The additional request for input on the DOT Force 'exchange' concept
makes me nervous.
I am getting nervous because here is another seemingly good idea which
appears to have at its core yet another way to wring out every last drop
of risk in trying to bring ICTs to bear on development.
If we are still talking about 'the poor' and 'the poorest of the poor'
(we are, aren't we?), then risk is part and parcel of the milieu into
which are inserting ourselves. We're talking about 2.8 BILLION people
who earn less than $2 a day. These folks know what risk is all about. It
would be nice to hear somebody affiliated with the DOT Force stand up
and say, "You know, we really don't know what is going to work where the
poor live. There are a hundred reasons why a good idea won't work except
where it is already working. There are also a hundred reasons why a bad
idea here is a good idea somewhere else. The interplay of associative
factors and chains of causation are too complicated to decipher. Our
planning can only be wildly approximate at best. So we've just got to DO
it and risk 20-25% of our efforts failing or being siphoned off by
unscrupulous players. We will simply do whatever it takes to push good
quality but low cost ICTs and combinations--hundreds and thousands of
them--down to the lowest social units among the poor around the world
and see what happens. Poor people are entrepreneurs too and can see
opportunities--or otherwise they wouldn't have survived. All they need
are the tools. We can provide the tools."
Can it really be so difficult to identify which ICTs and ICT strategies
will make a difference among the very poor? Mridula Murgai's recent
posting suggests that learning ICTs happens very quickly even among the
previously uninitiated when livelihood is involved or potentially
involved. We've seen other examples of amazing learning breakthroughs
when perceived 'critical' needs, as opposed to plain vanilla 'needs,'
are present, such as at
http://www.niit.com/Press%20Article/Article83.htm
We know that the cost of entry is critical for the poor. Why isn't
somebody figuring out how to make the $300 Brazilian computers an
international marketing phenomenon? Then somebody try your hand at $300
(annual) Internet connectivity or somewhere in that neighborhood? Why
aren't there about five thousand clones of Martha Davies running around
thinking up innovative rural money making schemes using ICTs when she
has already proven that it is possible?
Maybe we don't attempt this because we're too focused on exchanges and
gateways and national, even regional, 'policy-making'? Some, maybe many,
of the Martha Davies' clones' ideas will fail. So what? We'll still
learn. Action-research on actual efforts seems to me to be a better bet
than the elaborate, top-heavy planning (read risk avoidance) that we
seem to be constantly migrating towards. Once you've got dozens,
hundreds, thousands of efforts fermenting and colliding and moving
around, perhaps chaotically building grass roots political momentum,THEN
it seems to me that policy-making has a chance.
Another thing that made me nervous was the recent posting of GKD
recommendations that was distributed at the GKP annual meeting. It is
basically a list (in four areas) that goes on for four long pages.
Someone once told me that a list is a proxy statement for "we don't know
what we're doing" and to toss it out the window. Maybe it's time to
forget lists and concentrate on a few, maybe one, 'critical needs' in
every place to get things moving. If we can't come up with one, then
move on till you find one.
Isn't it time to take a few risks?
(I am employed by VITA but this is definitely just a personal view and
not a reflection of VITA views).
Gary Garriott
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