Volume 9, No. 3, November 1999
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What can we learn from Andhra Pradesh? First let me wish the readers a happy New Millennium. Departing from the normal practice of a short editorial, I have chosen to narrate the experience of Andhra Pradesh, which is one amongst the 25 states in India. Andhra Pradesh (AP) has been in the news for a variety of IT initiatives that have been launched in the last couple of years. AP is being held up as a model state for modernizing the government through the use of IT; taking economic reforms seriously by cutting subsidies and doing all this through a human face by spending on welfare programs specifically targeted towards the real poor. The success of AP has become particularly noteworthy after the resounding electoral victory of Chandra Babu Naidu's party in the recent elections. Not only have reform programs been implemented, they have been successfully sold to a public to whom real benefits may not yet have percolated. Although not every state can easily acquire a chief executive with the missionary zeal of a Chandra Babu Naidu, there are other important aspects that can be replicated by state governments in India and governments in other developing countries. These lessons may be lost if the limelight continues to focus only on the IT suaveness of the Chief Minister. The IT initiatives of AP can be broadly classified into three categories: strengthening the IT infrastructure; implementing selected IT applications which have a large citizen interface and attracting investments in the knowledge industry. Several well-defined projects were taken up in each of these areas and were executed in a short time frame. The Andhra Pradesh government has taken up a number of projects to strengthen the information technology infrastructure in the state. This infrastructure consists of a fibre-optic wide area network connecting the districts as well as an extensive network connecting various departments in the Sachivalaya (Secretariat, where the ministers and top echelons of bureaucracy work). Another critical aspect of the infrastructure is the strengthening of the IT manpower base in the state. Towards this end, ten thousand more seats have been created in Engineering colleges. Of these, nearly two thousand will be for computer science. In addition, the Institute of Information Technology has been created as a Centre for Excellence with multi-nationals participating in the venture. The third element of the infrastructure is the technical and software project management capability that is being built in the Andhra Pradesh Technology Service (APTS) organisation. This organisation is able to attract and retain highly competent professionals. This happens because of the compensation at market standards as well as the challenging tasks provided to such specialists. APTS provides technical services to various departments in the government as well as to the private sector. The fact that they have earned significant revenues from selling their services out side the ambit of the government is indicative of their capability. The first and the most important aspect is the articulation of a vision of how the AP government could improve the delivery of services to its citizens by bringing about internal efficiency and effectiveness. For this purpose, all the major departments have identified key indicators of performance, the current levels of performance on these indicators and the kinds of improvement that can be targeted in the near future. Armed with a strong will to improve the functioning of the government, AP has gone all out to use information technology to achieve the targeted improvements. The key lesson for other governments is that the will to improve governance and a detailed exercise to chart out a path of how this could be achieved, would need to be done before the induction of information technology. More than the IT suaveness of the Chief Minister it is the faith in the capability of IT to deliver performance improvement that has helped AP. When the Chief Minister does a morning videoconference with the Collectors (District Magistrates or head of district administrations) of AP or uses a note book to pick out data about a government department/program, most people cite it as an example of the IT suaveness of Chandra Babu Naidu. To an astute observer, this should actually appear as the strong will of Chandra Babu Naidu to exert pressure on the bureaucracy to improve its performance. It is a moot question whether the strong leadership of Chandra Babu Naidu and his enthusiasm for IT would alone have resulted in the kind of IT applications that are being developed in AP. Perhaps the strong support from the Chief Minister has enabled a critical mass in the bureaucracy to assume a role of championing the usage of IT in different departments. Perhaps they see that successful IT projects will not only bring them approbation from the public but will also get them recognition from the Chief Minister. What is remarkable about AP is the commonality in thinking, of a number of IAS (Indian Administrative Service) officers around the issue of how IT should be inducted in government departments. Not only are these bureaucrats able to make effective presentations about the strategy, but they speak the same language on public platforms. Their power point presentations are almost identical. Many of them are labeled as ex-officio IT secretaries although they may be heading different functional departments. A lot of credit of what is happening in AP must go to the leadership and the dynamism of these bureaucrats in taking up major IT applications and overseeing their execution successfully. AP government has realised that to take IT applications to many more departments and regions it will need capable project leaders who can execute the implementation of large IT projects. Towards this end the government has identified 50 potential chief information officers. These officers are likely to be given 4 to 5 months intensive class room and practical training to provide all the necessary inputs to transform them into an IT application project leader. For providing this training AP government is likely to contact the Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad, and Satyam School for Information Systems. All these actions suggest the seriousness with which the induction of Electronic Governance is being planned and executed within AP. One finds that most other states hoping to inculcate IT into their governance, have fallen behind, either because of a lack of a strong will to improve governance, or because of inadequate planning. All the initiatives of AP government would not have made news unless a few of these initiatives were able to create a significant impact on the citizens of AP. Not all the IT applications taken up by the AP government have been equally successful. However, a few of them, like the CARD project that has been implemented in two hundred locations, have been extremely successful. The CARD project has made the system of registering property deals more transparent and at the same time has reduced the burden of the clerical staff in the office of the sub registrar. The time for registration has been reduced from a few weeks to one day. The project has involved several administrative and legislative changes that have been brought about in record time. This success enthused the public as well as the bureaucracy leading to greater acceptance of newer applications of IT. Another significant aspect of IT deployment in AP government is the partnership that has been built with the private sector in many areas. Often, several components of large projects have been outsourced to the private sector. Private IT companies are heavily involved in training of government officers. Private investments have been welcomed in creating educational and wide area networking infrastructure. In return, the private sector will be allowed to provide value-added services to citizens for which it would be able to charge the citizens. Detailed costing has been done to identify viable projects that are a win-win for all partners: the government, private sector and the citizens. As the citizens experience better services in a few departments, they are likely to demand similar services from other departments. This demand will enable AP government to tackle employees in certain departments that are recalcitrant in adopting IT. Perhaps as an ultimate goal, the AP government can move towards establishing a citizen's charter where it would publicly promise services with well defined parameters of service levels and then endeavor to achieve these. Undeniably the role of the Chief Minister has been important. The clout of Telugu Desam (the ruling party in AP) with the central government has been used to advantage in getting certain key central government departments to extend help to the IT infrastructure development in AP. Fortunately for the IT enthusiast in India, the results of the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament) elections in AP and many other states have established a strong co-relation between good governance and electoral victories. One is sure that the AP government will now re-double its effort to improve performance. The modernisation of AP will be a substantial inducement to the foreign direct investors and the benefits of ITisation of AP will go beyond improvements in the functioning of the government. Andhra could see a lot more investments in the sunrise industry and a significant rise in the employment in IT sectors. The example of Andhra augurs well for other states that have recognised the potential of IT but have not been able to translate it in practice. Now they have a blue print that demonstrates how it can be done.
How Internet will affect the media in the near future Muhammad
Abd al-Hameed This is a paper presented at a national seminar on "Challenges of the Next Century and the Media," arranged by the University of the Panjab in August'99. Internet will be the most important prime mover of change for our print and electronic media as we cross the threshold of the next century. It will bring about the greatest revolution in mass communications since the invention of moveable type for printing. Unlike the previous one, which took centuries in reaching all parts of the world, the present revolution has already made its impact globally within a few years of its introduction. The use of previous technologies was primarily a matter of choice for the publisher or the broadcaster. The newspaper reader was not even aware of hot metal or photo-composing, and letterpress or offset printing. Similarly, a radio or television broadcaster could make his own choice of technology. The adoption of Internet, however, has become a compulsion for both the publisher and the broadcaster. This technology truly has a mass appeal and the readers and viewers expect its use as soon as they become aware of its advantages. Therefore, the Internet will take only a short period in transforming the mass communications even in the developing countries. Inertia of conservatism. Inertia, however, will be the biggest hurdle in the widespread use of Internet. Our editors, who are supposed to be the harbingers of change, are surprisingly themselves extremely conservative in adopting new technologies relating to their own job. Teletype, for example, was widely used by the Euro-American dailies for decades until personal computers replaced it. But our English newspapers never asked the APP and PPI to provide it despite its great advantage of automatic typesetting of news agency feeds. They could save much time and labor every day in composing and proofreading stories that did not require editing, such as stock exchange quotations, sports results, texts of official announcements and speeches, even many foreign and national stories. Many other things could have been done for improvement. Many of the technologies that provide a platform today for the Internet were available years ago. Over 13 years ago, the author prepared a report for the modernization of the Associated Press of Pakistan. The technologies and processes that were recommended in the report for reporting, editing, transmission, etc. of news were not much different from what we shall be seeing in the near future. Nor was the cost prohibitive. For a very small amount, the agency could have not only modernized itself completely (including getting rid of teleprinters), but also become able to provide its news service in English as well as Urdu without any extra cost! It would have also reduced drastically the composing costs of both the English and Urdu dailies. Just imagine how much improved Pakistan media would have been by now if the proposals had been implemented. The conservatism in the media persists and is already slowing the adoption of Internet. The use of email, for example, is still rare in all media. Very few give as much importance to email as to phone and fax, even though it is more reliable, faster and far more economical than either of the two. There is also very little coverage of the information technology both in the print and electronic media because the editors themselves don't know much about it! The Internet, however, has gained such a momentum on its own that the newspaper, radio, television and other media will soon be overwhelmed by it. The question is not of if but of when Internet will be fully embraced. The way to paradigm changes. The complete adoption of Internet will have a profound impact on Pakistan media. It will bring about paradigm changes not only in the processes, like reporting and editing, but also transform the very nature of the media. Reporting will be an entirely new kind of process. The pen and notebook may remain in a reporter's pocket for the time being, but he will be pounding on the keyboard of a very small computer for writing a story. The moment a story is done, it will be on its way to the destination. (As we shall see a little later, it will apply to stories in Urdu also.) The reporter will no longer be writing just stories. He will be using a digital camera for taking pictures that will accompany his stories. (The extra payment for pictures - which will be in color - will easily justify the purchase of the camera, even if he has to buy it on his own.) There will be no developing and printing of film, nor delays in the delivery of prints by a courier. In fact, the pictures will be ready before even the story is written! Even if a reporter is not a good photographer, it will not matter because his editors will easily remove the defects in his pictures. A story and the accompanying pictures may reach the newspaper as email attachments wherever the reporter may happen to be. He will, in fact, no longer be bound to his office or tethered to the wire of an ordinary telephone. Even the remote villages will soon have wireless (but fixed) phones, which are already being installed by private companies in tens of thousands in collaboration with Pakistan Telecommunication Co. Ltd. Then there will be the cellular mobile phone, which will provide Internet connection, and will be cheaper and much more ubiquitous than at present. If the editor is not satisfied or wants more details, he will not hesitate in calling the reporter wherever he may be, even in the remotest areas. A trunk call will no longer be an expensive affair. In December 2002, the monopoly of Pakistan Telecommunication Co. Ltd. will be over. With the dawn of the New Year, the Internet service providers will introduce Internet telephony legally. A phone call will then cost only Rs. 30 to 40 per hour (approx. US $0.75, connection charges at present), irrespective of the reporter being in Nushki, Nawabshah, Nowshera or New York! An alternative to a phone call will be what is called "chatting" in the Internet jargon. It is conversation in writing on an Internet connection, with words and sentences being typed alternately by the participants, just as they speak on a phone. When coordinated reporting on a major story is required, the reporters and editors may chat with one another simultaneously. Editors will have a much more harried life. Internet will be bringing to their computer monitors stories and pictures every minute in an unceasing stream. As if it was not enough, it will also be impossible to finish a story and forget about it because updates will be constantly pouring in. The radio and television will be coping with the problem by broadcasting more and more bulletins. (A news channel of the Pakistan Television is on its way. How far behind will be Radio Pakistan?) The print editors, by the nature of their medium, will be torn in two opposite directions. On one hand, they will have to prepare complete and comprehensive stories for the morning edition. On the other hand, many dailies will have web sites, where latest news will be placed literally every minute, with revisions and updating round the clock. (There may be pressures to bring out several editions of dailies during the day but the production and distribution costs will be prohibitive for most of the publishers. There may also be little demand from the readers, who have money and time for just one paper a day.) Not just the news. The stories in the next morning's edition will also require a completely different treatment. The Internet (along with the frequent news bulletins of radio and television) would have already given most of the W's of a story. The only one left will be Why (and to some extent also How). While giving the basic facts, a story will have to concentrate on analysis and background if a reader is expected to read it the next morning. The newsmagazines have a much harder time. Some years ago, the Time magazine decided to study its own future. The cable news channels, and later the Internet, took the bottom out of the newsmagazine's primary function of providing a summary of the week's news. It concluded that the only way it could survive in the age of instant news was by providing depth, background and analysis of events and trends. So, you will today find Time (and, inevitably, Newsweek) to be very different from what it used to be. And the cost of inertia? A leading Indian newsmagazine, Sunday, lost half of its circulation because it failed to change with the times. News stories for the media are no longer scarce. Internet has opened the floodgates of news about all parts of the world and on all imaginable subjects. Thousands of newspapers and magazines already have their web sites and more are joining them every day. Then many new specialized agencies cover various fields. Gone are the days when a few international news agencies controlled the flow of news because only they had the worldwide network for the distribution of news. Now many alternatives are available, including original sources of various countries. If, for example, an editor wants to give more coverage to the Muslim World, he will have no difficulty in getting all the stories (and pictures) that he can publish. The Internet will bring some relief to the space problems of newspapers. The editors always struggle to put in all the stories for fear of missing any important one but the number of pages fixed by the publishers frustrate their efforts. With Internet, the editors will be able to place full texts, lengthy details and less important stories on their web sites when they can't have enough space in the paper edition. Equal opportunity for Urdu. The Urdu newspapers, which have always lagged behind their English contemporaries, will not find it difficult this time to catch up technologically. In the early days, a computer could use only 128 characters (in the 8-bit ASCII code), which were obviously not enough. A subsequent code, EBCDIC, doubled the number of characters (letters, numbers, punctuation, etc.) but that again did not go far enough. Finally, after the technical limitations were overcome, the computer industry adopted the UNICODE, a 16-bit character-encoding standard, developed by the Unicode Consortium between 1988 and 1991. By using two bytes to represent every character, UNICODE enables almost all of the written languages of the world to be represented using a single character set. Approximately 39,000 of the 65,536 possible UNICODE character codes have been assigned to date, 21,000 of them being used for Chinese ideographs. The remaining combinations are open for expansion. It is understood that Microsoft will provide full support for Urdu in Windows 2000, making it possible to use the computer in our own language exactly the same way it is done in English. It will also be possible to use computers for all of Pakistan's regional languages with the same ease if character codes for them are assigned! Despite the technical limitations, however, Pakistan could have still expedited the use of Urdu computing if it had simply followed and adapted whatever research and development was being done for computing in Arabic. (And it was quite a lot, because of the petro-dollars flowing around in the 1970s and 1980s.) Unfortunately, Pakistan insisted on the use of the Nasta'lique form of the script, which is not entirely character-based, and hence could not be used easily in computers. Naskh is used by all other languages of the world, which are written in the Arabic script, including Pakistan's own regional languages. If Urdu had been doing the same, one could have saved many years in making full use of computing and also not wasted millions of man-hours on developing software (and that too inadequate) for Nasta'lique. (The handicap still persists because even UNICODE will not make it easy to use Nasta'lique.) By discarding the use of Nasta'lique and adopting Naskh, Pakistan would also have improved tremendously the typesetting technology for Urdu print media but that is another story. Basic problems for
newspapers. The widespread use of Internet will pose some fundamental
problems for the newspapers. For example, why should the reader buy a
newspaper when he will be able to get the news on the Internet instantly
and that too according to his preferences and free of charge? It may give
sleepless night to publishers but there are several reasons why they
should not despair. There are several reasons why a reader will still need
a newspaper. The newspaper publishers also need not fear that Internet will take over the news completely. The free news is great for the reader but a burden for the provider. Some attempts were made to charge a subscription for the Internet editions of newspapers. An outstanding example was that of The New York Times, which thought it could pull it off because of its prestige and influence. But it had to climb down soon and join the others, such as The Washington Post, who were making their complete contents available on their web sites without charge. The placing of a newspaper on the Internet does cost money. The advertisement revenue could be the only alternative to subscription charges to meet the expenses but Internet has not proved to be an effective medium for it. The advertisers somehow believe that they get better value for their money from the newspapers than the Internet. Therefore, independent news providers cannot find any way to meet their expenses while the newspapers can continue to provide the Internet edition, though only as a prestigious subsidiary of their normal operations. Internet and electronic media. More and more radio and television stations around the world are making their programs available on the Internet. You can listen to music or news on a radio or watch a television program even if it is being broadcast on the other side of the world. Since audio and video require much larger capacity (technically called the "bandwidth"), Pakistan's Internet users will have to wait till digital subscriber lines are provided to them by the phone company at a very low cost. The Pakistanis in many countries, however, are not handicapped by the small bandwidth and can even now enjoy the programs of Radio Pakistan and Pakistan Television. Like the newspaper publishers, the radio and television broadcasters will also have to bear the costs of placing their contents on the Internet without any hope of return. For them too, it will be a prestigious subsidy. The Internet, however, provides simultaneous worldwide coverage to the radio and television, far beyond the present normal coverage area. If the audience abroad grows large enough, the broadcasters may think about abandoning their satellite transponders, which cost millions of dollars per year but cover only one-third of the globe at the most. In addition, the users need a dish antenna or a cable television connection. The satellite service providers will have a very hard time selling the vacated transponders to others. Then the Internet service providers may come to their rescue and use their services for transmitting large data files from web sites. The files may well be television programs! The television (and radio) may thus still use the satellite but in a roundabout way and at a very low cost. The age of self-publishing. The Internet has given a new meaning and possibilities to publishing. It will reduce the dominance of the major publishers and allow 'a thousand flowers to bloom.' Conventionally, a new newspaper normally requires tens of millions of rupees. On the Internet, a new newspaper, magazine or even a book can be published at a very, very small cost and for the whole world to read. The obstacles on the way. Finally, how long will it take the Internet to have its full impact on Pakistan's print and electronic media? Revolutions do not take place overnight because human societies take their own time to change. The Internet, however, may make its way rather easily. The prices of personal computers have been falling continuously. The telephone network will improve and expand further after the monopoly of the PTC ends in 2002. Then will remain the cost of Internet, which can be brought down substantially if (a) the rates charged by PTC for international connectivity are based on actual costs, and (b) the license fee for the Internet service providers is abolished. And if PTC provides nodes for Internet at every district headquarters, the Internet can economically reach even the remote areas. After the Internet
becomes affordable and easily available in every part of the country, the
media, even in the least developed areas, will be revolutionized. It will
be a great day for mass communications. Intermediary NGOs can do the job Gary
Garriott This is a 'story'
submitted to a stories contest jointly organized by infoDev and the
International Institute for Communication and Development. Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA) is a small nonprofit organization based in the United States that for forty years, has been committed to the dissemination of useful technical information and development assistance. A common characteristic of rural or isolated populations is inaccessibility to information sources and interactive communication media permitting them to improve their lives. VITA developed prototypical store-and-forward (non-real time) email communication systems using low earth orbiting satellites and ground stations to attack this problem. After years of experimentation (including having received a "Pioneer's Preference Award" from the Federal Communications Commission), low cost user-friendly earth terminals and free commercial-grade multi-satellite service will soon emerge. As an indicator of the great potential for this technology, the experience of the Kibidula Farm Institute (KFI) in Tanzania has been instructive. KFI provides research and local expertise in health, agriculture and construction techniques in rural central Tanzania. But there is no running water, no electricity, and no efficient means of communications with the 'outside' world. In 1992 Kibidula acquired a solar-powered VITA satellite ground station and the expertise to run it. As a result, its work and even institutional structure have been completely transformed. Not only has the email link to the Internet supported logistical and administrative functions, but information provided through the system has also addressed serious health and medical issues. The breakthrough came when KFI started using the link to manufacture a single-engine airplane from parts right in the bush, and to keep it running through Internet email consultations with the American company that produced the kit. The plane is used to get supplies and medical relief to even more remote villages. "Without radio connection to the satellite and the subsequent ability to send emails to Zenith, maintenance issues and operational support would be a nightmare," according to its chief mechanic and pilot, Bill Norton. The 1996 special event '24 Hours in Cyberspace' featured the project in their collection of essays (http://www.cyber24.com/htm2/5_2.htm). As of 1998, two airplanes are flying at KFI supporting the work of a team of physicians now resident there. What accounts for the long-term success of this ICT-based project? First, it is a good example of an NGO clearly understanding the needs of its 'target population.' It is doubtful if the people receiving benefits from the new medical services suddenly available knew much about how the airplane came into being and the novel communications link supporting it. Rather, KFI, as an intermediary NGO, was able to translate the action dimension of its clientele's needs into corresponding informational components, and then to establish the mechanism permitting reliable acquisition of that information on a timely basis. There was also a great commitment on the part of KFI principals to acquire knowledge about an initially unfamiliar technology. The experimental ground station KFI acquired from VITA was not a user-friendly terminal by today's 'point-and-click' standards. But neither did it demand a degree in computer science or radio engineering to use it successfully. It did require a willingness to learn problem-solving techniques and 'housekeeping' tasks as well as persistence in 'getting it right' through trial-and-error when necessary. There is a danger in the current imperative to always deploy without question the latest technology--which almost by definition means less user control and knowledge--into field situations where local people cannot recover 'under their own power' when problems occur. A useful rule-of-thumb has been known to amateur radio operators (hams) for many years: more knobs on a radio translate into lower cost and higher operator skill, while fewer knobs mean just the opposite. It should be recognized that an element of serendipity was involved. When VITA was first approached by KFI, the intention was to buy equipment only. Previously, VITA had not entertained such proposals, because experience had shown that already-skilled VITA personnel always needed to accompany the equipment for initial installation and in situ training. But in this instance, the availability of a KFI principal in the United States happened to coincide with the establishment of a ground station by VITA's software developer for testing purposes. KFI's representative acquired practical experience by helping the programmer assemble his station. Then he returned to Tanzania to build the KFI station without further substantive assistance from VITA. Seven years later as this is being written, KFI's station is still functioning. It was also not known to VITA (and perhaps not to KFI itself) at the outset that the system would be used to locally build and fly airplanes! However, reliability of the communications link allowed KFI to think creatively about what additional tasks the resource could address. This universal background creativity is inherent in the ICT diffusion process, but only emerges once technical utility and reliability has been demonstrated and if permitted to flourish by management. The 'critical need' met by a given ICT may be very different from the initial application once experience with it has matured. Thus, latitude for experimentation and creativity should be encouraged, while not keeping prescriptions too tight on the 'correct' ICT diffusion process itself. Finally, real-time high bandwidth web browsers are not the only Internet technologies that can make substantial positive development impacts. Coupled with savvy intermediary NGOs, even modest 'real-enough time' email systems can have impacts well beyond expectations. Reproduced below is a thank you note sent by KFI staffers after a few months' hiatus while a new satellite was being brought into service. I am kicking myself for not having a camera ready when VITA got back on the air. You should have seen the reactions around this little community. Yesterday Bill downloaded a pile of messages. Everybody was whooping and hollering and devouring their messages like starved animals. Total ecstasy around here! I just want all you guys at VITA to know how much you are appreciated. Your hard work is not in vain. VITA is the link that allows us to maintain our sanity and remain out here in the bush year after year. Information Rich- Information poor, Bridging the Digital Divide Jane Black This article has been taken from the E-journal on the web-site of International Institute for Communication and Development (www.iicd.org). Introduction The Internet has ushered in the greatest period of wealth creation in history. It's rocked the way we deliver and receive information and the way we do business. And so, for many, it is easy to accept euphoric claims - like those of Vice President Al Gore - that the Internet is also bringing about a brave new world replete with an 'electronic agora' and 'online democracy'. It's not. More than 80% of people in the world have never even heard a dial tone, let alone surfed the Web. And the gap between the information haves and have-nots is widening. In a speech recently at Telecom 99 in Geneva, Switzerland, UN Secretary General Kofi Anan warned of the danger of excluding the world's poor from the information revolution. "People lack many things: jobs, shelter, food, health care and drinkable water. Today, being cut off from basic telecommunications services is a hardship almost as acute as these other deprivations, and may indeed reduce the chances of finding remedies to them," he said. In this special report, BBC News Online probes the growing gap between the information rich and information poor: How big is it? Why is it so hard to close? And how are individuals and communities around the globe trying to bridge the digital divide? Losing ground bit by bit The hype for everything online obscures the reality about how technology is changing life at the end of the 20th century. From Manhattan and Madrid, the Internet has fundamentally changed work, recreation - even love. But in Malawi and Mozambique, life remains very much the same. "Think how powerful the Internet is. Then remind yourself that fewer than 2% of people are actually connected," said Larry Irving, former US assistant secretary of commerce. "The power of the Web increases exponentially with every person who goes online. Imagine what we're missing." Facts first The statistics on the basic building block of connectedness - that is, phone lines - are stark. According to the latest UN Human Development Report, industrialised countries, with only 15% of the world's population, are home to 88% of all Internet users. Less than 1% of people in South Asia are online even though it is home to one-fifth of the world's population. The situation is even worse in Africa. With 739 million people, there are only 14 million phone lines. That's less than in Manhattan or Tokyo. Eighty percent of those lines are in only six countries. There are only 1 million Internet users on the entire continent compared with 10.5 million in the UK. Even if telecommunications systems were in place, most of the world's poor would still be excluded from the information revolution because of illiteracy and a lack of basic computer skills. In Benin, for example, more than 60% of the population is illiterate. The other 40% are similarly out of luck. Four-fifths of Websites are in English, a language understood by only one in 10 people on the planet. Barriers The lack of resources in poor communities can't explain the technology gap alone. In the developing world, there is still resistance to the idea that technology is a quick fix. Take the African Virtual University. The World Bank-sponsored programme has broadcast over 2000 hours of instruction to over 9000 students in all regions of sub-Saharan Africa. The initiative has allowed AVU students to take courses given by professors from world-renowned educational institutions in Africa, North America, and Europe. That does not impress Ethiopian Meghistab Haile: "With that money just imagine how many lecturers you could have. If the World Bank really wants to help African universities then the first step would be to encourage and support the Africans to return back. In the end it is only the Africans who could solve their problems." Others complain that high-tech education - available only to a select elite - is not worth it when so many places on the continent are still without electricity and running water. "Our priorities are hygiene, sanitation, safe drinking water," said Supatra Koirala who works at a private nursing home in Kathmandu. "How is having access to the Internet going to change that?" How to close the gap? As the famous Alcoholics Anonymous saying goes: Admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery. International organisations, governments and private institutions are just starting to do this. When I was first talking about the Internet in the developing world in 1992, I was called a 'technofascist' and a 'cybercolonist'," said Larry Irving. "Now I don't get those comments, just questions about how can we get this - and fast." Magda Escobar, Executive Director of Plugged In, a non-profit organisation working to bring technology resources to poor communities in California, agrees. "The convergence of a lot of different interests has put this on the agenda," she said. "The general public is interested in having access to the tech revolution, businesses want to expand their markets, schools are interested in trying to change the way kids are taught. Everyone's awareness is coming together at the same time." Experts like Mr. Irving estimate that the Internet will be virtually global in five to seven years. But for that to happen infrastructure must be put in place, which means a lot of money - and fast. The Net may be the wave of the future but age-old problems still apply. A few case studies discussed below illustrate the two facts: the potential benefits for the poor, and the increasing divide. The Internet is not yet a reality for Burkina Faso If the Internet is supposed to be a tool to open up communication for all and enrich all our lives, what better test than a project involving illiterate farmers in Burkina Faso? Father Maurice Oudet is doing just that. A priest who has lived in Burkina Faso for 30 years, he is using the Internet to gather information and publish a magazine for farmers in some of the country's 71 local dialects. Father Oudet knows well what it is like to be out of touch. When he first arrived in Burkina Faso, he was based in a remote parish with no telephone. The closest post office was 20km (12 miles) away. Today Father Oudet is a little more connected. In Koudougou, a town about 100km (62 miles) from the capital Ouagadougou where he now lives, he has a telephone and Internet access. But he still doesn't buy the Internet hype. The Internet cannot change the lives of the poorest people because it doesn't put food in their mouths. Land-locked Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries in the world. It has few natural resources and a poor soil. Life expectancy at birth is around 45 years. Although around 90% of people live on the land, many families still struggle to eat. The average farmer's income is around a 60p (? 0.6) a day and they may live far from towns and telephone lines. This is one of the chronic problems of bringing the Internet to the developing world. The information gap may be getting wider but the world's poorest still don't see it as a priority. But Father Oudet believes it can help in other ways. Besides a chronic shortage of food, Burkina Faso also has a largely illiterate population. Only 19.2% of people speak and read French, the official language. The farmers who can read and write are learning their own dialects. Father Oudet's magazine, published every three months, uses many of the diverse languages of Burkina Faso to help them learn. Agricultural workers can contribute to the magazine, by sending in their views and experiences and passing on farming advice. The magazine is produced using desktop publishing facilities in Koudougou, but the editorial content is gathered from volunteers from each region and language. Outside resources have also proved useful. Websites as far away as Canada provide feature material. The magazine is not yet published online - but the possibility is an appealing one. The online magazine would create a community of farmers, using technology to exchange ideas and information, a world where everyone, rich and poor, can access information with the click of a mouse. There are some encouraging signs. Burkina Faso is one of 13 African countries where local telecom operators have set up a special 'area-code' for Internet access. That means that a call to the Internet only costs as much as a local call even if the Internet Service Provider is far away in a major city. But there is some way to go before the average Burkinabe is truly represented on the Internet. Communication has never been easy in Mongolia. The country is nearly three times the size of France but has a population density of 1.5/sq mile, one of the lowest in the world. The Internet seems the natural answer but the problem is less one of infrastructure than the cost of getting online. The price to connect is certainly out of reach for most ordinary people. One ISP charges approximately £30 ($50) per month and that does not include the cost of the phone call. The average GDP per capita is £1,359 ($2,250). That's complicated by the gap between rich and poor. More than one third of the population lives in poverty. Outside the capital Ulaanbaatar, many areas still do not have telephone access. The Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (APDIP), a United Nations-funded organisation based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, is trying to help. It has launched Citizen Information Service Centers, where citizens in remote Aimags including areas of the Gobi desert, can now connect to the central government, apply for grants on-line, receive news, and obtain basic training in computing. The first step was a summit designed to explore opportunities through IT. APDIP also set up a cyber cafÈ in the UNDP building in Ulaanbaatar, to show people what technology has to offer. "We want to involve ordinary people," he said. "If they cannot see the vision then we cannot make it work," said Atsushi Yamanaka who works for the UNDP. "Young people are the ones who have to create this. People are very eager to tap into new technology, but they're not sure of how to best use it". The programme's long-term aim is to encourage businesses and colleges to take up information technology and to build a culture of open information. It has set targets for the next two to three years and is building an action plan up to 2010. But Mr. Yamanaka said there were still problems in Mongolia following the end of socialism and the country's first democratic elections in July 1990. "Under socialism there was a train every few days, so people got letters every two days," he said. "Citizens who had everything, all of a sudden didn't have anything. Now it can take two months for letters to get through. The people are suffering a lack of information and a lack of basic services." But even as new technology takes hold, those in power in Mongolia still have doubts. Changing people's mindset is the hardest part. "There needs to be a very top-level support" said Mr. Yamanaka. "Email is not seen as an official document. It's not like a paper agreement that you can sign and seal. The government is keen to use email but they ask, 'What is its status, how official is it?'" Making ends meet in Morocco "Men eat and sleep," says Fadma Bouadou of Taliounie, Morocco. "Women work." That may never change but Fadma has found a way to beat the system. She still does the work but thanks to the Internet she can now sell her wares in the global marketplace, earning enough money to take care of herself and her two daughters. Fadma is part of a group of local weavers who sell their rugs through a site called Virtual Souk. The project, which employs 775 artisans in Morocco, Tunisia and Lebanon, works through non-governmental organisations to get rid of the middleman and deliver 65-80% of money earned to the artisans themselves. Around 75 to 80% of the artisans partners of the Virtual Souk are women. "Taliounie was our first project and we chose it because it is a remote and isolated village. We wanted to demystify the technology," said Azedine Ouerghi of the World Bank Institute who is managing the project. "If we could do it in Taliounie, we could do it anywhere." The project has thrown a lifeline to the women of Taliounie as each woman involved in the project will testify. Fadma Aoubaida, a mother of seven, earned 532 dirhams (£33) which she spent to repair her roof and start building an indoor latrine, one of the few in her village. Ijja Aittalblhsen spent her last payment to buy cement and windows to renovate her home. When asked what she wanted to do with future profits, Ijja first said she would buy gold jewellery - a traditional way for women to save. Then she got more imaginative. First she suggested buying a truck to transport rugs produced in the village to the town where they are marketed. She now believes that getting all the women bicycles would be more fun because they could have a race on the way home. But the market for indigenous crafts on the Internet is still uncertain. If brand-name Net start-ups - with huge amounts of venture capital behind them - have yet to make money on the Internet, what chance is there for isolated artisans in the developing world? "We thought we could build a cool Website and people would come there and buy things," says Daniel Salcedo, founder of PeopLink, an Internet marketplace for indigenous crafts. "But having people find you is hard. Having them trust you is even harder." That is where Virtual Souk is trying to help. All transactions are processed through a clearinghouse in Paris. Artisans are not paid until clients receive the product. Mr Ouerghi of the World Bank says he hopes to expand the project, creating sub-sites for artisans in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. Either way it's fine for women like Fadma Bouadou. Even in it's early stages, the Internet has opened her up to the world and helped to make ends meet. US Plugging in to the revolution Think of Silicon Valley and you think of the information revolution. Technology has created hundreds of young millionaires in the Valley and brought an epic boom to the rest of the United States. But such riches have not reached everyone. In East Palo Alto, the area bordering the tech-rich Stanford University campus and the corporate HQs of multi-billion dollar companies such as Yahoo and Oracle, more than 17% of the population lives in poverty. Only 14% have a four-year college degree and less than one out of five families has a computer in the home. Even in America the digital divide is wide. But as technology increasingly becomes a part of everyday life, and the ongoing political debate, a new awareness is emerging that the benefits of technology will not filter down by themselves. "It's taken a while for mainstream culture to understand how it would make their lives easier - and what their lives would be like without it," said Magda Escobar, the Executive Director of Plugged In, a community project that aims to bridge the digital divide. "It is also a very sexy issue. And it's politically advantageous for everyone - liberal or conservative - to focus on it." Plugged In is leading by example in East Palo Alto. The non-profit organisation offers residents state-of-the-art computers and courses to build their literacy and computer skills, work on their CVs or make money as Web designers. Plugged In Enterprises, a teen-run Web page design business, is one of the centre's most dynamic and talked about programmes. Each year 36 teenagers learn cutting-edge business skills and earn money working on projects for real clients including Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems. PIE, as it is known, is run by John Mireles, a 17-year-old from nearby San Jose. Formerly a graffiti artist, John's own projects include transferring his own highly-charged images into digital form and pushing the medium to its limits. His goal: to earn a good living that leaves him plenty of time for his own art. Plugged In also runs a programme called Community Kids which hosts 55 children each day after school and involves them in hands-on arts and crafts and computer projects. The Plugged In Community Technology Centre, a mixture of a cafÈ, copy shop and library, is a resource for teenagers and adults to work on their CVs or get career advice. But there is still much work to be done. The latest report from the US Commerce Department, Falling Through The Net, reports that the digital divide widened between 1998 and 1999. Black and Hispanic households are approximately one-third as likely to have home Internet access as households of Asian/Pacific Islander descent, and roughly two-fifths as likely as white households, according to the report. The disparity does not only follow racial lines. Even at the lowest income levels, those in urban areas are more than twice as likely to have Internet access than those in rural areas. "We need to keep up the pressure to keep up with the technology," says Ms. Escobar. "There's a risk that people will just dump equipment into poor areas. This is a long process." References: Do Gender Issues Have a Place in Indian Telecom Policy? Subhash
Bhatnagar & Shilpa
Kedar Introduction With the liberalisation of the telecom sector and the creation of a Telecom Regulatory Authority, some public debate has taken place with respect to the needs of a variety of stakeholders, such as the rural population and the 'urban poor'. However, in all these discussions, a group of consumers, women – for whom telephone access can make a large difference, has been completely ignored. There does not seem to be a large amount of research on gender issues related to the telecom sector. A special session on gender issues at the World Telecommunication Development Conference (WTDC-98) noted : As far as the telecommunication sector is concerned, we feel that there is much to be done to further enhance the position of women as users, as well as providers of telecommunication facilities and services. A number of suggestions were made as to how the ITU programme might be engendered. These include: rural telecommunications networks, universal access, broadcasting, telecommunications as a social service, development of telecentres, telemedicine, tele-education, telecommunications and trade, telecommunications and the environment. The conference recommended that data collection for the telecommunications indicator series should provide gender specific statistics. Another recommendation concerned a programme of action to increase the number of women who are employed in the telecommunication sector at varying levels of responsibility. While there are significant lessons and policy implications of the few action research projects such as by Grameen Bank reported here, we need to understand the relationship between access to phones and empowerment of women as well as to define the parameters that would determine ‘reasonable’ access. Ours is therefore an exploratory research to identify key issues that concern women. The issues would need to be researched further. A methodology of in-depth interviews was used to talk to women telephone owners, women users of State Trunk Dialing/Public Call Offices (STD/PCO) booths, women owners of STD/PCO booths, other owners of STD/PCO booths, NGOs working with rural/urban poor and telecom service providers, all from within the city of Ahmedabad and surrounding rural areas. We summarise below our discussions with middle and low income group women in urban areas, women living in urban slums and also present the main findings. Urban Middle and Low Income Women The purpose of using a telephone could be classified as personal, i.e. talking to relatives; social, i.e. talking to friends and acquaintances; or business related. We find that access to a telephone at home provides an opportunity to women to engage in economic activities from a home base. There were several examples of women using telephones at home for telemarketing and teleresearch service or tutors operating from home and using telephone for keeping in touch with their students and their parents. Since a significant proportion of urban householders are likely to have a home PC in future, a telephone connection could also provide opportunities for teleworking. Most often the use of home telephones for economic activities is on a part time basis and not for a regular contracted employment. Thus a telephone has a significant value to those women who may be confined to home because of childbirth or young children. In an era of competition, basic service providers might provide special incentives to women of such a profile for owning a telephone. We tried to assess
the perception of women regarding personal security (avoidance of
harassment) in using PCO booths. The perception differed
significantly amongst young and old women. College going girls,
young women, and women hostellers seemed to be concerned with this issue
particularly in using a telephone in the evening hours. Older women
did not perceive any kind of risk in going out to a PCO booth. One group of women that have experienced problems in terms of access to PCOs is women hostellers. Normally, hostels attached to educational institutes and working women’s hostels have time restrictions. This prevents access to PCOs in time zones that offer discounted prices. Perhaps it should be made mandatory to locate a PCO within the premises of large hostels. Such PCOs can be run by women. Special incentives can be provided to women to own such PCOs. Some illiterate women preferred a booth where a talking device interfaced with the display and could speak the charge. In the survey that was conducted of PCO owners, we tried to find out the number of women visiting the PCOs as well as the time preferences of such women. We found that only 20% of all urban PCOs reported a proportion of more than 40% women using PCOs. Amongst the 256 non-owners of telephone who use STD/PCO facilities, there were only 25 women. The small number of women clearly reflects that access to telephone is unequal, and indicates that there may be some problems in terms of convenience of access, timing of discounted services and perception of risk in reaching a PCO. In terms of time preferences, most women seem to use time zones when discounted rates are on offer. Our discussion with the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) officials indicated that gender issues have not been factored into the selection criteria for the allotment of public payphones. The focus of the whole exercise is geared to providing employment rather than improving access. To qualify for allotment, applicants must be educated unemployed, or represent a charitable institution/hospital. The selection criteria are designed to give preference to handicapped/blind persons, Scheduled Caste /Scheduled Tribe applicants, Ex-service men/war widows, retired DoT employees or their dependents, and freedom fighters. Women are conspicuous in this list by their very absence. The application form does not even have a column to indicate the gender of the applicant. Data on the percentage of women licensees of public payphones is also not easily available. Women in Urban Slums and Rural NGOs We discovered that phones in rural areas have a much greater value as instruments for receiving calls than for making calls. For example, NGOs would like to connect urban customers that need different types of domestic services with the women who are unemployed and provide such services. Such services are usually on a part-time or temporary basis. Currently, there is no way in which a prospective customer can send a message to a potential women service provider. Many techno-economic arrangements could be possible to facilitate the delivery of incoming phone messages to poor homes. We came across case studies of illiterate rural women who have benefited a great deal by buying a telephone to run their small enterprises. A case in point is that of Puriben, an illiterate rural woman in the Kutch district of Gujarat. Having received handicraft training from SEWA (Self Employed Women's Association), she successfully manages 40 handicraft units spanning 22 villages. Access to telephone in rural areas has helped NGOs in strengthening training programmes for rural women as well as for their own workers. For example, SEWA has used the talk back facility in conjunction with video based training through satellite communication to conduct educational programmes cutting across a range of themes: forestry, water conservation, health education, child development and panchayat raj system. (Panchayat Raj is a system wherein five members of the village are elected and made responsible for its smooth functioning). The talk back feature is effective, generating an average of 150 questions from rural trainees from across several locations. SEWA believes that for rural poor women it is important to increase the capacity and power to bargain. This requires access to market information as well as lateral communication amongst different rural groups. The most striking example where women have benefited greatly by access to information is that of Grameen Bank where mobile telephones were provided to rural women to create village pay phone facilities. Grameen Bank had been providing credit to rural women members for a decade and were extremely successful in recovering the loans provided to such women. We summarise here some of the benefits that have been reported by Bayes, Braun and Akhter. The Grameen Village Pay Phone initiative in Bangladesh Bangladesh has emerged as a ‘unique’ case in the development of rural telecom infrastructure. Grameen Bank of Bangladesh (GB), an NGO, has introduced Village Pay Phones (VPPs) by leasing cellular mobile phones to women members of its micro-credit program. This was done with two aims: the women themselves would be able to eke out a living by selling services, and villagers would benefit by buying the services. The GB experiment is relevant for rural India because of the obvious similarities that exist between Bangladesh and India. GB leased cellular phones to women members who had a very good record of repayment of GB loans and had a good business (preferably a village grocery store) which allowed them time to act as the VPP operator. Operators were required to be able to read and write. Their residences were to be located near the centre of their villages. Nearly 45% of VPPs were operated by the owners themselves, while 50% were operated by the owner’s husband, son or daughter, and the remaining 5% were operated by other persons. Plans foresee GTC providing services to 100 million rural inhabitants in 68,000 villages within four years through its financing of 40,000 VPPs selected from 2 million members of GB as well as other potential customers. The study by Bayes etal assessed that the VPP operation was quite profitable as the VPP owners earn an average net profit of Tk. 277/week. The profit level ranges from as high as Tk. 683/week to as low as (-) Tk. 35/week. Half of the sample owners reap a net profit of more than Tk. 300/week, and another one-tenth earn more than Tk. 500/week. In terms of the gender distribution of phone callers, 65% of all calls are reported to have been made by men, and 35% by women. Typical use of phones was for calls which were: Economically-related, Health (emergency and advice), Social/Personal (family- and office-related), Remittances and Other. Contrasting poor and non-poor group usage, the study suggested that the extremely poor seem to use phones chiefly for economic purposes, making about 54% of all their calls with these purposes in mind. The poor group also makes relatively more phone calls for health-related purposes. However, even the extremely poor group indicates that about 21% of their calls are made for business-related purposes. This goes to show that even the poorest segment of the village, which is involved in the petty production of eggs, vegetables, puffed rice, poultry rearing, etc., make phone calls in order to keep informed. Implications for policy makers The Grameen Bank experiments with village pay phones and our own field work in Ahmedabad has the following lessons for Indian policy makers.
Owning Knowledge, Owning the Future Venkatesh
Hariharan Hungary's capital, Budapest is a quaint old city with quaint cars, some of them so small that they look like a cross between an autorickshaw (a three wheel motorised vehicle popular in Asian countries) and a small car. Most of the cars on the road are so ancient that their coat of paint has gone dull, but here and there you find a new flashy new Japanese car with a shiny paint job. This country has a population of a mere 10.2 million but has given birth to more Nobel Laureates than India has. Located in the heart of Europe, Budapest was therefore an apt location for the recently concluded World Conference of Science: Science for the 21st Century -- A New Commitment. Around 1800 attendees from 155 countries, deliberated for six days over issues like the ethical issues in science, the need to promote the involvement of women in science, science for sustainable development etc. One of the issues that appeared like a recurring theme through various panel discussions and debates was the control of knowledge assets. In the information age, those who own knowledge own the future. The bad news for emerging economies like India is that the future may be owned by the developed countries of the west in the form of patents and copyrights. Traditionally patents and copyrights have been legal monopolies granted to innovators and inventors and creators of unique works to reward them for their investments of time and effort. Of late, however, countries of the developing world have been voicing their concerns about the lax and liberal patent and copyright laws in the developed world. As knowledge becomes the means of creating wealth, developing countries fear that the disproportionate amount of knowledge assets in the hands of the developed world may stunt the progress of economic development. Alun Anderson, editor of UK-based 'The New Scientist' who moderated a panel titled, "Who owns the Future?" introduced the topic by saying that when Britain was leading the industrial revolution, America refused to hold British patents valid on American soil. That was its first step towards attaining its current status as a technological superpower. He said that today, the American government is seen as a powerbroker for the economic interests of the USA. He quoted a recent survey that showed that almost 30 percent of academic papers had at least one author with financial interest in the research area. Anderson said that due to such factors, the public is losing faith in scientists. That set the stage for a spirited debate from the panel that consisted of industry, academia and non-profit organisations. Eminent Indian
scientist, MS Swaminathan, widely respected as the architect of the green
revolution in India, said that one way out of this was to have compulsory
licensing of critical resources. He said that governments must increase
their investments into research that results in public good. Speaking for the life sciences business, Albert Fischli of the pharmaceutical giant Hoffman LaRoche said that the pharmaceutical companies spend around 600 million dollars in researching a new drug and that these investments could not be made without protection of the rights of companies. He added that the returns on research investments in the pharmaceutical industry were much lower than in similar intellectual property oriented fields like software. Speaking on behalf of the world federation of scientific workers, Shreesh Juyal said that intellectual property was emerging as a new form of colonialism and this brand new world order was driven by uncontrolled capitalism. He pointed to the fact that the multinational companies were now seeking to patent knowledge that was passed down through the ages by indigenous people. Many of them did not understand the patenting process that takes as much as 60,000 dollars and two years to complete. Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi, India's Minister for Human Resource Development and Science and Technology raised these worries in his address. He said that we need to generate opposition to the misuse and exploitation of scientific knowledge and technology for purposes of monopolisation of knowledge and development of trade practices that tend to mitigate healthy competition. We must plead for open and equitable access to knowledge," he said. Dr. Joshi also proposed five programmes for international cooperation to be included in the document "Science Agenda: Framework for Action" to be adopted by the WCS. These included the use of Internet enabled science education and teaching which could redress the limitations posed by education infrastructure and the shortage of able instructors, increasing the mobility of people from developing countries for higher studies in emerging fields of science and technology, publishing a 'World Technology Report' on the impact of technology on social systems and culture, promoting scientific literacy and culture, and preserving and utilising traditional knowledge systems. The final version of "Declaration on Science and the use of Scientific Knowledge" contained a formal recognition that indigenous knowledge has contributed to modern science but representatives of indigenous groups did not succeed in their attempts to get indigenous knowledge being placed in the same category as scientific knowledge. This is an issue that is likely to crop up again and again in the future as profit driven organisations seek to patent and own knowledge which has been traditionally free. For India, which has a rich tradition of indigenous knowledge - the unani and ayurvedic medicine traditions being the best examples - this is a very serious threat. Among the attendees to the conference, cynicism was rampant. Many of the delegates from developing countries that I spoke to, felt that given America's pro-business policies, a status quo was extremely favorable to the US. If anything, the discussions indicated that the battlelines for a long and prolonged fight have been drawn. Telecom Policy Initiatives: The Road Ahead Ramadesikan
G. R. The workshop, held on August 28-29, 1999 at the Indian Institute of Management aimed to showcase the findings of the Centre that emerged out of the year long research on key telecom policy issues in India. Presentations were also made by policy makers, opinion makers, academicians and financial institutions. The workshop was conducted at a juncture when a lot of policy issues remain unresolved and unanswered. Various speakers stressed this fact. Justice S S Sodhi, Chairperson of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), in his key note address, highlighted the challenges TRAI faced as the regulator and also the anxieties caused to the regulator in an era of unclear policies. He cited the example of the intervention of the judiciary in Government of India's order changing the existing license fee regime to a revenue sharing arrangement for private sector operators. He said the primary objective of the policy should be to facilitate consumer welfare by increasing the size of the network and increasing competition. He argued that although the sanctity of the contract as in license fee agreement is paramount, the license fee at best is notional with little scope for collecting the fee from unviable projects. He said that there could be misconception in the minds of the consumer that TRAI is anti-consumer, perhaps because of its orders against certain tariff plans filed by operators, which were not in tune with the TRAI Tariff Order 1999. He also emphasised the importance of the regulatory process while taking decisions on substantive issues (like allowing free incoming calls). Chief Vigilance Commissioner and former Telecom Secretary Mr. N. Vittal, underscored that the vested interests of Department of Telecommunications (DOT, the current monopolist), private operators, and multinationals (mainly equipment suppliers) are stalling the proper development of competition in the telecom sector. Another point made by him was the need for a level playing field between DoT and Private Sector Operators, the main rationale being that DoT, a Governement department, is exempt from paying corporate tax. He also stressed the need for technological reality being considered while framing policies, especially in areas like IP telephony. Prof. Ashok Jhunjunwala, of IIT Madras, Chennai, in his address, suggested a new industry structure for the telecom revolution. The industry structure as suggested by him, would be decided by very low cost telecommunication access and small scale access providers similar to cable TV service providers. Prof. Richard Janda of McGill University, Canada, drew parallels between the process of telecom regulation in Canada and India. The key issue brought out was the lack of true independence to the regulators both in Canada and India, with the regulators in both the countries being subjected to government oversight. Measures to strengthen TRAI were also suggested. Prof. Rekha Jain and Prof. Trilochan Sastry of IIMA presented findings of their survey aimed at gauging the Socio-Economic impact of Mobile Phone Public Call Offices in Uttar Pradesh (a state in India). This state is characterised by poor penetration of basic telecom services. The results indicated the increased sense of security and empowerment across all sections of the society due to telecom access. The survey also indicated that contrary to expectations, a large number of long distance calls were made, even from rural areas. The access to the Telecom Services had contributed significantly to the reduction of the need to travel. Prof. S.C.Bhatnagar and Shilpa Kedar of IIMA, in their presentation on Gender issues in Telecommunications, stressed the role telecom access can play in empowering women of disadvantaged sections of the society. Their interactions with voluntary organisations working with women indicated that telecom access can increase the market reach of services that can be provided by these women such as food delivery and baby sitting. Prof. P V Srinivasan of the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), Mumbai, presented the results of his study on demand estimation of long distance calls in India. Demand estimation and usage variances in intra day tariff blocks were used to arrive at own price elasticity for long distance calls in India. The study predicted a demand elasticity of -1.37 to -3.7, indicating scope for large reduction in long distance tariffs in India. The presentations by Rajiv Ranjan of State Bank of India and Mohit Batra of ICICI Ltd. on financing telecom projects, and the discussions that followed, were centered on issues concerning appraisal of telecom projects, sanctions and disbursements, and reasons for non disbursements. The effect of the lack of clarity in India's Telecom policy and of the length of time required for statutory approvals on financing of telecom projects were also highlighted. The policies of funding agencies towards vendor financing and equipment costs as mentioned in the project document were debated. Prof. Sidharth Sinha of IIMA, in his presentation on Price Regulation in Telecommunication Services, discussed the need for price regulation in an industry like telecommunications and also the theoretical underpinnings for various price regulatory regimes. Prof. Manikutty, IIMA, in his presentation on user profiles of long distance callers from Public Call Offices, stated that usage of phones is widespread among all sections of the Indian society. The results of his study broke the myth that the telephone, especially with reference to long distance calls, is mainly used by the affluent sections of society. Dr. Sunny Handa, Adjunct Faculty, McGill University, in his presentation on convergence, discussed the path followed by various countries to regulate converged networks. Prof. Rekha Jain (IIMA) and Dr. Partho Mukhopadhay (IDFC Ltd.) charted a way to design auction of spectrum rights for the broadcasting sector based on the lessons learned from telecom sector licensing. Ramadesikan G R of IIMA, in his presentation on IP telephony discussed the related cost issues and also suggested an appropriate policy environment for ushering in IP telephony. More information about the ongoing research activities of Centre for Telecom Policy Studies can be found at the website www.iimahd.ernet.in/ctps. CTPS invites suggestions for research activities and collaborative effort with various stakeholders in the telecom sector. Centre
for Electronic Governance A Centre for Electronic Governance has been set up at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) with sponsorships from Oracle Software India Ltd., Compaq Computer (India) Pvt. Ltd., and Santa Cruz Operations Ltd. (SCO). It has been established with the objective of identifying applications of information and communication technologies that can be implemented to provide improved services to citizens and help the public administration in improving planning, monitoring and other administrative processes. It would demonstrate the feasibility of implementing such applications by specifying broad architecture, detailed design and creating proto-type application software (wherever feasible) on platforms available at the Centre. The intention of creating these would be to demonstrate proof of concept. The centre would work towards disseminating its work to public administrators and other agencies involved in promoting and using electronic governance by undertaking consultancy assignments and conducting workshops. The centre was inaugurated on the 22nd of October, 1999 by the Chief Minister of Gujarat state, Keshubhai Patel. In his inaugural speech the Chief Minister outlined the key aspects of Gujarat government's endeavor to promote the use of information technology at all levels in the state. He said that there is a great deal of competition to attract foreign direct investments and only those governments which are seen to be open, transparent and efficient would be able to do so. Information technology, he said, could help the Gujarat government to generate many thousands jobs in both urban and rural areas and if different departments in the Government adopt this technology to make their working more effective, they could transform Gujarat into a very citizen friendly government. He further added that he was pleased about the fact that the centre proposes to actually develop software for a few applications to demonstrate the feasibility of ushering in E-Governance and offered the use of the state of Gujarat as a laboratory. The inauguration was followed by a workshop on E-Governance in which senior officers from the Gujarat Government and senior IT professionals from the region participated. R. Chandrashekhar, IT Secretary of Andhra Pradesh (AP), the first state in India to move towards electronic governance, shared AP government's vision of E-Governance. He said that the technology component in any IT project was only 15%, while change management and process re-engineering formed the remaining. The sponsors of the centre made a presentation on the technologies useful for E-Governance. They highlighted the key result areas that the Government can expect of E-Governance such as the ability to manage high volume of information in centralised, distributed as well as mobile environments. Prof. Subhash Bhatnagar of IIMA, and also co-ordinator for the Centre, spoke about the key issues in implementation of E-Governance. He said information and communication technology applications could bring in office automation thereby reducing paperwork and improving communication and co-ordination; provide decision support to public administrators for improving planning and monitoring of developmental programs; improve services to citizens and bring in transparency; and empower citizens through access to information and knowledge. He brought the workshop to a close by reviewing some applications that had been demonstrated to have a high social impact and framed guidelines for successful implementation of ICT. The centre believes that setting up the hardware constitutes only half the exercise, with the other half expected to come from Governments involved in IT promotion. Besides Gujarat, it is hoping for participation from the Andhra Pradesh Government in developing E-Governance applications. The centre would like to build partnerships with these governments. Eight faculty members from IIMA are likely to contribute to the activities of the centre. The centre will be staffed with three information/systems analysts who will develop the applications under the guidance of the faculty. The centre is in the process of building a homepage which will go live in January 2000. Please contact Prof. Subhash Bhatnagar for any further details. Conference
on Information Technology CITA'99. Roger
Harris The Conference on Information Technology in Asia 1999 (CITA'99) was held on the 16th and 17th September 1999 in Kuching, Malaysia. The conference was organised by Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) and the Asian region of IFIP Working Group 9.4 CITA'99 reflects the Group's increasing focus on regional issues concerned with Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in developing countries. Recognising the enormous disparities between and within countries in Asia in terms of access to technology, and coming at a time of financial turmoil in the region's economies, the conference examined the continuing role of ICTs within the prevailing challenges of development faced by the region. The location of the conference, in Malaysia, is particularly apt, given the nation's emphasis on ICTs in its aspirations for development. In many ways, the Malaysian experience offers lessons for the rest of the region as it takes its rightful place in global affairs. The conference presented 40 research papers from 10 countries which were organised into six tracks reflecting the principal themes of the conference and the aims and scope of the WG9.4. The six tracks were: national perspectives; applications; IT in education; organisational responses; adoption of IT; and cultural aspects. The range of topics covered by the conference papers reflects the pervasive nature of ICTs in contemporary life. As Chrisanthi pointed out in her closing address, it was particularly gratifying to have a WG9.4 conference with the overwhelming majority of papers coming from developing countries. It is fully in accord with the Group's objectives to encourage researchers from developing countries by providing suitable outlets for their findings, and CITA'99 certainly achieved this. As befitting an IT conference, the papers covered a wide diversity of topics, but the underlying theme, that of information equality into the next millennium, provided a unifying focus for the entire event. Copies of the proceedings are available from the conference organisers at US$25 plus post and packing. Contact Roger Harris, Head of the Information Systems Core Group, Faculty of Information Technology - Universiti Malaysia Sarawak. On the Way to Electronic Government A Call for Papers Workshop within
DEXA2000, Greenwich, UK With e-Commerce having achieved striking success, the transfer of concepts and systems to the public sector has been advocated. Yet e-Government is a different field and careful deliberation is needed. Systems have to pay attention to specific aspects of governance as well as comply with the distinctive features of administrative work. But hindrance on the way will be overcome because prospects for e-Government are bright. Governance includes various types of work and nearly all of them can be supported by information technology. The list of issues is long with some examples given below:
Contributions with
relevance to these topics are welcome. Accepted papers will be
published by IEEE. Please send your Paper (maximum 10 common pages
or equivalent to 5 IEEE-Proceedings pages) by January 31, 2000 to the
workshop co-ordinator: Camera ready papers have to be delivered until May, 2000. More on DEXTER Workshops and the DEXA Conference can be found on the web: www.dexa.org IT and Small Enterprise: Online Research Findings Richard Heeks A new report:
'Information, ICTs and Small Enterprise: lessons from Botswana' is
available from the IDPM Web site at: It summarises interim findings from a research project in Botswana about the information systems and information needs of small enterprises. It also presents recommendations on ICT use in small enterprises. As usual with our papers, there is an educators' guide for those wishing to use the paper for individual or group training. APC "Betinho" Communications Prize Maureen
James Since 1990, Association for Progressive Communications (APC) has been working with NGOs, activists, and social movements to harness information and communication technologies (ICTs) in ways that match their mission and mandate. APC is joined by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC, Canada) in an effort to recognize and document outstanding examples of how the Internet is being used to make a real difference. For APC's 10th anniversary, they are together launching the Betinho Prize -- to commemorate the inspirational life and work of Herbet de Souza (Betinho), a visionary Brazilian social activist and exemplary communicator. How to Nominate an Initiative The $7500 US prize is open to non-profit organisations, community-based groups, coalitions, working groups or social movements anywhere in the world that have successfully used ICTs as an essential ingredient in their development work. Nominations will be judged by an international jury according to these criteria:
Nominations for the Prize will be accepted until January 31, 2000. The stories of 12 finalists will be profiled on the Betinho prize site, and the winner will be announced in May 2000. Detailed instructions and a nomination form are available from http://www.apc.org/english/betinho Liberalization of the telecommunications sector is progressing across Africa. One of the most important benefits of this trend is that it will make value-added services, particularly Internet access, more affordable and reliable for telecommunications users in the continent. The Internet need not be a useful tool only for industrial societies. The poor in many African countries, struggling to meet basic needs, often remain poor not only because they are denied access to physical and human capital, but also because they lack the information necessary to convert that capital into wealth. By opening wide the door to a huge store of global knowledge, the Internet offers untapped possibilities to address the blight of information poverty. This toolkit is inspired by the African experience where access to the World Wide Web is helping doctors to save patients, schools to educate children, and communities to create businesses that will lift them out of destitution. Over the last three years, the number of Internet host sites, excluding the developed market of South Africa, has risen twenty-fold despite the low level of telecommunications. Private, nonprofit, and public sector Internet service providers have sprung up to help exploit the opportunities presented by this new technology. At the time this report was written, 42 of the 54 nations in Africa had live public access to the Internet in the capital city, while eight had countrywide local dial-up access. Competition (where allowed) can be fierce, and the price for "all you can eat" web access dropped below US$ 30/month for some countries in the region. In Mozambique, one of the least developed nations of the continent, it is possible to make a telephone call over the Internet today. Largely because of the efforts of private operators, the number of host sites in African countries has increased from 290 in five countries in 1995 to 6,510 in 32 countries in 1998. These figures exclude South Africa, which alone has 129,000 sites. However, there are still many hurdles to a comprehensive coverage of African nations. Issues that require urgent deliberation include pricing structures, monopoly controls and licensing charges. Often these are the result of state policies, restricted by a short-term view of the economy and its future, or by concerns over the immediate effect of Internet on telephone company revenues. This toolkit closely examines these issues. It finds that, in the long term, the Internet cannot be looked upon as a threat to telecommunications companies. It is true that it is one of a range of technological advances that are forcing changes in the operation of telecommunications systems, but it also presents opportunities for new sources of revenues and new ways to meet the demands of the society. The Internet has become a tool for development with its ability to facilitate the delivery of social services, disaster mitigation, and poverty relief. The toolkit also finds that the move towards liberalization is likely to have a beneficial effect on Internet rollout, just as it has on basic service provision. The toolkit is a part of a collaborative effort on expanding Internet access to Africa that began in 1995 with the creation of the Africa Internet Forum (AIF). This group includes the UNDP, UNITAR, USAID, CIDA, NASA, the Carnegie Corporation and the African Networking Initiative - which itself includes groups such as the IDRC, ITU, ECA and UNESCO. The toolkit is intended to be used in policy dialogues and country assessments, broadly to facilitate the involvement of the private sector in Internet provision, and specifically to help policy makers shape their attitudes toward this exciting and expanding sector of the telecommunications business. The toolkit is available on the World Bank's website, www.worldbank.org/infodev/projects/finafcon.htm Tips and cautions: Setting up an electronic AIDS network in SE Asia infoDev Edited version of a 'story' from the stories contest organized by infoDev and the International Institute for Communication and Development. The SEA-AIDS Project has three main components: SEA-AIDS Link electronic discussion group, SEA-AIDS Files, and SEA-AIDS FLASH electronic newsletter. It aims to bring together the people and organisations in the Asia-Pacific region that are shaping the response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Together, the three activities work to provide a forum for instant communication among all those working on HIV/AIDS in the region and augment the quality and quantity of information about HIV/AIDS and to make its flow more timely, efficient, and cost-effective. The activities address the relative isolation faced by many of the people living and working with HIV/AIDS in the region, who, due to a variety of factors, may have difficulty in accessing support services and information. They highlight where HIV/AIDS-related information and best practices can be found, and enable referral to appropriate sources of such information. In the early stages, some people who considered joining SEA-AIDS expressed a cynicism about the value of e-mail networks --e-mail is a new medium and people need time to integrate its potential into their thinking and planning. Also at the outset, a significant number of SEA-AIDS network members were not regionally based, but were technical experts based in the "North" with a special interest or professional affiliation with the region. At first, these were the most active network participants. Many potential country-level network participants already have the computer equipment (486 or stronger) needed to establish e-mail connection but do not realise it. The costs of establishing an e-mail connection are small in relation to the potential savings that can be made in international telephone/fax charges. Levels of e-mail connectivity vary considerably from country to country and tend to be more concentrated in capitals and limited in provincial areas. Legislative restrictions on the use of electronic communications are also still in effect in some countries. Many people participate in the network passively, mostly observing exchanges and rarely contributing to them. This reluctance to play a more active role is, in part, related to the often ambiguous relationship of participants to this new medium -- "Am I taking part as myself, or on behalf of my organisation?" This attitude was reported by people at all organisational levels, and is also seen in other forums such as workshops and conferences. Because a common language is needed for a regional network, some participants may be unable to fully understand the information and materials shared by participants. In some cases, a lack of confidence in using a second language has been a barrier to more active participation. Many postings to the SEA-AIDS Services are from people who want to circulate their own resumes or promote commercial services. It is important to develop from the outset a set of moderation criteria for dealing with these kinds of postings. The role of the network moderator is essential to the success of a regional network like SEA-AIDS. The person serving in this capacity must therefore have dedicated time available for this purpose and have a broad understanding of the topic. For information
contact: Seri Phongphit,
Room no. 359, UNESCAP Building, 10200 Bangkok, Thailand ;
Fax:66-2-590-1850 |