Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Social As Well As Business Metrics

[Peter Burgess]

Dear Colleagues,

I am always intrigued by discussion about different metrics, and
frequently come away with the impression that there is a high level of
dissatisfaction about metrics as currently practiced.

I was involved in the early days of management information systems,
before it was normal for corporations to have complete and comprehensive
information systems to provide managers with all the key information
needed to make good decisions. One of the keys for management
information success was always to combine the raw accounting information
with important operational information. Most departments do not have a
"profit" bottom line, but there is certainly a big difference between a
well run department and one that is sloppy and expensive, and this can
almost always be measured using some very obvious metric.

Management By Objective -- MBO was a fashion in the corporate world for
a while, and often failed to produce much performance improvement except
when it was integrated into the management information system, and then
it became very valuable. In most development situations it is possible
to articulate objectives that have social impact, and it should be
possible to report against such objectives, as well as having the
related accounting information for the cost of achieving the objectives.
As far as I am concerned objectives can be anything that the entity
wants them to be...a good system will help report the progress and the
cost...and that is a big step forward in managing development.

It is a separate step to think through the value of an objective. Value
is what the development community should be seeking to maximise, though
it seems to have been ignored in most development decision making for a
very long time. I would argue that an individual, in a family and in a
(beneficiary) community should be the main source of information to
determine the value of any development objective. Of course this is how
a working market economy functions...people will buy something if it is
affordable and the value is higher than the price...people will produce
something if its price is higher than its cost. Value adding is
essentially the difference between cost and value. However, imitating
this in an administered development environment is not always easy.

Social objectives often have high value to people and families and
communities, but the costs are also high and price then unaffordable.
Delivering social services on a sustainable basis through subsidy may be
the only option, but where it is possible, the dynamic of development
would be better served by seeking ways for the community to earn enough
so that social services are affordable. Development, in my view, has
ignored far too much the potential of communities to have their
productivity improved by appropriate investment and method improvement.
Far too many projects have put the resources in the wrong place and
ended up with a terrible waste of money, but investment in the right
place can make a huge difference.

And in the case of health and the current AIDS pandemic, social value has
tremendous importance. But the enormous value of AIDS interventions should
not be confused with the cost. The work needed to relate realized social
value in the AIDS crisis with the related costs is important work, and
should be an integral part of the management of all resources associated
with the pandemic. From what I know of this field, I think we will be
shocked at the ineffective way most resources in this segment of relief and
development are used when the social value is assessed from the perspective
of the SOUTH where the crisis is endemic.

Most "experts" who have spent more than a few weeks on the ground have
learned a lot about different implementation modalities and their
successes and failures. But hardly any of this knowledge finds its way
into the public domain, which is a pity. It is something that
"transparency" would achieve, but for the moment it seems that there is
more interest in talking about transparency than in actually doing
transparency. My feeling is that this is in the process of changing.

I am very hopeful that soon there will be some big changes in the way
transparency, accounting and accountability and effective monitoring and
evaluation (TAAME) is accomplished, and after that significant changes
in the performance of development.

Sincerely

Peter Burgess

Peter Burgess
in New York
Tel: 212 772 6918 
Email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Database http://www.afrifund.com/wiki/index.pcgi?page=AfrifundDatabase
Coffee: http://afrifund.coffeefair.com
Blog: http://taame.blogspot.com


On 11/22/2004, Al Hammond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Vickram Crishna and others have written on this. From the perspective of
> our research on successful BOP business models, we think that the
> companies who have really done well have had both business and social
> metrics, the latter articulated at the very top of the company. They
> take the fo

Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] What New Technologies and Business Models are on the Horizon?

[Paul Richardson]

Dear GKD Members,

I run a small company (ExpLAN Computers Ltd) which is the lead partner
in a group of 14 companies and individual engineers who have spent the
last 4 years designing an ultra-low energy computer suitable for running
indefinately off renewable power sources - particularly solar.

You can get an overview of the Solo on  although
the website is deliberately not being kept up to date because we were
experiencing problems of others using this as their source of
information and then purporting to represent our Design Team!  :-(

We are in fact at the point of building the Mk IV prototypes during the
next three weeks, and I have to take two of them straight to West Africa
and return to the UK before my visa expires on 17 Dec 04!

With these tight timescales would other contributors please excuse me if
I can't keep up with where this thread is going!

Nevertheless I am intrigued by Ken DiPietro's comments to GKD, and this
open response is provoked by him:

Ken, you will understand that most other group members are either
currently working or intending to work on the very edges of where
computer technology can reach. Whilst some access to mains power or
(pollution creating) generators is assumed, our Solo Project is intended
to release us from even that requirement.

Of course this only solves half the problem...you still need
telecommunications if the accessability to Western knowledge or trade
markets is to be achieved.

By definition, if the GKD members are working at the edges of the
provision of mains power, then telecommunications is also likely to be
absent or very expensive (24/7 satellite etc). Whether we consider an
Iridium satellite link or a typical sub-Saharan African telephone
land-line, you will be lucky to achieve 2400 baud!

On Tuesday, 16 Nov 2004, Ken DiPietro wrote:

> [...] In 1999 my wife and I decided to bring high speed Internet
> connectivity to our area of Vermont as it was unlikely that the bigger
> players would ever do so.
> 
> After nearly a year of research, we launched our company, New-ISP.net,
> delivering high-speed Internet connectivity to businesses in our area
> using Fixed Wireless and SDSL technology.
..snip...
> Over the years we have developed a network of suppliers that can provide
> wireless equipment very inexpensively. I can reliably say that we can
> light up a town in our area for well under $3,000 all-inclusive.


As I understand it you are still reliant on having a proportionally
"large pipe" to transfer the high speed wireless systems in and out of
your zone. Moreover, I'm assuming that your service is an
instant-response system, requiring live web-access with no
"store-and-forward" technologies using servers.

Within the vast majority of the world (defined by both population and
land area), this is unachievable because there is no large pipe to start
from. Whilst we could readily inter-link rural villages with wireless
networking at 53Mb/sec, the bottleneck is the pair of rusty wires at the
end of the network which is your modem link to the outside world!

We would still be very happy to utilise even this, of course. The most
basic raw-text email support would revolutionise the Developing World
even if no external web-access were available.  :-)

South America has implemented a "large pipe" approach, and has installed
a massive fibre-optic ring around the coast of all countries. However it
only links the major cities and their principal buildings such as
universities. If you are even 1km away from the fibre-optic network then
it has had zero impact on your community!

> I am thrilled to be a part of this discussion and I have nothing but the
> deepest respect for people, like you, that are working to make this
> world a better place.

There's quite a mixture of members in the GKD group. I would suggest
that the majority are working for NGO's funded by the likes of the World
Bank, UN, WHO, EU etc.  Whilst they are doing wonderful work, they are
primarily operating in service-sectors such as Education and Health, or
else conducting feasability studies that have no commercial viability.

The minority of us GKD members are working in the commercial sector.

In the Western World we only get our secondary/service industries
because our taxes and personal health-plans (etc) generate enough income
for us to pay for them.

In the Developing World, we Westerners have supplied secondary/service
sector facilities such as schools and clinics, largely through the
previous 200 years of missionary work, followed by a plethora of
charities and one-off aid/relief appeals.

However, until we can assist the countries of the Dev-World to create
their own primary/commercial sector industries, they stand no chance of
being able to support these expensive service-industries we have
supplied them with.

Simply *giving* things to the Dev-World doesn't help the problem...even
if these things are container-loads of 2nd hand PC's and generators!

Moreover, even if we succeed 

[GKD-DOTCOM] Hybrid Profit and Non-Profit Business Models

[Keith Birkhold]

Dear Colleagues,

A terrific variety of approaches. I wanted to share how we have
approached the development of a hybrid e-school in Indiana. Our
founding board had a choice of forming a private school, where students
pay the tuition, or a public school sponsored by a state university. The
public path had many more hurdles, but we saw no other way of serving
low income families. So far, the project has been delayed by one year
while we remove impediments to this form of education, and while we
expand our business plan to our sponsor, who wants to ensure the school
has 100% chance of success as it will be the first school of this type
in Indiana.

Several other schools of this type have been formed in Ohio. They have
set up a public school but the founders have either formed a for-profit
management company or have sold curriculum to the school for profit. 
These models have had difficulties getting a non-profit status from the
US Internal Revenue Service, and thus have had limited success in
acquiring public grants and donations.

We did not set up a management company for this reason, although if the
school sets up other schools a different management structure will be
needed. In our example, choosing a non-profit business format is the
best during the early development period. The first years are where the
"profits" need to be re-invested anyways, and is the period when the
school quickly needs non-profit status. In later years, a for-profit
component could be added once there are profits available, and the need
for donations is reduced. This is a project in the works, so we will
see how it goes.


Sincerely,

Keith Birkhold




This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by USAID's dot-ORG Cooperative
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Digital Dividend Project, and hosted by GKD.
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Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Win-Win Business Models

[Adriana Labardini]

Dear GKD List Members,

Thanks to Pamela, Janice, Peter, Lee, Tom, Kris, Al, Ken, Atanu, and
Arrigo for your valuable information, caveats, guidance and
volunteering. We now have more pieces of the poverty puzzle together
than we did 2 weeks ago. But getting to the designing and planning stage
is the tough part since every case has to be tailored according to local
needs and circumstances. Hence a business model may be as successful as
a not-for-profit one, depending on the details, so specific case studies
have been very useful if read in their context.

Arrigo, I wished I had a financial/business model for a telecenter's
sustainability. I am actually looking into one suitable for a Mexican
rural community and one for a suburban community.

All of your pieces of information and expertise are contributing to
building a telecenter and I found them extremely useful -- although of
course it has
to be looked at with caution as the socio-economic scenario/ Internet
penetration/ legal framework is completely different from developing
countries. See the TELECENTERS CONCEPT developed by the North Carolina
Rural Internet Access Authority for poor rural counties within that
state that suffered high unemployment rates in 2000 after the tobacco,
textile and furniture industries shut down. Both the methodologies,
principles, metrics and vision of the e-NC initiative 
(formerly RIAA) can be very useful and provide guidelines as to the kind
of services that could be offered in a telecenter that does create
value. You can read the Telecenters Concept paper at:



Also visit 


Yours truly,

Adriana Labardini
Mexico City
[EMAIL PROTECTED]




This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by USAID's dot-ORG Cooperative
Agreement with AED, in partnership with World Resources Institute's
Digital Dividend Project, and hosted by GKD.
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Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Win-Win Business Models

[Vickram Crishna]

On 11/19/04, Lee Thorn wrote:

> The hard work of the people in Phon Kham and elsewhere in Lao PDR cannot
> be over-emphasized. They defined the problems to be addressed, they
> searched for solutions that fit their situation, they helped us define
> and test their solution and worked hard to achieve permission for the
> first site, and we partnered with them to develop the business tools to
> make the project sustainable. This, I believe, is the most important
> information in this piece. End users defined the problem and helped
> solve it. We expect this in each implementation. End users are involved
> from day one.

Involvement in any leading edge kind of developmental activity is only
meaningful if knowledge and understanding is at a high level.
Unfortunately, most societies and communities have an enormous hangover
of half-baked knowledge (even this one, if we are willing to be
objective about the quality of our own posts). In the case of the
countries of the African and Asian continents, this is overlaid by the
colonial experience, one that encouraged the suppression of independent
thought and fostered huge dependencies.

I was struck by Lee's mention of a single village, and the clear
reference to time and patience, both of which lead inescapably to the
points I have made above.

For that matter, even if we step back and look at how US and European 
corporations (and there have been significant differences in approach 
within the two groups) have automated their business processes over 
the years using ICT, it is clear that there has a been a very long 
and gradual learning curve, punctuated by concerns expressed over and 
over about ROI.

How much more important then to exercise patience and expect long-term
engagement, if one is to meaningfully achieve anything in regions and
with peoples that have been kept out of the loop since time immemorial?
And top-down or trickle-down approaches just aren't the way, they tend
to exacerbate existing divides and differences that usually have
overtones of oppression and injustice.

-- 
Vickram




This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by USAID's dot-ORG Cooperative
Agreement with AED, in partnership with World Resources Institute's
Digital Dividend Project, and hosted by GKD.
http://www.dot-com-alliance.org and http://www.digitaldividend.org
provide more information.
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