated (G) Widow/Widower(I)
Married (B) Unmarried (D) Divorced (F) Separated (H) Widow/Widower (J)
When converting it to duotrigecimal number system, it will take 4 blocks to code the place of birth. Block 2-5 are used in Citizen ID for place of birth code. Date of birth (block 6-10): In the proposed system, date of birth has been taken in ddd/yyyy format. Thus the date of birth of a citizen, who born on 26/02/1972, can be written in ddd/yyyy format as 0571972, where 057 is the day of the year, and 1972 is the year. After conversion in base 32 system, the coded date of birth will be 0GR14. All the date of birth can be coded in duotrigecimal number system in 5 digits. Block 6-10 is used in Citizen ID to place these converted code for date of birth. Serial number (block 11-13): Serial number is the number assigned for new birth/new entry corresponding to date-of-birth, place-of-birth and sex. New numbers will be started for each sex, place of birth and date of birth. For example, if serial number (in decimal system) for the 78th male birth at XYZ place in Lucknow September 2006 | www.i4donline.net
Table 1 : Maximum district population and population growth rate in states and union territories of India State Code 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 11 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35
Maximum Maximum No. of District District Districts Population Growth Rate Jammu & Kashmir 14 1,238,530 38.59 Himachal Pradesh 12 1,338,536 30.64 Punjab 17 3,074,207 24.79 Chandigarh 1 900,914 40.33 Uttaranchal 13 1,444,213 32.88 Haryana 19 2,193,276 51.16 Delhi 9 2,847,395 62.52 Rajasthan 32 5,252,388 47.45 Uttar Pradesh 70 4,941,510 36.13 Sikkim 4 244,790 37.17 Nagaland 8 414,801 95.01 Manipur 9 439,532 81.96 Mizoram 8 339,812 39.24 Tripura 4 1,530,531 26.44 Meghalaya 7 660,994 51.44 Assam 23 2,515,030 25.75 West Bengal 18 9,638,473 28.72 Jharkhand 18 2,783,577 29.05 Orissa 30 3,136,937 24.79 Chhatisgarh 16 3,009,042 24.58 Madhya Pradesh 45 2,585,321 40.82 Gujarat 25 5,808,378 47.04 Daman & Diu 2 44,110 83.49 Dadra & Nagar Haveli 1 220,451 59.20 Maharashtra 35 8,587,561 54.86 Andhra Pradesh 23 4,872,622 37.41 Karnataka 27 6,523,110 34.80 Goa 2 757,407 16.16 Lakshadweep 1 60,595 17.19 Kerala 14 3,629,640 17.22 Tamil Nadu 30 4,224,107 22.35 Pondicherry 4 735,004 54.52 Andaman & Nicobar 2 314,239 30.14 Islands Name of State / UT
Source: Census Report of India 1991-2001
city on 01/01/2001 is 0078, after conversion this serial number in duotrigecimal will be 02E. Block 11-13 is used to place coded serial number, which can occupy serial number up to 9999. Therefore, a maximum of 10,000 (0-9999) entries of citizens of same sex, same birth place (district) and same date of birth can be registered for Citizen ID, which is sufficient as per Census India 2000-’01. For example, a maximum of 10,000 new born male citizens, taken birth at XYZ place at Lucknow on 01/01/20001 can be provided Citizen ID. Example of Citizen ID: Citizen ID of alive married female citi-
7
zen, who was born on 26/02/1972 in Harzratganj in Lucknow district of Uttar Pradesh (Pin code 226001) and registered as 78th citizen on that day and place will be 10IMM0GR1402E.
Organisations
Type of public information
Intelligence Bureaus
Day to day public data, like travel record, bank account, assets created, etc, to monitor corruption and criminal activities
Citizen database Citizen Database is the repository of citizen’s basic information. All the characters of citizen in this database will be either static or those, which will be changed occasionally. The basic information about citizen, which can be added to the database are citizen’s ID, name, date of birth, place of birth, sex, caste, religion, address, qualification, profession, designation, father citizen ID, mother’s citizen ID, annual income, identification sign (mole, curly hairs, etc), signature/thumb sign, etc. Database can be sorted and searched on any of the available citizen’s characters. For example, if one requires information of the citizens of scheduled caste who are alive, it can be acquired using caste field of the database. Citizen’s information can be gathered from a nation wide survey, current census records, election commission’s voter’s list, etc.
Citizen card Citizen card is like the voter card issued by Election Commission of India. It consists of citizen’s basic information viz, Citizen ID, name, photograph, date of birth, address, caste, religion, identification sign, signature/thumb sign. Citizen database will be used in issuing the card. Card can be used for voter identification, entry in highly secured places (defence organisations, ministries, legislative assembly, etc), health services, public distribution system, etc. It should be mandatory for every citizen to move in public places with his/her citizen card or otherwise, should remember his/her Citizen ID.
Identification and modification/development of public databases After completion of citizen database development, the next important step is to identify the organisations catering services to public, viz., railways, electricity department, banks, insurance companies, telecom department, airways, etc. Most of these organisations have already started computerised information system and developed databases catering to the day-to-day services. In order to access the public database through Citizen ID, this key must be added in their database. Modification will be required in their information system application software to access the data through Citizen ID. Moreover, these organisations should provide access to their databases on the Internet, so that public information related to that organisation can be accessed from any global point. Website of that organisation can be designed and launched for the same. Some of the organisations like railway reservation, banks, etc are already providing their database access on Internet through their websites.
Enabling organisations to access public data Another important aspect to cover is the identification of the organisations where public information is required. Public information plays a key role in socio-economic planning and development. Some of the organisations, where citizen information is most required are as follows:
8
Dept of Social Welfare/ Data on economic condition of public Loaning Agencies for better planning and monitoring of social work and also disbursement of funds Highly Secure Zones
Public criminal record for security check
Such organisations should be equipped with IT infrastructure facilities to access public databases at any point of time, using Citizen ID or any other searchable keys available in public database. Moreover, public Internet booths/cyber cafe may be launched at public places for quick access to information. Specially designed mobile phone/wireless phones should be manufactured for accessibility of public databases in mobility.
Citizen website Indian citizen website should be developed to provide link to all public databases. Search facilities with important searchable keys should be provided on the site for quick search. A model website should have following contents: • Links of all public databases like citizen database, reservation, telecom, electricity, crime, property, income tax, bank accounts, health, shopping, etc.; • Information search based on Citizen ID and respective database access keys; • Listing of database access keys like address, vehicle number, telephone number, name, passport number, etc.; • Searching window to search information with key words; • Public notices/important announcements; • Important surveys/analysis reports.
Advantages • Internal security: Citizen Identity checking at public places/ ministries/legislative councils against criminal/terrorist, monitoring of public activities; • Income tax: Identification of public assets and income for tax calculation, analysis, warnings, etc; • Social welfare: Identification and analysis of people of particular income group, particular caste, literacy for proper planning in fund allocation, loaning, education, housing, subsidies, etc; • Proper planning in production, import and export; • Reliable Human Resource Development and Management; • Improved Natural Resource Management; • Identification of constituencies and voters ; • Online and credit-based shopping; • Market Research: Citizen data can be analysed for better marketing strategy. i4d | September 2006
E -E NTREPRENEURSHIP
May a thousand e-Entrepreneurs bloom We need to equally look at the existing entrepreneurial spirit rather than only technical conditions before concluding whether ICTs could be successfully integrated within a SME.
Vikas Nath Special Advisor to the Executive Director and Coordinator, South Intellectual Platform, South Centre, Geneva vikas.nath@gmail.com
10
‘E’ stands for enterprise In developing countries, it is usually the informal sector rather than the formal employment sector which is the largest source of livelihoods, investment and government revenue. While several of these developing countries, including India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Peru, Egypt, Argentina may be witnessing a high GDP growth rate of 5 percent and above, and most workers in these countries still find work not in the modern, formal sector but in the informal sector. For instance, in Peru itself (despite a 6.9 percent GDP growth rate), the size of the informal sector has doubled during the last forty years, to incorporate almost half of the workforce (http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ jur/200406/papers/paper_acosta.html). It comes as no surprise that the informal sector, constituting of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), is where livelihoods and lifeline of a majority of people and especially those who are poor and under-educated is dependent upon. In Asia-Pacific region itself, the SMEs account for between 40 and 80 percent of the total non-agricultural employment. The most potent concept while talking about SMEs is what the ‘E’ stands for, which is for ‘Enterprise’. It is potent because behind every ‘enterprise’ there is usually an ‘entrepreneur’. And the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of SMEs around us means that there is no dearth of entrepreneurs around us who have identified an opportunity for meeting their ‘livelihoods’ and seized it. They have done this via investing their own savings or by borrowing from the local creditor, or if they are fortunate by taking loans and subsidies provided by banks and NGOs. But who are these entrepreneurs? These entrepreneurs are so much woven
into the everyday lives of people, living in developing countries, that they co-exist alongside the formal economy without clear distinction. In urban areas, these include the person operating a corner tea and cigarette stall, the owner of food and juice stalls alongside the road, the motor vehicle repair mechanic, the ubiquitous laundry and ironing shop, to those operating home based industries. The increasing usage of ICTs within developing countries has not left these SMEs unaffected. Several of these entrepreneurs have already seized the new opportunities, provided by this medium to improve and expand their enterprises. These include, vendors in Botswana, who sell fruits and soft drinks on moving buses and who have now started to sell mobile SIM cards, or in Mongolia, where roadside operators hand out wireless in local loop (WLL) enabled handsets on busy intersections to allow people to make local calls, or in India, where the one-person operated bright yellow telephone booths, where people can make local and outstation calls, are a common sight even in the rural areas. The examples above are the ‘visible’ aspects of integration of ICTs within SMEs. But what is ‘invisible’ is equally profound and far-reaching. The increasing accessibility to ICTs and at a lower cost is allowing SMEs to rethink their business strategy to expand markets for their products and services from local to national and global and sometimes exclusively global, or to provide services which, so far, were difficult or even unthinkable to provide without ICTs. For instance, Mexico and Brazil are seeing rise of entrepreneurs, who are offering Spanish classes to beginners, using Skype. It now does not matter where the learner resides i4d | September2006
as long as he or she has access to Skype. Home-based centres, run by entrepreneurs, are abound in India, Philippines and South Africa who undertake audio transcription and data entry work for clients, located abroad or elsewhere within the country. Local tourist guides, in Thailand, have started to offer their advisory services online so that the prospective visitors are able to plan their itineraries better based on the local knowledge. In short, the livelihood enhancement possibilities, which have opened up and could be put into practice, using ICTs, are immense, and are limited not by the technology (as the case is often made out to be), but by the imagination of entrepreneurs and organisations fostering entrepreneurships.
Putting entrepreneurs before ICTs
This reflects, how focusing the popular thinking about ICTs in terms of integrating desktop computers, customised software and providing Internet connections to existing enterprises sometimes overlooks the entrepreneurial capabilities and the ability of entrepreneurs to use what is available around them. A simple mobile phone equipped with a camera, when used innovatively, offers the same or even more networking and enterprise-expansion capabilities. The above example is also a reflection of how ‘entrepreneurs’ are integrating ‘e’ into their enterprises and expanding their businesses using locally relevant e-Commerce models. An outsider, given the circumstances, would have dismissed the feasibility of e-Commerce applications in such a scenario. This example reinstates a need to look equally at the existing entrepreneurial spirit rather than only technical conditions, before concluding whether ICTs could be successfully integrated within a SME. Interestingly, when traditional SMEs transform into ICTenabled service providers, they themselves become consumers of ICT products and thereby enhance their knowledge and access to the outside world, and often set into motion a virtuous circle of expansion of SMEs where they employ more people to manage the growing business.
Unlikely as it may seem, but amidst all the talk of ICTs for development, which resounds in the public domain and events, it is easy to overlook the potential of ICTs and the inroads it is already making in the lives of entrepreneurs. ICTs are looked upon too narrowly and in a pre-conceived manner even by those, who are proponents of ICT for development that the innovative angle to ICT application gets lost and fails to enthuse the entrepreneurs. For instance, a Sri Lankan farmer, belonging to a mushroom cooperative in Warapitya village in Matale district, that is 4 hours away from the capital city of Colombo and located The way forward miles away from the highway, not possessing a computer or Some people are ‘born’ entrepreneurs but others (if not all) can serviced by a stable electric supply in his village, and without be trained to become entrepreneurs. When it comes to any support for ICT applications, available from the government developing countries, there are several areas, where local SMEs or local NGOs, would be an unlikely beneficiary of the ICT rather than bigger companies are better placed to fulfill the revolution in our normal wisdom. However, this perception needs of the people and this also makes sense from the becomes invalid when we focus on the ‘entrepreneurial’ aspect of the SMEs, which, in this case, refers to the mushroom cooperative and the farmers running it, (supported by MREAP project of IFAD). In this case, two of the farmers, Mr Samatha and his wife Ms Gayani got their business cards, printed replete with their photograph on it. The business cards did not mention any email or website address (as they did not have one) but their mobile phone number and their postal address. The plastic packages in which they sold their mushrooms to the market also mentioned their mobile number, neatly printed on the labels. The mobile phone was purchased by the farmer family through their own savings without resorting to subsidy or support of any kind, and they already feel they have recouped this investment via the enhanced business opportunity for marketing of mushrooms. It is true that now this farmer couple wants to invest in a computer, but not for any Internetenabled e-Commerce application. Instead they feel the computer would be useful for accounting purposes to keep track of their sales and to manage the customer database and they do not need an Internet connection for this (which is still not Source : http://www.sgentrepreneurs.com/uploaded_images/j0233018-785560.jpg available in that village). September2006 | www.i4donline.net
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development perspective. Our national educational system needs to be tweaked to foster development of more of such SMEs. In most cases, the education curriculum is geared towards securing a good job for self rather than creating jobs for others. The popular question is still ‘which company or organisation do you work in?’ rather than ‘which company did you start and how many people do your employ?’ To counter this, there is a need to put greater focus on creating and administering ICT/e-Entrepreneurship courses and making them available through vocational training institutions, or via classroom teaching or distance-learning modules. The courses should focus on two aspects: (i) fostering the spirit of eEntrepreneurship, and (ii) helping the entrepreneur to get started on the e-Entrepreneurship path by providing information about start-up ingredients, including technology, capital and mentors. Fostering the spirit of entrepreneurship is easier in the digital age as ICTs have diminished the time and the capital, required to put an entrepreneurial idea into practice. A good idea, thought during the day time, can ideally be put into practice by evening and this should enthuse the mindset of the youth, the entrepreneur and the inspired. Further, the returns on investment are based not only on enhancing the efficiency of existing operations, but through creation of newer services or expanding into newer markets. The opportunities are immense in rural areas, where the markets for SMEs have traditionally been limited to walking distance range of their customers. The onus for fostering e-Entrepreneurship also lies on national and international government institutions, as well as private and public educational institutions and on entrepreneurship promoting organisations, including Acumen Fund and Ashoka to move more vigorously into this direction. A doctor will not be doing justice to
his profession if he knows of a better remedy to cure a disorder but does not prescribe it to his patients. Similarly, academic, government and non-government institutions, who are aware of better ways to generate livelihoods through e-SMEs, but do not incorporate the same in their curriculum or interventions, do not do justice to their constituencies, for whom they are working for.
The road to riches It needs to make qualitative leaps in our popular wisdom to put greater trust and resources on fostering the spirit of ‘entrepreneurship’ and ‘innovations’ over technology and accepted wisdom. It has a long way to go to achieve that. A simple case to point is the global gathering being organised by the World Bank and the FAO under the aegis of ‘World Congress on Communication for Development (WCCD)’ (http://www.devcomm-congress.org) which seeks submissions of abstracts and proposals to consider innovative and creative ways to present information and share knowledge, using different technologies that encourage dialogue and exchange, consistent with the spirit of the discipline. It then rejects a paper submission simply because ‘the list of references is short and there is no attribution for the sources of the ideas in the diagrams and sketches.’ In effect, innovations by farmers implementing e-SMEs will never find acceptance in such forums, aimed at promoting them simply because they proved successful in an area where there was no precedence and they did not refer to popular literature before embarking on their enterprises. The message being sent out by WCCD is a setback as it fails to comprehend the challenge, it has taken. There is a need to get excited about the pivotal role ICTs can play in the lives of entrepreneurs and their SMEs, because even in the digital age, they offer the best opportunity for the upward mobility of a majority of people in rural areas and their next generation.
Citizen service: an informative care extended by Pradeep Lokhande
Source: www.outlookindia.com/images/making_a_difference_20040119.jpg
Pradeep Lokhande, a resident of Pune is receiving bulk of letters being addressed to him personally on grievances like lack of information and amenities, a confidence he has developed with his fellow villagers encompassing about seven states, over the last ten years.
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Started with a spirit to make a difference to the lives of the majority of Indian population, Lokhande has accumulated a wealth of information from fellow villagers and through his regular visits to village panchayats. The huge mass of database of about 4,000 villages and their demographics and expectations is ultimately surfacing now to take a concrete shape. He sells it to multinational companies, who are keeping watch of rural trends and awareness level for their products. Lokhande liaisons between the villages and large companies through his own company ‘Rural Services’. His services come with a fee, a part of which goes into the improving the conditions of rural life. So far, among many, he has contributed computers to 370 villages, much to the enthusiasm of the villagers. He calls his efforts as an NRV (non resident villager) movement. His business instinct comes with a moral to share the information with his fellow men that inculcates a sense of responsibility as a citizen besides building a platform for improving the material well being of all. For further details visit : http://www.ruralrelations.com/ Source: The Times of India i4d | September2006
ICTS
IN E -B USINESS
Adoption of ICTs in SMEs The article is based on cross-country project of the author that analyses the causes and consequences of the adoption of ICTs in several developing countries.
Kaushalesh Lal Researcher, United Nations University (UNU-MERIT), The Netherlands lal@merit.unu.edu
September 2006 | www.i4donline.net
ICT Adoption Advent of ICT led new technologies are capable of providing equal edge to large firms and SMEs in term of market access and production technologies. Function-specific ICT tools are expected to contribute to a great extent in business applications such as corporate management, production processes, marketing, resource management, coordination with business partners, etc. The article is based on cross-country project of the author that analyses the causes and consequences of the adoption of ICTs in several developing countries. The main objective of the project was to gather international evidence of the extent of ICT adoption by SMEs and its consequences on the performance of firms. Although the project includes countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America and Caribbean, the summary of the findings of Malaysia and India are presented in this article. The findings are based on the primary data, collected from SMEs in sample countries. Same instrument was used to collect qualitative and quantitative data. The motivation behind the project was the ability of SMEs in contributing in employment and foreign exchange earnings. The contribution of SMEs in national income has also been underlined in the recent years. Malaysian firms were surveyed during October 2004 to March 2005. The findings are based on sixty-seven SMEs located in and around Kuala Lumpur while Indian SMEs, located around Delhi (Noida and NEPZ) were surveyed during December 2000 and February 2001. The Indian sample firms (fifty-one) were revisited in November-December, 2004.
Malaysian experience Findings showed that the majority of the respondents had advanced ICTs adoption
rate. However, results cannot be generalised, because majority of the sample firms were drawn from more advanced or technologically driven industries such as hardware and machinery, chemical and pharmaceutical and electronics. It is generally known logic that technologically advanced industries should have higher levels of ICTs adoption rate. This sentiment was echoed by many representatives from both government and SMEs associations in Malaysia including SME owners themselves. One most important finding is that educational attainment of companies’ directors had a bearing on ICT adoption. There is also a strong link between technologically driven firms and the qualification of their leaders. Collaboration with foreign partners was found to be a usual practice among SMEs in Malaysia. Follow up interviews also attested to this phenomenon. A president of a SMEs association in Malaysia concurred that SMEs in this country normally employed workers over 40 years of age and most of them could only speak and write Chinese. Lack of English proficiency was recognised as the main problem in ICT adoption, causing hindrance to training or collaborative efforts with foreign partners. Although the Malaysian government is serious about enhancing SMEs competitiveness in response to growing threats of globalisation, the policies introduced two decades ago were very much in line with efforts to increase participation of ‘Bhumiputra’ (natives), sometimes at the expense of overall development. It is also interesting to note that the Malaysian government has begun to recognise the importance and contribution of SMEs to Malaysian economy with the establishment of SME Development Bank in 2005.
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The findings of the study suggest that apart from providing financial support to SMEs, the Malaysian government needs to focus on human resource development policies. It is two-fold: (i) The government needs to establish technological institutions that can provide job-oriented formal training in new technologies; (ii) Short time training opportunities near the workplaces may be very helpful for skill upgradation of workers. A provision of such opportunities is expected to contribute to the efficiency and high productivity of workers.
Indian experience The study identifies and analyses the determinants of the adoption of e-Business technologies in the manufacturing sector in India. Sample firms were dominated by SMEs as 73 percent of these firms employ less than 150 persons. Entrepreneurial characteristics such as Managing Director’s education and age, historical data of firms, and other firm-specific factors such as size of operation, export intensity, international orientation, wage rates, profit margins were included in the analysis. We also included a variable, i.e. bandwidth that represents the institutional environment, created by central and local governments. The opinions of MDs on potential benefits of the adoption of e-Business technologies were also considered. Sample firms were grouped into three categories, namely (1) offline, (2) online and (3) portal-using firms. Firms that were doing e-Business, using offline technologies, such as e-mail systems, were grouped in the first category, whereas firms that were using email systems as well as online e-Business tools such as Active Server Pages (ASPs) in their websites were classified as online e-Business doing firms. Portal and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), using firms were considered as advanced users of e-Business technologies and were treated in the third category. Firms were assigned ranks, depending on the type of e-Business technology, used by them. As far as the model of e-Business is concerned, 92 percent of firms adopted B2B e-Business model. The multivariate ordered probit technique was used to identify the determinants of the degree of the adoption of eBusiness tools. The study reveals that the firms that were more internationally oriented, have adopted more advanced e-Business tools. Wage rates and scale of operations have also emerged as significant determinants of the adoption of e-Business technologies. The study captures the role of bandwidth in diffusion of e-Business technologies. The study shows the evidence of a positive association of type of e-Business technology, used by firms and the bandwidth. A study by NASSCOM in 2000 suggests that availability of higher bandwidth is a pre-requisite for the penetration of Internet and web-enabled services in India. This study concludes that a very reliable and affordable telecommunication network has to be in place to harness the potentials of ICTs. The passage of the IT Law 2000 is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the success of ICTs. The findings of the study suggest that there is a need to create proper local, national and global information infrastructure to derive the maximum benefit from the ICT revolution.
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Export performance Same data were used to examine the export performance of sample firms. A censored regression model, i.e. Tobit, was used to identify determinants of export performance of firms. The results of the study show that the type of technology, used for e-Business and the skill intensity of the workforce were the two most significant factors, found to influence the export performance of firms. The scale of operations has also emerged as a significant determinant of export performance. The study reveals that the labour productivity of export-oriented firms was higher than that of nonexporting units. The study captures the important role being played by the type of technology, used for e-Business by the sample firms in influencing their export performance. Several other studies suggest that communication technology network is a driving force behind the diffusion of e-Business. The study found that the diffusion of eBusiness is strongly associated with the bandwidth. A study by Mehta suggests that availability of higher bandwidth is a prerequisite for the penetration of the Internet and web-enabled services in India. Findings of this study suggest that it is imperative to create a conducive environment for greater diffusion of e-Business technologies that, in turn, could augment the export performance of firms. The implications of findings of the study are twofold. One, an appropriate environment for the effective adoption of eBusiness has to be in place. The limited use of e-Business will have serious repercussions on the performance of firms in international markets. If Indian firms, that deal in international markets, are unable to strengthen the applicability of e-Business in areas such as online financial transaction and monitoring of status of consignments, etc, they are likely to lose foreign partners. Although the Government of India has taken several measures to encourage greater diffusion of ICTs, access to high speed communication networks at competitive price might enhance the diffusion of e-Business technologies, which is, in turn, likely to influence export performance. The formulation and enactment of comprehensive communication technology convergence regulations can facilitate access to a broad range of communication networks. The Government of India can also encourage the adoption of this new technology among exportoriented firms by continuing export incentives such as tax holidays on the value of goods and services, traded electronically. The second implication is related to policies on collective learning and training facilities, aimed at SMEs. The study has shown that the incorporation of e-Business practices, coupled with a higher skilled workforce, can enable firms to perform better in export markets. Hence policy makers need to target learning and training facilities for SMEs. This can be achieved by providing logistical support to industry associations located in SME clusters. The industry associations in turn can take advantage of an ‘IndustryUniversity link’ programme initiated by the Government of India in producing skilled labour for the use of SMEs. Therefore, it has become imperative for the Government of India to provide proper institutional support to export-oriented firms for the effective use of e-Business, which would strengthen export performance. If it does not take proactive measures to speed up the adoption of eBusiness, India might lose part of its export share in international markets. i4d | September2006
T E N E T’ S R URAL BPO I NITIATIVE
Untapped resources: amazing potential The TeNeT Group at IIT-Madras has worked over the past 18 months on a rural BPO initiative that links urban clients with a rural workforce through the Internet kiosk network.
Saloni Malhotra Team Lead saloni@tenet.res.in Sreejith N N Business Development sreejith@tenet.res.in Sangamitra Ramachander Research Consultant Sangamitra.r@tenet.res.in TeNeT Group, IIT Madras, India
September 2006 | www.i4donline.net
Far out of reaches In a village with a population of six thousand, where the primary occupation is weaving, Thenmozhi, a young graduate, runs an Internet kiosk business. With a single connected computer, she provides a variety of services to the community that includes browsing, games, photography, education and Desk Top Publishing among others. Over a period of a year, her income has grown and she has added two more computers to the kiosk. Today, with three PCs, she provides Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services such as data entry and data conversion to clients located in distant urban centres. In another village, Rosy, a young mother, runs a kiosk, where she employs four people and provides BPO services such as localisation of content and Computer Aided Design (CAD). While these stories are undoubtedly incongruent with our predominant perceptions of rural India, indeed today BPO operations are making their way to the most remote and unlikely parts in the country. As celebrated New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, observes in his latest book ‘The World Is Flat’- “all you need now is a global, web-enabled platform for multiple forms of sharing knowledge and work, irrespective of time, distance, geography and increasingly, language.” As rural India is increasingly connected, there is no reason that jobs cannot move - as they have from London to Bangalore – to Vadalur, an unheard of village in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Today there are approximately 15,000 Internet-enabled villages in India. With various efforts underway toward enabling rural connectivity, such as Mission 2007 and the CSC scheme of the government, this number is projected to reach 100,000 in a few years’ time. In this
scenario, the potential for the rural BPO industry can only be expected to grow.
The rural BPO business model The TeNeT Group at Indian Institute of Technology, IIT-Madras has worked over the past 18 months on a rural BPO initiative that links urban clients with a rural workforce through the Internet kiosk network. The team identifies and trains workers in rural areas in various skills, relevant to the BPO industry. It liaises with urban clients and takes complete responsibility for the outsourcing and timely delivery of the projects undertaken, and ensures that quality standards are met. As a coordinating agency, the team protects the interests of both the clients and the kiosks. At the village-end it filters out unproductive kiosks from the system, and at the city-end it runs due diligence checks on the client to guard against fraudulent BPO activity. This unique initiative has a portfolio of services that includes typing in English and regional languages, data entry operations, web and multimedia development and regional language translation. More recently, engineering services such as 2D drafting and conversion of 2D to 3D for the manufacturing sector have also been introduced. While the model today runs on a smaller scale, a typical rural BPO centre, to be envisaged in the future, would consist of 10 PCs running in two shifts. Each centre would employ between 10-20 individuals, and the kiosk owner would be responsible for hiring and managing the staff, ensuring that timelines and quality standards are adhered to, and managing daily operations.
Impacts and benefits BPO activity in India is clustered around 5 main hubs today. These centres will continue
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to remain important in the future, but the industry is looking to expand to other locations for several reasons. Newer locations would imply access to a larger workforce, provide an opportunity to further reduce costs of operation, help acquire language-specific skills and mitigate overall business risk and ensure business continuity. Expansion to newer locations would also help to reduce the pressure on infrastructure, being faced in the current locations. Rural areas can be attractive outsourcing destinations for the BPO industry primarily because labour is less expensive than in the cities. Also minimal investment in infrastructure is required in the existing kiosks in order for them to serve as BPO centres. Rentals and overheads in these areas also tend to be low, further adding to the arbitrage. The most important leverage in this arrangement, however, is the existence of an entrepreneur running every kiosk, who is a trusted entry point into the village. Likewise, the Rural BPO model offers significant benefits to the rural population. With IT training, the youth in rural areas are exposed to skills that are highly valued in today’s economy. As a result, their productivity and incomes increase, and so, also their personal confidence. The entire rural economy begins to thrive as more money flows into villages, allowing for more equitable economic growth at the national level.
Challenges While the concept described above has been executed with encouraging results, the challenge is to scale it to thousands of villages. The constraints today are mentioned below. • Though a large number of students pass out of schools and colleges in rural areas every year, only a small percentage is employable as per industry standards. Their skills must be enhanced so that they can be absorbed into the work force.
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General training in line with BPO industry requirements and specific training programmes for each of the IT services is required. • Ensuring high quality and timely delivery of work from a widely dispersed and remotely located workforce calls for effective management systems and creative use of ICT. The Rural BPO team has already made some breakthroughs in this direction. Processes are also required to monitor and assess performance of BPO workers periodically. • Frequent power disruptions call for power back ups to ensure continuity of business operations. However, the situation differs vastly between states. • Creating confidence among clients in urban areas and abroad to engage with rural areas in business transactions is required. To overcome this, support is required from several quarters such as industry associations, governments, NGOs, the press as well as other well-established industry clients.
The vision for the future According to NASSCOM, the BPO industry in India has experienced a year-on-year growth of 37 per cent in FY 2005-’06, and the size of the market is estimated to be $9-12 billion today. It employs around 400,000 people and is expected to face a shortfall of 262,000 professionals by the year 2012. With some IT training, there is a significant opportunity for the large number of highschool graduates and undergraduate degree-holders in rural areas to fill a part of this gap in the future. The potential of ITenabled services is much larger than that of manufacturing or other services because it does not involve the physical movement of goods or people. If the goal of setting up Village Information Centres with connectivity in 100,000 villages is achieved, all of these villages would have the potential to act as BPO centres. Consider 10 percent of these villages employing 20 people at an average salary of $65 per month. This would directly add $1.56 billion to the rural economy per annum and create 200,000 jobs. The demand for several allied industries such as hardware servicing and software development would also grow. The rural BPO team envisions playing a significant role in this IT revolution, by leveraging the power of computing and connectivity to create wealth in rural areas. The team intends to build capacity in villages, to create the right systems and networks for remote business operations and to ensure the highest level of professionalism and quality standards. The group believes that this is not just a significant business opportunity, but also a means to catapult the pace of rural development in the country under a wholly different paradigm. For more details visit: www.ites.tenet.res.in
i4d | September 2006
B UILDING W OMEN ’ S ICT S OCIAL E NTERPRISE
Social outsouring: creating livelihoods A social outsourcing initiative from Kerala’s government is the world’s largest development of ICT-based livelihoods for poor
How can ICTs be used to improve the livelihoods of poor women? One answer is ‘by addressing social development’ - use of ICTs to improve communication of educational, health, political, community and related information. Another answer is: ‘by addressing existing economic development’ - use of ICTs to improve communication of information about women’s existing economic activities (ideas on better farming techniques, data on market opportunities for handicraft work, etc). But there are strong limitations to each of these approaches because they involve marginal rather than fundamental change to women’s livelihoods. The equivalent of oiling the pedals or adding new tyres to a bicycle. When what you want is to exchange that bicycle for a motorbike. To create a fundamental change, we need to follow a third answer, ‘by creating a new economic livelihood’ - use of ICTs to create a complete new job and income that did not exist before. We know this is possible for relatively-advantaged women who become Indian software programmers or South African call centre operators. But what about women from poor communities?
Understanding ICT-based livelihoods
Richard Heeks Development Informatics Group, University of Manchester, UK richard.heeks@manchester.ac.uk
September 2006 | www.i4donline.net
To investigate this, the University of Manchester is undertaking a global project on women’s ICT-based livelihoods - new livelihoods created solely via ICTs - supported by funding from the UK Department for International Development (DFID). A set of commissioned case studies (http:// www.womenictenterprise.org/cases.htm) demonstrates that this is a worldwide reality. The attention, though, was particularly drawn to the experiences of the Kudumbashree project in Kerala State, India. Undertaken under the auspices of the State’s
Poverty Eradication Mission, this is thought to be the world’s largest initiative in creating ICT-based livelihoods for poor women, affecting several thousand women to date. The focus of this article is made on two aspects of the project. First, the innovative business model it uses. Second, the effect it has on women’s livelihoods, based around a structured approach to ICT project impact assessment.
Social outsourcing: a new business model for IT services Governments procure their external services by various means. At one extreme, there is a market outsourcing - paying a private company such as a multinational subsidiary via a contract to do the job, often used for IT or management services work. At the other extreme, there is workfare - paying local citizens such as the rural unemployed via daily cash compensation to do the job, often used for labour-intensive activity such as public works. Kerala’s State Poverty Eradication Mission has come up with an innovative hybrid - ‘social outsourcing’. This contracts work out from government to social enterprises but with a developmental as much as a neo-liberal agenda. If everything goes well, one gets a triple win: • developmental benefits of enriching and empowering poor women, • economic benefits of saving money for government, and • political benefits of delivering simultaneously on small government and equity agendas, while deflecting criticism about outsourcing.
Indian experience of social outsourcing So how does it work in Kerala? Support is provided to bring together a group of
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close interaction of client and sub-contractor. But what about the women themselves - do they benefit?
Understanding the impact of ICTs on women’s livelihoods
(typically ten) unemployed women from below-poverty-line families. Then they register themselves as a cooperative enterprise by each investing US$30 (a trivial sum by Western standards but enough to exclude some of the poorest or more risk-averse participants). Government will then chip in a grant of ten times the group investment and secure a matching amount as a bank loan. US$6,000 is thus typical starting capital, of which half must be repaid. More than 230 of these small enterprises have been created since 1999. This has coincided with growing use of ICTs in the Kerala government and, hence, with growing potential for outsourcing of IT services. That potential has been used for social outsourcing in three main fields: • Data entry and digitisation: about one-third of the women’s enterprises undertake this work, such as the digitisation of voter records. • IT training: slightly less than two-thirds undertake this, mainly training students in state secondary schools. • PC assembly and maintenance: an activity of just three of the women’s enterprises but nonetheless responsible for hundreds of PCs per year.
Individual life stories, such as that of Mable (see the box) can illustrate the impact of a new ICT-based livelihood, but they do not represent a rigorous analysis of benefits. To provide such an analysis, the project drew on the skills of research partner Planet Kerala to undertake case analyses of over 30 women’s enterprises, and interviews with more than 130 women. The impact assessment was framed in terms of a modified version of the ‘asset pentagon’ identified in the sustainable livelihoods framework (exchanging natural capital, which played no role here, with political capital, i.e. empowerment): • Financial capital: Almost all women, some 1,500 core enterprise members and c.2,500 more hired as employees, were now earning at least US$1 per day. Although small, this was making a significant difference. For more than half the women it represented more than half of all household income. This income was seen as the main bulwark against the vulnerabilities women had previously suffered. They used the money not just for everyday spending but for exceptional items: education costs, health care, construction work, redeeming pawned items. Most enterprises have also paid off their initial loans and a number have taken further loans to update or expand their ICT infrastructure. • Human capital: There has been a fairly obvious gain of ICTrelated skills for thousands of women. Core enterprise members have picked up managerial and entrepreneurial skills as well because of their collective involvement in the enterprises they have created.
Mable’s story Mable is the eldest of three children from a poor family, unable to continue her studies after the age of 16 because her father fell ill and could not continue with his job. Together with nine others she formed the Technovision enterprise in year 2000, but struggled during the early days. Community members mocked them as a bunch of girls who have no other work to do. And in the first year, they got practically no income. But a strong feeling of group solidarity got them through the bad times, and now she is her family’s main breadwinner. Neighbours who derided her now come seeking ICT training and wanting ICT-related jobs. Her message is clear: “Women too can prove themselves in the IT sector. Our work has developed my confidence to tell you this. There is nothing women are unable to do in the IT field.” In some cases, mostly for data entry and PC assembly, the women’s enterprises compete with other firms to secure the government contracts. In others, mostly for IT training, work is given without an open tender. Government certainly benefits. Outsourcing solves the perennial public sector difficulty of failing to retain in-house IT staff. Outsourcing to low-wage social enterprises delivers low-cost IT services solutions (no doubt a cause for grumbling among the IT services firms competing for contracts with these women’s enterprises). And working in this manner builds-in factors known to underpin successful outsourcing: trust, long-term relations and
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• Physical capital: Cooperative ownership of the enterprise’s ICT infrastructure (typically about one PC per member) has supplied each woman with a work-related asset worth the equivalent of almost two years’ income. This works as collateral for additional loans, due to the upgrade mania of the PC world that declines quite steeply in value over time. • Social capital: Narrow, heavily-localised social networks have been significantly expanded. Formally, women have new linkages to a variety of government officials. Informally, the cooperation, mutual trust and team spirit among enterprise group members gives them a strong sense of new social capital. i4d | September 2006
• Political capital/empowerment: Women described their empowerment in terms of changing self-identity and status. They talked constantly about their new confidence in tackling problems, in approaching institutions, in dealing with other people. They talked too about respect, recognition and acceptance in their communities; not simply because of having a job but because of having an ICT-related job, something associated with modernity and progress and hope. Change in gender relations was less clear. These women were taking on traditionally male e.g. management roles; some were hiring and managing men as employees; some were breaking away from traditional female goals of security and stasis to push for growth in their enterprises. However, men still filled the pivotal roles in the State Poverty Eradication Mission and as local government customers. There remained a degree of deference to fathers or husbands as ultimate decision makers in the household. And expectations of women’s triple role - wife/mother, worker, community member - still lurked not far beneath the surface.
The overall impact Sustainability of such impacts will always be a question mark for government-supported initiatives, but there are a number of positives: • Several enterprises have been running for more than six years, and the great majority for more than four; longer than the average lifespan of a small enterprise. • Core members do drop out for reasons of marriage or alternative employment but in most cases they are replaced by new employees. • Diversification away from government is limited, but definitely on the agenda. Some units now earn a third or more of income from private customers. In sum, this is not a panacea. However, equally, we may share the language of the women involved to talk of a transformation in their lives thanks to use of ICTs to create new livelihoods; replacing the old ‘bicycle’ of their unemployment with the ‘motorbike’ of an IT sector job.
Next steps It is hoped that other state and national governments can learn from the Kerala experience, and seek to replicate its success in delivering ICT-based livelihoods to poor women. Of course, that requires strong political commitment to social outsourcing of IT services, and to women’s development, plus means for poor women to access ICT skills. To encourage not just this, but a more general process of creating and developing women’s ICT-based enterprises, the Manchester project is now in a roll-out phase. This relies on the localisation activities of a series of partners: Change Initiatives, Datamation Foundation, Drishtee Foundation, and IT for Change in India; WOUGNET in Uganda, and Sula Batsu in Costa Rica. Others with an interest in this area are encouraged to join in the discussions (http://www. womenictenterprise.org/involved.htm) or to collaborate in other ways that can help exploit ICT’s significant potential to create new livelihoods for poor women. September 2006 | www.i4donline.net
Announcement for APC Chris Nicol FOSS Prize 2007 The APC Chris Nicol FOSS Prize recognises initiatives that are making it easy for people to start using free and open source software (FOSS). The prize is awarded to a person or group doing extraordinary work to make FOSS accessible to ordinary computer users. The APC FOSS Prize has been established to honor Chris Nicol, a long time FOSS advocate and activist who for many years worked with APC. The prize money bears the value of USD $4,000. This may be shared by up to two initiatives at the jury’s discretion. The prize is open to any person or group anywhere in the world who supports or promotes useroriented free and open source software. The application form can be completed in either English or Spanish, however there are no language restrictions regarding the language of the project. Small-scale activities are encouraged to apply. Applications can be submitted using online form. The deadline for prize nominations is March 30, 2007. APC is looking for the following initiatives : • The initiatives that improve the accessibility to, knowledge of and/or usability of FOSS, • Those which are user-oriented, • Those which are documented, so that others can learn from and replicate the model and • Those which are have demonstrable impact and have increased the number of people using FOSS on a day-to-day basis. Source : http://www.apc.org/english/chrisnicol/index.shtml
Industrial Information Network (IIN) ‘Industrial Information Network’ (IIN) www.iin.com.pk, Pakistan’s first B2B (business-to-business) and business information portal, was launched on 25th of June, 2005 by Mr. Jehangir Khan Tareen, Federal Minister for Industries, Production and Special Initiatives. The launch event was held in Pearl Continental Hotel Lahore and was attended by over 350 people belonging from various business sectors including textile, leather, auto, insurance, academia, banking, legal, young entrepreneurs, IT, commercial counselors, chambers, export promotion bureau and donor agencies. It aims to use information technology to connect and facilitate businesses in Pakistan. This portal is designed specifically to cater to the online trading and information needs of businesses from various industrial sectors in Pakistan. The project is initially focused on Textile and Leather sectors with more sectors to be added later. This is a joint venture of the Ministry of Information Technology & Telecom (MoITT) and the Ministry of Industries & Production (MOIP), with SMEDA as the executing agency and UNIDO as the technical consultant. The goal is to promote the use of business-to-business e-Commerce in the country and utilize technology to link businesses with local and international buyers, suppliers, trade facilitation bodies and the government. IIN is designed to become an online one-stop-shop for industry and SMEs for all their Information and e-Commerce needs. Source: http://www.smeda.org/main.php?id=113
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S ELF -E MPLOYED W OMEN ’ S ASSOCIATION (SEWA), I NDIA
Improving trade, securing livelihoods, with ICTs Today through SEWA’s ICT projects, a number of poor rural and urban women are using ICT to improve their trades and secure their livelihoods.
Reema Nanavaty Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) Ahmedabad, India bdmsa@icenet.co.in
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Story behind SEWA Years ago during severe and frequent droughts Gauriben had only two options, either to forcibly migrate, or work at earth digging sites. She does not remember how much jewellery and precious family heirlooms (intricately hand embroidered items of personal use) she had sold at throw away prices just to survive. With acute water shortage, no regular income and cattle adversely affected by harsh and fragile condition, Gauriben was unsure of her and her family’s future. She even could not dream of the education of her children, health care, repairing of her old house, saving money, etc. and all this was way beyond her means. Day to day survival was a challenge. What to eat tomorrow and where to get work tomorrow was the burning question every day and this always put her in trauma. Who will lend the money to Gauriben and who will give the daily ration on credit? The future was very unsure! This was the case of most of the members of SEWA when SEWA entered into their lives. The members were informal and scattered, with no options of income and employment. Today can anybody imagine that more than 1500 of SEWA members have landline, more than 200 SEWA members are engaged into different livelihoods are owning mobile phones, more than 1000 SEWA members have basic computer literacy and more than 250 SEWA members have became trainers of computers education. More than 15000 artisan women have organised their own company and have implemented a full-fledged MIS/ERP and are directly competing into the mainstream market through websites. More than 22 community learning and business resource centres have been run by women and serving the community, more than 1000 salt workers have set up their own salt testing
laboratory, agriculture workers with the use of small mobile phones have ventured into the partnership with corporates and doubled their income. There are numerous examples. The last ten years has seen an IT boom in India. IT has made India prominent on the world map, with India becoming renowned for its computer-savvy IT professionals. The Information and communication tools have not only improved the lives of everyone but have also resulted in the huge class of high salaried professionals. While privileged people in the cities and semi-urban areas have benefited from IT, this story is very different amongst the poor, further different amongst the women who are poor and even more different amongst the poor women living in the rural parts of India. Many women in villages have not even seen a telephone, a mobile or a computer. Using these gadgets is nothing short of a dream for them. However these women do not dream about being able to use a phone or any other technology. They dream about being able to eat two square meals a day and not worry about where the next dinner will come from. What do these women do for their living? What are their trades? Most of them are nonliterate and a very small percentage is semiliterate. There are vegetable vendors, small roadside shop owners, casual agricultural workers, salt workers and many of them are too poor and unskilled even to earn a living. What can SEWA do to improve their lives? With IT as a solution, how exactly can SEWA help these women adapt IT in their day to day work? These are some of the questions that was being discussed when the organisation, set on the IT mission a few years back. Today through SEWA’s ICT projects a number of poor rural and urban i4d | September 2006
women are using ICT to improve their trades and secure their livelihoods.
SEWA and ICT SEWA, a member based organisation of poor, self-employed women was one of the first organisation to successfully organise rural women and women working in the informal sectors and now has 61 cooperatives, 400 self-help groups, 4000 saving groups over 530000 members in Gujarat – with its membership often encompassing all the women in the entire village. SEWA has realised the potential of harnessing the power of information technologies in the context of the informal sector at much earlier stage. Its organisational structure and reach gives it the potential to harness such technologies effectively. In order to optimally utilise the power of ICT at the grassroots level, SEWA has launched various integrated development programmes and has demonstrated the capacity to deploy ICT and mainstream it effectively. SEWA has pilot tested various ICT tools for poverty alleviation, micro-enterprise development and even disaster mitigation, with remarkable success. SEWA’s ICT efforts focus on the following aspects: • capacity building, • livelihood generation and security, and • knowledge sharing. A number of ICT tools has been experimented and customised in various projects of the organisation. The new technologies have the proven potential and flexibility to facilitate capacity development, enable in cooperative efforts and reduce vulnerability by access to information. Depending upon the trade and the ability of the workers in different trades these ICT tools need to be customised and adopted in different ways.
SEWA in livelihood improvement Take the case of Jasuben Malik, now president of Jeevika Sewa Mandal. Jesuben grows seasme seeds. She sells them to the local trader who then sells them in the main market in Ahmedabad. SEWA trained her on the use of mobile phones, giving her a loan for purchasing it. Jesuben used her phone to find the prevailing prices in the market. This gave her the power to negotiate with the local trader. Soon Jesuben mobilised a number of other women of her village. They have formed a cooperative. The cooperative now sell directly to the main market without involving any middle men. Jesuben is now recognised as a business woman. Videoconferencing has played a very important role in supporting trade related activities of its members. Take for example, the case of a wheat procurement order that was received by its cooperative members in the district of Sabarkhata. This was a huge order of about 100 tonnes. When the price of procurement had to be decided, members used telecommunication facilities to directly communicate with the Sewa Gram Mahila centre. The latest market prices were found and negotiated. During implementation of the September 2006 | www.i4donline.net
order, the members had a lot of questions, which had to be explained from Ahmedabad. Videoconferencing was a very effective medium of addressing the community issues and questions, is a much simpler and effective way of sharing information and communicating in such cases. SEWA members can not only freely talk to one another and discuss the project, the visual medium that videoconferencing provides helps in better communication.
Access to electronic medium Videoconferencing equipments are being used in many of SEWA’s centres for effective interaction, holding literacy training, health related, childcare related and other trainings for the community members. It has also helped in sharing ideas, not only across Sanskar Kendras, but also with countries like Afghanistan. Sat-com facilities are also used by cooperatives in all districts for sharing of ideas and as for discussions and issue resolution. Sat-com, as a medium of communication, has become very popular as it is available in all SEWA district centres. These facilities are operated by the members themselves, the programme being held fortnightly at the centres. Laxmiben Narenbhai of Kutch sells milk in her village. She was taught on how to operate an electronic weighing machine. She started using it to weigh the quantity of milk being sold. The result was dramatic. People flocked to her ‘booth’. Although people in the villages have less access to technology, their faith in technology is tremendous. Says Laxmiben “People trust electronic gadgets and hence felt that my electronic machine would never lie”. Laxmiben does the largest sale of milk in her village. Her income has increased many fold. Other simple tools such as calculators have also helped the members. Use of calculators has helped women now to handle and count their earnings. Women operate their own accounts whether it is in the SEWA bank or through SEWA’s ATM facilities. The use of these simple tools makes a huge impact in the small micro-enterprises of these women. These are very simple but very necessary for any person who is linked to the market. Exposure to these tools removes a lot of unfounded fears (related to ICT). The
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removal of these fears has helped in introduction of more complex technologies.
Advancing steps in technological and management inputs The plight of the salt farmers is known to all. These people toil relentlessly in harsh conditions and yet do not have enough money to eat two square meals a day. They work in the salt pans that are very far from their homes and when they need to send a message, buy a commodity or a replacement for a broken part of their machines they have to travel to the village. This trip which is about 70 kms one way takes a day, wasting precious time and money. ICT interventions have been helpful to these farmers not only in improving their trades but also in improving their quality of life. Salt testing laboratories have been set up in the villages for these salt farmers. These labs have been equipped with the latest testing technologies. Training is imparted to the salt farmers to improve the quality of their salt. They receive technical inputs on how to make industrial salts which fetch a much higher price than the edible salts. Efforts are being made to set up mobile labs so that the farmers do not have to travel to the village. ICT interventions have also improved the quality of life of these farmers. SEWA has set up mobile vans that deliver spare parts and other commodities to these communities. These vans offer education to the farmers and their children. In addition medical facilities are also provided. Doctors travel with a team to address the health problems of these farmers. The women in the districts of Kutch and Patan are very adept in embroidery. The demand for this intricate embroidery is tremendous, in India and abroad as well. However, these women were not aware of the demand and price for skills. They sold their work to middlemen for next to nothing. SEWA has been engaged in organising and facilitating the activities of these craftswomen and ICT is playing a very important role in converting the micro-trades of these women into a huge enterprise. The 15,000 women have been organised to form a company. ICT activities are being taken up in full swing to increase production and generate more revenue for themselves. Market awareness of the various products is generated through websites and other media. The SEWA trade facilitation website www.sewatfc.org displays new designs and products of the members. A management information system is being developed to capture market related information about buyer’s preferences. This system will integrate the members in the villages with the main marketing hub in Ahmedabad, enabling real-time access to market, financial and product information. The craftswomen are being trained on the use of computers, scanners, mobiles, faxes, emailing etc. SEWA organises computer trainings for the women and their children in the villages of nine districts of Gujarat. The trainings are all about exposure and introduction to very simple computer applications that can help them in their trades, help them communicate with one another and ease a lot of burden in their lives. Many women are trained in Excel worksheets. Niruben, team leader of the insurance team now uses Excel as a planning tool. Others like Reenaben uses Excel for maintaining her accounts. These women do not use very high end technologies but their
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acceptance of technology broadens their outlook. In the districts of Kutch where girls are not encouraged to study, computer trainings for adolescent girls has grained popularity. The training gives them a better vision of the future. Many who exhibit greater talent undergo further training and then become teachers and run SEWA’s Sanskar Kendras. “It’s a great feeling to go back to your school as a computer teacher” says Shobhana Parmar (Anand district) who had to drop her schooling because of financial problems at home.
Sanskar Kendras The Sanskar Kendras are the community and business resource centres. These are 20 in number and have been set up across nine districts of Gujarat. A number of activities are held at the Sanskar Kendras. These include the ICT trainings and other trade related trainings. The Sanskar Kendras are also centres for carrying out disaster management activities. While all the kendras at the district offices have connectivity, some of the Sanskar Kendras at the cluster level (wherever telecom infrastructure is available and reliable) also have connectivity. Videoconferencing and sat-com facilities are also available in most Sanskar Kendras. At times of disaster, connectivity with the districts and Ahmedabad helps in organising relief activities and bringing trade and work back to normal quickly. A number of softwares such as savings software, insurance software are being used by the women which help capture trade and activity related information for deciding future interventions. Data entry in this software is done by the trained community members. The software generates information that helps in planning and deciding future course of actions. As in the case of the insurance and the savings software the reports help track member savings and investment. emailing and Internet access at the Sanskar Kendras have been useful to members, who want access to market and government information. However, trouble free connectivity still remains unresolved for Sankar Kendras. A number of other ICT interventions are being planned. Setting up of mobile vans offering facilities, providing PDAs to our members, offering telemedicine facilities, establishing linkages with the government for access to government information at the Sanskar Kendras and many others.
Linguistic challenges Adapting these technologies to local languages is very challenging task. Information and technology tools are predominantly designed for the English speaking class. A greater challenge is in imparting training to the non-literate women and encouraging them to use the trainings. These trainings have to be constantly adapted to suit the various communities.To overcome these, SEWA is looking for partners. There are some areas in which research inputs are needed to provide information on how to take our ICT programmes further. These areas include measuring the increased income of its members who have participated in the ICT programmes, researching on how cooperative efforts can be established across regions to spread the effects of the various programmes that have contributed a lot to the changing faces of the women. There are many more Gauribens whose lives have to be touched. i4d | September 2006
N EW S TEP I N T ELECENTRE M OVEMENT I N B ANGLADESH
SEBA – GP Partnership Using technology, mainly mobile phone, as communication media has been widely spread all over Bangladesh and Grameen Phone (GP) in Bangladesh has a direct role to bring the service in the rural areas.
ICT4D is an emerging area of development agenda in Bangladesh, and its relevance to economic and social development is wellacknowledged although adoption of ICT based development initiatives is slow in compared to some other developing countries. ICT for Development has become a common phrase in the development world, and till now telecentre is the only focus initiative of ICT4D in Bangladesh and many developing countries. However, the boom of mobile telephony in Bangladesh has shown the people the power of information and instant communication in their businesses and their daily lives. Using technology, mainly mobile phone, as communication media has been widely spread all over Bangladesh and Grameen Phone (GP), the leading mobile phone operator in Bangladesh has a direct role to bring the service to the rural areas. Society for Economic and Basic Advancement (SEBA), a local NGO, mainly focusing in livelihood activities, has experience on developing a sustainable model for telecentre through an action research project.
Community Information Centre : The journey begins
Md Shahid Uddin Akbar Coordinator ICT for Development Programme, Bangladesh (ICTDP’B) An ICT4D initiative of SEBA, Bangladesh shahid_ictdpb@yahoo.com
September2006 | www.i4donline.net
In recent days, various initiatives from different stakeholders, mainly NGOs and private sectors have been taken in the establishment of telecentre or Rural Information/ICT Centre. Most of these initiatives were donor funded and few of them showed positive potential to replicate as successful model. At this point in time, a partnership has emerged between SEBA and GP to establish Community Information Centre (CIC) in rural areas of Bangladesh to bring the benefits of ICT to the rural people. Based on SEBA’s experience on operating telecentre at field level and GP’s country wide connectivity with the vision to serve the rural community in a profitable way, the newly developed CIC model is now in implementation phase. It is expected that the CICs will bring the benefits of ICT to
the rural communities and will contribute to bridge the digital divide gap in Bangladesh.
CIC at Bamansundar: Demonstrating impact SEBA launched the first CIC at Bamansundar, a rural location in Chittagong district, about 220 km from the capital city of Dhaka and only within 3 months operation, the centre reached break even point to sustain from its own revenue at centre level. The soft launching of the centre created huge impact on the local community as the local communities were actively involved in the whole setting up process and represented in the event. Meantime around 1000 local users availed services from the centre and the trend is increasing. The most popular service in the CIC is digital photography (mainly for micro-credit, job and trade license application), and desktop publication and use of information service (Internet based) are other commonly used services. SEBA is implementing GP’s CIC at field level along with other partners and the CICs will be established all over the country by the end of 2006. The penetration of CICs will be expanded in deep rural areas by 2007.
The Business Model: Entrepreneurship is the key Entrepreneurship is the key component of Business Model of Community Information Centere (CIC). Basically, CIC is a composite model of information technology enabled services (ITES) under one roof from where a bundle of services can be delivered by using ICT for the rural people. The services include communication facilities, business development services and social information services. A ‘CIC’, owned by the private sector, is a physical infrastructure with basic ICT facilities (phone, computers, printer, scanner, Internet connectivity through an EDGEenabled modem to access the Internet using the GP Edge technology, digital camera, etc.) in a rural set-up. To establish a centre, an
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entrepreneur will require approximately USD 1500 to cover all fixed costs. CICs will promote entrepreneurship and create selfemployment to at least one to two youths in each location and it is expected that this will contribute to build advanced knowledge based ICT services in rural areas served by the centres.
Services – A basket with wide varieties Understanding the information demand of the rural people and offering need based services was the key strategy of service development for CICs. Based on the recommendations of various study and reports, multiple services for CICs have been developed. And, field experience on telecentre operation was specially considered during service range selection. The CICs are now offering a range of information and services mainly in 3 categories, communication services by using mobile phone and Internet, ICT based services including digital photography, desktop printings, job openings, citizen services along with disseminating business development services mainly information for the local businesses, information on businesses & networking, and comprehensive information on some selected sectors that are dominantly present in project localities. ICT related and value-added services of GP are also dispensed at this centre to make the enterprise financially viable. Presently, access to passport forms, birth and death certificate forms and other related information are available through the government websites. Market prices of agricultural produce are also available through the website of the Agricultural Extension Department. CICs are also of help to students and professionals to gather reports and news suiting their requirements. Information relating to local and foreign job search and government forms would be available. Many services which would continue to remain beyond the reach of an individual would now be available at the Community Information Centres. Health and medical information and advisory services will also be made available through the CICs soon. In addition, SEBA is working to develop an information portal on businesses in partnership with SME Development Forum (SDF) to serve the broader agriculture sector. Other useful content will also be added gradually in the CIC service line.
Target groups: Reaching the unreached Inclusiveness is the core approach adopted for CICs to set its target groups. Since, the CICs are located in a common rural setup, in general, all walks of people of the vicinity visits the centre for different purposes. These wide groups include rural farmers, businesses, teachers, local government officials and other professionals, journalist, students, women, unemployed youth, and considering this practicality, CICs have been designed to serve all. The CICs help rural people to stay in touch with their friends and relatives abroad using email, fax and instant messaging. Through web cams, it is now possible for them to see their near and dear ones staying abroad. Since the CICs are located in the rural areas and services (information and advice) are available for the local businesses including agriculture, inevitably the micro and small enterprises are benefiting from the centres and ultimately will increase their productivity which leads to economic empowerment of the rural
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people. This will also contribute to the national economy as the economy of Bangladesh is still largely agro-based.
Serving in a sustainable way: Strength of partnership SEBA is involved in entrepreneur selection, training, distribution of kit and marketing materials for CICs. GrameenPhone provides GSM infrastructure and supports the initial technical support services. Soon there will be a Coordination Unit to ensure smooth flow of information among SEBA – GP and CIC operators. Working jointly to build the capacity of the entrepreneurs and operators, developing operational handbook, promoting CICs at local level and building network among all stakeholders are making the CICs an integral part of the community. This participatory approach is also creating ownership feeling among the local people.
Challenges and threats: In implementation phase During the initial phase, SEBA tackled few critical challenges to develop a mechanism to select location, entrepreneur and bundling services. Through initiating open and competitive approach to select the location and entrepreneur, it was minimised. Also some other issues are yet to be resolved and SEBA developed a continuous process to overcome the issues like capacity of the operator, networking and awareness building of the rural users. The major challenge of developing local and relevant dynamic content needs more concentration from both GP and SEBA. Otherwise, CICs may twist towards an ordinary communication service provider like many other mobile phone shop or cyber cafes. Also development of service providers to provide support service and to ensure consistent supply of content will be another challenge in Bangladesh if no initiative is taken to address these issues.
e = Easy: Making rural life easier Usually e stands for electronic but in CIC practice in the field, ‘e’ is turning as ‘easy’. Making life uncomplicated and prosperous is a continuous effort from SEBA in the implementation of CICs. Also GP hope the centres will become a natural place for people in rural areas to meet and get services relating to their health, education, communications and information needs. Once the country wide network of CICs established and support information service is developed, SEBA envisions that the rural people will be exchanging their knowledge on livelihoods with people in other location, empowered economically and actively involved in social and political decision making processes. In this process of expansion of CICs in rural areas, the benefits could be multiplied if government comes forward with the electronic citizen services and implements e-Gov at local and national level, in phases. This will ensure better services to the citizens, establish transparency and accountability, and also the CICs may become the local service delivery channel. GP and SEBA has planned to roll out all over the country and reach the remote rural communities of Bangladesh, and surely it requires support from various stakeholders, and it is believed that only joining hands together can ensure broader development impact. i4d | September 2006
2007
Asia 2007
6 - 8 February, 2007 Palace of the Golden Horses Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Organisers
knowledge for change
Aminata Maiga Afrilinks Mali
Jeremy Millard Head, eGovernance Program Danish Technological Institute Denmark
Bruno Lavin Senior Advisor (e-Strategies) World Bank United States of America
Jeongwon Yoon Director National Computerization Agency Republic of Korea
Chaturon Chaisang Minister of Education Royal Thai Government, Thailand
Kenneth Keniston Andrew Mellon Professor of Human Development Massachusetts Institute of Technology United States of America
Dennis Pamlin Policy Advisor WWF Sweden
Kraisorn Pornsutee Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MoCIT) Government of Thailand
Who’s who of ICTD sector - an Dorothy Gordon Director Kofi Annan Centre for Excellence in IT Ghana
Karl Harmsen Director United Nations University – Institute of Natural Resource in Africa (UNU – INRA) – Accra, Ghana
Devindra Ramnarine Advisor (Public Sector Informatics) Governance Institutional Development Division Commonwealth Secretariat UK
Kunying Kasama Varavarn Permanent Secretary Ministry of Education Govt. of Thailand
Edilberto de Jesus Director, South East Asian Ministers of Education Organisation (SEAMEO) Thailand
Lars H. Bestle Programme Specialist - Policy Asia Pacific Development Information Programme (APDIP) UNDP - Regional Centre in Bangkok, Thailand
Dr Hyunjung Lee Asian Development Bank Philippines
Mark Surman IDRC/telecentre.org Canada
Manoo Ordeedolchest President, Software Industry Promotion Agency (Public Organization) Ministry of Information and Communication Technology Thailand
Suchai Charoenratanakul Minister of ICT Royal Thai Government, Thailand
Dr Morten Falch Danish Technological Institute Denmark
Subhash Bhatnagar eGov Practice Group, World Bank Indian Institute of Management (IIM –A) Ahmedabad, India
Minja Yang Director and Representative UNESCO-India
Susanne Ornager Advisor for Communications and Information in Asia and Pacific, UNESCO
Michael Gurstein Centre for Community Informatics Research, Development and Training Canada
San Ng The Asia Foundation USA
and part of our journey so far M V Rajshekhar Hon'ble Minister of State for Planning Planning Commission Government of India
Teresa Maria Camba Director, National Computer Centre Govt. of Philippines
Nagy Hanna e-Leadership Academy University of Maryland United States of America
Prof Vijay Kumar Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - USA, Advisor to the Knowledge Commission
Peter Moore Region Managing Director -Asia Pacific Public Sector Microsoft, Singapore
Prof Yin Cheong Cheng President Asia-Pacific Educational Research Association (APERA) Hong Kong
R. Chandrashekhar Additional Secretary (e-Governance) Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Government of India
AND YOU?
2007
Asia 2007
www.egovonline.net/egovasia
www.i4donline.net/atf
www.digitalLEARNING.in/DLasia
With Asian nations emerging as most promising global economies, traditional governments and their ways of governance surely need to be redefined. A plethora of public management and administrative challenges face most Asian nations. Heightened expectations of rapid socio-economic development and the need for efficient government is higher than ever before.
Telecentres are increasingly emerging as one of the most important equalizers of digital divide among urban and rural citizens.
Today Asian countries are competing with each other to be the frontrunner in technology-enabled education. While most countries do not want to miss the opportunity to connect to this ‘connected world’, the struggle to close the existing divides continues. Research and practices have confirmed that a holistic approach that integrates and emphasises process, be it capacity building of the educators or transforming pedagogy or creating localised and relevant ICT-based content, has substantial impact and sustainable and effective integration.
With boundless potential of modern IT and its proven credibility in transforming organisations and economies, governments across the world are increasingly getting active to embrace technology and leap-frog administrative reform. With a purpose of creating an invaluable Asian platform for consultative dialoguing, strategic planning, knowledge networking and business partnering in the field of e-Government, egov Asia 2007 is will bring together some of the best minds from the highest echelons of government, industry, academia and civil society.
Sessions Highlights • • • •
National e-Government Strategies Policy Reforms for ICT-enabled Governments Models of e-Service Delivery Emerging Technology Solutions
The Asian Telecentre Forum 2007 aims to bring the Asian practitioners in a platform for learning and sharing the experiences. Experts will be engaged in close assessment of issues relating to project monitoring steered by external financial support, from international development agencies and governments in Asia. Stakeholders from various sectors, viz., NGOs, Governments, Private sector, Donor agencies, Research organisations etc. will participate in this conference. There will be opportunity to showcase key project work and experiences through presentation sessions and/or panel discussions and through an exposition of products and projects.
Digital Learning Asia 2007, will bring some of the key drivers from the leading countries of technology-enabled education to deliberate on the pressing challenges of technology-enabled education from capacity building to reengineering pedagogy, change management to providing digital access.
Session Highlights Sessions Highlights • • •
•
Telecentre Movement in Asia: Road Ahead Partnerships for Developing Telecentre Networks Financing Mechanism and Sustainability Factors of Rural Telecentres a reality check Service Delivery and Capacity Building through Telecentres
• National Strategies on ICT in education • Localisation, customisation and content development • Educating the educators • Reengineering pedagogy • e-Learning trend and practices in higher education and school education • Education technology trends in Asia
Exhibition
Important Date
Conference Secretariat
The ICT triple conference will host an exhibition of latest e-solutions, services, initiatives and case studies from across Asia and beyond. Professional service providers, IT vendors, consulting firms, government agencies and national/international development organisations involved in the ICT in Education domain are participating in the exhibition.
Last date for receipt of abstracts: 25th November 2006
Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS)
Contacts
G-4, Sector - 39
For Exhibition Rakesh Tripathie (rakesh@csdms.in) Tel: +91-9899821364
Noida - 201301, India
For Registration Himanshu Kalra (himanshu@csdms.in) Tel: +91-9818485406
Fax: +91-120-2500060
Tel. : +91-120-2502181- 87 Web: www.csdms.in Email: info@csdms.in
Vol. IV No. 9
September 2006
Information for development www.i4donline.net
Agriculture Internet-based agribusiness in an up swing in India In agriculture, Internet-based applications hold the key in answering questions and solving problems regarding production and management, and many others in the field to the dinner-plate process. The adoption of technology is slowly benefiting the end consumer. For instance, the Internet today has become an important source for buying products and services for end customers. Consumers can also get information on prices of all the major markets in India from agmarknet. Sericulture department of India has a website to provide price details of silk cocoons across various silk exchanges in India for the benefit of sellers and buyers. Internet portals such as Agriwatch.com bring together various participants in the agribusiness sector such as the farmers, traders, food processors and raw material suppliers by providing latest information. This also enables eCommerce in agricultural products through this vertical portal. www.ciol.com
Community Radio Bangladesh: Play for community radio After a ten days workshop on ‘Forum Theatre’, volunteers of the UNESCO-supported Youth Community Multimedia Centre (YCMC) produced two interactive plays explaining the role of community media and contextualising it to the lives of the rural poor in Bangladesh. These plays are now regularly being performed in rural areas to raise awareness and public demand for community radio legislation in Bangladesh. This unique September 2006 | www.i4donline.net
characteristic of Forum Theatre was explored to create a virtual community radio platform in many villages in Sitakund. YCMC has discovered that the importance of this kind of an approach is manifold: first, it reminds people of existing local negative practices; secondly, it raises awareness about the lack of access to mainstream media and demonstrates how local communities can use community radio and other media to change their society. portal.unesco.org
e-Commerce
rce me om e-C
Almost 80 percent SMEs use e-Commerce to shop online According to a new survey from Jupiter Research almost 80 percent of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are using the Internet to shop online. The survey found that using the Internet to shop was almost as common as using email for SMEs and this usage has created an entire market for suppliers. It was also discovered that SMEs often stay loyal to certain companies online. David Schatsky, president of JupiterKagan, comments that companies looking to grow online shopping for relationship-intensive products and services should target small businesses with tenure of less than two years. web-sites.press-world.com
Education NIIT, Intel and MP join hands on ‘Gyanodya’ NIIT, Intel, the Madhya Pradesh (MP) State Electronics Development Corporation, and the MP government in India have joined hands on ‘Gyanodya’, an ICT enabled education project in the government schools. The pilot project is being rolled out in
the Government Excellence Higher Secondary School, Budni. The Madhya Pradesh government has decided to enable its youth with the best of technology and education. The government hopes to extend this initiative to the students across all the socio-economic strata, including the rural and inaccessible corners of the state. Madhya Pradesh State Electronics Development Corporation (MPSEDC) will oversee the successful implementation of the project. The NIIT will deploy ‘eGuru’, its most popular and widely accepted virtual computer based teaching solution, besides providing faculty, teacher training and courseware. Intel will provide necessary infrastructure in schools. www.business-standard.com
ADB suspects India of acheiveing MDG targets The Asian Development Bank said India would not meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets as in the case of other countries in the Asia Pacific region, despite making significant improvement in access to primary education. ADB in its annual statistical publication, Key Indicators 2006 said the MDG targets for universal primary enrollment and a two-thirds reduction in child mortality were unlikely to be met unless governments rapidly intensified efforts to improve basic education and access to primary health care for the poor. ADB said India along with Bangladesh had made significant progress in improving access to primary schooling but concern remained regarding the quality to basic education and inequalities in enrollment rates. It also said India was in danger of falling short of the target to reduce the underfive child mortality rate to two-thirds of 1990 levels by 2015. www.financialexpress.com
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The i4d News
India to establish G-2-B portal for investors soon India will soon establish a government-to-business (G-2-B) portal to provide easy communication and service linkage to foreign and domestic investors. The department of industrial policy and promotion (DIPP), in a mission mode project (MMP) under the national eGovernance programme, has tentatively decided to award a Rs 20-crore pilot project to a consortium of companies led http://www.kayesmith.com/images/ by CDAC. Based on the success of the pilot project, the exercise would be expanded to a larger-scale covering all departments. The exercise would cover business-government interface in selected departments, including ministries of company affairs (for issue of certificates of incorporation and commencement of business), excise and customs, environment, as well as RBI (for filing of forex transaction report), director general of foreign trade (for issue of importer exporter code), CBEC and a few chosen services in the governments of Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Haryana. This initiative would result in speedy, transparent and hassle-free information.
the applicability of the software or the process, which the software performs, would hurt the Indian software industry. Open source software (OSS) and patents are in conflict with each other, underlined Vijay Kumar, academic director, MIT. He added that the basis of OSS model was free sharing of source code and the right to use other’s work unrestricted. Governments view open source as a way to move away from US-based software company products that costs millions on implementations and another hefty amounts for regular updates or security upgrades. Unless, the lacuna in the IPR laws in India are addressed, the issue will continue to be a grey area for companies that market open source services and in our endeavour to become a digital economy.
www.financialexpress.com
www.business-standard.com
Health Singapore plans for IT system to manage patient records The government of Singapore has unveiled a new programme aimed at helping general practitioners (GPs) in the island-state manage patient records and related information via a common IT system. Some S$15 million (US$9.4 million) will be invested over four years into the programme, says the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), the country’s infocomm regulator. From Oct. 1, GPs from 1,400 clinics in the country will be able to update and retrieve their patients’ health records through integrated clinic management systems. They can also perform other related functions, such as managing billing charges and patients’ insurance claims. IDA added that the centralised system would in future facilitate GPs to submit mandatory information, including infectious disease reports and alerts, to the country’s Ministry of Health (MOH). zdnetasia.com
Livelihood Satyam Foundation initiates IT training for streetchildren Satyam’s corporate social responsibility arm Satyam Foundation and Society for Integrated Development in Urban and Rural Areas (SIDUR) have made it possible for streetchildren to dream of a career in the IT sector.
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An IT training centre will initially train a batch of 30 street children in basic computer skills, MS Office and data entry. English speaking and development of communication skills will also form a part of the training. Secretary, SIDUR, T. Nanda Vardhan, told that computers means modernisation, a sense of adventure and an opportunity to explore another world. SIDUR will initially focus on children from shelter homes. The organisation also plans to train children having monthly income of less than Rs. 2,000. Satyam Foundation has facilitated 10 computers and has plans to increase the number to 30 in the near future. Satyam employees will also volunteer for training and counselling sessions of children. www.hindu.com
Open Source Patent law may stifle open source growth in India Patent laws, if adopted, may block the growth of open source software in India, a market where 20 per cent of the software used is now open source as against 80 per cent proprietary software. In fact, some large MNCs which are using open source software (and proprietary too in some measure) are reportedly investing up to $100 million in legal fees to fight patent threats. At a recent knowledge symposium, organised by Red Hat Inc and IIT Delhi, Michael Tiemann, V-P, open source affairs, Red Hat, asserted that patents the act of granting ownership on
Technology Bar-coded SMS to be launched in India Now, you may not have to bother about collecting ticket from an airline office or carry a printout of the ticket downloaded from the Internet. Even going to a cinema hall to book a movie ticket could be a thing of the past. Bar coded SMS will now verify details of your tickets. After booking ticket on the mobile phone, the customer will receive an SMS carrying a seven-digit number in bar code form. This bar-coded SMS could then be scanned by readers at airports and movie halls. The bar code SMS also provides a 120 character text messages describing the offer. Technology company Value First is already undertaking a pilot test, with the service expected to be launched next month. The bar code SMS is compatible with both GSM and CDMA handsets, provided it has a picture display facility. The company is in talks for tie-ups with airlines, cinema halls, banks, major retail outlets, advertising agencies, online portals and a few state governments for m-Governance (mobile governance). business-standard.com
HP tops PC market in India Technology solution provider Hewlett Packard India Pvt Ltd has emerged as the overall leader in the personal computer (PC) market in India with a total market share of 20.3 percent. i4d | September 2006
The i4d News It continues to lead the notebook and desktop markets in Q2 2006. ‘HP India has achieved a massive market share of 37.1 percent in the notebook segment, which was more than double the share of its closest competitor, according to IDC’s Asia/ Pacific Quarterly PC Tracker, 2Q06. The company also emerged winner in the total desktop segment with a market share of 16.6 percent (by volume). indiaenews.com
Telecentres Microsoft launches digital village in Akwa Ibom State Microsoft Nigeria, in collaboration with the Foundation for Community Health Education, a non-governmental organisation has commissioned its digital village in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. The digital village, donated to Obonganwan Skills Acquisition Centre and commissioned by President Olusegun Obasanjo is expected to promote skills development and economic empowerment of the people of the state. According to Gerald Ilukwe, Country Manager, Microsoft Nigeria and Ghana, the initiative was part of Microsoft’s drive to give something back to the communities in which it operates. The digital village is the second out of nine such facilities to be sited across Nigeria. www.andnetwork.com
ADB signs MoU with UNESCAP to establish CeCs in South Asia The Asian Development Bank and UNESCAP have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for the establishment of 20 pilot Community e-Centres (CeC) in South Asia. As part of ADB’s South Asia Subregional Economic Cooperation (SASEC) program, the project will be jointly implemented by ADB and the Information and Communication Technology Applications Section of the Information, Communi-cation and Space Technology Division (ICSTD) of UNESCAP. The project is funded by the Japan Fund for Information and Communication Technology (JFICT) of ADB. The project aims to reduce poverty, empower communities and improve the quality of life in rural areas in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal by providing communities with access to Information and Communication Technology (ICT). CeC will provide September 2006 | www.i4donline.net
ADB and UNESCAP signs MoU to establish CeCs in South Asia The Asian Development Bank and UNESCAP have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for the establishment of 20 pilot Community e-Centres (CeC) in South Asia. As part of ADB’s South Asia Subregional Economic Cooperation (SASEC) program, the project will be jointly implemented by ADB and the Information and Communication Technology Applications Section of the Information, Communication and Space Technology http://www.adb.org/Documents/ Division (ICSTD) of UNESCAP. The project is funded by the Japan Periodicals/ADB_Review/2004/ Fund for Information and Communication Technology (JFICT) of ADB. The project aims to reduce poverty, empower communities and improve the quality of life in rural areas in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal through providing communities with access to information and communication technology (ICT). CeC will provide services to access the Internet for socio economic development activities www.unescap.org
shared facilities for the public to use basic telecommunications services access the Internet and use various ICT applications for socio-economic activities. www.unescap.org
Telecommunication Ryanair plans to allow mobile phones in planes Ryanair plans to install a system on its planes to allow the use of mobile phones during flights. The system will allow passengers to be able to call, text and e-mail using their mobile phones and BlackBerrys charged at rates that mirror international roaming charges. Users will be charged by their mobile service providers on their monthly bills and Ryanair will receive a commission from OnAir. The system is still to receive regulatory approval from the Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT), which is expected in November. Each of the 23 European countries that Ryanair flies to would then need to issue a license for the system. edition.cnn.com
Telecare for older and vulnerable people The Scottish Executive is using technology as a selling-point for older and vulnerable people. An amount of £8 million has been investment in new telecare technology. Telecare, which has been pioneered in West
Lothian, involves people having a range of innovative monitors fitted to their homes. These can range from fall sensors and panic buttons to flood detectors, and are connected to a round-the-clock emergency call and response service. The announcement of the national roll-out of the scheme was made during a visit to Colinshiel Court, a Housing with Care development, managed by Hanover (Scotland) Housing Association in Armadale which incorporates the new technology. publictechnology.net
Wireless Wireless solution to connect Missouri families to soldiers in Iraq A 10-day demonstration of a secure wireless communications network has concluded recently at the Missouri State Fair. The goal of the exercise was to demonstrate the versatility of a secure broadband wireless communications architecture in providing voice, video and data capabilities for a number of statewide scenarios. As part of the demonstration, the team was leveraging the wireless solution to connect soldiers serving in Iraq with their families onsite at the Missouri State Fair providing real-time, face-to-face conversations. This demonstration at the state fair served as a ‘proof-of-concept’ for future statewide implementations. The Fortress/Nortel architecture being used in the demonstration integrates Wi-Fi and WiMAX transmissions with high-assurance security. www.govtech.net
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‘i4d innovation of the year 2006’ award goes to Hansdehar Smart Village Kanwal Singh, the innovator of the first Smart Villages Project in India was awarded the first i4d innovation award at a Gala Awards Ceremony on 23rd August 2006 as a part of Indian Telecentre Forum 2006 conference held in New Delhi. Kanwal Singh was recognised for his remarkable efforts in initiating a web presence for village Hansdehar in Haryana State in Northern India. Inspired by the Gandhian philosophy and the views of the President of India, Kanwal Singh goes beyond his day to day business of serving as the Chief Techical Officer with Haryana State Electronics Development Corporation. Mobilising the community to have a virtual presence has Kanwal Singh receives the i4d innovation award from Mani Shankar Aiyer, Minister of meant that the community participates and Panchayati Raj and Youth Affairs and Sports, Government of India contributes to the content. The village named Hansdehar, located in Haryana (India), has uploaded itself Ltd., cutting out middlemen. But younger villagers plan to onto the Internet, giving the outside world a glimpse of life use the Internet to help hasten their exit by searching onin rural India. line for college places and jobs in big cities. The village council-or panchayat-is pictured on the website. Carpenters and masons will tout their services online. Others will upload their resumes to job-hunting websites. But the grand aim is to encourage more of India’s 640,000 villages to upload themselves and unite in online networks to advance the cause of rural India, home to a tenth of humanity.
A webshot of Hansdehar Village website www.smartvillages.org
Visitors to Hansdehar village’s website (www. smartvillages.org) can see the names, jobs and other details of its 1,753 residents, browse photographs of their shops and read detailed specifications about their drainage and electricity facilities. Most of the residents can’t yet surf the Hansdehar website as the village is not yet connected to the Internet. Now Hansdehar farmers hope they will be able to get better prices for their crops by trading online through the National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange
The award winners (awards in their hands) and their families with the minister Mani Shankar Aiyer and President of CSDMS M P Narayanan (in blue shirt)
During the Gala Awards evening two other awards were given away by Mani Shankar Aiyer. The innovation in egov award was presented to the Dakshin Kannad Police Blog and received by B Dayananda. The Digital Learning innovation award was School Camera Programme of Seva Mandir and was received by Neelam Khetan.
I NTERVIEW
Creating awareness on ICTs among SMEs Imran Chaudhry Manager, Donor Coordination and International Linkages, Small and Medium Enterprise Development Authority (SMEDA), Pakistan imranch@smeda.org.pk
What role are SMEs playing in the developing countries of the world and what more they can do? Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are considered to be one of the principal driving forces in the economic development of any country. Anecdotal evidence suggests that despite the decline in the large sector growth rate worldwide, SME sector has managed to grow; since they are relatively flexible and can adapt quickly to the changing market demand and supply situations. Their ability to generate employment and to diversify economic activity can make a significant contribution to exports and trade, create employment as well as alleviate poverty. SMEs bring more diversity to economy and facilitate technological innovation and provide significant opportunities for the development of new ideas and skills. Which areas of SMEs need to be more focused in policy in Pakistan? Despite their economic importance, the SMEs in Pakistan suffer from a variety of weaknesses, which have constrained their ability to adjust to the economic liberalization measures introduced by the Government of Pakistan and to take full advantage of rapidly expanding markets of the world. September 2006 | www.i4donline.net
These weaknesses include a relatively narrow base of the formal SME sector and its focus on low value-added products; the absence of an effective business information infrastructure; the inadequacy of the existing support services for entrepreneurship development and promotion; and a relatively low level of integration in global value chains. The large-scale industry in Pakistan has its focus on large markets and is supported by complex regulatory support systems. Small and Medium Enterprises, on the contrary, suffer from low productivity, high closure rate and small net worth. Therefore, their industrial base must be strengthened to improve the differences which exist between them and large enterprises through sustained growth, so that these SMEs can later graduate into the formal sector. Do you think that ICT can help SMEs to play a better role in socio-economic development of any developing country? If so, in which areas ICTs have the potential? Yes, as explained earlier SME sector is directly linked to the socio-economic development of any country and ICT can help SMEs a lot to play more effective role in this regard especially in the developing ones. However, the need of the hour is how to bridge the digital divide. In the developing countries, SMEs can play a vital role for the augmentation of GDP if resources available to them are utilised at their best. For the utilisation of such resources and developing futuristic plans, ICT can bring the real time value addition to the SMEs in terms of bringing ease to their resource planning and providing certain authentic information and statistics for making crucial business decisions. ICT can enable and empower this sector with the right technology tools to contribute
more, increase their own productivity and be more competitive. ICT can bring socio-economic alleviation for the SMEs in developing countries by providing certain ways of market-research and making their existence available on the Internet. This will not only help to boost their business proposition but also bring benefits to the growth of cyber economy of the SMEs of developing countries. How much support has been provided so far in Pakistan by ICT in improving and encouraging SMEs? Please provide some specific examples. ICT has been identified as one of the key drivers of the economy by Government of Pakistan. In last six years, the government has undertaken several initiatives to increase computer literacy to attract international investments and equip Pakistan with an IT savvy workforce pool. Several forward looking private companies have also taken the lead and are working in conjunction with the Government’s charter of bridging the digital divide. Government is following a comprehensive programme to reduce the broad band rates for IT traffic, comprehensive awareness programme among the stakeholders, spreading outreach on Internet connectivity, etc. Development of Industrial Information Network (IIN) is another initiative by government which is the first B2B portal of the country. In Pakistan, which aspects of SME policy play remarkable role in the country’s socioeconomic development? SMEs constitute over 90% of businesses (by number) in Pakistan, all of which function within the private sector. Many of the SMEs operate in the informal sector which is undocumented.
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Legal Structure of Enterprises in Pakistan Individual Proprietorships
82.75%
Partnerships
2.50%
Companies (Public/Private Ltd)
0.50%
Government /Corporation/ Local Government Establishments
6.71%
Others
7.58%
Source: ILO-SMEDA Study, 2000.
SMEs represent a significant component of Pakistan’s socioeconomic development in terms of both value addition and employment generation. As they predominantly provide employment to lower income groups, they are also considered an important vehicle for poverty reduction. SMEs, in particular, play a key role in the manufacturing sector; providing 80% of the total employment, contributing over 30% to GDP, and generating one-fourth of the sector’s export earnings. The following table shows the importance of SMEs as major providers of employment and their increasing contribution towards manufacturing value added. Contribution of SMEs in Manufacturing Sector 1980-81
1997-98
Value Added
27%
35%
Employment
85%
83%
Source: Economic Survey, Census of Manufacturing Industries and Census of Small and Household Manufacturing Industries
Could you please provide us a brief about the background of SMEDA in Pakistan? SMEDA was formed in October 1998, through an Executive Order from the Prime Minister’s Secretariat, motivated by the need to take pro-active measures for boosting exports on one hand, as well as stimulating investments in enterprises that required low capital but had high employment opportunities. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), for the first time, thus attracted the attention of the Government as potential source of achieving both the objectives. The mandate given to SMEDA’s Board was the following: • To be the apex policy-making body for small and medium enterprises • To provide and facilitate support services to SMEs • To serve as the key resource base for SMEs in Pakistan • To serve as the voice of small business within the Government • Kick start the economy through aggressive launch of Small and Medium Enterprises support programme • Generate massive employment opportunities at low cost What areas are being mainly emphasized as a part of SMEDA activities and how are these areas being identified? SMEDA is the flagship organisation of Pakistan which is providing the necessary services to help SMEs overcome the weaknesses that
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are endogenous to their very nature. It is an autonomous body working under the umbrella of the Ministry of Industries and Production and contributes towards the growth and development of SMEs in Pakistan through: (i) the creation of a conducive and enabling regulatory environment; (ii) development of industrial clusters; (iii) the provision of Business Development Services to SMEs in all areas of business management. Adhering to a clear mandate and a logical path to achieve quantitatively verifiable targets, SMEDA carries out comprehensive analyses of international trends, national policies and other macroeconomic factors affecting SMEs in Pakistan for a gradual progress towards the creation of a favorable business environment for its key clients – the SMEs of Pakistan. At the same time, we also interact with the SMEs working in industrial sectors such as Agriculture, Fisheries, Textiles, Handloom Weaving, Transport, Leather, Marble & Granite, Carpets and Light Engineering. This interaction takes place at the individual as well as collective level to provide pro-active and responsive financial, technical, management and marketing services to SMEs. At the collective level SMEDA addresses the problems and needs of SMEs in the form of an industrial cluster – a concentration of largely homogenous enterprises within a certain geographical area. SMEDA interacts with the stakeholders operating in such clusters on a regular basis and collects first hand information about their problems and needs. During this interaction, the issues are prioritised and the important problems are selected for detailed working through which the projects/programmes are identified. SME support through cluster development programmeme is provided on two fronts: Regulations and policy level support and institutional and networking support In the policy level support, problems related to any Government department or Government policy/regulation are studied and, if found valid, are advocated with the concerned authorities. At the institutional level, SMEDA provides support to SMEs by creating networking amongst the concerned stakeholders or by directly starting development projects in the clusters. Such projects may include establishing a training institute, building a common facility centre, building a model plant with state-of-the-art technology for SMEs to emulate through reverse engineering. These projects also include upgrading technology in a particular industrial sector and starting a programme-lending scheme for this purpose in collaboration with the financial institutions. Up to now, SMEDA has been involved in cluster development projects in the areas of Boat Modification in Marine Fishery Sector, Credit for Auto Vendors, Carpet Weaving, Marble & Granite, Dates and Apples Processing, Wooden Furniture, Leather Garments, Ceramic Kilns, Cotton Ginning, and Glass Bangles Cluster. Number of the important cluster development projects undertaken by SMEDA is in sectors like: Textile/Apparel, Horticulture/Fruits and Vegetable, Fisheries, Granite & Marble, Gems, Agriculture. The third area of SMEDA’s functioning is the provision of Business Development Services to SMEs. For this i4d | September 2006
purpose we have set up Help Desks in all four of our regional offices where any SME can simply walk in and obtain over the counter products such as Project Briefs, Pre-feasibility Studies and Regulatory Procedures, along with advice on specific problems. SMEDA Help Desk Services include: Assistance in Raising Finance, Financial Advice, Project Identification, Business Plan Development, Technical Advice, Marketing Advice (Branding, Labeling, Packaging, Distribution, Promotion, etc.), Company Incorporation, Export Registration, & Regulatory Advice, Sales Tax, Custom Duty, Excise Duty, etc, Electronic Commerce Support, Business Matchmaking, Accounting and Bookkeeping Services, Information Services (Library, Databases, Project Briefs, Pre-feasibility Studies, Business Guidebooks). As a part of its Business Development Services, SMEDA also provides Human Resource Training services by conducting extensive training need analysis of different SME clusters. SMEDA has so far conducted more than 550 training courses and workshops focusing on developing sector specific skills. SMEDA is aimed to become a model of public-private partnership for better facilitation of the small and medium enterprises in Pakistan through the creation of a more equitable, transparent and conducive regulatory environment. While we frequently focus on globalisation, what viewpoints need to be modified to make the SMEs more effective and active in socio-economic development, locally as well as globally? Promotion of SMEs entails enhancement of the competitiveness of the economy and generation of additional employment. A thriving SME sector has long been recognized as one of the key characteristics of any prosperous and growing economy. However, there has been concern that the SME sector has not been able to realize its full potential. The SMEs continue to suffer from a number of weaknesses, which hamper their ability to take full advantage of the opening of economy and the increasingly accessible world markets. The areas of constraints are normally identified as labour, taxation, trade capacity, finance and credit availability. (Glocal ‘Global information but local wisdom’) is the solution for socio-economic development. What is your viewpoint regarding the extent of SME led economic growth in Pakistan in comparison to other South Asian countries? It is not far from reality to call Pakistan’s Economy as Economy of the SMEs. SMEs constitute nearly 93% of all the enterprises in Pakistan; employ 78% of the non-agricultural labor force; and their share in the annual GDP is 35%, approximately. However, unlike large enterprises in the formal sector, a small and medium enterprise is constrained by financial and other resources. This inherent characteristic of an SME makes it imperative that there should be a mechanism through which it may get support in different functions of business including technical up-gradation, marketing, financial and human resource training and development. SME development has the potential to broaden Pakistan’s export base both in terms of product range and geographical spread. SMEs fit in this scheme since they can produce non-traditional items for export into new markets where quality standards are not critical and September 2006 | www.i4donline.net
volumes are low. The large scale industry in Pakistan has its focus on large markets where they avail quota opportunities and are supported by complex regulatory support systems. What is the role of technology upgradation in entrepreneurship development? Technology is a defining factor for any country’s economic growth. World economy is now no longer restricted by geographical barriers and only by manufacturing high quality cost-effective products can make industry compete globally. Assimilation of technology upgrades to industry help expedite value-addition while enhancing productivity. Mass production of high-value products will ultimately bootstrap the economy to increase the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Technology upgrades can take them to the next development curve. Technology up gradation refers to rapid induction and assimilation of technology which causes a quantum improvement of an existing level. Technology Upgradation and Skills Development Company (TUSDEC) has been established by Government of Pakistan to emulate successful experiences of South East Asia in Technology Upgradation and Skill Development. TUSDEC upgradation initiatives are aimed to cause measurable jumps from an existing technology/time curve to a higher curve thus closing the gap between Pakistan and developed countries. This means improved productivity, quality, skill, environmental conditions including the work environment in industry. In India, the introduction of Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme (TUFS) and the establishment of Tools, Dies and Moulds (TDM) centres have given impetus to the pace of industrial activity especially in the engineering sector. There are 126 TDMs across India, contributing to industrial growth while in Portugal, similar steps were taken for the development of its engineering industry. Do you think there is need of linking ICTs with entrepreneurship development to eradicate the problem of unemployment in the developing nations with large population? Yes, there is a dire need of bringing ICT tools in practice in entrepreneurship development as it brings the awareness among the young potential entrepreneurs to have their own business and get them employed as well as create additional employment. In your point of view what should be the role of the government to develop SMEs with the help of ICT? Government of Pakistan has been doing a lot however still lot more needs to be done. Creating awareness among the SMEs about ICT benefits in their day to day working as well as business planning is an uphill task. SMEs are technology shy and their adoption to ICT tools is also slow. Government should take on board all the stakeholders like equipment manufacturers/ suppliers, ISPs, etc and announce a comprehensive ICT package for SMEs where they could be getting necessary training, equipment and technology on attractive rates. Once hand full of SMEs know the benefit of going digital, it would be easy for rest of them to get convinced.
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C OMMUNITY B ASED E- COMMERCE
The innovative power of telecentre networks ChasquiNet transformed the perceived needs and opportunities of the telecentres, with which it works, into a business idea which became a project.
Christoph Roessner FundaciĂłn Chasquinet, Ecuador christoph@chasquinet.org
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The situation in international e-Commerce e-Commerce, ‘the distributing, buying, selling, marketing, and servicing of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks’, generated in 2003, sales worth USD 12.2 billion. However, the distribution of this sales represents the inequality, be it social, digital, economical, in the Information Society. In some countries or regions companies like e-Bay, amazon.com and others base their business activities on a working infrastructure of postal services, credit cards and other financial mechanisms, easily available broadband Internet access and favourable policy environment. In other countries/ regions this infrastructure is practically not existent. Postal services are expensive and not reliable. Credit cards and credit in general is only available for a small and rich percentage of the population. Internet access is a costly resource and the policy environment is characterised by corruption, scarce know-how and frequent change of governments. Latin America is one of the latter regions, but it is by far not the only one. eCommerce in these regions and community based e-Commerce (throughout the world), in general, face a similar problem. Independently how well designed are the applications? Independently how thoroughly had the market analysis been carried out? The all deciding question is: How to get the goods from here to there and how to pay and get paid? When answering this question, e-Commerce in Latin America and in other regions fails to reach more than the small percentage of the rich population, because the mentioned barriers hinder the take off of big scale e-Commerce projects.
The problem The result is shoddy overpriced merchandise that the importers bring in, which they markup (including marking up on the freight and customs duties). The same importers have distributors to the interior cities that sell to the stores and resellers, both of which also mark-up. The variety is weak, the quality poor, the prices outrageous and the guarantee of new products is virtually nonexistent. Many of these products come from contraband, obviously without warranty.
Need for powerful alliances In any place of the world, a solution which aims on changing this reality must be a powerful one. It must organise, capacitate and empower the excluded communities and it must bring them together with world class service providers in the areas of logistics, payment and technology. Only such an alliance has the ability to overcome the described barriers and to provide world class services for affordable prices to people, who individually are excluded from participating in the Information Society, but who, as a community, can play an active and productive role.
Role of telecentre networks Telecentre networks play a key role in the creation of this kind of alliances. They are the intermediary actors who provide the glue that bonds together the approaches of global business players with local community initiatives. These networks understand the reality of their member telecentres and their respective communities. For being a network with added value, they must be able and willing to translate these realities into projects with regional or even global approach. Furthermore, they must be able to communicate the value of such projects to global actors, in the case of i4d | September 2006
e-Commerce to transnational corporations and international service providers. At the end of this chain stands a Multi-Stakeholder Partnership (MSP) which organises itself in order to become a glocal (global+local=glocal) service provider who provides local services on global or transregional basis and vice versa. Only this kind of organisation is able to respond to the local needs and opportunities, while having a global approach and only in this way e-Commerce can be realised on international scale.
The I-Malls idea Based on this understanding the Ecuadorian Fundación ChasquiNet developed with partners an innovative and concrete business idea. The I-Malls project is a consequence of positive experiences during an e-Commerce pilot with Ecuadorian telecentres. It is the attempt to establish via an Internet-based trading platform a hemispheric two-way channel for the sending and receiving of goods, remittances and social services, e.g. health insurances. A special quality of I-Malls will be the provision of full landed costs to the customer, who no longer have to concern about international shipping costs and customs costs. However, the real innovation is that I-Malls is using telecentres as effective channels for e-Commerce. This makes I-Malls a universal solution for eCommerce, because telecentres exist almost anywhere in the world and the barriers to e-Commerce are similar in a lot of regions.
Telecentres For ChasquiNet, telecentres are meeting places within a community. They are used by different community stakeholders. These can be local schools, local entrepreneurs and community initiatives which work for the improvement of the quality of life of the community’s population. In order to achieve their specific goals, these stakeholders are strategically using the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) which the telecentres host. The locations of telecentres usually are rural and/or poor communities. Those can be villages in the Amazonian rainforest or in rural India or migrant communities at the heart of New York City, London or Barcelona. The innovation is that, by using telecentres, people without credit cards will also be able to purchase and sell online. As a consequence, I-Malls reaches communities which until now had not been directly connected to the international exchange systems of a globalised world. This illuminates an important characteristic of I-Malls. By connecting telecentres in Latin America to telecentres in countries like the US, Canada or (in a later stage) Spain the two-way channel of I-Malls will also be a response to international migration (only as illustration, every third Ecuadorian adult lives and works abroad), one of the, if not ‘the’, most pressing phenomenon of today’s globalisation, not only in Latin America.
From idea to business model ChasquiNet transformed the perceived needs and opportunities of the telecentres, with which it works, into a business idea which became a project. But, with this, only the first step had been made. The next one was the formulation of the global approach through the Telecenters of the Americas Partnership (TAP). September 2006 | www.i4donline.net
TAP is a hemispheric telecentre network throughout the Americas which brings together more than 5.000 telecentres in the Canadian Telecentre Network, PCNA (Pacific Community Network), the US-American Network, CTCNet (Community Technology Centres Network), the Puertorican Telecentre Network, ASPIRA, and the Telecentre Network for Latin America and the Caribbean, somos@telecentros. The approach to implement I-Malls through TAP gave the project more weight and arguments for the making the next step, the creation of alliances with international service providers in order to create the I-Malls business model.
Multi-stakeholder partnership (MSP) The outcome of this step had been a configuration which integrates existing services in a new context. It includes vendors throughout the hemisphere that do not have the facilities to deal with international markets, it includes existing providers of logistics and credit and it includes telecentres all over the continent serving as logistics and purchase centres within the communities. Among the I-Malls partners there are the logistics provider UPS, the IT-provider Microsoft and a variety of local banks and credit unions. This partnership is the strength of the project, because it brings together the necessary expertise from the different areas the project. Considering the wideness of this alliance, the I-Malls process shows that ‘doing business with the poor’, what is an ugly but useful phrase, slowly becomes part of the mindset of the corporative world, which usually preferred to compete in well-known, but saturated markets instead of trying to integrate low-income populations into their business strategies. It still is difficult to communicate community-based business models to corporate
actors, but it becomes more and more possible with every successful project. The task, telecentre networks have to fulfill, is to provide their corporate partners with the information they need for making business decisions. This information comprises statistics regarding network membership, telecentre target population, telecentre locations, users, user needs, user behaviour and services provided by the telecentres. Of course, this is a very ‘corporate’ way of documenting community-based telecentre activities, but one of ChasquiNet’s learned lessons when dealing with MSPs is that each
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door for community development and this development is mandatory for intensive two-way use of the I-Malls channel. Finally, this intensive use of the two-way I-Malls channel caused by active and developing communities is the common goal of the telecentres, the telecentre networks and I-Malls’ corporate partners.
History
sector (public, private or social) has its own style of documenting and measuring processes, of communication and of the way of decision-making including the speed of decision-making. The conclusion is that telecentre networks, acting as intermediaries, must be able to deliver to the different actors the information as the respective actor needs. Moreover, they must be able to deliver this information in a format the respective actor is used to deal with.
TAP and the MSP In the case of I-Malls, the weight, the project got through TAP, was and still is the enabler for the implementation of the MSP. Within this partnership, the role of the telecentre networks is to communicate and advocate the community interests and to combine them with the corporate interests of the service providers. Hence, the role of the telecentre networks is to assure the glocal character of the project.
The concept The I-Malls concept is revolutionary. The key is the complementing expertise of the different actors within the I-Malls MSP. Because of these different capabilities, the question of how to get the goods from here to there and how to pay and get paid becomes resolvable. This is a milestone for e-Commerce, not only in Latin America. It will be the first big scale e-Commerce service which does not require credit cards from its customers, which delivers at least to the community if not to the door, which offers a two-way channel, which offers a credit line for micro enterprises and which has as its main goal the incubation of community development in the connected communities. The latter is of crucial importance for the success and, hence, the sustainability of I-Malls. Community development is the core goal of the whole project, from the perspective of ChasquiNet and TAP. Only if I-Malls catalyses community development, the communities will use the I-Malls channel in a sustainable way. Therefore, I-Malls MUST be a two-way channel. Communities get access to new markets as purchasers as well as producers. Communities will receive training and permanent support, what is the strength of organisations like ChasquiNet. Moreover, I-Malls will provide a micro-credit line and small and medium enterprise (SME) assistance (specific training courses, support materials, assistance with import/export and shipping). Altogether opens the
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ChasquiNet had been working with telecentres since 1997. The Ecuadorian e-Commerce pilot barriocom, which is the origin of the I-Malls idea, took place from 2001 until 2003. The process to implement the I-Malls idea as a project had been initiated in 2004. In 2005 the project’s processes had been defined on outline level. The current complicated task of all stakeholders is the implementation of the MSP and the refinement, application, local appropriation and local implementation of the defined I-Malls process. As a result, pilot projects in geographical zones covered by telecentres (clusters) will start operating in late 2006. The goal is to establish the I-Malls project in Canada, the US and six Latin American countries in the next two years and in expand globally afterwards.
Changing patterns The implementation of the I-Malls project will start as a proof of concept in Latin America. But it has a global scope, because telecentre networks have been emerging in every continent. The needs and opportunities of the communities, who developed their telecentre and who struggle to sustain it, are unique. Every telecentre and every community is different. But the barriers to e-Commerce and to community development follow similar patterns in many places of the world. If the proof of concept is successful in Latin America, what directly depends on the functioning of the MSP, I-Malls immediately will become a solution for other regions. Telecentres exist almost anywhere in the world. The telecentre networks are emerging and the international service providers have global approaches and are already operating worldwide. The door to worldwide community based e-Commerce is open. If it is being successful, I-Malls will be more than a proof of concept with global scope. It will change patterns far beyond eCommerce. If the project succeeds, the role of telecentres in the Information Society will be defined in a new way. Telecentres will not be seen any longer as isolated ventures working on the improvement of local living conditions in marginalised communities. Telecentres will become interconnected nodes through which active and productive communities mutually interchange goods, information, experience and services of any kind. The totality of these notes and their communities, being represented through the telecentre networks, will be an attractive partner for numerous and different kinds of project initiatives in areas like e-Commerce, education, research, knowledge sharing, medicine, telecommuting and others. A well organised telecentre network, which represents hundreds of thousands of people and which is able to reach and motivate them, is an interesting partner for any organisation with a global approach. Considering this, it is the task and it must be the mission of any telecentre network to transform these global approaches into glocal projects, which positively influence the life of the people who the network represents. i4d | September 2006
September 2006
Efficient Programme Monitoring For effective and efficient programme implementation constant monitoring is essential. NISG has various mechanisms in place – one of them being Results Based Management (RBM) framework – to ensure that projects are on track and yielding expected outcomes. This article highlights how one of the pilot projects – e-Krishi – was modified based on lessons learnt. Introduction The face of agriculture has changed as Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have become increasingly critical to farmers and agricultural planners in the developed world. ICTs have many potential applications spanning the breadth of the agricultural industry targeting and covering all stakeholders such as farmers, cooperative and professional bodies, farm machinery vendors, fertilizer and chemical companies, insurance, regulators, commodities dealers, agronomists, consultants, farm advisors, etc. A farmer needs to be supported throughout the agricultural lifecycle. During crop planning, a farmer requires information and advisory services related to the soil, weather, crop diversification, water supply, etc. In subsequent stages, the farmer is required to be serviced by providers of seeds, fertilizers, machinery, etc. In the postharvesting stage, the farmer faces the challenges of marketing, storage and sale of his produce. At each stage of the lifecycle, the farmer is supported by various government agencies including extension officers, credit banks, cooperatives, educational and research institutions. But in reality, from the
farmer’s perspective the supply chain has been found to be inefficient. With emerging calls for a Second Green Revolution to increase the productivity and diversification of the agricultural sector, ICTs must be effectively mainstreamed to bring improvement in the lives of the rural community that is primarily dependent on agriculture.
Background of e-krishi In a scenario where market determined production is likely to be the basis of all agricultural operations, real-time and up-to-date information regarding market prices, insurance, logistics, warehousing, commodity trading, pesticide and other allied activities and resources becomes indispensable to the farmers. Taking into account the need to provide the farmer with a fair chance in this competitive environment a pilot project e-Krishi is being implemented by the Kerala State IT Mission under the ICTD Project. The broad objective is to create agribusiness centres for providing web-based information system for multiple stakeholders. The vision of the project is to create a “connected farmers community” throughout Kerala who have ac-
cess to market information, good agricultural practices, quality agricultural inputs, backed by a robust transaction platform that supports all on-line and off-line activities. The project is being piloted in the Malappuram district of Kerala since the last 18 months. The project addresses the existing gap in agriculture information flow and transaction management and is expected to facilitate farmers to interact with agricultural service providers in the private, government and non-government sectors utilizing the already existing Akshaya centres as delivery points. The interaction would be through a web-based platform (www.e-krishi.org). The design and architecture of the project is such that it can be easily scaled to cover the entire state. Preliminary Impact Study of e-Krishi A preliminary impact study of the project was conducted by Prof. V. Mukunda Das of Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management – Kerala (IIITM-K). The data for the study was obtained through unstructured interviews with various stakeholders. The web portal of the project was also analysed in detail and evaluated.
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Make ICTs Work for People
marketing system especially in transactions. This resistance to change was fuelled by the compelling role of existing middlemen based marketing system where dependence on middlemen was very strong. This reduced the adoption rate of the online system of transactions far more than expected.
Mid-Course Corrections
The major finding was that the lack of a legalized transaction platform in Kerala substantially hindered the progress of the project. Every state has the Agricultural Produce Marketing Commodity (APMC) Act in place. Kerala does not have such an Act. In the absence of this Act middlemen have to buy on behalf of the buyer. To enable the buyer to directly contact the farmer through the eKrishi web portal requires legislative changes. The absence of this crucial piece of legislation has held up the pace of the project. The study also identified that the most visible impact of the project so far has been is in creating awareness on farm prices – dependable and relevant – to the farmers. While it may be early to assess the quantitative savings for the farmers, it has been observed that middlemen who traditionally dictate prices to farmers have become cautious in under-quoting market prices because the farmers are aware of the current market prices, thanks to e-Krishi. The impact of the project till date has been quite satisfactory. The savings arising out of better price
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awareness, adoption of better agriculture practices leading to higher productivity, adopting quality agricultural inputs are measurable and tangible impacts of the project. Some of the other salient observations from the impact study are as follows: a. The assumptions about change management have not been realistic and therefore, could not contribute to accelerating the project. While Akshaya’s biggest strength in technology was regarded as the most important resource base, it did not turn out to be so important compared to the expectations from the farmers. The interventions for meeting the farmers’ expectations were not effective to the expected level. b. The farmers had to switch to a new generation of adjustment and activities. Being small farmers, given their low risk-taking ability and high fear of failure, they had difficulty in adopting and endorsing the new technology intensive system. c. The farmers had their own reasons not to move over to a new
The impact study provided NISG the opportunity to review the eKrishi project pragmatically. Based on the study, it was felt that the project needs to focus upon improving communication and information sharing. This communication has to be customized in such a way that the farmers are benefited and the project meets its goal. Therefore, a component for more deeper and intense communication interfacing with farming community needs to be undertaken with farmers. The filling of this critical gap would strengthen and accelerate the project outcome. Based on the lessons learnt from the field during the first phase of project implementation, a more holistic approach has been considered to get the desired results. The active participation from different collaborators, trade related agencies, farm clubs, self-help groups, women’s groups, Kudumbasree units and others have been felt to be essential for the successful implementation of the project. The main objective of e-Krishi is the promotion of agricultural trade. Therefore the current implementation plan ensures that it leverages upon the Karshaka Information, Systems, Services and Networking (KISSAN) network and presents itself as the IT facilitated trade related part of the agriculture related services. KISSAN envisages prowww.nisg.org
Appropriate linkages have been forged with the e-Extensions and education initiatives like the KISSAN, Virtual University for Agricultural Trade (VUAT) and Krishideepam TV serial so that the project’s objectives and goals are achieved efficiently and effectively. IIITM-K will assist KSITM in eKrishi implementation in areas like technology development, on demand information services, providing expert advisories, setting up on demand educational /training programs, etc. The following components have been added to achieve the results and outcomes as proposed. 1) Portal enhancement: The present portal has to be enhanced with more content. External help and collaboration of other institutions and agencies will be sought to enhance the
portal with more enriched content. More dynamic modules like ‘on-demand’ advisory services, best practices in agriculture, ‘Ask an expert’, etc, will be incorporated. These will be dynamic modules which will give more details and guide farmers on quality planting materials and inputs to the farmers from the nearest places. a)
b)
A statewide market information system: which will collect and disseminate information on prices of various commodities and its arrivals from the selected local market. Ask an expert : This module will help the farmers and trad-
ers to seek any expert advice and solutions on specific issues. The scientists and experts working in the KISSAN data centre will provide authentic and reliable answer to the queries. The farmers will be encouraged to post their issues through e-Krishi portal either directly or with the help of Akshaya Entrepreneurs. c)
Content development in various aspects: The portal will be enhanced with more useful and user-friendly contents on various aspects of farming. This includes information on various crops, best farming practices, water management, and nutrient management, harvesting, weed management, pest and disease management, etc. for the selected crops, which have regional importance. Apart from the above, the portal will be supplemented by the collaborating effort of KISSAN, VUAT and other Agri informatics initiatives of IIITM-K, Department of Agriculture and Kerala Agricultural University.
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Make ICTs Work for People
viding infrastructure and organisational support for establishing IT facilitated Agricultural Consulting Services through a virtual enterprise model. It is a model where cooperating experts located anywhere geographically will be in a position to offer specialized and advanced consulting services or help build and sustain knowledge intensive products and services in the rural areas.
Make ICTs Work for People 42
Akshaya Center : The backbone of the e-Krishi network
2) Virtual Trade Call Centre: Taking note of the fact that the state of Kerala has the highest telephone density in the country of 7 per 100 and also has the highest rural telephone density in the country with 5.1 per 100 it was decided to set up a telephonic call centre, which would give dynamic advice, and trade related information on real time basis. Farmers and traders in Kerala would benefit from the cost effectiveness and time saving of the telephonic advisory services. A comprehensive trade related database and dynamic database on prices of agricultural commodities would supplement the call centre. The reliability and authenticity of the information is very important to sustain the call centre. The call centre will be managed by agriculture experts and extension officers. 3) Media-based programs: The intervention of media is very crucial in any socially relevant project, especially visual media. It is a powerful tool to reach large number of targeted users. The project will develop some good quality informative video programs to be telecast through
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satellite channels or cable TV operators. This will also include some programs on best practices, value addition, best techniques, etc for better productivity. The contents will also be distributed through the Akshaya network. 4) Master Digital Video Archival system: A demand driven content strategy is crucial for the success of the project. The best quality video contents on various aspects of farming including good success stories will be developed and distributed over the network or in offline mode. This will help the farmers adopt best practices. This could be one of the most effective knowledge sharing methods for agriculture. IIITM-K has developed more than 1000 hours of telecast quality highly informative digital video materials on various aspects of agriculture and allied sectors. The project will make use of the existing video contents developed by KISSAN and convert them into streaming format. The project also envisages converting these raw footages to CD format and distributing through the Akshaya centers for the benefit of farming community.
5) Location specific web enabled GIS for agricultural trade Developing location specific market information system is the last key change envisaged in the project. Location specific farm based advisories on crop practices, natural resource utilisation, etc. will be provided using web GIS. This will also help them choose the right mix of crops and this can also correct the randomly occurring demand – supply gap in agriculture products. The base map for Malappuram district with road network, important places, markets, etc is already available with IIITM-K for further processing. The project envisages building further GIS based dynamic applications by connecting different databases already developed for the KISSAN and VUAT project. NISG believes that the activities proposed as part of the mid-course corrections will supplement the original objectives of the e-Krishi project and will add value to the farmers and other agricultural stakeholders in the state. ICTD
NISG and i4d jointly hold the copyright to the articles printed in the ICTD section of the i4d magazine and website. For permission to reprint the articles please write to the Editor i4d.
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RENDEZVOUS I NDIAN T ELECENTRE F ORUM 2006 (ITF 2006), 23-25 A UGUST , N EW D ELHI
Knowledge sharing through telecentres Indian Telecentre Forum 2006 (ITF 2006) along with two parallel events, ‘e-Gov India 2006’ and ‘Digital Learning India 2006’ was jointly organised by CSDMS along with several partners, at Hotel Taj Palace in New Delhi (India), on 23-25 August. This was a result of a number of collaborative steps for creating international understanding of the needs of telecentres in India. The welcome address was delivered by M. P. Narayanan, the President of CSDMS. The convocation ceremony of fellows of
National Participatory Knowledge Management Workshop and Plans for Mission 2007 Training Commons. Ashutosh Chadha, Manager Education Programme, Intel, announced the launch of Intel Learning Programme to Jamsetji Tata National Virtual Academy (NVA) and NVA fellows. The key note address was delivered by Professor M.S.Swaminathan, President, Jamsetji Tata National Virtual Academy. Special address was made by Kiran Karnik,
NVA fellows after the convocation with the lead panelists, 23rd August 2006
Jamsetji Tata National Virtual Academy Fellows (NVA) followed. The fellows were conferred with awards for their grass root initiatives by MSSRF. The welcome address of the convocation was delivered by Tara Gandhi, Advisor, Jamsedji Tata National Virtual Academy. Basheerhamad Shadrach, Senior Programme Officer, International Development Research Centre (IDRC) explained the outcome of the Third September 2006 | www.i4d.csdms.in
Trustee, NASSCOM Foundation and by Adrian Marti, Deputy Country Director, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). At the end of convocation ceremony, the vote of thanks was delivered by Nancy Anabel, Coordinator, NVA. The well organised exhibition showcasing technology was inaugurated there after.
An eloquent interaction with National Virtual Academy (NVA) fellows was arranged, where they shared their experiences with the fellow participants. The discussion of multi level exchange of ideas was being translated in regional languages by facilitators to overcome the barriers of interchange and communication in various languages. The session was followed by Mission 2007: The way forward under the lead of DC Misra, NIC, Government of India reiterated ‘content’ being king. The convergence group led by Aruna Sundararajan of IL&FS, Tarun Malik of Saksham, Microsoft and V.V. Rajasekhar of ITC talked of the major telecentres models planned in India. The capacity building discussions were led by Ankhi Das of Microsoft and Namrata Bali of SEWA. The session was moderated by B. Shadrach, telecentre.org/IDRC. The day concluded with the Dinner Panel honoured by Mani Shankar Aiyer, the Hon’ble Minister of Panchayati Raj and Youth Affairs and Sports, Government of India. There was an award ceremony for three innovators in the field of i4d, egov and Digital Learning (see page 32 for detailed coverage). From the second day of the conference, there were parallel sessions, tracked conveniently to hold the specific interest of speakers as well as the audience. The session ‘Telecentre Models: Global experience’ was moderated by Mark Surman, Managing Director of telecentre.org/IDRC. The panellist were divided into distinct groups of representing nations who have proved their innovative potential in running the telecentres. The participants were divided into groups of seven to share the experiences by each of the representing nation. Accordingly, Aminata Maiga of Afrilinks,
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International Telecentre thought leaders sharing their experties to the Indian Telecentre Community, 24 August 2006
rural connectivity options with a focus on telecentres. Morten Falch of DTU discussed his paper ‘National Strategies for Promoting Broadband Access’. Dr.Avinash Joshi of Tech Mahindra focused on the rural connectivity issues in the session. There was a parallel session on ‘Indian Telecentre Networks: The Next Steps’, chaired by Rufina Farnandes, NASSCOM Foundation. The speakers in this session were V.V. Rajasekhar from ITC, Satyen Mishra from Drishtee, J.S.Sandha from Jagriti eSeva, Capt K.J.S.Brar from Designmate, Surendra Rana from Tarahaat, Rama Hariharan from National Informatics Centre (NIC), Government of India, Shantanu Sengupta from Grasso and Dr. Ashok Jain from AISECT. After the presentations, the participants discussed important issues like government’s role in telecentre initiatives, sustainability issues of the telecentres and also the sensitive issue of social responsibility for telecentres. The post-lunch session was on Government Rural ICT initiatives and IT Secretaries Panel. Shefali Dash of NIC, Government of India, N S Kalsi, Secretary IT, Government of Punjab, Sivasankar, Director of IT Mission Kerala State and Alok Bhargava were the representative members from government.
Mali; Subbiah Arunachalam of MSSRF, India; Zulfikar Mochamad Rachman of the National Development Planning Agency, Indonesia; Harsha Liyanage of Sarvodaya, Sri Lanka; Marianna Posfai of 4CLI, Hungary; Tess Camba, Commission on Information and Communication Technology, Philippines; Phonaphasit from Laos; Klaus Stoll from Latin America; and Michael Gurstein from Canada narrated their experiences gathered in operating telecentres in the goodwill of the communities. The UN Solution Exchange Workshop on Knowledge Management was also held parallely that highlighted the activities of UN Solution Exchange and its online communities. The second session of the day was on ‘Rural Connectivity’, chaired by Deepak Maheshwari of ISPAI. Vipul Sharma of Nortel made presentations on wireless technologies and enabling e Governance applications, Rakesh Radha Krishnanan of Sun Micro Systems made a demonstration on e-Connectivity for PURA, Patrick Veron of Alcatel talked on WiMax- Access Connectivity, enabling a world of broadband wireless opportunities, Prof. U.B.Desai of Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay The International donors marketplace highlighting ‘Investing, Engaging, and Impacting discussed on Wireless Mesh Networks for Rural Areas, the Telecentre Movement’ strategies Senthil Ayyasamy of Bharati Airtel discussed the scalable It was followed by International donors Forum ‘Investing, architecture for rural kiosks, Ashish Duggal of Gilat focused on Engaging, and Impacting the Telecentre Movement for Poverty Reduction and Achieving the MDGs’. Introductory remarks were made by Richard Gerster and San Ng of the Asia Foundation, USA facilitated a marketplace session after taking the participants’ inputs and questions to the donors. Hyunjung Lee of ADB of Philippines, Adrian Marti of SDC, Mark Surman and B.Shadrach of telecentre.org/IDRC, Jody Mahoney of Tech Soup, USA, Jocelyne Josiah of UNESCO, and Maxine Olson of UNDP. The third day of the panel discussion focused on Telecentres: Where can India be in 2010.The discussion panel went eloquent with DC Misra of NIC, Government of India on e Governance efforts on Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) in various states. N. Subramanian, a research scientist from CDAC, Bangalore focussed Rural connectivity session with eminent panelists in progress, 24 August 2006 on research and training methods that to be repeated between lab
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i4d | September 2006
Telecentres: Where can India be in 2010? Panelists deliberate
and ground to bridge the digital divide and Tarun Malik of Saksham, Microsoft. The second parallel session was held on ‘Relevant technologies with impact in the telecentre movement’, chaired by Michael Gurstein. Four papers were presented in this session by Deepak Menon, Microsoft Research India, Zulfikar Mochamad Rachman of The National Development Planning Agency, Indonesia, Prashant Chaudhary of Computer Associates and Hyunjung Lee of Asian Development Bank (ADB). After the presentations, an interactive discussion was held among the participants and presenters regarding the issues like partnership in telecentre initiatives, corruption problem, strategies for assisting telecentres, etc. The session on ‘South Asian Telecentre Experiences’ was chaired by S. Abbasi of DIT, Government of India. Md Shahid Uddin Akbar, ICT for Development Programme, Bangladesh outlined the challenges of Telecentres: an increasing trend of content divide in developing countries. He raised the question, why at all a teacher, farmer or student from a rural area should go to telecentre! A H M Sultanur Reza, A M M Yahya of Grameen Phone Ltd., Bangladesh shared a feasibility study on telecentres for sustainability, Prof Lutfor Rahman, Founder Vice Chancellor, Pundra University of Science and Technology, Bangladesh viewed telecentres from
The ITF 2006 delegates in rapt attention during a session in progress, 25th August 2006 September 2006 | www.i4d.csdms.in
livelihood and job creating potential and as a resource centre for community development in rural areas. Shagun Dhakhwa of Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya (MPP), an NGO in Nepal working in the preservation of Nepali language and literature, besides FOSS in the respective language, made his presentation on ‘Sambad’. Shikha Shrestha of Bellanet, Nepal in her presentation wanted ICT’s to become a medium of voice for the voiceless. The telecentres, should work on ICT4D network promotion, research and capacity building, localisation and technological innovations and advocate for ICT policies, she remarked. Sharad Babu Shrestha of READ Nepal shared his success story of rural libraries becoming telecentres. The session on ‘Case studies from India’ had Roger Harris from Roger Harris Associates, Hong Kong, T.K.Omana from RASTA (an NGO in Kerala, India), Ashish Saboo from Association of ICT Tools Access Providers and T.N. Anuradha from OneWorld South Asia sharing their valuable experiences in India in the field of telecentres. With the international telecentre specialists, another session was held to collate the recommendations.
Collating the recommendations to the Indian Telecentre Forum 2006
A discussion on work plan for the telecentre movement to move forward was held in the post-lunch session on the third day of the conference. The session was entitled as ‘2010 roadmap and vision: How do we get there?’ Implementable and thought ideas were shared with a group of international experts like Radhika Lal of UNDP, New York, B. Shadrach of IDRC/telecentre.org, Veena Joshi of SDC and Ankhi Das from Microsoft. All the sessions concluded with valedictory session, chaired by Dr. M. P. Narayanan, President of CSDMS. The panellists were Adrian Marti, Deputy Country Head, SDC, Piti Premotedham, Managing Director, Asia South, Computer Associates, Subhash C Khuntia, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India. There was an interactive discussion on the conference outputs among the participants and panellists. The triple conference concluded with a vote of thanks by Ravi Gupta, Director of CSDMS. A detailed conference report with recommendations will be soon available on the web. log on to www.i4donline.net/indiantelecentreforum
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Bytes for All... The months of July and August saw terror raising its ugly head again. Mumbai-India suffering from a series of train bomb blasts and UK, luckily escaping similar mid-air blasts. We at Bytes For All, hope for new beginnings and a life free of terror and most importantly a life where each an express his/her free opinion. The ban on blogs, blogging and how the cyber community forged ahead despite bans at various times seem to have dominated reader postings on the BFA list this month.
India blocks blog sites after blasts: Post Mumbai blasts; bloggers in India got a rude shock when the Indian government banned some popular blogging sites, which apparently had a tinge of communalism. A report about the same was posted on the list by one of our readers George Lessard. Read the full report at http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/jul/ 17blog.htm. Hardcore bloggers would certainly feel strongly about the ban. And Fredrick Noronha of BFA submitted an interesting post to the list, which contained some of the counter arguments made by bloggers against the ban. Read on: • The Terrorists used telephones (landlines and cell phones) to communicate. Why didn’t the government ban phones too? (Come to think of it, the police jammed cell phone networks immediately after the blasts, supposedly to thwart the terrorist’s communication lines. That it put the public in the throes of tragedy at great inconvenience is another matter altogether) • The government cannot suppress the citizen’s right to express an opinion. • The Internet has umpteen number of communication platforms, like chat rooms, messengers, email groups, game sites, etc. Targeting only blogs does not make sense. • Censorship usually causes dissidence among the populace, as is well documented in history. Revolt is usually triggered by restriction. As is human tendency, when you do not have something, the craving for that thing is more. • The Indian government decided to block blogs as it was rumored that the banned organization SIMI used them for communication. It’s the classic case of the whole basket of apples having to suffer because of one rotten apple. Tomorrow what stops the government from cutting off water supply from the taps just because SIMI too will be drinking from it? • The terrorist takes away the citizen fight to feel safe and the government the right to free expression. • The government needs to understand that it cannot stifle the voice of the online citizen just by imposing a ban. Internet savvy people will surely find ways to blog despite the ban with the help of social technologies. • Its time the decision maker in the government also becomes technology savvy. Just because it was known that the terrorists used blogs to communicate, the government goes ahead and bans most of them, without taking the trouble to really read what these blogs are all about. No one would feel safe if the security of the country is in the hands of such ill-informed bureaucrat.
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• The govt. is probably new to the concept of “community content”. Internet by virtue of its anatomy is a realm that does not have any boundaries and no rulers. How can the owner of a web site be held responsible for what is posted on his/her site by thousands of usually anonymous users. This case is very similar to the case when the owner of Baazee.com was arrested when a MMS clip was sold from his website. • The government better amend its draconian decision fast. The banned websites are contemplating legal action. The loss of revenue to the government is some food for thought. Read Fredrick’s entire report at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/ message/8372
Note: Luckily for Indian bloggers the government has since reversed it ban on blogging sites. Guess uproar does help after all. Me.com While still on blogs, one of our readers Satish Jha submitted an interesting post ‘from a bloggers report’. The post had an interesting dissection of blog-sphere, blogging and bloggers in general. It says that for most bloggers, sharing their personal experiences is ‘A’ reason and not ‘THE’ reason to blog. However the breakup goes as follows: 37 percent: my life and experiences, 11 percent: politics, 7 percent: entertainment, 6 percent: sports, 5 percent: news, 4 percent: technology, 2 percent: religion and spirituality. According to the post, some observers believe that blogging is attributed to the growing culture of narcissism and exhibitionism spurred on by reality TV. What comes to mind are the following lines from Shakespeare: “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely Players; They have their Exits and their Entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts…” Other reasons for blogging are as bizarre as ‘creating the longest thread in history’, 8 percent say they do it for money and a miniscule figure says they do it ‘for the love of it’. But the overwhelming theme for bloggers always remains ‘ME’. So is this new phenomenon in cyberspace positive or negative. Positive, because, it promotes democratisation of voices that can bypass the gatekeepers of mainstream media. Negative, because it promotes narcissism and most importantly because of another horrifying reason: ‘Madness is rare in individuals, but in groups, parties, nations and ages it is the rule’. Wonder whether the Indian government read too much into the last statement! Link: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/message/8379
How the cyber community overcame the ban So first we had the blogs and than the ban. And thankfully a happy ending to the story with the ban being lifted. This was not the first time that cyber citizens were gagged. First it was China blocking sites that dealt with Tibet’s liberation. Than Pakistan banned sites on the Danish cartoons. At various times, governments have been arbitrarily banning sites under the guise of patriotism, pornography and communal harmony. Fredrick Noronha of BFA submitted a post on just how the cyber community has been pulling ahead of censors. The post is an interaction between Shashwat Chaturvedi from CyberMedia News and the co-founder of Electronic Frontier i4d | September 2006
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Bytes for All... Foundation (EFF) John Gilmore. Read on: The EFF is a group that fights global censorship on the Internet. Defending free speech, privacy, innovation and consumer rights. On asked whether it is possible to block content on the Internet, Gilmore had this to say: It is hard to stop a dedicated set of people bend on publishing information. When typewriters and photo copiers were banned in the erstwhile USSR, hand-copied information was distributed. It is even more difficult to stop such people on the Internet where it is even easier to copy. Often the ban has the opposite effect than that foreseen by the government. The publicity attracts even more people to the very sites sort to be banned. Gilmore was asked about the ethical concerns in banning material on the Internet. For e.g. shouldn’t child pornographic sites or sites stoking religious sentiments be banned? To which Gilmore replied saying: It is not appropriate to ban any information from adults. The cure for bad information is correct information. A computer cannot make moral choices. That choice is for well-informed and educated humans to make. Teach people why they should not be religious fanatics, or molest children. Hiding the ugliness is not a cure for it. As is said, ‘sunlight is the best disinfectant’. The vast majority of Internet users are innocent. And subversive and pervert users are in a minority. Surely a small minority cannot control the thoughts of the majority. For more such interesting comments read the complete post at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/message/8427
More snippets on blogs • According to a post from Fredrick of BFA, several bloggers have decided to unite into a Bloggers Collective and file a Right to Information petition, in order to obtain the list of sites blocked. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/message/8367
• Banned or not, in the aftermath of the Mumbai blasts several bloggers decided to do their bit by posting information (like names, contact numbers, photographs that they had personally collected by visiting hospitals) about the victims on their blogs. Notable blogs among them were Mumbai.metblogs.com and mumbaihelp.blogspot.com. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/message/8356
Is SMS killing creativity? Our reader Satish Jha submitted a post on the above topic. According to the post, text messages or SMS (short messaging services) as it is more well known has been killing creativity among our people specially youngsters. No longer do people spend hours choosing or decorating cards for their loved ones. What’s more there are even ready-made SMS for special occasions. Die-hard SMS fans however refute the cons of SMS saying that sending a short message is actually creative. Not all people are good at expressing themselves; hence SMS comes as a saviour. If you have nothing to say but still want to keep in touch over large distances than SMS is for you. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/message/8479 September 2006 | www.i4donline.net
$100 laptop: here or not here! The $100 laptop prototype has been launched. It is spill proof and drop proof. In short designed to work in some of the most rough and rugged terrains of the world. In reaction to this report, one of our readers Wayan Vota of Geekcorps Division cautioned that it is still a prototype and once launched, it will cost more than $150 in order to sustain its initial cost. Will not have any local support or maintenance ecosystems or any teacher training or user adoption support. Wayan went on to add that if the poor in rural India had access to affordable ICT’s and were trained to use them then they could definitely improve their lives and create wealth for themselves and their families. The government should actually spend money in developing such far-reaching comprehensive solutions instead on just falling for the hype created by the $100 laptop. Another of our readers Charulata Basu had a poser: is it relevant for us to uplift the quality of education in villages in India. Maybe technology savvy education makes sense only in the rural areas of USA. What is the need to make such hype and noise about these innovations as if they solve the problems of the world? To which another reader Vickram replied that innovation was not about doing old things better, but doing altogether new things. Charulata reacted to Vickram saying, “Innovation for innovation sake makes matters worse”. It distracts people from the central issues and brings distortions. The reason why ICTs are not penetrating in rural India at the rate they should is because of this innovations syndrome. And the $100 laptop epitomizes this. Atanu Garai of OneWorld New Delhi commented that using of laptops and desktops does help in honing the learning skills of students. Satish Jha opined that there is no need for ICT crusaders to be emotional in pushing the technology like the $100 laptop. Making the traditional means of education i.e. books cheaper will contribute a lot. And if the goernment. does want to tow the line of ICT, that it is better to come up with alternatives to increase access to computing rather than substitutes that may be of questionable value. Charulata countered Jha’s points saying that making gadgetry cheaper does have benefits but only helps marginally in overall development as it distorts progress on core issues. Vickram countered saying that innovation must continue without distracting flow of life. Ananya of IGNOU agreed but added that simply mouthing platitudes will not suffice. A large part of India does not have basic necessities of life like power supply, water, radio stations or television. Isn’t it out of place to talk of laptops! Well rest assured that we haven’t read the last word on this debate. Bytes for All: www.bytesforall.net Bytes For All Readers Discussion: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ bytesforall_readers Bytes for All Summary Archive: http://www.bytesforall.net/Summary/ Bytes for All discussion summary compiled by: Archana P. Nagvekar, Bytes for All, India
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RENDEZVOUS ‘KICCS’ 2006, A YUTTAYA , T HAILAND
Knowledge discovery
The critical importance of Knowledge Management, Collaboration and Information Systems to social and economic development is steadily becoming acknowledged by wider Asian academic and business circles. Asia can be referred to as the cradle of civilization, where many of the most ancient languages first developed, where societies are inherently very close knit and ‘collaboration’ is a natural way of life. Yet, by western standards, communication, creative and critical thinking and knowledge exchange in modern Asia are just emerging. Last August in Ayuttaya, Thailand ‘KICCS’ took place, the first Conference on Knowledge, Information and Creativity Support Systems in the country. Announced a few months earlier via international links – I am a westerner working in Thailand for an IT university, yet received the link to the conference website via a Thai IT researcher who lives in Germany - it was a significant milestone for the academic knowledge community in the region, and despite difficult topics verging on the experimental and multiple language barriers, the event caused a good measure of excitement among the participants. The hosts Sirindhorn International Institute of Technology (SIIT), Thammasat University, in collaboration with Japan Adv anced Institute of Science and Technology in Japan and the Thai Computational Linguistics Laboratory (TCL), NICT, put together a programme spanning all areas of knowledge discovery engineering and beyond. The majority of the presenters were international doctoral and postdoctoral students from at least a dozen different countries, as well as senior professors and researchers. The first day ‘keynote’ was given by Mr.Takeo Higuchi, the Founder of Idea-Marathon system (http://idea-marathon.net/en), Mr.Higuchi, in his colourful presentation, explained his system: thanks to the systematic notation – strictly handwriting – of all the ideas that one can possibly generate (how many ideas do you get any one day?), the brain will eventually train itself to become a powerhouse of active thoughts – not just ideas likely to disappear into our subconscious mind, let’s admit it: most of us keep our dreams in a drawer – but action plans, visuali-
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sations of our projects, the first steps towards the full realisation of our life purposes. Mr Higuchi amazed everyone and managed to convince many in the audience that always carrying a notebook and a pencil is a way of life, and that the future of knowledge and creativity is not in electronic devices, but in handwriting. Higuchi fears that keyboards are changing the ability of humans to be in touch with their emotions, and demoed a forthcoming technology to convert handwriting from the penciled notebook, into electronic characters readable by any computer device. The second day invited talk was given by Prof. Riichiro Mizoguchi, from Osaka University. He gave his classical, always fascinating straightforward ‘Ontology Engineering’ talk, mainly a primer for those who still haven’t come to terms with it yet, held by one of the most prominent, world class Asian researchers in this area. For a few Ontology expers in the audience, this was a rare chance to attend a masterclass by a leading thinker in this relatively new discipline, and a chance to take a close peek at his recent work. The third scheduled talk ‘Natural Language Processing Based on Knowledge with Degrees of Abstraction’ given by Dr Hitoshi Isahara, NICT Japan, included an overview of several papers presented at the conference and his intervention received a special mention. Over the three days about fifty presentations were held across two tracks: Machine Learning and Knowledge Management, and their interdisciplinarity became increasingly apparent. The best of Thailand and Japan researchers came together to challenge each other presenting daring topics: among them, ‘Method of selecting media that consider the sender’s demand by use of context information’ (Uchida and Shikida) to ‘Eyetracking Analysis of Japanese reading Process’ (Tera and Sugiyama), ‘Integrated Knowledge Management in Results Based Managed Framework’ (Leonardo et Al), Effects of Pre-processing and feature selection in Nepali (KC and Nattee), the latter winning a special recognition, and dozens of others. Two presentations included references to “Ma” - Japanese word meaning a kind of creative space - “Building Communities of the Future – Image Creation Through ‘Ma’ Management” (Song et al) and “The Role of Online Role-Playing Game Worlds … “(Medeni et al). Medeni explained that although ‘Ba’ is a relatively understood concept in Knowledge Management, ‘Ma’, while broadly used in literature, music and visual arts, has just been recently studied in the context of IT and social sciences. Some research admittedly just showed prototypes, and presented models in search of better refinement and possible application – yet each talk represented clearly a meaningful and promising fragment of a vibrant, thinking Asian knowledge community in the making. Hungry and hopeful researchers interested in knowledge and creativity in Asia will be looking forward to the next edition, scheduled at JAIST Japan in 2007. Report by Paola Di Maio, paola.dimaio@gmail.com i4d | September 2006
What’s on Australia
Indonesia
2-4 October, 2006 The Australian Computers in Education Conference 2006 (ACEC 2006) Cairns North Queensland
11-13th Sep 2006 ENGAGE Indonesia 2006 Hilton International Hotel, Jakarta, Indonesia http://www.jakarta2006.engage-ist.org
http://www.terrapinn.com/2006/media%5Fau/
India 5-8 December, 2006 The 2nd ICDL (International Conference on Digital Libraries), 2006 India Habitat Centre, New Delhi http://static.teriin.org/events/icdl/index.htm
Italy
China 13-15 November, 2006 Wi-World, China 2006 InterContinental Pudong Shanghai http://www.terrapinn.com/2006/ww%5Fcn/
16-17 November, 2006 China Telecom Future Executive Summit Shangri-La Hotel, Beijing http://www.ibgintl.com/events/telecom/
18 September, 2006 EUChinaGRID 1st Conference, Rome
24-27 October, 2006 Africa Media and Broadcasting Congress 2006 Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg South Africa
Spain 25-27 October, 2006 eChallenges e-2006 Conference, Barcelona http://www.echallenges.org/e2006/
15-17 November, 2006 Jornadas Técnicas de RedIRIS 2006 Universidad de Granada, Granada http://www.rediris.es/jt/jt2006/
Switzerland
25-27 October, 2006 1st World Congress on Communication for Development, Rome
25-29 September, 2006 EGEE’06 International Conference Centre Geneva, Geneva
http://www.devcomm-congress.org/worldbank/
CSDMS Events Malaysia 6-8 February, 2007 eGovAsia 2007, Palace of the Golden Horses, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
http://www.itu.int/WORLD2006/
http://www.egovonline.net/egovasia/2007
11-13 December, 2006 NextGen Search 2006 Conrad Hotel, Hong Kong
6-8 February, 2007 DLAsia 2007, Palace of the Golden Horses Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
http://www.terrapinn.com/2006/ngs%5Fhk/
http://www.digitallearning.in/dlasia/2007
Denmark
6-8 February, 2007 Asian Telecentre Forum 2007 Palace of the Golden Horses Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
http://www.forskningsnettet.dk/konference2006
http://www.itafrica-congress.com/
http://www.euchinagrid.org/Conf-Roma06/
4-8 December, 2006 ITU TelecomWorld 2006, Hong Kong
13-14 November, 2006 Forskningsnet Conference 2006 Konferencecentret Comwell, Middelfart, Denmark
14-15 November, 2006 IT Africa Congress Gallagher Estate Conference and Exhibition Centre, South Africa
http://www.terrapinn.com/2006/mediaza/
http://www.acec2006.info
15-16 November, 2006 Australasian Media and Broadcating Congress 2006 Hilton Hotel Sydney
South Africa
http://www.i4donline.net/ATF/2007
http://egee-intranet.web.cern.ch/egee%2Dintranet/ conferences/EGEE06/index.html
Turkey 6-24 November, 2006 The ITU Plenipotentiary Conference Antalya http://www.itu.int/plenipotentiary/2006/index.html
United Arab Emirates 3-5 December, 2006 Bridging the Digital Divide Al Bustan Rotana Hotel, Dubai http://www.terrapinn.com/2006/govme/
10-13 December, 2006 Telecoms World Middle East 2006 Jumeirah Beach Hotel, Dubai http://www.terrapinn.com/2006/twme/
Netherlands
United States
7 October, 2006 ICT Meeting for Next Generation Networks & Convergence, Nadi, Fiji
9-11 October, 2006 Transforming Local and Central Government through information technology Hotel Okura, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
http://www.pita.org.fj/index.cfm?action=events&cmd
http://www.terrapinn.com/2006/tgov/
http://cosl.usu.edu/conferences/opened2006/
Fiji
27-29 September, 2006 Open Education 2006: Community, Culture, and Content, Logan, Utah
Get your event listed here. www.i4donline.net/events September 2006 | www.i4donline.net
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Books received OECD SME and Entrepreneurship Outlook 2005 Publisher: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 2005 edition ISBN: 9264009256 Pages: 350 Boosting and facilitating entrepreneurial capabilities for the rapid growth of innovative SMEs is an effective means of creating jobs, increasing productivity and alleviating poverty. Hence, identifying the policies needs will go in a long way to achieving these goals in industrialised nations as well as in developing nations. The publication, accordingly reflects the recent trends, concerning SMEs and entrepreneurship in OECD economies and beyond. It reports on a wide range of policy initiatives taken to increase the competitive spirit of the SME sectors, which comprises over ninety five percent of all enterprises and accounts for two thirds of private sector employment. The content of the edition looks into the need to reduce regulatory and administrative burdens affecting entrepreneurial activity, the increasing attention given by governments to entrepreneurship education and training, the need to ease SME access to financing, technology, innovation and international markets, the growing importance of women’s entrepreneurship, besides the local policy issues much to the interest of the innovative entrepreneurs and policy implementors and governments.
Open Source for the Enterprise: Managing Risks Reaping Rewards Published by: O’Reilly in 2005 Author: Dan Woods, Gautam Guliani ISBN: 0596101198 Pages: 217 Open Source for the Enterprise is a serious attempt to guide exploring entrepreneurs to open source to work in the modern IT departments. The software has entered a new area where it is being used as a marketing device, a collaborative software development methodology, and a business model. Here a novice can seek answers to questions like, why there a productisation
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gap in most open source projects? how can the maturity of open source be evaluated? how can the ROI of open source be calculated? what skills are needed to use open source? what questions need to be answered by an open source strategy? what policies for governance can be instituted to control the adoption of open source? how will using open source transform an IT department? etc. The authors, with their expertise spanning over 15 years at IT departments small and large have collected the wisdom of a host of experts from IT departments, open source communities, and software companies much to the benefit of the enterprising individuals/groups furnishing an unique insight into realm of open source.
Gender Evaluation Methodology (GEM) for Internet and ICTs Published by: Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and Association for Progressive Communications Women’s Networking Support Programme (APC WNSP) in 2005 Authors: Chat Garcia Ramilo, Cheekay Cinco Edited by: Teresita G. Camacho ISBN: 92-95049-00-4 Pages: 139 As a measure of empowerment, GEM started as a project and has now evolved into a community to make ICTs work for women. The manual Gender Evaluation Methodology (GEM) for In t e r n e t a n d I C Ts i s a s t e p by step guide for developing and implementing evaluation plans that incorporate a gender perspective. GEM has now participatory member groups cutting across Asia, Africa, Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America collaborating and extending cooperation in consolidating the gender issues. It is a useful manual for the beginners who want to have an idea of how to conduct gender evaluations. It is also an authentic reference guide for the experienced persons in evaluation of gender analysis and apply the parametres in ICT initiatives. The manual also comes with an accompanying CD with complete evaluations of ICT projects implemented in different parts of the continents as well as links to the references on methodologies adopted to conduct studies. The GEM tool is also translated into French and Spanish. Above all, GEM is a strong advocate of ICTs as a potential tool in bringing dynamics of social change and gender equity. J i4d | September 2006
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