Volume 10, No. 2, August 2000
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I am happy to note that the readers picking up the Newsletter from our website have been increasing. We have also received suggestions to unbundle the articles to enable faster downloading. IIMA has recently augmented its internet bandwidth and hopefully that should ease matters. We are also exploring an arrangement by which a broad based E-Governance site hosted at IIMA will be mirrored by a company in the US whose servers virtually sit on a high bandwidth pipe. This is likely to take two-three months. The E-Governance portal would feature this Newsletter, homepage for international journal of IT for Development and a large amount of material relevant for public administrators. It will also include the work being done at the Centre for Telecom Policy Studies and the Centre for Electronic Governance at IIMA. We would like to phase out the hard copy publication of the Newsletter after the December 2000 issue, which means that the April 2001 issue would be published only on the web. I would, however, like to receive specific requests from those readers who wish to receive a hard copy. I would also like to exhort the readers to contribute more original material for the Newsletter. We have been increasingly relying on secondary sources. In this process our editorial staff has to do a lot of work to condense, summarise and present material from secondary sources. I would like to share with the readers that I would be relocating temporarily to Washington to work for the World Bank from this October. I will be working in the area of E-Governance. It is a sign of modern day communication that I do not feel handicapped about publishing this Newsletter or editing the Journal of IT for Development because co-working is so much easier with Internet and the web. The editorial team will continue to be in Ahmedabad and I hope that we will remain on target. Having exalted virtues of modern communication, I must admit that in the last year there has been a lot of discussion on the digital divide. There is now a recognition that internet is not reaching a large number of people in developing countries. It is highly concentrated in metropolitan towns. Even within the developed world there is a certain level of disparity amongst groups I recently attended a Roundtable organised by the Asia Pacific Centre in Stanford and the Emerging Market Forum. The Roundtable discussed how the digital divide in India can be corrected by taking telecom access to rural areas. It was attended by representatives from non-government organisations, large telecom and internet companies, academics and representatives of international agencies. The one day Roundtable provided a lot of food for thought. The entire strategy of rural telecom access in India is being worked out on an assumption that the fixed line network must be expanded to reach a point close to rural areas from where access can be provided through wireless in the local loops or with copper wires. This approach essentially restricts the areas to which the access can be taken. It also calls for large investments. Many participants expressed surprise over the lack of utilization of mobile telephony. In many countries the number of mobile phones are overtaking the number of fixed line phones although in a country like India they represent only 10% of phone connections. The technology advances that are being made particularly in the area of IP telephony and high bandwidth access were also discussed. A presentation from CISCO indicated that level 5 switches, which will now be unbundled to 2-3 separate components, might begin to cost 10% to 15% of the current costs. The other resulting benefit is that the restriction of 64 kilobytes of available bandwidth, (when routed through a digital switch), will be now circumvented. The debate on IP telephony is inconclusive but one begins to wonder whether future strategies should be based on old technologies. Several participants felt that the focus of rural telecom access has been on technology. The demand side, i.e. the purpose which the rural telephone will serve has not been discussed in detail. My own presentation related to the kind of benefits that can accrue when telephones are taken to rural areas. Grameen telephone has already shown the kind of economic benefits that can accrue to small rural enterprises. I believe that for large countries like India, policies related to rural telecom must be made on a regional basis. There may be small regions/areas where there is reasonable potential for earning revenue because of specific economic activities. Such areas could be well served by small private enterprises acting as telecom companies. On the other hand, areas where there is no existing demand for telephone services, NGOs and co-operatives need to be encouraged to provide these services. Also other value-added services would have to be bundled in addition to telephone and Internet kiosk. For example, milk co-operatives can benefit from a rural telephone infrastructure in improving their own efficiency and effectiveness in delivering artificial insemination and veterinary services to the rural population. Such co-operatives would be more interested in making investments in telecom infrastructure as compared to telecom companies which do not see significant revenue inflows from rural areas. Other presentations highlighted the provision for rural telecom access made by small cooperatives in North America, as a large amount of telephone traffic is intercommunication within small regions. Large companies find collection of revenues, maintenance of telecom infrastructure, large overheads in managing infrastructure and placement of staff in rural areas to be a deterrent. Perhaps alternative organization mechanisms such as those proposed at the Roundtable need to be seriously considered. These include providing encouragement to small and medium size private companies, NGOs and co-operatives to put their stake in providing access to communication in rural areas.
Book Review and Announcements The quantum leaps in the technological revolution has made it possible to amalgamate local knowledge with information held in remote databases and information repositories to bring about a greater understanding of the conditions leading to poverty and the factors propagating it. The opportunities arising out of the info-tech revolution are immense, and in convergence with a visionary approach, political-stimulant and right value framework, can secure considerable gains towards sustainable human development. On the other hand, while ICT allows countries to leapfrog its way to becoming a knowledge society, the danger is that countries that fail to use the technology to their advantage will fall further behind countries that do. Knowledge sharing for Human Development: Approaching development from knowledge perspective can greatly improve the quality of people’s lives. The World Bank organized forum called “Voices of Poor” which got feedback from 60,000 people in 60 countries concluded that people wanted access to knowledge and opportunities instead of charity to fight conditions leading to poverty. And knowledge is not a scarce resource – it is infinitely expandable and proliferates with its use. Knowledge sharing can occur at all levels - between countries, within a country, between communities and among individuals. At the village level, where land is the main resource of the rural communities, knowledge about legal ownership of land is often confined to a handful few that encourages its use in an exploitative manner. If the same information is put into the public domain then its potential to be used in an exploitative manner diminishes. With the transfer of information from private domain to public domain, the societal forces re-arrange themselves laying the foundation for equitable sharing of power and responsibilities. Evolution of ICT-enabled Knowledge Societies for Human Development: The ICT network is based on the principal of inclusion and participation rather than on the principle of exclusion. There is a free-flow of information from different channels as information once hosted on the net can rarely be fully obliterated. Emails, mailing groups, news groups, discussion groups and interactive websites hold boundless potential to reach everyone who is connected to the Internet to target specific information or get views of the people. The technology allows individuals to bring together knowledge by harvesting data from other sites and adding value to it by prioritizing, translating and updating. Knowledge therefore no longer remains confined but perpetuates and there is continuous value-addition and customization. Such unrestricted and continuous sharing of global and local knowledge between policy-makers, public and private sectors, and the civil society heralds the way forward to an empowered knowledge society which can efficiently manage the change process towards sustainable human development. The evolution of knowledge societies bridges the gap between communities and between development professionals and rural people through initiating interaction and dialogue, new alliances, inter-personal networks, and cross-sectoral links between organizations so that "useful knowledge" is shared and channeled to provide decision-making support. Alternative mechanisms to carry out these tasks would take a lot more time, resources and efforts. There is no choice, as the growth of knowledge societies is becoming pivotal for the creation of resilient economies and for providing higher quality of life. The pertinent question is not whether, but how soon, the developing countries be able to remove all the barriers to knowledge sharing to transform themselves into knowledge societies for sustainable human development. Strengths of ICT-enabled Knowledge Societies The transformation potential of ICT-enabled knowledge societies is not circumscribed to the developed countries. The potential is immense for developing countries, however, much depends on the perspective. Countries with access to ICT innovations and having a capacity to absorb them and use them will reap social and economic advantages, and focus on human development. By focusing on improved ICTs, developing countries can broaden the scope of their actions and address human development related issues previously beyond their capacity. Wider penetration of knowledge societies, based on ICTs can involve more people, hitherto unreached or underserviced, and accomplish a deeper geographic penetration, especially to rural areas, than in the case with traditional means and modalities. It allows access to usable and intelligent information worldwide; promotes forms of knowledge networking which transcends borders, languages and cultures; fosters empowerment of communities; and helps spread knowledge about "best practices" and experiences. The evolution of such ICT-enabled knowledge societies are instrumental in helping communities break from the narrow national and local outlooks and from the hegemony of governments and the large corporations. Some of the other ways by which the evolution of knowledge societies promotes the cause of sustainable human development are highlighted. Greater Access and Control over Information: People are having relatively easier access to vast store houses of information but it is tragic that the delivery mechanisms for knowledge are today in the hands of fewer and fewer people. ICT-enabled knowledge societies often put the control of what is to be transmitted and the delivery mechanism through which it is to be transmitted in the hands of its stakeholders and the users groups. Empowering Communities: The inter-network equality of knowledge societies provides people with a powerful medium to voice their concerns about issues affecting them and develop linkages with communities and individuals with similar concerns across geographical barriers. ICT is playing a lead role in formation of common cause coalitions, electronic networks of solidarity and support among pro-peace, indigenous workers and human rights groups and is bringing people together like never before. Virtual communities is the upcoming powerful force of these concerned, empowered individuals and networks which can act at all levels. The juggernaut of this virtual community was witnessed in the recently concluded WTO meet in Seattle in 1999 and the World Water Forum in Hague in March 2000. Individuals and communities spanning nations held intensive discussions on the Internet years before the meets. They converged into a powerful voice to resist some of the decisions being taken. Virtual communities may not have a geographical, hierarchical orientation but they are emerging as global watchguards and advocates, and no longer decisions affecting the masses can be taken in isolation and without a larger public debate. In a way, knowledge networking becomes a mechanism to bridge the gap between micro-level activism and macro-level policy discourse. Better Governance: In a democracy, power is vested with the people and in this age where information is power, access to information by the people becomes the root to a thriving democracy. If all the information is stored digitally, it could be put into public domain enabling easier access by a cross-section of users. The key element to better governance is to "democratize" people's knowledge and understanding of complex social, economic and welfare mechanisms and processes, and to "demystify" the political choices available to their elected representatives. The Andhra Pradesh cyber model in India has proved that good policies and clear vision need to be shared with people and their support cultivated for effective governance. Better Valuation of Resources/Services: In many parts of the developing world, farmers are solely dependent on farm income for their livelihood. The farm gate prices for the crops are rarely constant and keep on fluctuating across different trade markets. In such cases, knowledge networks could supply information about farm gate prices for a particular crop prevailing across different agricultural markets to enable farmers to sell their produce in markets which fetch them the best returns - thereby eliminating the need of middlemen and reducing the risk of panic selling. Employment Creation: The spread of knowledge societies has the potential to create enormous job opportunities. Evolution of such societies require skilled and trained knowledge workers - such as web-designers, web-searchers, information scientists, researchers, etc. who can perform specific tasks of understanding, compiling, analyzing, providing value-addition and disseminating information. Personnel for low - level white collared jobs would be sourced from places where there are skilled knowledge workers available at competitive rates. Labor intensive jobs such as back office management, medical transcriptions etc. could be performed by knowledge workers from anywhere in the world by making use of ICTs. For example, Ford Motors is setting up its back office in India to handle its global administrative works relating to sale of automobiles. Thousands of knowledge workers in India who have the ability to understand and process information in English would be employed to undertake this job and it speaks volumes of the direction in which employment rate would increase. Barriers to evolution of Knowledge Societies for Human Development Developing countries are at varying stages in the utilization of the existent ICT infrastructure in the task of building innovative and distinctive knowledge societies. Often the forces in the wider sphere of influence and the existing policy frameworks are not in consonance with the overall development objectives to catalyze the transformation process. Barriers exist in the mind: The human brain is a valued resource in developing countries as is evident by the trends of brain-drain from developing to developed countries. Knowledge flows and emerges where it gets recognized, enriched and valued. The problem with many developing countries so far has been their inability to recognize the knowledge they possess, put a value to it and use the power of knowledge to their growth. The self-imposed barriers need to be removed if these countries are to be a part of the growth of the knowledge societies. The comparative advantage for developing countries, especially those in the south Asian region, is the richness and diversity of the human resource capital. Avenues therefore need to be created for knowledge incubation to be supplemented by capacity-building support and enabling policy frameworks, which provide opportunities to people to use the power of knowledge for propelling their growth. Access to Technology: Who gets to access the information superhighway is the most pertinent question. Currently, around 50% of the Internet users are in the US; about 25% are in Europe; and only 12-13% are in Asia. One in every three Americans uses the Internet, whereas only one in 10,000 people in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan do. Countries like Bangladesh still do not have an optical fibre link connected to world’s information superhighway and dial-up access price often becomes costlier than Internet usage charge itself. Simple rule of thumb points out that the foremost necessity is for a high speed, broadband, digital information infrastructure based on optical fibre cables to have limitless bandwidth to provide people access to information superhighway at an affordable cost. To bring the technology closer to the people, the government, the private sector, financial institutions and the aid agencies have an important role to play in improving ICT access by functioning as technology demonstrator, facilitator or propagator. Intermediary organizations will have an important role in bridging the digital gap and in providing the "last mile" of connectivity. Programmes such as the Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP) <www.sdnp.undp.org> of the UNDP and Electronic Networking for Rural Asia Pacific <www.enrap.org> of IDRC/IFAD are providing valuable support in this area in many developing countries around the world. Riding the Information Superhighway: Getting connected to the information superhighway is only half the race won. The nation that is able to harness it to its advantage wins the race. The significant barriers to winning the race are content, skills and language. It would be futile to link communities on the information superhighway at an exorbitant cost when little relevant content is available on it for communication. Efforts therefore need to be made to link isolated islands of information within a country to the information superhighway to enrich local content availability and to promote its use. Hosting of local farm gate prices, information about the local government officials, village level records including land ownership patterns and funds allocated for development works under various schemes; and knowledge of local health practices on the Internet can instantly transform an isolated, information-starved village to one which has a greater control over its development through access to information which matters. The culture of information-sharing and consensus building through ICT need to be fostered, especially in countries where there is very little top-down flow of information and confinement of information due to bureaucratic bottlenecks. Handling ICT, hosting of information and retrieving useful information from the net does require a fair amount of technical skills and net-literacy. In developing countries, the level of skills about computer use and Internet navigation is extremely low. Skills on ICT management therefore need to be inculcated across the population among all groups - children, youths, women and the older generation - at the individual or the community level. Each day over two million pages are added on the Internet, however, there is very small content representation on the net in the vernacular languages of the Southern countries. Further, with high rates of illiteracy in the developing countries, people who are unable to read the content, even in local languages, would be excluded from the knowledge-sharing network. To eliminate the linguistic barriers, the focus of research and development in web-based technologies should be on making the content comprehensible to the end-users. This would lead to a virtuous cycle as availability of relevant content would push forward the demand for access, and access by itself would also lead to creation of content. Private sector has an important role to play in making available open source software for developing content in local languages and for translation purposes. Further, the Internet should not just be restricted to written-text format but should encompass voice-data, greater visual representation through use of locally relevant icons and use of hybrid technologies. Policy Implications for the State and the Private Sector: Realistically, the developing nations are not fully equipped to benefit from ICTs. What is needed is greater guidance, enabling policy frameworks, and an open-ended learning approach to harnessing the potential offered by the new technologies thereby leading to their better diffusion, adaptation and effective use in development process. The government regulatory frameworks should be “de-bottlenecked”, market forces developed and impetus provided for growth of the sector, for example, by allowing the private sector to have direct international connectivity in order to make riding on the information superhighway more affordable. Developing countries also need to both anticipate and accommodate rapidly changing advances in telecommunications, computing, power and multi-media and at the same time invest in infrastructure essential to their propagation. Government’s intervention to harness ICT for development is imperative as it is the policy maker which can catalyze the transformation to knowledge societies and is also the single largest user of knowledge products. In its role as a policy maker, the government needs to set up an information technology vision for the country to spearhead the knowledge revolution. Earnest attempts should be made to set fair rules for the government to achieve the vision it sets for itself. As a user of knowledge products, the government should itself start to function as an ICT-based model. Efforts should be made towards rapid digitization of information to be made available in the public domain and be hosted on the information superhighway for wider reach and value-addition. This, however, calls for a change in the governance mindset from restrictive flow of information to open flow of information. Several functions of governance can be efficiently carried out through greater participation of the people by switching over to an ICT based model. The state and the private sector will have a crucial role to play in creating a skilled, educated intellectual force with a strong penetration till the village and household level that can revolutionize the current approaches to development. The comprehensive approach to development would be the merger of both technology and human capital. The government and the private sector will need to extend incubator facilities for creating new models for solving problems relating to development sector. This can be done by fostering formation of dot.orgs along with dot.coms so that the infotech revolution does not side-step the development sector with the mere assurance of trickle-down effects from the mainstream developments. Last but not the least, the government and the private sector should be brave enough to explore new pathways and new destinations because there is no one way to go and no one way is the right way. Other Partners in Development: In the last decade, a number of new interesting partnerships have emerged. Many of the existing global institutions have re-designed their development mandate with the changing times to acknowledge the potential offered by ICT in spearheading towards knowledge societies. The Global Development Network <www.gdnet.org> initiated by the World Bank aims to serve the needs of researchers and institutions in creating high quality and policy relevant research to close gaps in the market research for development knowledge. The Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) <www.globalknowledge.org> is another major step forward in the direction of global knowledge societies. GKP is an evolving, informal partnership of public, private, and non-profit organizations from across the globe. Initiatives such as NetAid of UNDP will enable people in the North to offer their expertise to people in the South, by becoming virtual volunteers for skill development and capacity building. Ultimately, evolution of knowledge societies by itself cannot be an answer and elixir to all problems facing sustainable human development, though it does bring in new information resources and can open new communication channels for the marginalised communities. This is because the formation of global knowledge society is under no single control as information available in the public domain is free to flow everywhere and all people have equal rights to it. The value therefore accrued to an individual user through the availability of information is different and this has the potential to further widen the economic and knowledge gap, especially in cases where people are not conscious of what they know or the potential value of absorbing the available information. Information Technology Revolution : What about the Developing Countries Edited version of the paper on the website of Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). (http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/xpress/dex/dex9604.htm) As proactive witnesses of the Information Technology (IT) revolution sparking economic, social and political change, mostly unpredictable, we are faced with a deluge of questions: Who will be included, and who will be left out in the IT race? Who will be the winners and the losers? And what will happen to the people of the developing countries (80 per cent of the world's population) as global patterns of production, power and wealth shift? Rapid advances in technology are at the core of information revolution, and have the power to change the traditional structure of North-South trading and industrial relations beyond recognition. Developing countries have learned a painful lesson that when a major technological change reshapes the industrial world, they are at the end of the receiving line, with little access to the gains in terms of competitiveness and productivity allowed by the new technology. Information Explosion in the North: Widespread use of microcomputers and communication technologies is linking technology producers with frontier knowledge producers in every field. Companies able to buy IT globally can keep abreast of rapid changes in demand, products, and technologies. Meanwhile, the accelerating creation and spread of knowledge has, itself, further quickened the introduction of new technologies and innovations in the market. To survive, enterprises need to be constantly plugged into the information loop where new knowledge is created and old knowledge is discarded. Overall, the information explosion has boosted the economy-wide efficiency and global competitive dominance of those nations who are plugged into the networks while the increasing accessibility of IT due to falling costs of computer hardware and communication services, along with progress in building an information superhighway will further strengthen the North. Information Poverty in the South: In contrast, most developing countries have trouble acquiring, retrieving, processing and disseminating information of various types. This "information poverty", at every level of society impairs public and private decision-making. IT in the South lacks raw information as well as the means to convert it into knowledge, leading to dire economic and developmental consequences. Local business opportunities are curtailed by serious lack of knowledge about local and international markets concerning changed patterns of demand, or new products, technologies and methods of production. Researchers, scientists, and skilled workers are isolated from current developments in their professions. Lack of timely information leads to low productivity, poor-quality research, and time wasted in hunting for information and repetition of research. Developing countries face obstacles that seriously handicap policy-makers. These include inadequate knowledge of natural resources, and unreliable (if any) socio-economic data, as well as poor information on national accounts, debt, balance of payments, market prices, extent of poverty and impact of poverty alleviation, health and education programs. These translate into planning without facts, and facing great difficulty in dealing with any urgent problem, from an epidemic or a flood to a financial crisis. Lack of information also reduces bargaining power in bilateral and multilateral negotiations. Major companies armed with remote-sensing satellite information about oil, minerals or crops may know more about a developing country's resources than the country itself - which may face a similar weakness in borrowing on international capital markets, dealing with multinationals, or influencing decisions by multilateral organizations like the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. A Widening Gap: In 1970, the UN optimistically wrote "the next decade should see developing countries even more active in closing the computer gap". Despite advances that could help this happen, such as microcomputers, only the OECD countries and a few Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs) have been able to use the new technologies. The faster their progress, the further the rest of the world falls behind. Ultimately, the information gap adds to the competitive gap, which deepens the development gap. IT Applications in Industrial Development: As IT is applied to design and manufacture, demand drops for the raw materials and energy supplied by developing countries while, in many branches of industry, their traditional competitive advantage from intensive use of low-skilled labor is also eroding. In textiles and clothing, developed countries use new, sophisticated computer-based technologies such as computer-aided design (CAD) and computer numerically-controlled machines (CNC). This, allows quick pattern changes, fast and accurate cutting, less wastage of material and energy leading to greater efficiency and higher quality. Therefore labor has fallen from 30 per cent of textile manufacturing costs to as low as 4 per cent, sharply reducing the competitive advantage of low-wage countries. For many industries in developed countries, low-skilled labor has fallen from 25 per cent of production cost to just 5-10 percent today. Computer-based machinery can be programmed to perform various jobs. Such flexibility allows economical production of small batches, overturning the old notion that only large-scale plants can be profitable. Mass production of standard goods is giving way to flexible production of customized products, along with new techniques like just-in-time production and inventory methods that demand closer proximity between suppliers, buyers and markets. The impact on developing countries, and their competitiveness, will depend on the rate of diffusion of technology. Investment Flying North: Developing countries fear that trends in informatics and labor cost - accentuated by just-in-time and total-quality-control organization methods that require production, supply and markets to be close together - may lead to "relocation back North" for industries in which they have historically had a comparative advantage. Besides the basic physical infrastructure and a cheap-labor reservoir, the key factors to attract foreign investment to a developing country now include skill levels, market size and advanced telecom and information processing facilities. The high capital costs, infrastructure needs, and skill intensity of IT are a barrier to most DCs, except a few NICs - but the flexibility and feasibility of small-scale production runs suit market conditions in many, and could attract foreign investment. IT and the Service Sector: The information revolution has transformed the nature and importance of services, making this the largest economic sector and employer in most industrial countries. Until recently, most services had to be produced locally, customized to buyers needs. Now, informatics and telecom advances are overcoming the barriers of distance. Anything done on a screen or phone can be handled anywhere in the world: airline reservations, security monitoring, accounting, management services. As computer hardware costs fall and software quality improves, services which were once considered as internationally non-tradable, now account for 20-25 per cent of global trade. Most
information-related services are highly labor-intensive, so developing
countries have great export potential. Opportunities may be available for
highly skilled workers (systems analysts, scientists, programmers) or
relatively lower skilled data clerks and keyboard operators for
administrative, accounting and other back-office work. The fast-growing software services market shot up globally from US$ 52 billion in 1985 to an estimated US$ 300 billion in 1995. India has a thriving industry centered around Bangalore, supplying to companies such as Texas Instruments; Asian and Latin American NICs, and other developing countries. Globalization has increased the demand for a range of management services, from consulting on IT to strategic planning. Firms in Latin America and Korea are operating successfully in systems consulting and integration, while Indian companies have many clients in the U.S., Europe, and the developing world. Pakistan has been creating drawings for Stockholm architects designing projects in Saudi Arabia. Such firms have a comparative advantage in markets of the South, not only in cheaper labor but better ability to handle problems relevant to developing countries. Many DCs now carry out a wide range of back-office work requiring lower skills and less training through IT applications. Workers in Barbados and Jamaica handle worldwide data input, and answer phone enquiries for airlines and credit card companies. Chinese operators have re-keyed the name and phone number of every person in the U.S., twice, for an American CD-ROM product. U.S. judicial opinions are abstracted and entered by clerks in Korea, for use by lawyers everywhere. Similar databases exist for tourism, agriculture, medicine and pesticides. Pre-conditions for Success: To benefit from the information revolution, the South must exploit IT successfully. Personal computers, simplified software, and electronic networks offer the developing countries access to global information. Advanced NICs are benefiting but for the least-developed countries, lack of human and physical capital may mean lost markets and further marginalization. They need to invest in capacity building (skills, infrastructure) to leapfrog into the new century. Local infrastructure like telecom facilities (phone, fax, etc.) and most importantly uninterrupted electricity is crucial. Singapore and Korea invested early and heavily in telecommunications. However, most developing countries lag behind. Tokyo alone has more phones than in all of Africa, and the waiting time for a business phone in Ghana is over 5 years. With 80 per cent of world population, developing countries account for only 2 per cent of global informatics expenditure. Building capacity is difficult, costly, long-term, and may seem remote from such realities as hunger and infant mortality. But the World Bank finds such investments have high returns (18 per cent, or 36 per cent counting indirect benefits) and become a steady source of public income. Easing of government regulations may attract investments from foreign firms. Singapore's liberal policies on trade in services and on telecom helped it become a world-class financial market. Countries successful with IT have been emphasizing computer literacy and informatics in engineering, business and technical schools. The World Bank sees four policy goals for the development of human capital: train information scientists and technicians; prepare teachers to promote computer literacy in schools; raise policy-makers awareness of informatics; and enable professionals to identify applications in health, management and agriculture. Training however, must not just be in computer use, but in programming and microelectronics, needed to make computers easier to use. IT Applications in Other Areas: Building informatics capacity not only enables a country to compete in global markets but also boosts efficiency in many areas of the economy. Governments, the biggest data-collectors, need information to make decisions. IT can enhance everything from policy analysis to accountability. An automated financial information system, integrating the Ministries of Finance and Planning with the Central Bank, enabled Uganda to balance its books for the first time in 17 years. IT can make tax collection effective, and improve the management of the civil services and public enterprises. However, to gain these public benefits, databases must be created. IT can also help governments deal efficiently with crises. IT can narrow the information and communications gap between rural communities and the main centres by enabling rural people to have access to valuable information (market prices and trends, government regulations, agricultural research, improved farm practices) and transmitting indigenous information and locally produced knowledge (on environment, resource constraints, farming methods, etc.). UNIDO reports high returns on rural telecommunications. For instance, in Sri Lanka, telephone access to central markets allows farmers to set prices higher, rather than at 50-60 per cent of Colombo prices. Microcomputers with much high-volume data are ideal for agricultural research. IT has enhanced the conduct and analysis of surveys and the design of agriculture projects in Nigeria and Indonesia. Recent advances in geographic information systems and remote sensing have diverse applications from taking stock of natural resources, and predicting desertification and deforestation, to helping bring environmental considerations into national planning (resource assessment, land and water use). In northeast Thailand, computers regulate irrigation. In Kenya and Nigeria, crops are forecast and food security monitored through computers. IT can help tackle the obstacles to poverty alleviation programs by identifying target groups, measuring policy impact, strengthening the planning and evaluation of projects. IT can sharply improve the delivery of health, nutrition and family planning services. China is experimenting with computer-aided diagnosis for rural hospitals, while Philippine health workers in remote areas use radio to consult about treatments and drugs. Similar networking prevails in Thailand as well as central and west Africa. IT is effective in monitoring epidemics and spreading medical information quickly. Future Prospects: New technology can link educators, researchers, students, policy-makers, and institutions, within or outside the country, and has a great potential for "distant learning" and mass education. World Bank projects have shown how technicians and villagers with low literacy levels can learn from graphics and visuals communicated through computers. IT has the power to change the traditional structure of international trade and industry. Countries able to incorporate the new technologies can become more competitive, resist "brain-drain", and raise the quality of life. However those lacking infrastructure and human resources face a bleak future of lost export markets and deepening isolation. Quick action is needed to realize the potential of a global information society, before this second Industrial Revolution sweeps past most of the world's people. Online Content in South Asia: Opportunities and Realities M. Rao, I. Rashid, H. Rizvi, R. Subba Edited version of article in EPW, November 20-26, 1999. The population of the Indian subcontinent is fast approaching the one and a half billion mark. However, the south Asian diffusion and adoption of the Internet continues to fall far short of the region’s potential. Much of the success of the Internet as a medium and as an economy in south Asia will depend on universal or near-universal access of citizens to cyberspace. But unlike ordinary telecommunications service, issues relating to access to the Internet do not stop at the level of the line and the device. The Net being a two-way communications and publishing medium, access issues should take into account the publishing and communication resources available at the user end. Internet users are not just consumers but producers and active participants in the information economy. National and local connectivity to the Net must be coupled with locally relevant content, community fora, and economically self-sustainable online initiatives. Gearing up to meet all these challenges requires local capacity in terms of technical expertise, leadership at the national levels, and regional co-operation between Internet professionals across south Asia. The material for this paper has been drawn from discussions and presentations at the south Asian Internet Workshop, organized by the International Centre for Mountain Development (ICIMOD) based in Nepal and hosted by the Local Government Engineering Department (LGED) of Bangladesh, in Dhaka in April 1999. Content in Developing Countries Developing nations are far behind the more advanced Internet economies not just in number of Internet Service Providers (ISPs), hosts connected to the Net, number of individual users online, Internet diffusion ratios, and number of organizations with leased line connections. This imbalance also extends to content in terms of number of web sites in developing countries, amount of local language content, and use of online content by key sectors. According to the International Telecommunications Union report, 'Challenges to the Network: Internet for Development' (1999), there are more Internet hosts in Finland than in all of Latin America and the Caribbean. There are also more hosts in New York than in all of Africa. More than 80 per cent of web pages are in English. The World Bank's annual development report, Knowledge for Development (1998), stresses the importance of leveraging new media technologies like the Internet in DCs for areas like lifelong learning, training and retention of skilled workers, transparency of government and financial institutions, and rural as well as distance education. But DCs lag behind to some extent in communications infrastructure, technical know-how and information processes about the economy and the environment. Tracking the diverse aspects of the online content scenario, identifying gaps in online content, and recommending measures to bridge this gap within the development context thus constitute a key component of any progressive regional Internet initiative. Content Developers and Audiences Internet diffusion in south Asia is at least a step or so behind other regions like North America and Europe. Thus, like some other emerging economies, one peculiar feature of the south Asian Internet scenario has been that there are more Internet users of south Asian origin outside the region than within. As a result, much of the initial push to create south Asia-related content came from outside the region, especially from the academic and non-profit sectors in the US. As local diffusion of the Net picked up, more content development work mushroomed at home. But much of the online audience even for this local content continues to be based abroad. Hence many content providers in south Asia (e.g. the news media) seem more pre-occupied with expatriate audiences, though this situation is beginning to change. There are at least seven measures of market maturity for online content in a country [Rao 1999]: (a) Total number of web sites about (and published in) the country; (b) Local relevance and usefulness of this content; (c) Local language standardization and usage on the web; (d) Amount of sub-national content (about states, provinces, cities); (e) Presence of meta-content like directories and search engines; (f) Amount of ad revenues targeted at online audiences via these sites; and (g) The presence of third-party services from online traffic auditors, ad revenue auditors and market research groups. In terms of content, the number of web sites focusing on each country is estimated to be around 10,000 in the case of India, 2,000 for Pakistan, 1,000 for Nepal, and 100 for Bangladesh [Rizvi 1999; Subba 1999]. The figures are an under-representation of the potential of the region, given the amount of existing offline content, cultural depth, and need for more online information in areas like government resources and social issues. Most south Asian online content (more than 95 per cent) is still in English, and efforts to boost local language content are in the nascent stage. Many Internet users in south Asian countries are yet to find significant local benefits from accessing local content on the web. In some countries, sub-national content is beginning to appear on sites dedicated to specific cities and states (e.g., <www.goacom.com>, <www.kerala.com>). Only India has comprehensive directory and search services covering local content in English (e g, Khoj <www.khoj.com>, Rediff <www.rediff.com>). Otherwise, US-based directories like Yahoo are the more authoritative resources on regional sites. The online ad markets in south Asia are still in their infancy; the Indian Internet ad market, for instance, was worth only about Rs 7 crore (US $ 1.75 million) in 1998. And third party audits of online traffic to south Asian web sites are completely missing. Market research groups like International Data Corporation (IDC-India) have only recently begun to issue forecast reports on areas like e-commerce. Attaining online media maturity also requires building and harnessing the requisite capacity for digital publishing. This requires a significant availability of formal educational and vocational training offerings for students and workers. In India, the Indian Institutes of Technology and Management have only recently begun to offer courses and modules in areas like web publishing and e-commerce. Professional training institutes like Aptech and NIIT offer a range of courses in multimedia publishing and e-business in several south Asian countries. As expected the initial channels for delivery and publishing of south Asian online content were mailing lists, usenet news groups and gophers; web sites came into the picture only in the mid-nineties. Much south Asian content today is web-based, but email fora can still play a useful role – especially in areas where bandwidth is low and the quality of phone connections is poor. In that sense, email-based discussion lists are an under-utilized channel in south Asian online communications. For instance, a search on the Liszt directory of mailing lists <www.liszt.com> reveals that out of about 90,095 mailing lists on the Internet, there are only about 40 mailing lists focusing on India, eight on Pakistan, four on Bangladesh, two on Nepal, and 10 on south Asia; most of these are also primarily concerned with south Asians living in the US. In terms of aesthetics and presentation of web publishing, many south Asian sites are still in the 'brochureware' or 'shovelware' stage; they do not effectively leverage the interactivity of the Net as a medium. Many of the south Asian sites also tend to be heavy in graphics, and have not been optimized for rapid download times. But then again, this is probably also the result of expensive access rates and inadequate budgets for investing in more powerful message board technologies or higher staffing levels. Unscrupulous web designer companies may also share the blame. Quite possibly, at the negotiation stage, they may not emphasize the ongoing investment the organization has to make in a useful web site. Content Categories News and General Information: Most English language newspapers and magazine groups in south Asia have an online presence (full lists of online media around the world can be obtained from sites like Newslink.org and MediaInfo.com). Some traditional media groups also face stiff competition from web-only publications (e.g. Rediff in India). In India, news content is also available in aggregated and re-distributed form on various newly emerging portals (e.g. SatyamOnline.com) and online research databases (e.g. IndiaInformer.com). Several alternative media organizations (e.g. Drik in Bangladesh < www.drik.net>) have also sprung up to challenge mainstream perceptions. Internet censorship does not seem to be a major issue yet in south Asia; most policy issues are still focused on creating appropriate regulatory frameworks for basic infrastructure providers like ISPs, setting access rate ceilings, and reducing import duty levels on Internet-related goods like PCs and modems. Public Health: The Net can be very well leveraged for public health information and for disaster relief during the region's frequent natural calamities. Some organizations have effectively used the web and email campaigns to raise relief funds during the Andhra Pradesh cyclone (e.g. India Network Foundation – <www.indnet.org>, but much more can be done in this regard in south Asia. Education and Research: Internet diffusion in schools, colleges and universities has not yet reached adequate levels; very few academic journals published from south Asia are online. Access to research-oriented content – such as online databases from the Institute of Scientific Information, which is a major provider of online research content to western academicians – is still priced beyond the budgets of many south Asian academic institutes. Government Resources: Some governments and government agencies are actively publishing reference information online. These include the National Informatics Centre in India <www.nic.in>, state governments, and sites in Pakistan and Nepal <www.pak.gov.pk>, <www.panasia.org.sg/nepalnet>. Spurred by the anticipated boom in the Indian Internet user base, a number of state governments have announced local Internet initiatives, ranging from online trade and investment services to high-tech corridors conducive to foreign investments. Andhra Pradesh's Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu is planning to get all the companies in his state on to the Internet, and create transparent government services accessible online. Information and services to be provided via the Net will include land records, property taxes, birth and death data, and applications for certificates. Some Indian states have official web sites promoting activities like tourism and industry. India's commerce ministry has selected several organizations for coordinated EDI (electronic data interchange) implementation, such as Customs, Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), Reserve Bank of India, and Container Corporation of India. But despite such announcements, the promise of the Net for services like e-governance is still far from implementation. States like Kerala and Tamil Nadu, with assistance from London-based ITU-backed World-Tel, are looking at boosting online government services and local content in the coming years. Non-governmental Resources: National NGOs like the LEARN foundation < www.learn.org> and Drik in Bangladesh, International NGOs like ICIMOD in Nepal <www.icimod.org> and CRY in India <www.cry.org> and global organizations like UNDP in Pakistan <www.un.org.pk> have a modest online presence in south Asia. International NGO funding drives much Internet publishing in south Asian countries like Nepal and Bangladesh. Local Language Content: Newspapers of only a few regional languages are online; only a few academicians and committed individuals have published notable amounts of local language literature. Part of the problem has been a general neglect of local language, IT products and services by the south Asian IT industry; there is also a marked lack of standardization of representation schemes, fonts and keyboard layouts. Fortunately, there has been a modest amount of lobbying and mobilization to get some south Asian languages included in the Unicode consortium. This has also garnered some support from other countries where south Asian languages are spoken, such as Singapore and Malaysia. Unfortunately however very little pan-south Asian work is taking place for local language standardization. A few encouraging signs along this dimension are emerging. India's Centre for Development of Advanced Computing has launched a multilingual Webware scheme called the iLEAP-ISP scheme. A multilingual word processor with Internet and e-mail support in Indian languages will be made available free to all Internet subscribers through their respective ISPs. Probably one of
the most promising developments has been the thrust given to local
language content and access infrastructure by the Tamil Nadu government.
The 75 million-strong Tamil speaking population worldwide has received a
platform in cyberspace, thanks to a $1.25 million initiative to promote
online content. The initiative includes support for a state-level Tamil
Internet Research Centre and a World Tamil University. The state
government plans to approach the International Unicode Consortium for
seeking membership and to work closely with the governments and
Information Technology sectors of Singapore, Malaysia and Sri Lanka on
such initiatives, Tamil being an official language in these countries. In India, state governments of Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Kerala, and Gujarat are discussing projects for the launch of public access Internet community centres with World-Tel <www.world-tel.com>, for taking information technologies like the Internet right down to the villages. Business Content: Much of the drive towards e-commerce in south Asia will be driven by transactive content, i.e. content which facilitates the completion of entire commercial transactions, or a significant part of them. It is in the business-to-business sector, and not the business-to-consumer sector, where the Net is expected to have its most dramatic impact as companies hook up content and messaging systems on Intranets and Extranets to cut costs, improve efficiency, and create whole new market spaces. Such trends are becoming visible in the Asian context as well. For instance, the site of trade information publisher AsianSources.com, a business-to-business trade inquiry hub, is facilitating millions of dollars of international trade leads for Asian companies in the manufacturing, pharmaceutical and apparel sectors. From humble email messaging and real-time market research to online sourcing and e-retailing, the Net has much to offer south Asian businesses. At a national level, this will call for the use of IT to improve linkages with suppliers, distributors, retailers and other intermediaries. Indian retailers like Shoppers' Stop <www.shoppersstop.com> use sophisticated information technology to cut costs, improve market responsiveness and manage customer loyalty programmes and web sites. But there are hardly any examples of third-party business-to-business content and commerce sites in south Asia, which could serve as online hubs for strengthening co-operation and information sharing between manufacturers and retailers. E-commerce in India is very much alive, with sites offering books for sale in Bombay, vegetables in Delhi, and movie tickets in Bangalore. IDC (India) estimates that the value of sales over the Net in India will mushroom to Rs 1,200 crore in year 2001, if the Internet user base takes off. Educational institutes like the National Institute for Fashion Technology (NIFT) are stepping up course offerings and internship programmes for students in areas like Internet marketing. Content Practices from Other Developing Nations Notable examples of local content publishing and leveraging in other emerging economies, from the south Asian perspective, include the Virtual University of the Monterrey Institute of Technology in Mexico (which enrolls 9,000 degree and 35,000 non-degree students from Latin America), the African Virtual University project (to increase access for African researchers to educational resources like academic journals through the Net) and Singapore Network Services' e-mail based services (which helped improve the efficiency of Singapore's ports; they are now being adopted in India). Other examples include One World Online <www.oneworld.org>, a web-based clearinghouse of issues related to sustainable development, which receives inputs from organizations in countries like India, Italy and Britain, and Peoplink <www.peoplink.org> hich uses the web to publicize the handicrafts work of women in countries like Panama. It is imperative that similar content-related developments in other emerging economies also are tracked, and lessons are derived from these for South-South exchange. Recommendations of the workshop Drawing on some of these similarities and differences across the region, several policy recommendations were made to boost south Asian content on the Net. (i) Publications (newspapers, magazines, academic journals) which are not yet online, must be encouraged to publish their information on the web. Content must also be provided in the business sector, geared towards creating a business market space. Constantly updated telephone/e-mail directories and yellow pages for businesses in each city and town must be made available online. (ii) Special attention must be paid to the export/import sector. Directories of exporters, product catalogues, customs information, shipping/transport agencies, insurance agencies and third party audit/verification information must all be compiled online for one-stop access by importers and exporters. Linkages must be provided to existing trade databases published by organizations like the United Nations. (iii) Content from non-profit organizations, public health groups and social service agencies must also be published online; a special grant should be set up for this purpose. (iv) Special measures must be taken for providing online content rapidly during times of disaster like earthquakes and floods. (v) Government departments and agencies must publish extensive content online, geared towards citizen services like land registration, tax information, and appointments with officials, transparent accounting practices, and employment opportunities. (vi) Initiatives must be launched to publish education-related content and services at all levels. Online educational content and instructional delivery must be used to extend the scarce resources of educational institutes across the country. (vii) Content generation must take place in south Asian languages and English. The development and standardization of local language software, fonts, and web publishing tools must be promoted aggressively. (viii) Where possible, use of freeware and shareware packages and tools, such as the use of the Linux operating system and Apache web server for digital publishing should be encouraged, instead of relying on costly proprietary software solutions. (ix) Training centres and seminars should be set up for generation of internal and intra-organizational Internet content, via Intranet document management systems and Extranet-oriented flow of information. Computer courses and curriculum in schools and colleges must be augmented to go beyond basic word processing and programming to include web page design and online database management. (x) Legal developments concerning content classification, regulation and enforcement in countries around the world must be tracked. Regional representatives from the industry, academia and government should try to be present in forums of the UN, WTO, OECD, G-7, ASEAN, APEC, etc. dealing with cyberspace content issues like intellectual property rights, copyright protection, online privacy, online crimes, and digital watermarks. Draconian content laws which require censoring of material published on web sites in India and abroad should be avoided. Where necessary, parental filtering solutions should be used to protect children from seeing objectionable content on the web. But laws interfering with basic freedoms of speech and expression should be avoided. (xi) Online forums and periodic seminars/briefings must be conducted at the national and regional levels to invite participation in policy making regarding national online content laws. (xii) Online and offline fora must be created and sustained to encourage discussion on digital content-related activities between south Asia and other emerging economies. (xiii) To promote access to illiterate people, Internet radio stations in local dialects should be encouraged, and devices as well as channels should be found (e.g. through Worldspace or other satellite broadcasts) to distribute this locally (e.g. via cable TV networks). (xiv) World-class hosting infrastructure must be created in south Asia so that locally generated content will be predominantly hosted in the region and not outside, thus saving lucrative foreign exchange revenues and safeguarding information sovereignty. References: Papers presented at the south Asia Internet Workshop, Dhaka, Bangladesh, April 1999: (i) Rao,
Madanmohan : 'Internet Content In India: Local Challenges, Global
Aspirations'. From Grassroots to Cyberspace: The BytesForAll Experiment in South Asia Frederick
Naronha, Freelance Journalist Abridged version of paper presented at the national conference "Reading Beyond the Alphabet: Innovations in Post and Lifelong Literacy," IIM, Ahmedabad, August 18-19, 2000. 99 percent of the
world's population have no access to IT. The economic, political and
cultural repercussions of this fact are the basis of a new form of poverty
-- information poverty -- one of the greatest issues confronting
individuals and nations. BytesForAll is an experiment to understand how IT and the Internet can be harnessed to alleviate information poverty. It is a centre for collating information on the initiatives being undertaken in various pockets - in India, in South Asia, or beyond. The search for initiatives has brought into focus a number of useful examples, which are unfortunately not widely known. In Mauritius, illiteracy being a major stumbling block in information dissemination, the faculty of agriculture was facing problems in developing ways to offer agricultural information to the rural community. Their innovation has been the use of audio files in two local spoken languages on a website that offers advice on potato growing. In order to ensure Internet access to non-computer-literate farmers, information, usually available in print form or in technical reports, has been placed onto a website with additional graphics and audio files to facilitate communication and navigation. <www.uom.ac.mu>, e-mail Krishan Bheenick < kjb @uom.ac.mu> The website of the Rio Colorado Irrigation District in the north-west corner of Mexico is aimed at assisting the local farmers' organizations. The site has become a focal point for the region's small-scale indigenous agricultural producers. Through Internet connections, the farmers can send email, submit reports on irrigation quotas and planting activities and access important information on weather and market conditions and a host of other relevant data.<http://cucapah.mxl.cetys.mx/indexe.html>. The website 'A Gateway to Indian Agriculture' gives information on animal sciences, crop sciences, agribusiness, fisheries, home science, horticulture, natural resources, and sustainable agriculture. Links to agriculture - related organizations worldwide, programmes, publications and libraries, and pages on weather, agricultural issues and policies, gender issues, infotech and human resources enrich the site <http://web.aces.uiuc.edu/aim/diglib/india/>. Village Information Centres are demonstrating value in rural areas such as in Pondicherry, India where villagers are connected through an online database which helps them access required information in their mother tongue - Tamil. The experiment is an initiative of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation <www.mssrf.org>. The villagers congregate around information centres to read newspapers and to get connected with the latest local news. Women get information about the wholesale and market prices of vegetables while farmers log in to find the market price of fertilizer and grains. The centres also give weather forecasts and thermal wave maps on those parts of the sea that can yield a large cache of fish for the seafaring lot. The students get news like the announcement of their examination schedule, the timing of their school bus, and watch the latest educational compact discs. Internet - radio broadcasting technology is being utilized to enable community access to information databases. The Kothmale Internet Community radio project in Sri Lanka includes a Radio programme to "Radio Browse" the Internet. Information from selective Internet sites is interpreted in the local language by community broadcasters. Besides its own Internet Café, the community radio has provided two free Internet access points at Gampola and Nawalapitiya community libraries. Besides, it also develops its own computer database deriving information often requested by community members, from the Internet <www.unesco.org/ webworld/highlights/internet_radio_130599.html>, <www.kirana.lk> or email MJR David <david@sltnet.lk> The Society for Telecom Empowerment plans to showcase some grassroot projects based on cutting-edge technologies. For instance, the community radio project using Internet radio plans to take health, literacy and other messages to a populace that is illiterate or does not know English. It is envisaged that a village would have a community information centre, with a multimedia PC Server (having a RealAudio or equivalent), connected to the Internet. The output of the sound card could be fed into an amplifier, and distributed over ordinary copper wire to surrounding houses, each of which only needs a loudspeaker. Or audio signals can be distributed from the community PC using either twisted-pair telephone wires or the coaxial cable used by cable TV operators. Homes would need a small Internet Radio, consisting of a simple embedded microcomputer, a loudspeaker, a microphone and a couple of buttons for channel selection < www.cerfnet.com/~amehta/>. "Our Voice" (Namma Dhwani), a pilot community radio project was conducted in Chitradurga district of Karnataka state in southern India to assess the possibilities for local participation and programme content. A monthly half-hour programme was produced and aired on the local FM station of All India Radio in 1998. The project involved participation of local individuals and groups. Themes included watershed management, education of the girl child, women's health, women's self-help income-generation schemes and the impact of adult literacy programmes on rural life. Email: voices@vsnl.com. The OneWorld Radio News Service carries audio features about human rights and environmental issues. These are available free over the Internet. This service uses RealAudio technology to compress audio files so they are small enough to be transferred quickly over the Internet. It's possible to download a 20-minute documentary programme with less than 20 minutes online. The files have been encoded to a high RealAudio standard (40.3Kbps.) <www.oneworld.net /radio_news/ index.html>. IT and Internet is facilitating the creation and dissemination of information through online libraries. The Humanity Libraries Project is a model for an information resource developed at low cost and made available to all for free or very low cost. It also offers 1,240 publications free online. <www.oneworld.org/globalprojects/humcdrom> or email Dr. Michael Loots <mloots@globalprojects.org>. A similar initiative is the African Digital Online Library for the benefit of users in Africa, started in November 1999. <www.AfricaEducation.org/adl/> or email Paul West, Director CLL at Technikon SA at LibraryAdmin@AfricaEducation.org. Virtual education can deliver immense benefit to the student and teaching community. The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) commissioned an international group of experts to look at the virtual education phenomenon and provide a report. The study is available from <www.col.org/virtualed/index.htm>. Experts in distance education libraries and information databases discussed the changing nature of knowledge management and available technologies. They also examined how COL and its Information Resource Centre can best meet the needs of stakeholders around the Commonwealth. The group drafted a mission statement for a Commonwealth Open Learning Interactive Network for Knowledge Sharing (COLINKS) <www.col.org/KMR>. IT is also
enriching distance learning worldwide. For instance, the educational
databases of the International Centre for Distance Learning (ICDL) - a
centre for research, teaching, consultancy, information, and publishing
activities, contain information on over 31,000 distance learning
programmes and courses. The databases also feature over 1,000 distance
education institutions worldwide and more that 11,000 abstracts of books,
journal articles, research reports, conference papers and dissertations
relating to distance education. <www-icdl.open.ac.uk/> To suffice the urgent need for IT training, ITrain makes available on the web a collection of Internet training materials for instructors and students. The materials offer an interactive approach, engaging students in the learning process and supporting instructors in customization and planning of courses. New courses are offered in website construction, effective Internet searching and list facilitation <unganisha.idrc.ca/itrain/ new_material.html> or email Steve Song <ssong@bellanet.org, <www.bellanet.org>. Efforts to spread computer literacy in schools are being made in earnest. The state of Tamil Nadu in India for example, has allocated Rs 1.12 billion to impart computer education to higher secondary students. Computer science will be introduced as an optional subject in the 11th and 12th standards in all government higher secondary schools. The state thus expects 30,000 computer - literate students to pass out from various government schools of the state in 2001 <www.rediff.com/computer/1999/nov/22tn.htm>. As part of the Alliance for Global Learning, WorLD and Schools Online are working together to bring the Internet and computer technology to schools in nine countries <www.schoolsonline.org>. In order to facilitate use of low-cost PCs, a little-known computer software company, Media Video Limited, is entering the educational computers arena with computers priced between Rs 1,250 and Rs 2,750 (US$ 30 to 65) for the semi-urban and rural market <www.economictimes.com/ today/ 01tech02.htm>. In order to promote use of Internet at schools, an annual school contest called Insect@thon was conducted by the National Museum of Namibia. Its purpose was to inventory national biodiversity information. The target of the Insect@thon was to inventory 70,000 hand- written insect records (comprising 11 data-fields) in a two day period employing 15 school teams of 4-6 students each. Subsequent school involvement through the Internet, by way of adding more biodiversity records to the webtop databases, will be rewarded with crefit points. These will allow the students at these schools to obtain additional equipment, software, Internet subscriptions, payment of telephone bills, etc. <www.natmus.cul.na/insectathon.html> Email: Joris Komen, Curator/IT Manager, National Museum of Namibia joris@NATMUS.CUL.NA. Efforts are also being made to increase computer awareness in remote areas. Under the aegis of Project Vidya, Intel India, in association with the National Science Centre, launched the first mobile computer awareness programme, 'Computers for you', for rural India. Under this programme, a van equipped with multimedia computers, software and a trainer will cover 60 villages in 12 months, reaching out to over 4,000 children per village. 'Cyberskools' have been set up at the National Science Centres in Mumbai and New Delhi. Over 50,000 children and 5,000 teachers are been given exposure to computers annually <www.rediff.com/computer/1999/jun/08intel.htm>. Efforts are underway to impart computer education to the blind by the Indian Association for the Visually Handicapped <iavh@hotmail.com>. The Concept behind BytesForAll BytesForAll launched in July 1999 is an unfunded and voluntary experiment in information sharing, aimed at focussing on how IT can be, and is being, made relevant to the common people in South Asia. In the absence of adequate information sharing on new technologies and their applications, the region keeps 'reinventing the wheel' instead of learning speedily from each other and sharing insights into the 'people before profits' uses of IT and Internet. In terms of contribution, BytesForAll is primarily involved in acting as a channel for ideas and information, both within South Asia and beyond. It is hoped that the experiences of South Asia can also subsequently be effectively utilized by other Third World countries, in their own efforts to use IT to battle poverty, illiteracy, or such other developmental bottlenecks. In addition to the website <www.bytesforall.org>, a monthly ezine of the same name is circulated widely through its own mailing list and many other like-minded lists globally. Lessons Learnt Growth of the Internet offers a unique possibility for low-cost, international collaboration among people working on developmental and alternate issues. In this context, the much-overlooked potential of electronic mailing lists and e-mail needs to be particularly stressed. [Refer 'At Ease With E-Mail: A Handbook On Using Electronic Mail for NGOs in Developing Countries', UN NGLS and Friedrich Ebert Foundation, 1998. ISBN 0-9645188-5-6.] South Asia shares so many similar problems, it would make sense to share information among those interested in tackling such problems, cutting across political boundaries. Information-sharing is a critical task, and given the diversity within India or South Asia, this needs to be carefully cultivated. Putting key players in the field in direct link with one another -- by indicating relevant experiments, websites, and e-mail contacts -- can yield rich returns in taking the issue forward. Communication within the Third World is as, if not more, important than exchanging ideas with the 'developed' world. It is in this region that relevant, meaningful and affordable solutions are more likely to be found, as this experiment shows. Non-profit community radio in particular holds an immense potential for local communication. India is yet to utilize the potential of educational radio or community radio. Reports from Nepal and Sri Lanka are pointing to the scope from this sector. Educationists need to stress the importance of radio, more so with FM broadcast technologies that allow for literally thousands of low-powered stations to be set up across the country. Spreading the wings Over the months the experiment seems to have inspired volunteers to willingly join in and lend their support. In terms of strategies, the primary focus has been sharing information and building links in a very low-cost manner. There are no full-time employees. But the wide network being built (through mailing-lists, such as bytesforall@goacom.com) makes sure that our e-zine is circulated across large areas, reaching a number of development organizations, which have found its focus useful. Encouraged by this experiment, BytesForAll is planning to launch MagsForAll -- a small, unfunded project to get the considerably large section of non-resident Goans to support small reading rooms in institutions, schools and clubs back home. Information and Communication Technology in Development: Cases from India Subhash
Bhatnagar & Robert Schware (Eds) Book Review by Dr. S. Sadagopan, Director, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore. Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has become the most exciting set of technologies today, thanks to developments like Internet growth, e-commerce proliferation, mobile computing revolution and the arrival of broadband. With the success of Indian engineers in global software development, ICT is receiving more attention in the Indian media than its due share. At this juncture it is appropriate to study the impact of ICT in rural India that addresses the needs of the common man. The book under review documents more than a dozen case studies on ICT applications in a development context in India. Most of the case studies documented are pilot projects undertaken either directly by Government departments or done with heavy Government support and funding. The cases concentrate on applications of ICT for rural development. They represent a wide variety - the high profile CARD project of Andhra Pradesh Government that attempts to provide a citizen-friendly interface to AP Government; the exciting WARANA project of wired villages; the unusual use of same-language sub-titling of film songs (Hindi movie songs) to improve literacy - and the well-known ICT use for improved accounting of milk collection in rural Gujarat. As such, they represent a welcome addition to both development literature and ICT applications literature. The case studies have been well-documented so as to be useful not only to Indian policy makers but also to anyone interested in ICT applications in a development context. The well known authors - Professor Bhatnagar of IIM, Ahmedabad and Professor Robert Schware of World Bank have done an outstanding job of editing the articles to provide continuity, common perspective, presentation style and a prologue and epilogue that threads the seventeen articles that form the book contents. An annotated Bibliography and Reference list provide pointers to several books & technical reports in this emerging area. Specifically the book documents the following applications. Computer-aided Administration of Registration Department (CARD) system of Andhra Pradesh that attempts to reengineer the Registration Process involving about 120 million documents a year. The pilot project already implemented has reduced Registration time from several days to just 60 minutes and Encumbrance certificate issue time from five days to 10 minutes. This is one of the most successful projects that bring benefits to millions of people in Andhra Pradesh. Hopefully other Indian states will attempt to replicate this success. IT at Milk Collection Centers in Cooperative Dairies in Gujarat brings real benefits to more than 60,000 farmers daily who are involved in the milk collection project spread over 600 milk collection centers. Using relatively simple technology (PC, Weighing machine with PC interface and online milk tester), this system has delivered results over many years. It is ironical that such replicable successes do not multiply even over full decades! Warana Wired Village Project in Maharashtra is a very recent experiment in providing Internet connection using satellite communication to rural India. This experiment leverages the relative prosperity gained by this region over the past decades through a Sugar Factory. Spreading over 70 villages, the project attempts to use Web technology for self-improvement through skill development and employment generation. The recently constituted IT Task Force has several such "show cases" - hopefully they will move beyond the show. Jhabua extension education in tribal Madhya Pradesh documents the use of satellite communication for extension education in remote areas in the backward area of Madhya Pradesh. Using 150 direct reception TV sets, with satellite-based talk back facility, the project experimented with more than two hours (daily) of developmental programs (targeting the village level functionaries like village health workers, staff and Government employees). The state of Madhya Pradesh believes in grass root applications like this. Same Language Sub-titling experiment in Gujarat that attempted a novel, intuitive yet controversial way of improving literacy among children by synchronized sub-titling of film music song lyrics (the sounds and the text of the lyrics show up on the screen together). This experiment has convincingly proved that children show significant improvement in literacy; the fact that children like to co-sing the songs and access to text of the lyrics helps in co-singing underpin the success of this experiment. Such inexpensive yet effective experiments somehow do NOT interest Indian policymakers for reasons best known to them. Integrated Certificate Distribution across Andhra Pradesh is another high-profile experiment being implemented. Similar experiments are under way in other states including Tamil Nadu. The technology is simple; yet the benefits are immense, particularly the system build up of Social Security Identification (SSI) for most citizens - a unique way of identifying every individual citizen, using a cost-effective and non-controversial scheme. Hopefully such a system will be used for other Government-Citizen interface issues like Election, Ration, Utilities, Special benefits etc. Electronic Support for (Auxiliary Nurse Midwives) Rural Health Workers in Rajasthan is an ambitious attempt to use cutting-edge technology like hand-writing based data entry, next generation tools (like Apple Newton PDA in mid nineties) to directly benefit rural health workers. Cutting edge technology need not always succeed - at least this experiment showed this! Disaster Management Plan for Maharashtra attempts to build an ICT infrastructure for earthquake-prone areas of Maharashtra. Obviously this experiment is a reaction to one of the worst disasters that the country witnessed in recent years. All such knee-jerk reactions lead to grandiose, expensive projects that are stand-alone; they do not benefit citizens for other functions, thanks to multiplicity of Government departments and their near isolation from other departments. Rural Postal System in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh represents an interesting way to reengineer the multiple functions in a Post Office counter in India using simple PC-based technology. Thanks to near-zero investments in Post offices, even such relatively simple and straightforward applications make news (and get documented here). Interestingly such experiments have significant payoffs; if replicated with care (thanks to 150,000 Post offices in India) it can change the very face of this extremely efficient, but awfully neglected department of Government of India. IT for Physically Handicapped is more of documenting isolated attempts to use PC based Braille readers, speech systems, Braille printers and speech interfaces for visually (and other) handicapped persons. The story is no different in other parts of the world; systems are expensive, people are indifferent, Governments are slow and in countries like India, the numbers are staggering and the situation disheartening (training is available to 400 persons out of 4,000, 000 potential handicapped persons in India). Honey Bee Network in Gujarat is an attempt to use multimedia technology to create, preserve and disseminate traditional knowledge systems of rural India using a philosophy of knowledge sharing. It is an interesting attempt that has taken several years to develop. It has succeeded in de-mystifying technology but one is not sure of its scalability to large number of citizens. Village Telephony in hilly Jammu Kashmir, Rajasthan desert, remote Uttar Pradesh and coastal Maharashtra is a typical technical demonstration that is repeated often in India. Use of Inmarsat satellite based communication system to provide basic telephony was studied. The results were as expected - the beneficiaries do get significant benefits. The follow-up is also on expected lines - none! (because some half-baked economists dispute the cost benefits!) Satellite communications for barefoot women managers in Gujarat documents a simple experiment to use satellite communications for training women village level government workers in municipal government, forestry and water conservation. One more case of an interesting ICT application. Multipurpose Electronics Training Centre is an attempt to create local employment using ICT - by way of creating technicians to serve ICT equipment in rural areas. With rural Internet & Telecom proliferation, it is an excellent attempt to create rural employment. One more case for rapid replication. As such this book is a valuable attempt to create awareness, share experience and learn from mistakes based on a set of successful ICT cases from India. Unfortunately all the cases suffer from being overly Government dependent (direct or indirect). There have been a number of cases pioneered by individuals and corporations (BharatMail of Madras that scans and e-mails relatives for illiterate people, Sudarshanam that replaces physical queue by logical queue for millions of devotees in Tirumala temple, WebDuniya that created the first Indian language portal, BabaBazaar of Delhi that has proved that e-commerce can work even for non-digital goods or FabMart that has proved that Business-to-Consumer e-commerce can be profitable etc.,) that are compelling applications of ICT in India - not necessarily in rural India. May be the Editors can attempt another book with applications that do not depend too much on Government. Partners sought: Health IS in Developmental Research Dr.
Richard Heeks A research proposal I'm developing will investigate factors underlying success and failure in health information systems (HIS) in developing countries. As part of the research, we will be looking for partners to write up case studies of HIS success, partial failure and total failure. The studies will be framed according to a success/failure model, which is being developed. We will be interested in a broad range of cases including HIS supporting - and failing to support - health care delivery, health care management, and health system planning from developing and transitional economies (i.e. all non-OECD countries). Following case development, we aim to work with a small number of the partners to develop a better understanding of critical HIS implementation factors At this stage, I would be interested in receiving just a simple expression of interest from anyone/any organization. A set of pages has been launched that is specifically targeted at the needs of Developing Countries. The initiative has been developed in conjunction with IFIP WG9.4, at: http://is.lse.ac.uk/ifipwg94/. To access the pages, please refer: <www.anu.edu.au/ people/ Roger.Clarke/ISWCountry/> ISWorld list is a service of the Association for Information Systems (AIS) <http://www.aisnet.org> hosted at University College Dublin. For archives, subscribing, or posting "norms" see <http://www.isworld.org/isworldlist> Business
Information Technology Management: Enabling Cultural Awareness Call for Papers and Participation Sherif
Kamel, PhD The Conference is scheduled for 4-6 June, 2001, at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. BITWorld is endorsed by IRMA and AIS/ICIS to bring the theory and practice of Business IT Management. <http://www.uia.mx/bitworld2000>. While the date for submission of the abstracts is January 26, 2001 the final papers must be sumitted by April 13, 2001. The keynote speakers at the Conference include Mohamed El Hamamsy, MisrFone Telecommunications, Egypt; Detmar Straub, Georgia State University, USA; Claudia Loebbecke, University of Cologne, Germany and Omar El Sawy, University of Southern California, USA, in addition to a number of speakers from the industry. The Conference Chairs are Dennis Dunn, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK and Amr Mortagy, American University in Cairo, Egypt while the Programme Co-Chairs are Sherif Kamel, American University in Cairo, Egypt; Ray Hackney, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK; Amr Goneid, American University in Cairo, Egypt and Gurpreet Dhillon, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA The best papers in the conference will be published in the Asia Pacific Journal of Management Science, or the Journal for Global Information Management. The journal aims at encouraging debate on the role of IT in the development process and contributing to more informed decision making concerning IT development, adaptation, transfer and utilization. It is a vehicle for information exchange and sensitization on the growing gap between the developed and the developing world, the role of IT in this process, and its impact on the excluded and included sectors of the society, especially with reference to the current globalization trend. The latest issue, Volume 9, No. 1 l contains the following articles.
Contributions to the journal may be submitted to Sasikumar, M., Knowledge Based Computer Systems Group, National Centre for Software Technology, Mumbai 400 049, India. For instruction to authors refer to <www.iospress.nl> or <www.ncst.ernet.in>. For subscription details refer <www.iospress.nl> email:order@iospress.nl Nascent Internet Phenomenon in LACs Anthony Faiola and Stephen Buckley Abridged version of article in the Washington Post Foreign Service – July 9,2000 Ashaninka Indian village in central Peru has been grappling with poverty and disease since ages. The village’s first link to the outside world was brought by the British missionaries only 81 years ago. As recently as the early 1990s, communist guerrillas had forced some Ashaninkas into slavery. Even after the Peruvian army defeated the insurgents, life in this thatched hut settlement with no electricity or running water remained a grueling struggle. It still is, but the lone computer in tribal leader Oswaldo Rosas's hut--now doubling as a tribal cybercafe--brings hope. The computer along with a portable generator, a satellite dish and a big screen monitor for video conferencing were obtained through grants from a Lima-based nonprofit organization, the Canadian government and the local telephone company. After receiving eight weeks of computer training, Rosas and five other tribal leaders have built an Ashaninka Web site on their folklore <www.rcp.net.pe/ashaninka>. E-commerce has boosted tribal revenue by 10 percent as they use the Net to sell organically grown oranges in Lima, 250 miles to the east. Ashaninka represents an extraordinary example of a nascent Internet phenomenon in Latin American Countries (LACs), the region, telecommunication analysts call the fastest growing Net market in the world. Experts estimate that 13 million to 16 million Latin Americans are now online. Although representing only 3 to 4 percent of the region's 500 million people, compared with more than 50 percent in the United States, the user rate in Latin America is more than doubling each year. In the region's most prosperous countries, it is doubling every four to six months. The Latin American Internet market is growing faster than that of any other world region, even outdoing Asia in its growth rate. Estimated numbers of Internet users in early 2000 are (in millions): Brazil 6.9, Mexico 2.4, Argentina 0.9, Chile 0.6, Colombia 0.6, Peru 0.4, and Venezuela 0.4. In contrast, the U.S. has 111 million and Japan 18 million Internet users. The average Internet user in LACs is white, male, urban and university educated. In the last two years, a movement to put a dent in what is called Latin America's "digital apartheid" has gained momentum. In an effort to keep Internet from broadening the gap between Latin America's classes, already the widest in the world, progressive governments, activists and nonprofit organizations have seized the technology to reach out to the poor and young. In Argentina, the government launched a $1 billion program this year to offer personal computer loans to people who cannot afford conventional credit. In Chile, the government finished an ambitious plan to wire all 1,263 public high schools to the Internet. Half of all grammar schools also have been wired, opening the Net to students of all economic levels. In Brazil, Latin America's most populous country and home to half its Internet users, nonprofit organizations have introduced computer courses and Internet connections to hundreds of slums. At the same time, the advent of companies offering free Internet access to Latin Americans has made it more accessible than ever. Without question, massive barriers exist. Analysts worry that poor infrastructure, especially in rural areas, will derail attempts to fight poverty. Ironically, expensive Internet-ready computers were shipped to at least one rural school in Argentina last year that still lacked electricity. Also, many poor people without the reading and writing skills necessary to surf the Net seem doomed to fall between the cracks. But the effort is being made, especially among the young. According to the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, there are 0.2 personal computers per household in Latin America, compared with 1.6 in the United States. More and more, computers are available in schools or community centers, or they can be rented by the hour in cybercafes for as little as $1 to $3 an hour in some countries. In Brazil, where roughly 18 million cellular phones are in use, analysts predict that wireless Internet services will become a cheaper alternative to computer-based use. The struggle to wire the poor, while still far behind similar attempts in the United States has gained ground as the cost of Internet access has tumbled. In Brazil, furious market competition and the devaluation of Brazil's currency have brought Internet rates down from $40 a month two years ago to roughly $10 today. In Chile, government regulations in 1999 forced rates down by 70 percent, with the average cost for 20 hours falling from $55 to $15. Since the past year, some companies have begun to offer free Internet access. They are aiming, analysts say, at the wealthy families and the advertisers who want to reach them. But the side effect is that people on the wrong side of the digital divide, too can get free access. Between December 1999 and February of this year, after Brazilian companies began to offer free access, the number of Internet users jumped by 1.2 million. America Online Latin America Inc. launched in Brazil, plans to expand into Mexico and Argentina later this year with a $374 million public offering. Thanks to high taxes, import duties and difficulty in finding goods produced abroad, online shopping has become particularly attractive. E-commerce is booming as the Internet changes everything from politics to tax filing. Brazilian consumers, who purchased $198 million in goods via the Internet two years ago, are expected to spend $900 million through the Web this year. In Buenos Aires, during this year's mayoral campaign one candidate sent out his campaign message on 200,000 CD-ROMs. In Chile, 30 percent of taxpayers filed electronically in April, a 500 percent increase from 1999. Considering Latin America's history of economic inequality, analysts caution that it is the larger and more economically powerful countries in the region that are acquiring new users. The tribe's story does offer hope--after taking computer training classes, one of its young leaders won admission to a university in Lima--it also shows how difficult expansion of the Internet to the poor may prove to be. Although most of the tribe, especially the young, speak fluent Spanish, many of the village's 1,000 residents, including almost all middle-aged women, cannot read or write; an all too common problem in the poorest Latin American countries plaguing the use of Internet for development. The KnowNet initiative aims to popularize and facilitate knowledge networking in developing countries for overall human development through the amalgamation of ICT and remote volunteering. It centers around using and propagating ICT models for creating an open system for recognizing, valuing, enriching and sharing local knowledge along with human capacity building efforts. This will lead to a two-way process of people accessing information and knowledge for development and also information and knowledge finding its way to the probable users. KnowNet aims to empower communities to use ICT models for creation of Livelihood Opportunities, to evolve better Coping Mechanisms, and seek better Governance to improve their Quality of lives, on the basis of their own knowledge and efforts. Some resources have already been developed and hosted on the website at <www.knownet.org> under the KnowNet Initiative namely KnowNet Weaver-a tool kit for creation of interactive websites and TechKnowNet - an email administered/on-line web development training course for lay persons. Both these resources are free and many more resources are in the pipeline. Radio station in a briefcase Vikas Markanday and Dayal Singh, both aged 21, and hailing from a small town in Haryana, a northern state of India, have assembled a low-cost FM radio transmitter that they hope will spread useful information making a vital difference to the lives of villagers. Weighing approximately 12 kgs., the entire "radio station" fits into a briefcase. The transmitter has a range of 10 to 15 kms radius. It can take input from a cassette, a microphone or even a built-in radio station. This offers broadcasting possibilities from a wide range of situations. The radio-transmitter barely costs Rs. 10,000 (approx. US$ 225). On the other hand an UNESCO-gifted 'radio station' costs around Rs. 200,000. The developers believe such a radio can play a vital role in low-cost communication especially in rural areas. Groups with developmental messages hope to get permission to take to the airwaves opening up to them globally, thanks to rapid changes in technology. India has been promising to open up 'community radio' stations. Asian countries like the Philippines, Nepal and Sri Lanka have already shown the beneficial impact of such locally managed, non- profit initiatives taken up by citizens. The innovators belong to Nutra Indica Research Council, an NGO in Rohtak that seeks to put rural innovators in touch with scientists, and provide a platform for ideas to be exchanged, particularly on the rural front. |