[GKD] Project Trains Women in Computer Skills (India)
Prof. K.V.Sane of IIT, New Delhi has been at the forefront of a very innovative project being run in the bye-lanes of New Delhi. Termed as - SITA - this project has trained almost 450 women in computer skills. During its two year operation, SITA has recorded many achievemnts like development of a multilingual Resource Package, design of a user-friendly training strategy, and using the Package and the strategy to train nearly 450 women from a disadvantaged background. One of SITA's pleasant experience was the ability of most of the trainees to pick up computer skills in spite of limited educational background and poor communication ability, particularly in English. However this did not prevent them from doing satisfactory work of diverse types like data entry, word processing, DTP, etc. They have also processed manuscripts in English, Hindi, Punjabi and texts involving scientific and mathematical symbols for books, newletters, journals, Conference Proceedings etc. All this work has been received from international sources and samples can be sent for inspection. For details please visit www.kcetu.org and www.sitaa.org . Another pleasant experience was the highly encouraging response from the international community through awards and invitations to showcase the project. A surprising and disappointing experience was the poor response of the job market to the project trainees. The inability of a majority of trainees to find jobs shows that good training by itself does not serve the needs of the individuals from the disadvantaged sector. If SITA type of efforts are to survive and grow, identification and implementation of income generating schemes must be given the highest priority. It is here where I seek the views and experiences of the GKD group - on how and where we can improve upon this project. Here the skill are available - but the next step on the ladder is not accessible. How can they be taught the marketing skills needed to market their earlier skills - without draining their alreadt meagre resources. Where can we find the org. or groups who will be willing to give them the jobs based on their computer skills - without paying too much emphasis to their lack of communication skills. Mridula Murgai ***GKD is an initiative of the Global Knowledge Partnership*** 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 Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.globalknowledge.org
[GKD] E-Governance an Intolerant Civil Society
Dear Colleagues, Greetings from the KnowNet Initiative at http://www.knownet.org and the Digital Governance Initiative at http://www.digitalgovernance.org Digital Governance is a project of the KnowNet Initiative. KnowNet Initiative aims to popularize the use of ICT for empowerment and development in developing countries, while DigitalGovernance.org explores and disseminates innovative models by which ICT can be used in developing countries to lead to better governance. Do have a look at both the websites and we are sure that you will find a lot of useful resources in it. We now have over 950 members from over 85 countries as a part of this virtual initiative launched over 18 months back. And this has singularly contributed to maintaining rich and diverse information resources on both the websites. We now have resources from Nepal, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cameroon, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Vietnam, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Costa Rica, Guyana, Pakistan, Israel, India and many others. We thank all the contributors who over the months have shared different web resources, links and case studies through this initiative. Both the initiatives function on a continuous learning mode. And more knowledge products (similar to this) would be brought into light in the subsequent updates. These occasional updates may be subscribed by sending a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] The updates are basically a compilation and reflection of the experiences shared by many of the E-governance practitioners and researchers working in the South. We are still at the beginning of the century and yet very exciting developments are happening on the E-governance front in South. More and more number of people are getting connected to some or other form of telecommunication and the network of interconnected people is geometrically rising. Whilst it is true that link to emails/ Internet is integral to large sections of people living in developed countries and there is a huge North-South divide in terms of connectivity, it does not mean that the South is not benefiting from getting connected to the telecommunications network. Interestingly, in comparison, the impacts of getting connected are very much different. And Impacting Governance is the front where the adoption of modern technologies could lead to (and is leading to) more radical changes in South than in North. And the South may have so much more to offer on how to innovatively use ICT to impact on governance processes. This is because, the Southern models often create communication channels between Individuals and Governance mechanisms where none existed earlier and thus lead to their greater popularity and faster adoption. Nevertheless, this does not imply that E-governance should become an elixir or the only desirable solution for better governance. Electronic Governance has to be realized by focusing on the two-way link between Government and Citizens. The link from Government to Citizens, provides an interface for the Government to reach out to the citizens. But this will happen only if the Government promotes the culture of information-sharing and has the intentions to foster participation and create greater awareness among the citizens. This often may not be the case and such an attitude will not happen immediately, especially at the national level. Information continues to be power in countries with high levels of information asymmetry and sharing of information could thus be construed as lessening of power or having to be more transparent- both of which- may high political risks in the eyes of traditional power holders. Nevertheless, changes could be incremental. For instance, in India, some of the States went much ahead in putting state government related information and procedures on the Internet, in comparison to the country as a whole. And it was often because of the positive efforts of some individual politicians/ government offices who take the political risk and in process paved way for a more transparent governance. The incremental effect has led to a more concerted efforts such as national recommendations to earmark $587 million in addition to the 3 percent plan outlay of each ministry for e-governance and convergence projects. In some countries, the seeds of change has been more at the national level and the central governments have served as a role model for the state governments to follow. The process of using e-governance may be incremental or centralized but the effectiveness of such government provided interface will still largely be dependent on the level of openness and risk-bearing capacity of the Government officials/ offices to make way for direct citizen involvement. The other link is from Citizen to the Government-in which electronic governance opens up an interface where the citizens demand participation in governance mechanisms- be it at the local, national or international level. The caveat is that under
Re: [GKD] Linux Aid Server Project
What Perry Morrison mentions below is probably fine for the smaller one-computer offices as he says. Each solution does have its merits that make it more suitable for different situations. The system in my proposal is a server intended for larger sites with a number of machines, and its main aim is to make communications easier in such a situation by automating the dialout delivery, and pickup process (eg can be done early in the morning when local phone system is not overloaded and thus very noisy with dropped calls, no connection, busy signals, as it typically can be, saving staff time, money and frustration), as well as providing a central documents repository with scripted nightly drive mirroring. This will provide extra backup security, as well as making the system fixable by a screwdriver-only PC technician in event of most failures. It also will have a WWW front end for setup, with most settings set to standrad sensible defaults. the ones that have to be set up for most sites would be in a simpler WWW frontend which is all most users will have to see. A UPS will be needed of course. Not being critcial of what he says, here are my first-hand experiences of UUPC. I have used UUPC a lot in the past through my first Usenet/Internet use 10 years ago and had to deal with it last of all for some older customers at the ISP I used to work for. One of the problems it has is that it can die inexplicably and be pretty hard to resurrect even for a highly experienced DOS user. It can also be very hard to install if you have to venture beyond the limits of its install batch file or third party addon mailer packages (pegasus mail for DOS etc). The Linux system above has a far more robust UUCP implementation which performs faultlessly and has features like automatic partial file transfer resume, and automated multitasking call scheduling ability for 2AM etc. in the morning (cheaper toll calls). This will be easy to install via the install CD I propose to build, and easily configuarble by the WWW front end. By limiting the hardware to PCI machines and NOT trying to get X windows GUI to run almost all the device driver problems for the task at hand are removed. The above are the reasons that Linux is better suited for larger sites, and ffor where you need reliabilty. One of the aims of the project is to remove the install hurdle that Dr Morrison mentions via the CDROM and WWW front end, which from my experience I know definitely can be done. Best Regards, Matthew Grant On Tue, 2002-02-12 at 19:42, Dr. Perry Morrison wrote: This is an interesting idea, but there are probably easier ways than Linux. The latter is notorious for its hassles with device support - usually OK if you know what you're doing - but if the Linux expert isn't there to install on the spot or the box isn't configured before delivery, you may have problems with the local hardware. In addition, if you don't really want to webserve or run a lot of LANS, but just want office software and mail exchange, in my experience an old laptop with DOS, some shareware that handles common document formats and UUPC utilities for mail exchange will do fine. ***GKD is an initiative of the Global Knowledge Partnership*** 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 Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.globalknowledge.org
Re: [GKD] Project Trains Women in Computer Skills (India)
Mridula, thank you for this update on the INFODEV-supported SITA and MitraMandal, around which you raise crucial questions of job placement for project trainees. As I'm sure you know, the relationship between training and presumed 'jobs' that hypothetically await successful trainees has always been one of the most vexed and difficult problems facing program designers/evaluators, and is by no means limited to India, or even to these kinds of approaches or communities. I think the issue is broadly at the base of all 'human resources development' strategies ( the subject of the forthcoming ECOSOC 2002 High Level Segment), and symbolic of major shortcomings in HRD policy and practice. Assumptions under which public training programs are usually themselves 'marketed' include statements about increased job-skills, without specifying how those job-skills are identified, or defined, or even if they are empirical (i.e. derived directly from the contextual 'job-market' which trainees will face). Yet outcome measures usually include measures of 'placement', again usually short-term without regard to how long or how successfully the job-entrant does over time. Western literature (including western 'expert' studies of worldwide HRD vocational education and training programs) is replete with evidence that those who successfully complete training programs either have difficulty finding jobs, or find them in very different areas from those in which they were trained. So I suggest this is not just a problem for SITA trainees, but raises much broader questions. Many countries today are full of high school, even university graduates who are unable to find jobs commensurate with their expectations or perceived skills levels. The work that SITA has done is groundbreaking and has surely brought hope and gratification to its 400+ women who have completed the training. Just bringing the IT world closer to life of poorer Indian communities may be seen as a benefit in itself, though scant reward for those who want the training to lead to tangible improvements personally in their own livelihoods. The SITA webpage states that each trainee was given a Certificate and assistance in getting employment. I am curious to ask what kind of assistance that was, and to what extent it was based on actual (empirically supported) knowledge of employment opportunities in communities where the trainees lived, their own aspirations/expectations regarding 'job' pursuit, and the expectations of those who would employ the succesful trainees. Is there any possibility that the training for these women could lead to (parttime?) employment in some way as outreach workers (analagous to community health assistants) serving as official links between government (state and local) and local communities as frontline liaison persons? Or could they become themselves basic trainers in their own communities regarding introduction of IT into these communities? Im not sure of precedents for this, but perhaps others on this network can identify some? ***GKD is an initiative of the Global Knowledge Partnership*** 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 Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.globalknowledge.org
