[GKD] RFI: Web Site Funding Models

[John Laxton]

At present I am working with the Geological Surveys in various
developing countries in assisting them to harness IT to help them
fulfill their roles. The development of a web site to raise awareness of
the services they offer and data they hold is an important aspect of
this for many surveys. Ideally this would lead to their producing
metadata about their data holdings and making this available on-line.
However a key problem for many of them is the sustainability of such
systems. There are various funding agencies that will assist with the
development of the web site in the first instance, but most funding
bodies expect the site to then be financially sustainable.

Clearly different funding models will be appropriate for different
organisations, with the best guide being what has worked elsewhere. I
was wondering if anyone is aware of any examples of web site funding
models that have been used successfully, information sources on
different funding models, or organisations I could approach who might
have such information?

Many thanks for your help.

Best wishes,

John Laxton

John Laxton
British Geological Survey
Murchison House
West Mains Rd
Edinburgh, EH9 3LA
United Kingdom 

Tel: +44 (0)131 667 1000
Fax: +44 (0)131 668 1535
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Web site: www.bgs.ac.uk
Internet Shop: www.thebgs.co.uk




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[GKD] Taking Communities Online (India)

[Frederick Noronha (FN)]

Taking communities online... Bangalore offers cyber tools to manage
knowledge

By Frederick Noronha

Everybody on the Net seems to be focussing on technology and tools to
get their job done, but an Indian-incubated initiative is focussing on
how people can make the real difference in tapping the potential of
cyberspace.

Pantoto, launched by the US-educated but Bangalore-based Dr. T. B.
Dinesh and expat Dr. Suzan Uskudarli, who worked out of Bangalore till
recently, sees itself as a simple but effective 'community building'
tool that just about anybody can use.

This 'online community builder' aims to support existing 'real world'
communities, by giving them the cyber tools that could make their
networking and knowledge-sharing more effective and meaningful.

"It uses information architecture tools to allow communities to manage
and nurture a repository of community knowledge," explains Dinesh.

It's goals are clear: providing an 'online' (Internet-based) platform
where people who are part of any 'community' (or extended network
sharing similar interests) can interact and come together for their
common cause.

Pantoto seeks to promote 'information-centric communication', as its
developers call it, between members of a 'community'. To keep the
software simple, it is small and 'light' in size, and works in any
browser -- the software widely used to trawl the Internet.

To make the knowledge-sharing among any 'community' more effective, this
tool offers a well-organized information repository.

It says the communication of the group can be "customised to suit the
needs of any community" and this also helps the group to build a
cost-effective presence on the Net.

This makes people -- rather than technology -- the key towards
leveraging the pwoer of the Net.

Pantoto says it can help groups build an 'online community', and also
put up their treasure-chest of useful and relevant knowledge out there
for everyone to share.

"With these three basic outputs (a community, knowledge-repository and
web-presence) a community can create any out-put. The out-put would
depend on the information needs of the community and how they choose to
structure and manage information," says Dinesh.

But managing information and sharing it effectively out there on the
Internet might not be as simple as it sounds.

To make it easier, the Pantoto solution depends on providing apt online
tools, creating multiple 'personas' for oneself which help a person
'manage relationships' within a community, and encourage people to
contribute to an info repository through Pagelets.

Pagelets are structured web-pages that can be published as easily as
filling out a form.

Pantoto also tries to help collaboration to enhance creation and
dissemination of community knowledge.

To be able to run this, anyone would need just the technical skills of
"knowing how to use a web-browser", claim its promoters. Web-browsers
are very simple tools, used sometimes without even being aware of it, by
anyone browsing the Internet.

Dinesh, who did his PhD in computer science from the University of Iowa
and post-doctoral research at Amsterdam, says: "Shri Shakti Alternative
Energies has been our beta users for a while. They use it for intranet
and dealer network needs."

"Pantoto might soon be used for project listing by indic-computing
community and CharityFocus India chapters. But our main work lateley has
been to work with local NGOs to help them build information management
solutions, themselves, for their varied needs," says he.

There are many tools out there for web-communities to grab and use. But
many are either expensive or need IT/Computer-programming help to tune
it for an specific information-community need.

"Pantoto is an attempt to first bring information architecturing to the
end-user, where by we hope that organizations (like a typical NGO) can
be empowered to be independent of IT consultants for much of their
everyday needs and next to provide flexibility with look and feel," says
Dinesh.

Dr Susan stresses "the importance of structuring information" to make
information "accessible and usable" in the long term. "Structuring
provides meaning to the information. Thus, intelligent searching,
filtering, and other processing such as analysis becomes possible," she
adds.

She says 'pagelets' are the information pieces that are meaningful to
the community. "The big deal about this is to distinguish the concept of
pagelets from common web pages. A typical web page has no structure. It
is free in form and free in content."

"On the contrary, with a pile of 'pagelets', from a series of surveys of
slums, these structured pages can answer questions like -- show me the
incidence of AIDS and the number of 'arak' (traditional liquor) shops in
April 1999 in Mysore district," she says.

Over the past three months, some NGOs (non-government organisations)
have begun using Pantoto with a "little bit of hand-holding and initial
training".

These include Sakti, a Bangalo

Re: [GKD] Attempts to Bridge Digital Divide Could Be Costly to Africa

[John Lawrence]

I am not in any way speaking for UNDP, but personally and
professionally Please note the reciprocal contrast between first and
last sentences in the introductory paragraph of this memo, then ask why
the title of this email exclusively focused on the first! This goes
beyond a classical example of the half-full, or half-empty glass.  As
part of a team who demonstrated empirically and conclusively the
surprising spread of e-comms in subSaharan Africa, and the implications
for social policy in key areas of development (Perspectives in Education
Vol 20 #2 pp 55-76), I suggest (and I think/hope there is wide
agreement) that young African children, all over the continent, have
inherently the right to the same opportunities for access to these
crucial technologies as their counterparts worldwide in rich countries
as well as poor. Public policy should recognize unequivocally the
astounding emergence of e-comms as a new reality in business,commerce,
and public service, thus comprising an essential educational requirement
in the development of human resources. Unless parents and communities
explicitly opt out, schools which ignore this reality are actively
depriving their students of critical skills acquisition in a fast moving
modern age. So it is incumbent on development agencies and the private
sector to work with OSS pioneers as well as the proprietary software
producers in addressing the existing commitments of governments to
education for all in the Millennium Goals. So focus on the last
sentence, and NOT the first!


Sally Gainsbury <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Attempts to bridge the 'digital divide' could lead Africa down a costly
> path
>
> Poor planning, expensive software and under-utilisation make computers a
> costly mistake for some African schools. Research published by id21
> Insights Education shows that the yearly cost of supplying and
> maintaining one African school with 10 second-hand computers, software
> and technical support could be as high as the cost of 2000 text books or
> 3.6 teachers. Good planning and utilisation - such as making computers
> available for community use outside school hours - and free 'open
> source' software however, can lower costs dramatically.

..snip...




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