Dear Colleagues, ICT has enormous potential for improving socio-economic conditions in rural communities, but seeing practical results that will improve the quality of life in rural communities requires a lot more than just a computer with Internet access.
Almost all the ICT initiatives that have been funded by the official relief and development assistance (ORDA) organizations have been heavy on technology (hardware), but weak on information and communications. But surely, it is information and communications that create the most value from an ICT intervention. Community centric sustainable development (CCSD) is a process that works. It is facilitated by a thorough understanding of the socio-economic status of the community. In general this information is well known in the community, though it may not be written down and organized in a particularly systematic manner. However, it is almost totally unknown outside the community, especially within the organizations that plan and fund relief and development initiatives. This information would be enormously useful in establishing a systemic way of monitoring progress of development and relating progress to specific fund flows and development initiatives. This could be the foundation for a system of management information for development. At some level the logic of this information for the community is similar to the logic behind the UN System of National Accounts that was developed by Dr. Stone at Cambridge in the 1950s. Though rarely discussed the UN SNA is widely used at the national level ... but in my view is not very useful because the national level has too much aggregation and is therefore difficult to interpret meaningfully. Similar information at the community level has the potential to be used in a very practical way to encourage incremental investment and funding, and to measure results. But communicating this information efficiently is a challenge in most rural areas. The communications dimension of ICT is vital ... and while today the technology is efficient and very low cost, the enabling environment to deploy this technology and make a communications infrastructure affordable and sustainable is absent. The rules governing deployment of communications technology need to allow best technology infrastructure to be deployed without the monopolistic constraints that seem to be everywhere. This needs to change. If there is community level communications infrastructure ... and it is linked to the global Internet efficiently ... local governance can be improved in all sorts of ways. In addition to the management information already referred to, it is possible to have electronic banking and money transfers, information flows about market prices and supplies, calls for help and guidance in medical emergencies, support for teachers and students, and so on. The possibilities are endless. Practical plans to do these things exist. The enabling environment to let plans get turned into reality is a big part of the problem. The good news is that this may be changing for the better, but not everytwhere and not very fast. Sincerely, Peter Burgess _____________ Peter Burgess Tr-Ac-Net in New York Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: 212 772 6918 Transparency and Accountability Network with Kris Dev in Chennai, India and others in South Asia, Africa and Latin America ------------ This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by the dot-ORG USAID Cooperative Agreement, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org provides more information. To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd For past messages, see: http://www.dot-com-alliance.org/archive.html
