The issue carries many pieces on IT and social change, the central agenda of our WG. Richard Heeks writes about an area which is sensitive but has a strong influence on the success of computerisation in developing countries. He raises the issue of "corruption" at operastional levels and how it interacts with design and implementation of IT appilications. Like many other areas such as centralisation vs decentralisation, the efects of IT on corruption can not be predicted. We need more than anecdotal evidence to establish whether IT eradicates corruption or institutionalises it another form.

We carry an article on a proposed Canadian initiative to promote effective use of information technology in developing countries. One continues to wonder whether we need more organisations or more action within existing groups. The set of people who are interested in IT and development are not as many as one would hope. There is a need for all organisations concerned with the issue to collaborate. Even well established groups like ours suffer from low activity levels. There has not much activity in the email discussion list in the last 3 months. COMNET-IT seems to be bogged down with the initial spade work of establishing an organisation in Malta. We have not received any furthur proposals for the next WG 9.4 conference. As a fall back, I am proposing that the next conference can be organised in Ahmedabad, India in November-December 2996. Mayuri raised several issues about WG 9.4 conferences in her speech in Cairo which is reproduced. We need some ideas on the theme of our next conference. Should it be more focused as Mayuri suggests or general, like our earlier conferences?

Another area to which the group will have to pay immediate attention is the holding of elections for a new chairperson of the group. Unlike other IFIP WG's the election process in the case our working group will have to work on a system of a postal/electronic ballot. I feel that members should begin the process of consultation and persuasion to identify suitable names who will agree to handle this responsibility. I propose that we give ourselves time until September 1995 to identify a slate of 2/3 potential candidates. That would allow us time send ballot papers with the October Newsletter and the announcement of the new chairperson can be done in the January 2996 issue.

• Computerising Corruption in Developing Countries
  Richard Heeks
  Institute for Development Policy and Management
  University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
   

• Third World Wonders About Information Highway
   

• Time to Address the Basic Problems
  Per Lind
  Industrial Management, Linkoping University, Sweden
   

• The Brazilian Software Production and Export Industrial Policy - SOFTEX-2.000
  Victor Prochnik
  Industrial Economics Institute, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro 

• Canadian Interest Group in Informatics for Development
   

• Mayuri Raises some Issues on WG 9.4 Conferences
   

• Informatics for Medicine as it Affects Developing Countries
  Shirin Madon, 
  LSE
   

• Building Very Reliable Data Communication/Distribution Systems
  Atop Very Unreliable Infrastructure
  Matthew A. Brenner
  Structured Software Systems, Inc.

• Review of a book on Telecommunications in Africa

• Does Technology Drive History?: The Dilemma of Technological Determinism

Studying Computerisation And Corruption

Corruption — "inducement to wrong by bribery or other unlawful or improper means" — is a global problem. The focus of this article is on corruption within the public sector in developing countries.  In choosing this focus, it must, of course, be recognised that other sectors and countries have corruption problems, and that much of the corruption in developing country state organisations involves payments from the private sector and from other countries. As an issue, corruption tends to stir extreme reactions, some of which are noted below (adapted from Klitgaard (1984)):

i) Corruption is a culture-bound concept: "Your culture may say that X is corrupt; mine does not". ii) Corruption is a force for good: "It helps the wheels of government and business to turn". iii) Corruption is too big to deal with: "Corruption is everywhere. What can we ever hope to do about it?".

All of these reactions can make it hard for corruption to be taken seriously, but it must be attacked for at least three good reasons (Davies 1987):

i) It drains off valuable economic resources, particularly investment of funds, into unproductive uses, and reduces the likelihood of planning objectives being achieved.

ii) It siphons off another valuable resource — the time of public servants, into unproductive use, and creates resentments and frustrations among staff, thus reducing administrative efficiency.

iii) Because it is hidden and unaccountable, corruption is essentially undemocratic and hampers the development of democratic processes and institutions.

For these and other reasons, corruption in developing countries has always been regarded as an important issue but it has recently been given additional emphasis through actions of external  organisations such as its explicit inclusion as an element of "good government" in aid allocation decisions by donors such as the UK's ODA; the OECD initiative to eliminate illicit payments; and the creation of the anti-corruption NGO Transparency International.

If corruption is now rising up the international agenda then so, too, is computerisation. One is therefore drawn to ask, "How does computerisation affect corruption in developing countries?". Because of the importance of both issues and their clear association in, for example, financial information systems, one might imagine that this question would regularly crop up. Yet very little has been researched on the topic.

One reason is the problem of any research on corruption, as Klitgaard (1984) notes:

"Corruption is one of the foremost problems facing policy-makers and managers in developing countries, but it is a remarkably difficult one to study."

Corrupt officials will not welcome investigation into their activities and corruption therefore becomes a topic much easier to talk about in private than to research in public. The presentation on university computerisation at the 1992 IFIP WG 9.4 international conference was an indicator of just how very carefully local researchers have to tread when approaching this issue. Secondly, there is that traditional IFIP WG 9.4 problem: study of corruption lies within the realm of social science, yet many social scientists are uncomfortable with new technology; on the other hand, most information technologists would prefer to spend the evening debating the merits of different local bus architectures rather than dealing with real world issues like people and  corruption.

Where the issue does crop up is in the wealth of writing on computer security. However, relatively few case studies have so far emerged from the Third World on this topic.

In researching computerisation and corruption, one obvious interest is to understand whether, for example through improved control mechanisms, computer use might help to reduce or even eliminate corruption. Some thumbnail sketches are offered below to help provide initial pointers to an answer.

They are drawn from the author's personal experience and from the direct experiences of study fellows at the University of Manchester's Institute for Development Policy and Management. (Those correctly identifying all the countries involved win a free three-week field trip to research drug-related corruption in Colombia; all expenses paid, including those for funeral.)

Cases of Computerisation And Corruption

Case 1: An Asian customs department kept manual records with the names and addresses of overseas firms which had been involved in import or export transactions. These contacts were useful to local entrepreneurs, particularly those seeking export collaborations. The entrepreneurs therefore paid customs officials illegally to provide them with the contact details.

The department, including its overseas firm details, was computerised and one computer was put into a front office where members of the public could access it. Entrepreneurs gained direct access to the contact details they wanted and payments were therefore no longer made.

Information about foreign businesses was a resource here which local businesses required. Because the information was scarce and because it was kept as a private resource, customs officials (acting as information "gatekeepers") were able to charge "rent" for access to it. Once the information came into the public domain, no access charges could be made. But, of course, this had little to do with computerisation. The department could have made  its manual records publicly accessible, leading to a similar result. Thus, when looking at computerisation and change, one must take care to disentangle the impact of computers and the impact of simultaneous organisational change.

Case 2: In an African public works department, there was concern about the number of "ghost workers" in the system. These are people listed on the payroll, and therefore paid, who do not exist in reality. Someone else collects the wages paid out under their name. The payroll system was computerised and, during this process, a check was made between listed and actual workers. Any non-existent staff were removed from the system.

This seemed to have solved the problem, assisted by the word being spread that the computer could make an automatic check between the payroll list and reality, and could automatically detect who was picking up ghost worker wages. Of course, it could do no such thing, and an audit 18 months later uncovered a very well-to-do computer operator who was collecting his own wages plus those of thirty other workers he had entered into the payroll system. Two points emerge from this. Firstly, as in the previous case, computerisation had little to do with the removal of ghost workers and consequent (temporary) removal of corruption. This required a physical check, as was done both before and after computerisation.

Secondly, computerisation did change things by altering the set of people with the skills, confidence and access to undertake this type of corrupt activity. Many of the ordinary staff were frightened off attempting this form of corruption by a mistaken perception of the computer's powers (quite possibly spread by the computing staff). Those with IT skills saw a wonderful new opportunity emerging as a result of computerisation. Plus, they were less likely to be detected because of perceptions that computer-based data is somehow hidden from human intervention, with the power of the computer rendering that data infallible.

Case 3: Examination marks at an Asian university were previously kept on paper, with calculation of final grades and averages being done manually by a small group of trusted staff.  Mark lists were kept locked in a safe when not being used. Given the large number of students, it was decided to computerise the marks and calculations. There was an assumption that information on the (un-networked) computer would be safe, though a password was added just in case, known only to a very few staff.

All seemed well until one lecturer noticed that a relatively dull student had achieved a spectacular final grade. Enquiries revealed that he was the son of one of the computer managers. The manager, knowing the importance of university grades for job prospects, had opened up the marks files and changed his son's mark. Unfortunately for him, instead of altering the figures slightly, he got over-ambitious and pushed them from the 40s up to the 70s.

This case more or less reinforces the point made earlier. Computerisation may open up new corruption opportunities, particularly by altering who has access to information, and it may also alter the skills necessary to indulge in corruption. In addition, the case has plenty of lessons in computer security and suggests you should be subtle if you want to get away with things!

Case 4: Managers in an Asian railway system were concerned about the efficiency of its seat/berth reservation system, and about corruption within the system. Booking staff had access to and control over the allocation of places on trains and a few would take a bribe (either directly or via a ticket tout) in order to provide a passenger with a reserved place, these being at a premium since all trains were over-booked. A computerised system was introduced, one objective of which was to eliminate corruption. To achieve this, allocation of reservations was handled automatically, including the particularly "weak link" of moving passengers on the waiting list into places vacated by cancellations.

Computerisation did make it harder for the clerical staff to be corrupt because the software, not the clerk, now decided — on the basis of booking date — which passengers would fill vacated slots. However, corruption was not eliminated, and two aspects will be noted here.

First, station managers retained manual control over a certain proportion of the train places, supposedly to cover emergencies or last-minute travel by VIPs. Some continued to provide these places to non-emergency, non-VIP passengers in return for cash.

Second, ticket touts showed how ingenious and resourceful they can be. Knowing that their best customers were businessmen in a hurry, they would book places well in advance on the main inter-city trains using a very common man's name, citing his age as 35. These places would then be sold at a premium to last minute travellers, most of whom were men who could get away with appearing 35 years old to the ticket collectors.

In some ways, this is the opposite to the customs case.  There, a private resource was made publicly accessible. Here, most control over the resource was hidden even further away from staff, within the information system algorithms. However, this was not entirely the case. Some of the more powerful system stakeholders ensured that their discretionary powers were not computerised. To some extent, this was part of the process of getting computerisation accepted: it was only able to proceed once it was decided that it would not threaten these stakeholders' control and private incomes. Indeed, by removing sources of competition for corrupt earnings from the clerical staff, it offered an opportunity for station managers' incomes to be increased.

Finally, this case shows from the example of the touts that if the motivation is there to be corrupt, human beings will almost invariably find a way to "beat the system".

Case 5: Computerisation was taking place in two African universities, and it seemed obvious to turn its attention to the admissions process, which was notoriously slow and corrupt. Computerisation of admissions typically involves inputting the school-leaving exam marks of all applicants, and then producing a prioritised list, headed by the candidate with the best overall marks. Other factors are taken into account but, if all other things were equal and there were 1000 places at the university, the top 1000 candidates on the list would be the ones to gain admission.

This clearly represented a considerable threat to members of the admissions committees. These members can gain significant financial and political rewards by offering admission to the stupid sons and daughters of the rich and powerful; children who would not get into university if an entirely merit-based system were adopted.

The committees adopted different approaches. In the first university, a decision was made that "computerisation of admissions would not improve organisational efficiency" and things continued as they were. In the second, computerisation did take place but the prioritised list was accepted merely as an "advisory tool" for the committee, and was never made public outside that committee.

These cases reinforce the earlier point that where powerful stakeholders are involved, they will devise ways to ensure that computerisation does not threaten their powers or incomes. They do this by keeping certain information or processes away from the computer. In the first case here, this involved no computerisation, while in the second it involved computerisation of some aspects but not the critical process — that of actually making the admissions decision.

Conclusions: "How Does Computerisation Affect Corruption In Developing Countries?"

Two principal outcomes are seen from the cases above. In some cases, computerisation leaves corruption unaffected, because it occurs in such a way that the key corruption-linked resources or processes are left uncomputerised, despite their possibly being surrounded by other computerisations.

In other cases, computerisation does alter corruption. It does so by changing the people who have access to and control over  valuable resources, especially information, and/or by changing the skills required to be corrupt, typically "upskilling corruption" by providing corruption opportunities only to those with IT skills.

Computerisation may therefore reduce or even eliminate some forms of corruption because of the change in access, control and  skills. Corruption can occur because people have access to a valued resource (and to those who will pay for it), with the skills and autonomy to manipulate it. Where computers can deny access to the resource or provide managers with control over their staff, so reducing their autonomy, this may hamper corruption.

Of course, access, control and skills are necessary, but not sufficient conditions for corruption to take place.  People must also have the motivation to be corrupt and the confidence that they will not be caught or punished. Computers are unlikely to affect underlying motivations but they can affect confidence. The promotion of a mythical image of the computer as an "objective, all-seeing, all-doing machine" may cause some corrupt staff to lose confidence and refrain from corrupt practices — though perhaps only temporarily, until they go on their first IT awareness course!

Apart from reducing or eliminating some corruption, a second form of alteration is that computerisation can lead to new patterns of corruption emerging. There can be new forms or processes of corruption from those who use the power of the computer and their personal computing skills, or from those who develop new processes or behaviours which work around the computerisation. Finally, though not mentioned in the case studies above, an old form of corruption with new clothing is also seen as purchase of IT goods provides opportunities for kick-backs from vendor to client.

Overall, then, if it leads to any changes at all, computerisation provides new corruption opportunities for some groups, and closes down or requires alteration of corruption routes for other groups. These changes, particularly the threat of a reduction in corrupt incomes, are likely to have a significant impact when planning new computerised information systems in the presence of corrupt practices.

In one Asian pensions office, for example, computerisation was roundly resisted. Many factors were at first seen to underlie the resistance including fears of loss of jobs, fears that staff would not have the necessary skills, and health and safety concerns. What emerged during investigation, however, was that the main fear lay around the issue of corrupt incomes. Pensions staff had the power to deny access to pension payments or to provide access to certain types of higher-income pension, and they used this power to extract bribes from pensionable claimants. They feared that computerisation would remove this power. Hence, their true reason for resistance.

Where resistance and corruption are linked, there are three possible reactions that can be drawn from the case studies above:

(1) if computerisation will not affect corruption, make this (subtly) clear;
(2) if computerisation will affect corruption and the stakeholders are not that powerful, then tough it out;
(3) if computerisation will affect corruption and the stakeholders are powerful, change the computerisation plans so that the key income-generating processes are not computerised.

Whatever the reaction, it is clear that the link between computerisation and corruption will have to be recognised in the planning of some information systems, and must be teased out as a component of resistance to computerisation.

Can Computerisation Eliminate Corruption?

The clear answer to this question from the analysis above is, "Of course not". Computerisation may have no effect, may alter corruption, or may reduce some types of corruption, but it will not eliminate corruption, and may even increase it.

Leaving aside the "corruption of opportunity", such as that which arose in the payroll case, two particular types of corruption can be distinguished. There is the "corruption of necessity" practised by poorly-paid, low-level officials. Their incomes do not meet the many demands placed upon them, and they must find ways of supplementation. Computers may suppress some of their activities but will not extinguish the underlying drive for additional income. Thus corruption is almost bound to re-emerge.

Alternatively, there is the "corruption of greed" practised by senior staff. They have enough income to live on, but want and get more because they are in a position to do so and because it is seen as a natural activity for those in power. Given the power of these staff to determine their working environment, computerisation is unlikely to be allowed to have much impact unless imposed by a very strong external agency.

In all cases, it can be seen that corruption arises from a combination of two sets of factors: the micro-level (the individual, his/her circumstances, needs, skills, access, confidence and opportunities) and the macro-level (organisational and national management systems, politics and culture).

As we have seen, computerisation may affect skills, access, confidence, opportunities and management systems. However, it is most unlikely to affect the individual or corporate drivers behind corruption (even though there is likely to be some impact of computerisation on organisational culture).

To put this in very simplified terms, computerisation affects symptoms of a corrupt system rather than causes. Corruption is a phenomenon rooted in the cultural, political and economic circumstances of those involved. Computerisation does little to affect these root causes, and so cannot eliminate corruption.

Computerisation and Corruption - A Research Agenda

In writing up the cases above, I was struck by how easily such descriptions can be "modern urban myths" - stories not really based in truth, but which fit our fears and value systems well enough to be believed.  Although they are based on direct experience, such studies (especially in such a foreshortened form) can easily degenerate into the realm of gossip and hearsay. Within the limits imposed by the sensitivity of corruption, there is therefore clearly a need for more in-depth case studies dealing with the issue of computerisation and corruption.

As well as being descriptive, such studies could also investigate:

• the impact of computerisation on corrupt income and practices (including differential impacts on different stakeholders);

• the impact of corruption on information systems design and implementation;

• the ways in which computers change an organisation's corruption-related cultural, political and economic "micro-climate".

If readers are aware of such studies, or know of cases in which computerisation and corruption interact, please contact the author. All contacts will, of course, be treated confidentially.

References

Davies, C.J. (1987) Controlling administrative corruption. Planning and Administration, v.2, 62-66

Klitgaard, R. (1984) Managing the fight against corruption: a case study. Public Administration and Development, v.4, 77-98
 

Back to Contents

Third World Wonders About Information Highway

Experts differ on whether the world's poorest countries will win or lose from the development of the global "information highway" which was planned in Brussels in a weekend in March by the richest nations. 

"There's a problem — what will happen to the Third World countries?" asked one member of the European parliament before the meeting of the Group of Seven (G7) top industrialised nations. South Africa's Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, the only African invited to the event, urged the seven — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States — not to exclude developing countries from their grand plan. "It's clear that bringing developing countries onto the information highway constitutes a colossal challenge, but we have to address this challenge if we are to promote economic growth," he told delegates on Friday.

The information highway, which is expected to revolutionise communications going into the 21st century, embraces the increasing use of computers, telephones and televisions to link consumers with services and with each other across the world. There are conflicting views on whether it will benefit the developing world. Some say it will be beneficial as it will reduce communication times between Papua New Guinea and the United States, for example, to a matter of seconds. "Africa is looking forward to your telemedicine," Mustapha Masmoudi of the Tunisian Communications Association said last week.

World Bank Vice-President Jean-Francois Rischard said telecommunications and information technology could enable less advanced countries to make a big leap forward by helping them to streamline public services and expand education opportunities. One computer hooked up to a telephone line could become a community learning centre, he said. Others fear the network of telephones, computers and television will strip developing countries of their identity and say many of them simply do not have the basic infrastructures to join.

Mbeki said three-quarters of white people in the South African city of Durban had a telephone, but only two per cent of blacks had one. Half of humanity had never made a telephone call, he said, adding: "The reality is that there are more telephone lines in Manhattan, New York, than in sub-Saharan Africa."

At least one company represented at the meeting saw the developing world as a challenge. Satellite company Teledesic Corp said it would give away some of its telecommunications capacity to help developing countries. Russell Daggatt, the company's president, told Reuters the offer meant several regions and countries would have free access to some of the fastest communications available for health or educational purposes.

Back to Contents

Time to Address the Basic Problems

Ten years ago I organised together with Dr. Robert Kalman from UNESCO an international seminar in Stockholm on Regional Computer Co-operation in Developing Countries. I remember very clearly from the seminar the high pitched expectations expressed by the participants about the role of computers and information technology for the third world development. It was a time when computers were seen as a blessing tool, and one of the African participants in the seminar phrased it in the following lyrical way in his paper:

"We are many in developing countries who found our hope in the computer revolution. We see in it a way to realise our dreams to overcome poverty and mediocrity and to reach a society of equity and welfare."

In spite of the substantial growth in number of computers, relatively little has happened that has made these expectations come true. The recently held WG9.4 conference in Cairo underlined this general feeling that the break-through of beneficial computer usage among developing countries has yet to come. There are many who ask what went wrong. And why.

In my opinion we should concentrate on the second issue. It is important to explore why developing countries have not managed to benefit more by IT in spite of the huge investments. I think we have a long and challenging process in front of us where we will need to ask creative questions rather than delivering trivial answers.

In this process there will be need for models and frameworks that can help us to understand and to articulate the specific problems. I will briefly illustrate what I mean.

In Biological research there is an on-going debate about brain and speech development. The debate is whether the brain adapted to the use of language or the language developed because of the development of the brain. Or in other words, did adaptation come before behaviour, or structure before function.

The structure (adaptation) vs function (behaviour) approach seems to me a fruitful explanation model. One could test it as a model to address the problems related to computerisation in developing countries.

Computerization in developing countries started with functions that were alien and new to the existing structures. Mutual adaptation between structures and functions, which has been the case in the more industrialised countries, did, however, not happen in developing countries. What we find today are islands of successful IT usage where functions happen to match a certain structure. Unreflective persons tend to take this as proof of a general usefulness of IT. This may not be the case as the behaviour of very few does not necessarily result in adaptation of societies.

In fact, the true successful installations are those where applications are isolated from the environment, for example for the control of industrial processes. Most applications are, however, in the open system, where the organizations exchange information with the environment. Examples of such applications are production planning and material control systems. From my research in Egypt on computer-based material requirements systems I found that the order point calculation had no relevance in the constrained transportation infrastructure system. But also in more administrative oriented applications there may be misfit between function and structure. Such an application is invoicing. Numerous enterprises in developing countries face cash-flow problems, not because of missing or inadequate accounts receivable methods but because the clients just do not pay !

Before one can expect IT to be of significant benefit in these countries there need to be structures that can accommodate the functions. It seems to be that structure means capacity. In the Western societies this structure resulted inter alia in the development of IT functions that were relevant and useful in these contexts. Other cultures, having their structures, need to either change their structures to cope with the IT functions or to make use of their over-capacity to develop alternative IT functions that fit with the structures.

The latter may seem a presumptuous proposal. However, also in the more advanced countries there is a growing awareness about the discrepancy between formalised IT solutions and non-formalizable problems. This awareness is part of a much greater awareness about what many refer to as the end of the Renaissance period. This period that lasted for five hundred years has characterized the Western society through its mechanistic and scientific world-view. A new insight is gradually emerging, suggesting that reality is non-linear and that future is not predictable. Adaptation to this new world-view will require IT re-thinking with new and different functions to fit with the new structures.

I can see a need to mobilise creativity and encourage in the coming years to challenge the traditional IT community, both suppliers and users. This will mean to ask the right questions, to identify the real needs and to attempt formulating the proper solutions. Will WG9.4 be prepared to assume this challenge? 

Back to Contents

The Brazilian Software Production and Export Industrial Policy - SOFTEX-2.000

SOFTEX-2.000 is an imaginative answer to new international and national economic conditions, which were more strongly felt in Brazil since the final years of the last decade. Internationally relevant for the conception of this program were the tendency for economic globalization and the increasing software relevance among information technologies. In Brazil, this program was influenced by the progressive opening of the internal market to international commerce flows and by the failure of the former National Informatic Policy.

SOFTEX-2.000 is a initiative owed to the Brazilian academic computer science community. In fact, it was planned and it is coordinated by outstanding members of this community. The program focal point is the National Research Council (CNPq), an entity of the Ministry of Science and Technology which supports scientific development (teaching and post-graduate research) instead of the technological development supporting entities or the Industry and Commerce Ministry.

As a consequence, similarities may be noticed between the organization and conduction of this program and the usually favoured University work methods (team work, peer review, flat structure etc.).

The main activity in the program first phase, to end in 1996, is the  establishment of 14 development centers in different Brazilian cities. These centers aim to stimulate the creation of new firms and to articulate the local software firms among themselves and to the program. Participation in SOFTEX-2.000 requires, from each city, through partnership among its institutions (government, entrepreneurial associations, large forums etc.) a contribution in resources equal to that offered by the federal government.

Activities in the centers may be classified in three groups: (1) common activities (the same to all centers) with the support of the program administration (implantation of software development laboratories in order to lower the high cost of their associates investment in new products, in connecting firms and centers to the National Research Network etc.), (ii) complementary activities (partly undertaken by each center, for the benefit of all) - maintenance of offices in the exterior, studies, seminars and business rounds, program administration etc. and (iii) specific activities related to their regional realities - agreements with Universities, incubators, programs concerning particular market niches etc.

In order to participate in the program activities, firms submit project proposals to their centers. These are autonomous to choose, among their associates projects, those to make part of the center's plan. Selection is undertaken by a commission composed by local government representatives, teaching and research institutions and entrepreneurs. The centers, in turn, submit their plans to the program. When approved, the projects are followed by the CNPq. Tasks undertaken by the centers also are yearly evaluated by the program, which also is, as a whole, yearly evaluated.

Thus, SOFTEX-2.000 organization is based in tasks and decisions decentralization and in the cooperation among its participants (not only among entrepreneurs, governments, research and teaching institutions and other federal administration) - an example of "network" developed tasks.

It is also possible to observe the influence of academic prevailing methodology in the structures of criteria for project approval (peer review) and in action and decision decentralization. In this sense, it is quite clear the strong contrast between this program and other initiatives of Brazilian industrial policies, in which not only the incentives concession criteria are much less strict but, also, result evaluation and follow up practices are non-existent.

Flexibility is another program characteristic. A significant change, for instance, took place as to the main targeted market. Nowadays, the almost exclusive attention previously directed by the north-american market has decreased, in the name of a diversification effort of exports towards Latin America and European markets.

It is fit, however, to suggest the development by SOFTEX-2.000 of a policy to attend to the internal market. In many industries, such as those of textile and civil construction, Brazilian firms have acquired technical capacity due to internal market growth. Such accumulated technical capability allowed the exporting movement of the mentioned industries which followed. The same should happen in the software area, which could develop through the strong software component present in all large scale national projects." (Lee and Lee, 1994, p. 298).

Finally, it may be observed that the estimated cost of the four year first phase of SOFTEX-2.000, which includes enterprises financial counterpart and already preexisting public programs resources reaches 60 million dollars. In spite of the intrinsic value of the program, it must be noted that considering SOFTEX-2.000 as the main Brazilian industrial policy facing globalization challenges in the sectors of the electronic complex, this investment, for a country as large as Brazil, is regrettably small.

Bibliography

Lee, J. and Lee, J "Competitive Structures and Strategic Types in the Korean Software Industry", Technovation V.14, N. 5, 1994 

Back to Contents

Canadian Interest Group in Informatics for Development

The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) would like to invite ideas and commentary on the establishment of a Canadian Interest Group in  Informatics for Development (CIGID). Hopefully, CIGID will bring together Canadian public, private, and non-governmental organizations to participate in the design and application of Information Technologies (ITs) to the problems of sustainable development, and to work with developing countries and regions on the design and use of ITs. Members of WG 9.4 are invited to review the concept paper given below and send comments to:

Preamble

Information Technologies (ITs) may provide tremendous opportunities for progress and transformation in the global economy, as well as for communities, institutions, and individuals; they also present tremendous challenges in issues such as equity, access, social impacts, privacy, and information policies. This is especially true for developing regions which can benefit from the effective use of new information technologies, but which are also facing an increasing information and information technology gap.

Canada has much to offer and gain from the active consideration of these issues in the context of international development. Hence, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) proposes the establishment of a Canadian Interest Group in Informatics for Development (CIGID) to promote a process in this direction.

Mission Statement

To strengthen the ability of Canadian public, private, and  non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to participate in the application of Information Technologies (ITs) to the problems of sustainable development and to work with developing countries and regions on the use of IT to meet mutually-beneficial development objectives. 

Objectives
 

• To forge a public voice in Canada concerning Information Technology for International Development;

• To make Canadian international aid in the area of IT more effective, meaningful, and efficient;

• To facilitate communication between Canada and developing countries regarding IT issues;

• To promote awareness of the social, cultural, and political dimensions of IT issues in developing countries;

• To help gain for Canada a greater share of the world IT market.

Why CIGID?

Expertise Canada is a world-leader in the development and application of Information Technologies. From geomatics to telematics, Canadian organizations, public and private, are designing innovative systems for research, communication, and various informatics applications.

Problematique

Many countries are faced with uncertainty and crisis. Environmental degradation, disease, under employment, war, or a lack of basic freedoms and human rights undermine the ability of peoples and their governments to pursue their vision of development. Canada's problems are fewer and less severe, yet it too shares a stake in these global issues (through a common global environment, through global trade, and immigration etc.). 

Action Information Technologies can prove useful in the design and implementation of appropriate solutions. They can assist governments and individuals in making better informed decisions and policies, and they can empower people through the sharing of knowledge and experiences. This requires innovation, participatory design, and the consideration of cultural, geographic, technical, economic, linguistic, political, and gender issues. Hence, a multi-disciplinary approach is required.

Opportunity

Canadian IT organizations have an opportunity to cooperate with NGOs, governments, and research institutions to develop innovative, leading-edge tools to help make sustainable development a reality.

There is no single organization within Canada that supports the specific mission of CIGID, though there are many that share aspects of CIGID's objectives, e.g.:

CIPS (Canadian Information Processing Society) is focused on the needs of individual informatics practitioners in Canada; ITAC (Information Technology Association of Canada) focuses on a constituency of large IT companies in Canada; CAIDC (Canadian Association of International Development Consultants) covers a wide spectrum of disciplines, but does not focus on IT;

CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) invests in IT infrastructure projects, but has no IT locus of specialization per se; IDRC (International Development Research Centre) supports Information Technology research, especially within its Information Sciences and Systems Division (ISSD), but has had few opportunities to date to cooperate with the private sector. ISSD is the  Canadian focal point for Unesco's Intergovernmental Informatics Program (IIP). 

Target Groups

• Anyone interested in the CIGID mission, but particularly the Canadian Informatics and Canadian International Development communities;

• All those who "embed" IT in products and services, as well as those who develop IT projects and products;

• A diverse membership is encouraged to join: public, private, NGO, aid, trade, consulting, academic, research, and other organizations.

Potential Functions for CIGID: A "shopping list"

The CIGID community will develop the functions to support its mandate and general mission. Its functions will reflect its diverse membership. The "shopping list" of potential functions below is meant to stimulate thinking; it is proposed to be modified and refined as the CIGID community sees fit.

"Virtual" Community

• Establishing a forum for discussion on researchable and action-oriented issues, and related user needs;

• Fostering contacts and exchanging information with international informatics communities;

Partnering: Research

• Identifying mechanisms for matching research ideas and funding; 

• Providing a meeting place for diverse groups interested in fulfilling the CIGID mission;

Partnering: Ventures

• Stimulating innovative mixes amongst different stakeholders;

• Fostering long-term relationships in the national and  international arenas;

• Fostering cooperation in project development;

• Helping to identify opportunities at an early stage for Canadian participation in global project development;

• Facilitating twinning arrangements/partnerships between Canadian and developing country informatics communities;

• Identifying the potential for export of Canadian IT to developing countries;

Design/Innovation Focal Point

• Promoting an interdisciplinary, participatory approach to the design of IT systems for developing countries

• Assessing how cultural, environmental, and economic dimensions can be integrated into the design of IT systems;

Information Resources

• Supporting clearinghouse functions for information on IT for development including opportunities, markets, needs, projects, exports, firms, and individuals;

• Helping establish and publicize electronic tools to guide searches for and access to information on IT for development;

• Capturing and disseminating lessons learned in the field of IT and development;

Policy Focal-Point

• Selectively contributing to the Canadian policy debate on issues related to IT for development;

• Adapting CIGID's mission, objectives, functions, services and target groups to changing circumstances in Canada and the World;

Stimulating Awareness

• Permanently publicizing the aims and activities of CIGID in likely Canadian fora, both electronic and non-electronic;

• Identifying and publicizing the actual and potential gains from membership of CIGID, including for both the aid and trade communities.

Potential Products and Services

The following list of products and services suggest means by which CIGID may achieve its mission and carry out its functions. Again, this list is meant to stimulate, not to dictate. In some cases, CIGID may provide linkages to existing products and services, rather than developing new ones.

Workshops/Seminars

• Meetings, seminars, workshops, and conferences (physical and virtual) to stimulate the innovative application of IT in developing countries;

Databases

• Databases/Directories on Canadian experts and organizations in the area of informatics for international development;

• Database on IT projects in developing countries;

• Database on potential sources of funding for projects;

• Database on what Canadian IT firms are doing in developing countries, based on surveys;

• Database with extracts of useful information on IT trade supplied by Industry Canada, Statistics Canada, international organizations and other countries;

Internet Services

• Internet discussion group on CIGID;

• Gopher/WWW interface to help navigate the Internet and develop search paths leading to sources of information appropriate to CIGID;

Reports/Information

• Directory of IT contacts, firms, associations in developing countries;

• Scoping paper on IT products needed in developing countries to promote sustainable development;

• Newsletter on experiences/lessons learned in supplying ODA in area of informatics;

• Business fax menu-driven information service to supply information on CIGID;

• Regular reports and financial statements on CIGID activities;

• Ad-hoc advice desk.

Issues for CIGID Organizing Body

CIGID must establish and operate mechanisms to carry out its mandated functions, either within a small secretariat or out-sourced (provided by outside contractors and/or CIGID members). Types of activities may include the following:

• Producing an initial scoping paper and other background material or technical reports;

• Developing a CIGID constitution;

• Identifying means of financing the organization;

• Publicizing CIGID;

• Maintaining contact with relevant Canadian government and regulatory bodies;

• Identifying and corresponding with related institutions in Canada and in the world;

• Identifying, joining, and monitoring relevant electronic networks;

• Monitoring the Internet discussion group on CIGID;

• Maintaining the membership list.

Potential Modalities of Operation

• Secretariat functions;

• Governing body: Steering Committee or Board of Directors;

• Funding: membership fees, sponsorship, fees for service;

• Self-financing within a set period or permanent sponsorship.

Membership and Stakeholders

Open to institutions and individuals who seek to further the mission of CIGID. Classes of membership, fee structure, etc., to be decided when the modality of operation is fixed.

This concept paper has been prepared with the participation of a small group of interested individuals in government, industry and academe. In order to validate and refine the CIGID concept, IDRC will hold a launch event in the Spring of 1995 to bring together potential stakeholders.

Linkages to Other Activities

UNESCO: UNESCO/IIP is to be invited to participate in the   CIGID launch event. CIGID could help in facilitating contacts for the IIP Program in Canada;
IDRC  CIGID could provide contacts and partners for IDRC's Information and Communication Technology (ICT) program;
IFIP   CIGID could interact with Working Group 9.4 (Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries);
CIPS  CIGID could assist members interested in international development;
CAIDC CIGID could help increase Canadian participation in IT projects.

Back to Contents

Mayuri Raises some Issues on WG 9.4 Conferences

I would like to begin my closing remarks by first thanking all of you for helping make this conference a success. I feel the papers presented and the discussions that have taken place have been interesting and stimulating in their own ways. I hope we have all learnt something new in the past three days, and will go home with some new ideas and thoughts which we will try to pursue further. Some issues such as the need for policies and planning, infrastructure, human resource development, role of governments, management of change, maximising the use of information, globalisation vs. liberalisation, domestic markets vs. exports; issues of development, technology and sustainability, transferability of technology and methods, keep on recurring every time we discuss issues related to use of IT for Development. I feel some of these issues urgently need to be addressed by practitioners, governments, by people like us, as well as development agencies.

One of the most crucial and problematic issues we are facing in organising such events within WG9.4 is funding; funding to organise a conference and more specifically to sponsor people from DCs. This has been a serious problem ever since we started organising such events 5 years ago, and there have been few signs of improvement over the years. I find it a shame that authors from DCs, whose papers have been accepted for presentation, are often unable to attend such events due to lack of funds. Their institutes or organisations often do not have the money to sponsor such trips abroad, and the same can be said about the organisers of such events. Nor are we able to obtain sufficient funds to sponsor everyone from DCs whose papers have been accepted. The problem is to find the money for the air tickets and registration. Even if registration fees, which were very high at this conference, are waived, not many would have been able to attend without support towards their air tickets. In future, they should be encouraged to seek funding from other sources but they should be informed about this in advance.

My main worry is that events such as WG9.4 conferences, or many others as a matter of fact can turn into a yearly event where a group of people from the industrialised countries come together for a few days — to be with people with whom they share a common interest — IT in DCs and to have some fun. There would be nothing wrong with this under different circumstances, but in this case I feel it would be more appropriate to involve more people from countries which we are trying to discuss. It is perhaps unwise for many of us, who are not in daily contact with the situation in DCs, to sit here and discuss the "future" of IT in these countries, and dictate or direct what should be done  and how it should be done. However, I have to add that I have been very happy with the good turnout of local Egyptians at this conference.

I feel future events should only be organised if sufficient funds are available in advance with some kind of a written agreement from sponsors. This would make it possible to sponsor authors from other DCs to attend the conferences. Otherwise, I feel there is an urgent need to reassess the benefits of these conferences, and see if there are other more appropriate ways of getting a group of people together to discuss issues related to IT for development. Some of us had thought that this could be done on the WG 9.4 electronic mail discussion list, but we were proved wrong. There are hardly any worthwhile discussions taking place on that bulletin board. I have failed to figure out why this is the case. I do not feel cost of phone bills is a major problem as it is made out to be, because a large number of members connected to the list are from the industrialised countries. 

Going back to the issue of future conferences, I feel one option would be to organise more smaller regional conferences to overcome the problem of funds to support travel, as well as other problems associated with organising such big events. There is interest from Namabia, Nigeria and Thailand to host future WG9.4 conferences but none have the funds to organise such an event. Maybe they should be encouraged to hold their own regional conferences, for 30-40 people from the neighbouring countries. As far as international conferences are concerned, I feel we should only have one conference every 2-3 years.

Concerning the quality of work presented at the conferences, I certainly feel that we have made some progress — although there is still scope for improvement — since the first conference held in India more than 5 years ago. The quality of papers, as far as contents are concerned has certainly improved over the years. There is also more variety in the issues being discussed, addressed or researched. With this in mind, as well as the fact that our last four conferences have been more general, in a sense that the themes were wide and varying, I feel future conferences should be more focused on a particular theme. This may help attract people whose interests are more focused, and beyond those of IT in DCs in general. I feel there was more time for discussion this year, than there has been in the past, but there is still major scope for improvement; we need to allocate more time for question and answer sessions and panel discussions. 

Another related issue which I want to touch upon is the quality of papers from authors in DCs. The quality — in terms of originality of ideas, new research, references, writing style, the issues being addressed, etc. — is largely very disappointing (though improving), and we often have problems accepting such papers from authors from DCs. There are a number of reasons for the standard of papers from authors in DCs not being up to "scratch". I do not wish to mention all the reasons here but would like to say that one of the major problems is access to secondary literature in many DCs. Somehow all the papers, books, reports, etc. we write about DCs do not appear to be filtering back to these countries. It is not uncommon to find authors referring to outdated material in their papers. I feel we as a group should try and address this issue and look for ways in which we can help out. Even the proceedings of our previous conferences are not easily available in many countries. The widespread distribution of our Newsletter has helped the situation slightly but we need to look for other ways to disperse the literature. A suggestion made last year in Cuba was to set up a database with all the literature which could be accessed by whoever was interested in issues related to IT in DCs. The problem is that such databases are inaccessible to a majority of the people in DCs, even those having email access, due to high costs involved in transmitting all those bytes over a long distance. I hope that part of this problem will be solved by the re-launch of the Journal, IT for Development, which I am very happy to announce will be launched in Spring this year. The main sponsors of the Journal are IDRC and ComSec, and the publisher will be IOS Press of Amsterdam. I will be involved in that Journal in some capacity and look forwards to receiving your papers for possible publication in the Journal.

In relation to some of the issue I have touched upon so far, I would like to briefly focus on the aims and scope of the group (WG9.4) as a whole, ie. what we have achieved so far as a group. We haven't done so badly as far as membership, "successful" conferences and the Newsletter are concerned — which is a lot more than what some of the other IFIP WGs have achieved — but I feel there is still scope for improvement. For instance, to play a more active role in the application of IT in DCs (an area which is broad, addresses many issues, and calls for a lot); in the distribution of literature; and in joint research projects, apart from other things. I feel the group has a serious problem as far as collaboration, communication and cooperation are concerned and these need to be urgently addressed. There are just a handful of people, out of the 200 or so members  who one can call "active" and who are doing much of the work. I find this unacceptable and it probably calls for a re-assessment of the group, ie. its aims and scope.

Once again, I thank you all for being here and for helping us make this conference a success. 

Back to Contents

This is a review of a one day colloquium held by the British Computer Society Developing Country Specialist Group in collaboration with the LSE on Tuesday 8 November 1994. The colloquium set out to address a wide spectrum of issues related to the policy and practice of health informatics in developing countries. There were 6 invited speakers and around 50 delegates.

The first speaker was Zoe Kenyon, a London GP interested in anthropology. Her talk was entitled `Us and them in the third world'. The presentation was concerned with the mismatch that occurs between the policy considerations of bodies like the World Health Organisation in their campaigns, and the practicalities of health care at the grassroots level in developing countries. Zoe described a host of social/anthropological factors which typically influence the delivery of health care. Given the nature of these factors, the discussion after the presentation centred around how information technology could be applied to bridge the gap between the policy-makers and the implementors.

The second speaker was Leiser Silva, a PhD student at the LSE whose talk was entitled `Health information systems in developing countries: Who should be responsible?'. Leiser extended the argument of the first speaker by presenting a case study of how cultural norms prevailing in the social context define the utility of informatics projects. The case was of a US-funded project to introduce a computer-based information system in the Guatemalan Ministry of Health. However, the lack of local systems analysis skills resulted in US Aid having complete control over the design and development of the system. Control was manifested in several ways. First, the US consultants decided to buy 16 American-made PCs from a vendor who had a reputation of not supporting customers.  Second, the selection of software was not based on the ability of the users to work with the package. Third, the consultants decided to abandon the former manual system that had been instrumental in producing the much-valued health statistics yearbook. Leiser's case study provided a response to the question posed at the end of the previous presentation regarding the impact of health informatics in internationally-sponsored projects. The impact depended on both the roles and moral obligations of international cooperation agencies, and to the need for developing countries to focus efforts on human resource development in order to improve their bargaining power vis-a-vis international agencies. 

The third speaker was Jean Roberts, Director of GCL Health Management Consultancy and Vice Chairman of the BCS Health Informatics Specialist Group (HISG). The presentation was entitled `The potential UK contribution of health informatics development in emerging nations'. The talk outlined the main pillars of HISG activity and set it in international terms, both as recipients and disseminators of information. The HISG also provided a forum to access various networks and international working parties such as the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA). Although the presentation listed an array of existing and forthcoming networks, delegates questioned their actual utility to fostering informatics capabilities in developing countries.

The fourth speaker was Jeremy Thorp, Senior Consultant from Touche Ross. The talk was entitled `An Eastern European experience' and the speaker aimed to share his experience as a consultant in designing and developing health informatics projects in Eastern European countries. Two case studies of UK-sponsored projects in Poland and Bulgaria were presented. As a first step in the consultancy process, an assessment was made of basic management skills (project management and financial management) within the host countries. In both cases, skills in these areas was found to be absent. The consultants assessed the existing information infrastructure for a health informatics system. In both cases, data was found to be lacking for basic management functions, while inappropriate levels of detail of data were found for auxiliary systems. For example, data for the most basic of applications such as patient monitoring was absent. On the other hand, large amounts of data for peripheral systems such as catering management, and inventory management for sundry supplies were recorded but not analysed. The outcome of the consultancy report was that under existing conditions, a computer system would be the worst possible application of funds. Instead, the recommendations of the report were geared towards helping to define the priorities of the health section, imparting education and training to managers of health programmes, and developing an information infrastructure to support a computer-based project. 

The fifth speaker was Lorraine Nicholson, a Fellow at the Health Services Management Unit at the University of Manchester. The talk was entitled `Creating order from chaos and the speaker presented a case study of the rehabilitation of the medical records service at Mulago Hospital, Kampala, Uganda. The main aims of the project in 1990 were to re-establish working systems and management, and to enable the reassessment of Mulago Hospital's role within the more modest health service that Uganda could afford. During the course of project implementation, attention was given to providing training for senior and middle managers involved with hospital management. This training included budgeting, staff development, problem-solving, time management, communications, and project management skills. By 1992, many simple applications had been implemented by the local staff including a diagnostic index for recording disease incidence; recording and tracing individual patients with specific diseases; basic information on bed occupancy in the hospital. It was envisaged that these systems would eventually link to a master patient index in the future. This presentation complemented earlier discussions by providing an example of developing an application which is acceptable, achievable and sustainable. The project started from a low baseline so that when all the expertise and support of the aid programme were withdrawn, recipients should be capable of independently sustaining the initiative.

The final speaker was Margaret Peters, Director of the Wolfson Computer Laboratory, Birmingham University. The presentation entitled `Clinical decision support aids' took as its starting point the recognition that portable PCs were able to provide decision support systems at the point of health care delivery and that these systems could be programmed to provide relevant clinical expertise according to a variety of settings. The session presented a practical demonstration of generalised decision-support clinical systems developed at Wolfson Laboratory. These DSS modules were produced after a series of knowledge engineering sessions which included all interested persons and had the flexibility of being modified as necessary according to country-wide standards.

Health care provision is an information-intensive activity to which the application of computing power has long been recognised as being of great potential value. Huge investment is being made by international agencies and governments in developing countries towards promoting informatics to improve the delivery and management of health care. The aim of this colloquium was to provide a forum to exchange experiences of implementing such projects. Ultimately, it is only when we analyse why some projects are successful and why some fail that we can direct information technology to play a meaningful role in health care management.

Back to Contents

Introduction

Imagine the developing world as a large plot of land, and development projects as seeds. Conditions vary widely from point to point on the plot, yet only limited preparation of the land is possible. Imagine too that each individual seed costs dearly. Therefore, we must choose, very carefully, exactly which of many different kinds of seeds to plant in each of the many micro-climates on the land. No matter how carefully we match individual seeds to specific micro-climates only some germinate. Of those that germinate, only a fraction take root.

Development actually occurs when a seed (project) sets roots. At this point it becomes an integral part of the land. Over time the newly rooted plant can grow, and spread, and even evolve and better adapt to its own micro-climate and surrounding ones. The rate at which development spreads, is the rate at which it occurs. This paper does not address the difficult problems of "seed selection," or "planting." Rather it focuses on the problem of accelerating the rate of development. 

Efficiency of Communication

Development projects embody, first and foremost, values and information. A rural project that provides clean water to a village surely contains a technology component (a well or a water transport system), and a public works component (financing and constructing the water system), but the project can only succeed in the long term if the members of the village come to understand and value clean water. The community can only adopt this value by assimilating — and integrating into their daily lives — information about the benefits to themselves of clean water. Unless this "value and information transfer" takes place, the effort and resources necessary to maintain the clean water system won't get allocated, and the system will fall into disrepair and out of use.

If the project succeeds and the community recognizes benefits, they will spread the values and information about clean water to friends and relatives in other villages. Perhaps the government too will work to inform the populace about the benefits of clean water. However, just because information about the benefits of clean water emanate from the community or the government, doesn't mean that anyone will necessarily accept the information and pursue clean water. On the other hand, if this information never leaves the village it can't possibly spread. So, even in the event that information can spread quickly and easily (the society possesses high "communication efficiency") nothing guarantees that it will. Rather the communication efficiency (CE) of the society places an upper-bound on the rate at which rate at which such values and information can spread.

I believe low levels of communication efficiency (CE) characterize — in a primary way — underdeveloped countries (I think we can construct a good index of development entirely on measures of CE). Poor CE thwarts the development of private enterprises, reduces the efficiency of government, and makes investment less attractive to capitalists in developed countries. Furthermore, poor CE does not result from underdevelopment, but rather guarantees it. Slow and unreliable postal and telephone systems, endemic in developing countries, would seem to mandate low CE, and the massive capital outlays necessary to improve them seem unlikely in the short term. How then can we widen this CE bottleneck? Carefully crafted computer software can increase CE in developing countries, without requiring great investments of time, money, or human resources. But the ordinary, off-the-shelf communication software, widely used in developed countries, won't work well in developing countries, because it doesn't even work well in developed ones. 

The Poor Quality of Communication Software

Look at how few people, at home or work, send information directly from their own personal computer to another one. It's not for lack of modems. It's not for lack of interest (look at how many people use the Internet, bulletin boards, and commercial services). It's certainly not for lack of need (look at how many Fax's get sent). The reason is poor integration of communication software into the computing environment.

If I want to send something from my computer to your's, I need to know about things like COM ports, IRQ's, baud rates, modems, AT commands, conflicts with mice and printers, and cables (for external modems). I need to develop expertise in a special 'communication' program, and struggle with mumbo jumbo about start and stop bits, word lengths, initialization strings, and X-Y-Z Modem protocols. Maybe it's just easier to print the document and fax it? Or use the postal service, or pick up the phone and send the information verbally?

Even if I get my computer ready to send something, I need to call you so you can prepare your computer to receive it. Furthermore, you and I must agree on what to call the things we want to exchange and where to put them. This, of course, presupposes that between us we know enough about file names and directories to coach each other through specifying the things we want to exchange.

What if something goes wrong? What if the line drops, or the software gives up because it encountered too many retries? How do we know, and what do we do? The software doesn't care. The problem gets left for you and me sort out. There are risks too. If I specify the wrong file name or path (even by accident) I may not be able to find what we transferred, or worse I may overwrite something important. This problem is especially great when using unattended communication software that allows anyone to attempt transfers.

Lastly, and most importantly, existing computer software minimizes the importance of communications. The view is that occasionally we need to send a file or a document created by some other software application. No off-the-shelf software exists to allow users to create their own data collection and distribution systems. Presently, one needs a collection of computer experts to custom-build solutions to data collection/distribution problems.

In summary, present communication software is weak because:

• Communication hardware and software is 'tricky' to install

• The user needs to grapple with communication issues

• Human intervention at both ends may be required

• Error recovery is unreliable

• Systems are vulnerable to the mistakes (or attacks) of others

• No tools exist for non-experts to build custom data collection and distribution systems.

Communication Software For the Developing Countries

Effective communication software for the developing world must be reliable, robust, efficient, intelligent, and sympathetic to the user — just as it ought to be in the developed world. These characteristics, however, are even more important in the developing world because the infrastructure is less reliable, hi-tech resources more scarce and expensive, and technical support more costly and difficult to obtain. Of course, such software should also address the six weaknesses listed above.

I recently completed development of exactly such communication software. The program is called "Move-It!." I believe Move-It! is extremely well suited for use in developing countries for these reasons:

a) It is very flexible. Integrated within Move-It! is word  processing, electronic mail, spreadsheet-like  capabilities, Fax and data communications, and what I call an 'Electronic Secretary' to store and retrieve the information that gets moved around via Move-It!

b) Move-It! goes far beyond electronic mail. It allows its users to create 'SmartForms.' SmartForms can contain all variety of fields: number fields, text fields, dates, etc. SmartForms can also automatically perform  calculations based on some fields and display the result in 'result' fields (thus providing powerful spreadsheet capabilities). SmartForms can also contain embedded documents. SmartForms can serve as invoices, memos, expense reports, surveys, sales reports, supply orders,  budgets, job applications, purchase orders, warranty registrations, documents, and more. The great value of spreadsheet programs is that they allow people who are not computer experts to build their own data ANALYSIS systems. The great value of Move-It! is to allow the same people to build their own data COLLECTION systems.

c) The system is compact and efficient. The Move-It! program is only 280K bytes long. Thus, all of its capabilities are available even to those with the least  expensive/modern equipment. 

d) Move-It! is simple. The user does NOT need to know  anything about file names, or directories, or any such  technical issues. Move-It!'s Electronic Secretary helps  the user store, retrieve, print, and send documents and  SmartForms, without ever resorting to technical jargon.

e) Move-It!'s communications software is reliable and  relentless. In the developing world, telephone service  varies widely in reliability, availability, and  consistency. Once a user tells Move-It! to send a  'package' of information (containing any combination of SmartForms and documents), the user can continue to use the computer for any purpose. In the background, without disturbing or slowing down the user, Move-It! will try to send the package to the specified destination until it succeeds. Depending on telephone conditions, it may take a minute or a week, but Move-It! won't give up!  Naturally, Move-It! is always ready to receive a package from any who sends one. These receptions also take place in the background, without disturbing or slowing down the user.

f) Move-It! automatically archives everything that gets sent and received. The user never need to pick file names or specify directories; the Electronic Secretary takes care of all filing and retrieval.

g) Move-It!'s Electronic Secretary is also a tireless  bookkeeper. A user can tell the Electronic Secretary to  locate all SmartForms of a particular type that meet  certain criteria (e.g. from a particular organization,  during a certain time period), and add up particular  fields (e.g. labor hours used). The user can instruct the  Electronic Secretary to perform such tasks WITHOUT having to learn a complex query language.

h) Move-It! is simple to use. No technical jargon appears on  any screen. No 'Control' or 'Alt' or 'Function' keys get used. Context sensitive help is always available. The user interface is very consistent. The system is useful to both experienced and inexperienced users. For example, a user who doesn't need to send electronic mail doesn't need to learn any word processing commands, but can still  easily read mail that gets sent to him or her, and can still fill in SmartForms or make use of the Electronic Secretary. 

Move-It! also addresses the six weaknesses of other communication software (described in the previous section). The programs exists in two parts: the user interface, and the communication module. The user interface shelters the user from all details of computers. It presents the user with an environment in which to create SmartForms and documents, send them about, examine and save the ones sent by others, etc. The communication module is, in fact, a small program (a 20K TSR--terminate and stay resident program) responsible for sending and receiving 'packages' of information to and from other Move-It! systems. This module is called MICOM (Move-It Communication Manager). MICOM addresses the first five of the weaknesses found in other communication systems: 

1) MICOM software gets installed automatically when Move-It!  gets installed. MICOM automatically searches for a modem  and figures out which COM port to use, the modem's maximum baud rate and capabilities (error correction, compression, flow control, fax capabilities, etc.). The user can ignore all of these details. 

2) MICOM operates automatically and employs a unique protocol, invisible to the user, to insure reliable data transfers. 

3) MICOM requires no user intervention. Once the user tells Move-It! what to put in an information package, and who to send it to, the rest is automatic. MICOM requires no human intervention at either side. Whether Move-It! is running or not, MICOM is always ready to send and receive information. When a user runs Move-It! it notifies the user if any packages have been received. At any time a user can examine newly received packages. 

4) MICOM will relentlessly attempt to send each and every  package. If a transmission fails mid-way, MICOM will retry until it succeeds. Naturally MICOM logs all attempts to send and receive. 

5) When one user decides to send a package to another, he/she tells Move-It! what to include in the package (without any knowledge of file names or directories). The sender never knows or cares what the receiver calls the package, or where it gets stored on the receiver's system MICOM makes these decisions. The calling MICOM systems tells the receiving one to 'receive a package,' but the RECEIVING system decides where to store it and what to call it. Thus, the sender simply cannot do any damage — intentionally or otherwise — to the receiver's  system. 

Regarding weakness (6), Move-It! taken as a whole allows its users to create their own RELIABLE, customized data collection and distribution systems. These systems do not rely on the Postal Service. Nor do they require reliable telephone service. Nor do they rely on highly trained technocrats. Instead, through reliable software, a reliable system be built on an unreliable infrastructure and without computer experts. 

Summary

Improving the efficiency of communication within a society facilitates the movement of information and values within the society, and hence the rate at which development can occur. Developing countries, as a group, suffer from low levels of communication efficiency (CE) due, in large part, to erratic and unreliable telephone and postal service. One can improving CE in these countries by applying carefully designed computer software.

The article describes a program called Move-It! that allows non-experts to build their own, highly customized, inexpensive, data collection and distribution systems. The key point is that this software allows people to create very reliable communication systems using the very unreliable telephone systems at their disposal.

The Current State and Availability of Move-It!

Presently, Move-It! is undergoing rigorous testing in a commercial environment where 61 disparate locations need to communicate a wide variety of information (various Smart Forms) between themselves and corporate headquarters. At each location 3 - 6 different people use Move-It!. Thus, about 300 people, none of whom are computer experts, use Move-It! Needless to say the feedback continues to improve the program.

The author will be pleased to provide Move-It! for testing — at no charge — to not for profit organizations in developing countries. The system can also be tuned as necessary for local telephone conditions. Presently, only an English version of Move-It exists. However, provided a good translator, Move-It! can be provided in other languages. It will take 4 -8 weeks to complete a translation. 

Back to Contents

Review of a book on Telecommunications in Africa

To adopt a great saying, telecommunications is too important to be left to the engineers. Nowadays, telecommunications is an area of great interest to everyone concerned with socio-economic development. It is, therefore, a particular pleasure to come across a book on Telecommunications and Development in Africa. The book has been created by the efforts of the Telecommunications Foundation of Africa. It is a stimulating book, because it shows the strengths of Africa. Telecom engineers and managers in the continent have displayed a lot of resourcefulness in their work. Those who are ignorant of development of the countries in that continent will be surprised to read about the solid installed base of high technology systems in use over there.

The book is a collection of 25 papers written by different authors. A number of suggestions have been made by the authors, such as: giving greater autonomy to telecom companies, increasing privatisation, treating telecom as a part of development programmes in other sectors such as agriculture, education & health, and review of the economics of providing telecommunication services to rural areas.

An important issue raised is the creation of Independent National Telecommunications Regulatory Authorities. One of the papers, by Etienne Konan Kouadio, discusses "The African Green Paper". The discussion covers issues such as the political framework, the lack of information, sustainability of networks and services, human resources and network operation and regional cooperation as well as competition and privatisation. The author quotes the Green Paper saying "Some operating agencies do not even have the capacity to deploy efficiently the financial resources they would need. This traditional approach based on State-owned enterprises has shown its limitations". The author argues that continuous blaming of the traditional approach is not always fair. He goes out to say that the governments should give autonomy to the operating entities, enforcing discipline among the staff and fair treatment to the management in judging whether they have succeeded or not. Clearly, the author believes that state owned companies have a significant role to play.

Pinky Moholi offers talks on Universal Service Obligations for South Africa, and looks at telecommunications in the context of the reconstruction programme planned by the African National Congress for South Africa. The paper "Africa in a Global Economy - Requirements for Financial Telecommunications" by Kees W. Hozee deals with the needs of the Financial Service Centre. The author is a Manager with S.W.I.F.T. in Belgium.

There is a paper on "The Needs of Scientists in Africa for Computer mediated Communications" by Dr Paul Godard. He describes a variety of networks which provide services in Africa and offers a detailed table saying which country in Africa is connected to which network. He also offers information and the cost of telecommunications to four major centres in the world from each one of the countries listed. This paper is essential reading for any one who is concerned with networking for development in Africa.

There are papers on regional cooperation covering work done on the African Testing Organization and its impact on networking quality, and on equipment procurement strategies for African network operators. 

The paper "Combining Forces: The Challenge to Connect Africa" by George R. Langworth deals with planning for continent-wide connections in Africa. The author is the Director of Marketing of the company FLAG Limited (Fiberoptic Link Across the Globe). The paper gives significant information on the cost of data communications from Africa and to the rest of the world.

The paper "Trends in Rural Telecommunications Technologies" by Christoff Pauw describes trends in rural telecommunications technologies. She discusses the importance of telephones as a development priority, telecommunications policy and regulatory framework, use of card telephones which automatically compute appropriate tariffs, the use of short hall microwave links, point to multi-point rural radio systems, low altitude satellite systems, etc. She discusses the significance of a system such as Iridium for African subscribers.

Not all the papers in the book have been reviewed. An attempt has been made to tell the reader about the interesting material found in the book, to stimulate his interest in reading this. Any one interested in telecommunications in the context of socio-economic development anywhere will find it essential reading.

Back to Contents

This collection of 13 lively essays by historians examines the interplay between technological developments and social change and historians' ways of understanding this interplay. Many of the essays focus on technological change in the 19th century, when many commentators unambiguously identified North American industrialization and westward expansion with social progress. But contemporary questions about some of the troubling social consequences of North American society's reliance on more socially ambiguous technologies, such as nuclear power, pesticides, and petroleum influence form a tacit backdrop for many of the essays, except for Leo Marx's powerful essay on technology and "postmodern pessimism." While none of the essays examines computerization systematically, many of the essays should be read by anyone who is writing about computerization and social change.

The 13 essays characterize technological determinism in slightly different ways. Only one of the authors, Robert Heilbroner, seems to be a staunch defender of "hard determinism," -- the position that focuses upon artifacts or technologies as single powerful causes of social change. In contrast, "soft determinists" argue that groups select and organize technologies within a matrix of economic and social conditions and cultural practices, and that this socio-technical complex can have identifiable consequences. Thomas Hughes' essay, "Technological Momentum" examines the complex industrial organization of the electric utility industry in the early 20th Century in the US. He identifies a particular utility holding company as both a cause of subsequent social change and also a byproduct of the resulting social order later on. I found Hughes' analysis provocative for thinking about social change and contemporary large scale socio-technical information systems, such as "the Internet."

In an engaging essay, Peter Perdue critically examines historian Lynne Whites hard determinist argument that the development of a heavy plow in ninth century Europe was the cause and catalyst of the shift of economic and cultural vitality from Southern Europe to an urbanizing Northern Europe by the early Middle Ages. While it is hard to find serious defenders of hard determinism in this book, "soft determinism" versus "social indeterminacy" is truly debated in these essays. Perdue, for example, examines several major socio-technical transformations and argues that social transformations result from "the interrelationship of all the elements," rather than any single cause, and that the tightness of the linkage between social elements is "the key parameter."

Thomas J. Misa argues that a scholars' level of analysis influences their commitments to determinism: macro-theorists are more deterministic than micro-theorists.  Misa argues his point by carefully examining business historian Alfred Chandler's argument that strategy leads to changes in organizational structure with concrete data from changes in Andrew Carnegie's steel empire. Misa finds that many of the Carnegie's structural changes in business linkages and vertical integration were decoupled from synoptic strategies, and were byproducts of local opportunism. Misa goes on to suggest that social analysts can learn much from meso-level analyses -- levels of social organization that lay between business organizations and society. In the case of information technologies, these would include the roles of scientific/professional associations such as the ACM, IEEE, ASIS, and IFIP and of standards setting bodies such as ISO.

It is interesting to find among all of this theorizing for historians an essay by Philip Scranton that suggests how historians can connect with social theory more generally — from Foucault to Giddens and  from cultural and gender studies. The book includes one explicitly feminist essay by Rosalind Williams, who writes:

 "We began by analyzing the terminology of technological determinism; then we moved on to consider the intentions and interests of those who have served as powerful advocates of that idea; now we have to consider the intentions and interests of  those who have acted upon the idea. In the end, we should pay most attention to those who build determinative technologies — those least responsive to human will or those designed with the most technological momentum."

In a historical time scale of about 100 years, it is hard to argue that electrification has had many more harmful consequences than good, although strip mining, the costs and complexities of petroleum politics, and the unresolved problems of effectively disposing of nuclear wastes make simple optimism seem foolish. But Williams raises the deeper issue of technological momentum — the extent to which high momentum technological systems (which many computer scientists and engineers tell us "serve people," with no sense of irony) can be effectively influenced by people who are said to be served by them.

I was recently chairing a panel meeting about issues of National Information Infrastructure (NII) for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment when I began to wonder about the nearest "clean natural water supply" to people in different parts of the country. Around a large seminar table were about 30 vice presidents of diverse kinds of telecom companies, consultants and academics discussing the meanings of "universal access" to NII. In one sense, we have universal access to fresh water and telephones in almost every urban household, while at the same time most of us urban dwellers would not drink from the nearest lake or stream, even if the water were boiled. Why is it, I wondered, that it seems more likely that in the next 30 years more people in the U.S. will have much higher quality telecommunications services in their homes while the "nearest potable water" will be much farther away. This book identifies ways of understanding how much the proximity of data streams or fresh water streams of data are technologically determined or controllable by members of a society.

This would be a great book for a graduate seminar on information technology and social change. It will help expand the imagination of PhD students beyond the focus on IT, to time periods that run in centuries rather than decades, and to non-Western civilizations.  The author's use of the term "technological determism" unfortunately conflates technological utopianism and technological anti-utopianism [1] into one category.   And, unfortunately in my view, too much of the professional writing about information technology and social change is simplistically deterministic relative to the kinds of analyses illustrated in this set of essays [2]. No short review can  do justice to this set of essays.  Their historical scope and the sophistication of the arguments should be provocative for anyone who seriously studies information technologies and social change. 

[1] See Kling, Rob. 1994. "Reading "All About" Computerization:  How Genre Conventions Shape Non-fiction Social Analysis." The Information Society. 10:147-172.
[2] See, for example, Hillis, W. D. "What is Massively Parallel Computing and Why is it Important?" Daedalus 121(1)(Winter 1992): 1-16; Deng, Y., Glimm, J.,; Sharp, D.,"Perspectives on Parallel Computing" Daedalus 121(1) (Winter 1992): 31-52; Kurzweil, R., The Age of Intelligent Machines (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1990) and a critique of these works in Rob Kling, Isaac Scherson, and Jonathan Allen "Massively Parallel Computing and Information Capitalism" in A New Era of Computing. W. Daniel Hillis and James Bailey  (ed.) Cambridge Ma: The MIT Press. 1992.

Back to Contents