Re: [GKD] Invitation to "Content for Community Needs" Programme (India)
Dear Colleagues, I wish I had the time and money to be with you in New Delhi at the end of the month. 100,000 telecenters is progress, but how much depends on the architecture of the information and the infrastructure of the communication component. How do the content providers know what information is going to be the most valuable in the community where the kiosks are to be located? In the main, we choose from afar (I am in New York) and decide what information a villager needs, and when it comes to local information what we know is rather a small subset of what the village already knows. I was in Afghanistan about 12 years ago, and British World Service was planning an agriculture education services to help tell farmers what best to do. I was at a meeting where content was being discussed, and I believe the idea was dropped when local people pointed out that there were significant differences on farming practices from the north side of the valley to the south side of the valley. Bluntly put, how the hell were the experts wherever going to get planting dates right? Local people know a lot more than we give them credit for. The Transparency and Accountability Network (Tr-Ac-Net) database has a different information architecture than the British World Service idea .. Tr-Ac-Net seeks to help get key information from the community onto the record so that this information can help the community attract the resource assistance it needs for socio-economic progress. When there is "management information" available about community progress, and the various activities that have gone on to get this progress, then there can be efficiency improvement in the use of resources. Will the 100,000 telecenters being planned make it possible for villagers and community leaders to communicate with a web enabled database system like the one envisioned by Tr-Ac-Net, or will the information flow merely be "top-down". I will argue that information flows in both directions, as well as horizontally between local communities and local people, is several orders-of-magnitude more valuable than the simple top-down approach. I would be very interested to have other people's views on the OneWorld / Mission 2007 project, and the Tr-Ac-Net vision for a community database. Sincerely, Peter Burgess ____ Peter Burgess Tr-Ac-Net in New York 212 772 6918 [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Transparency and Accountability Network With Kris Dev in Chennai India and others in South Asia, Africa and Latin America http://tr-ac-net.blogspot.com On 6/17/2005, Veronica Peris wrote: > OneWorld South Asia's (OWSA) <http://www.oneworld.net/> under the aegis > of Mission 2007 <http://www.mission2007.org/> would like to invite you > to a "Content for Community Needs" Programme meeting (30 June and 1 July > 2005; India International Centre, New Delhi.) > > OneWorld will introduce the concept of 100,000 Telecentres and the > opportunities that exist for content developers/providers in the > immediate future. > > One of the practical ways of using ICTs, we feel, is to set up > Telecentres (Rural Advocacy Centres/Information Kiosks) that contain > information relevant to the needs of the rural/urban communities. Such > Telecentres would facilitate Communities' access to > information/facilities/services without their having to waste any time > in procuring/accessing the same. To the worker at the community level, > having to procure such information would mean in real terms, having to > drop out of work for at least a day -- often forgo a days wages -- and > the resultant food for him/her self and the family. For this purpose > there is an urgent need to digitise a content repository for community > needs to reach out to rural/urban India at large, as well as tailor the > data to the respective needs of the communities. ..snip... ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** 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.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
Re: [GKD] RFI: How Can A "Grassroots" Project Obtain Financing From Private Donors In Rich Countries?
Dear Colleagues, I would be very interested in the answer to this question myself. Speaking for the Transparency and Accountability Network, and our new program to help raise money for relief and development activities, we are looking for activities that demonstrably improve the quality of life in a community. This requires some baseline information about the community, some information about the planned activities, and a review of the community metrics periodically after the activity has been implemented. Something that costs $100 should facilitate an increment in community value of some multiplier of this ... perhaps as much as $1,000. >From our perspective, external funds are only valuable when they help make local resources, especially human resources and local natural resources, productive. Our expectation is that funds used for one purpose will get repaid, and then go on to facilitate some other needed work. We are not very interested in the organization that implements the activity. In fact the less organization the better, since too much of relief and development assistance funding is used to strengthen an organization rather than delivering activities to the intended community beneficiaries. Having said that, an organization that has successfully done relief and development activities and can show results is a plus. In order to be put in our funding pipeline we need information about the community, the activity, the implementing organization ... if you want more specifics I would be pleased to send them. Peter Burgess ____ Peter Burgess Tr-Ac-Net in New York 212 772 6918 [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Transparency and Accountability Network With Kris Dev in Chennai India and others in South Asia, Africa and Latin America http://tr-ac-net.blogspot.com ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** 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.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Local Governments Should Adopt a Business Model
Dear Mymoena Ismail and Colleagues: I do not know the legislation in South Africa, but it would be normal for the legislation to expect that entities account for every cent paid out and received. When there is reference to "cash basis" accounting it refers to how cash receipts and payments are handled in the accounts, and how invoices and accruals are handled. Most government systems ignore invoices and accruals...which is, in my view, a ridiculous situation...but legal for most government entities and funds, while being illegal since around 1880 for the corporate world. Talk about a double standard! When you talk about the South African Municipal Financial Management Act, does it require an entity to maintain "balance sheet accounts" and do its financial reporting with a full balance sheet as well as an income and expenditure statement? It might. Some progressive countries, notably New Zealand, have pushed forward to improve public sector accounting, but most countries firmly stick to weak and outmoded accountancy requirements that facilitate poor management of resources and grand corruption. Peter Burgess ____ Peter Burgess Tr-Ac-Net in New York 212 772 6918 [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Transparency and Accountability Network With Kris Dev in Chennai India and others in South Asia, Africa and Latin America http://tr-ac-net.blogspot.com In a message dated 5/27/2005, Mymoena Ismail wrote: > Not all local authorities work on a cash basis. In South African > legislation (i.e., the Municipal Financial Management Act) requires > local authorities to account for every cent spent and income received. > The City of Cape Town recently implemented a SAP ERP solution to better > manage its finances but also to ensure that there exists one back-end > system to support all related e-governance projects. > > > On Mon, May 23, 2005, Peter Burgess wrote: > > > Following up on postings by Janice Brodman and Ed Cherlin ... the > > interesting thing about a company is that the stakeholders who are > > interested in its "value" look at both balance sheet and the profit or > > cash flow past and future. This is very helpful in thinking about what > > works and what does not. Governments (including local governments) do > > their accounting on a cash basis that cannot reflect the financial > > performance of the government entity in a meaningful way because > > expenditures that have life beyond the current period are essentially > > "off the books". It is a weak system, and I am sure has stayed in > > vogue for that very reason. 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
Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Use of GIS to Support Local Administration of Municipalities
Dear Colleagues, I find the conversations we have very frustrating ... they take time and rarely tell me what I need to know. > http://www.gisdevelopment.net/thesis/thesis1/less4.htm > http://www.suny-cld.edu.lb/ui/systems.aspx Interesting ... but what do they really tell us. In the case of GIS words like "will" and "designed to" suggest that there is an element of marketing and hype, rather than hard performance information. I do not know how conclusions can be reached that the ICT GIS support is good unless there is some clear understanding of how much it cost, and exactly what results were obtained and a rigorous comparison with how much an alternative would have cost and how much the alternative would have delivered. When I was a corporate CFO, the staff kept trying to justify new investment when what they really needed to do was to operate the equipment they already had with some level of enthusiasm and competence. We used to refer this as a process of "spending ones way out of trouble". I did not like it or accept it in my corporate life, and I do not see why it should be acceptable in the Official Relief and Development Assistance (ORDA) world. In an environment of scarce ORDA resources, the other piece of analysis that should be done is to look at the cost and the results from one use of the resources and compare it to the use of these resources in the best possible way in the country, but perhaps in a different sector. I don't think the ORDA community ever does this, and as far as I am concerned this is a disgrace. Millions of people are dying because not enough money is reaching priority areas in crisis ... this is a choice the ORDA world and all of the experts are making, and it is creating death not much different than the holocaust of the 1930s and 1940s. John Perkins' book "Confessions of an economic hit man" raises some awful questions, and while I don't want to believe the book there is part of me that says he is 100% right ... and it stinks. I tried to highlight corruption through interaction with World Bank officers back in the 1980s, and was not welcomed with open arms, to say the least. Too much of John Perkins book rings true. How many of us are parties to the "hits" without knowing it? So back to this website information ... some nice projects. But can anyone help get the information that is really needed in order to say that they are good projects? Where is the practical application of Transparency and Accountability? Peter Burgess Peter Burgess Tr-Ac-Net in New York 212 772 6918 [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Transparency and Accountability Network With Kris Dev in Chennai India and others in South Asia, Africa and Latin America http://tr-ac-net.blogspot.com On 5/17/05, Barbara Fillip wrote: > "The Geographic Information System (GIS) dramatically increases the > accuracy of information utilized in municipal operations and planning > through computerized 'mapping' of more than seventy layers of physical, > financial, and personal data. Electronically linked to administrative > and financial databases, the system provides a wealth of information > that will be used in the planning, inspection, audit, assessment, and > collection processes. The GIS is a powerful tool that can be used by > municipal councils in assessing the needs of the community, and in > identifying, implementing, and sustaining economic development projects > related to tourism, industry, agriculture, and other sectors. > Importantly, use of the GIS will enable decision-makers to promote > transparency and accountability in the appraisal and collection of taxes > and fees, ensuring that, for example, outdoor advertising licenses and > construction permits are issued appropriately." > > From the SUNY / CLD web site: http://www.suny-cld.edu.lb/ui/systems.aspx ..snip... > Lessons that can be learned from using GIS in LGUs in developing > countries (part of a larger student thesis): > http://www.gisdevelopment.net/thesis/thesis1/less4.htm 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
Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Local Governments Should Adopt a Business Model
Dear Colleagues, Following up on postings by Janice Brodman and Ed Cherlin ... the interesting thing about a company is that the stakeholders who are interested in its "value" look at both balance sheet and the profit or cash flow past and future. This is very helpful in thinking about what works and what does not. Governments (including local governments) do their accounting on a cash basis that cannot reflect the financial performance of the government entity in a meaningful way because expenditures that have life beyond the current period are essentially "off the books". It is a weak system, and I am sure has stayed in vogue for that very reason. Sadly most NGOs also use cash based accounting. Maybe for the same reason, or because it is the type of accounting that suits tax reporting. Giving NGOs more sources of revenues is a laudable goal. But international selling is not easy. There is a powerful global market economy. It is very expensive to move goods around the world, especially if you are not expert and are not doing it in huge quantities. The Walmart business model works for international selling. The mom and pop businesses will lose money. But I do think there is a case for excellence in accountancy for NGOs so that it is easy for them to show how well they are doing. Tr-Ac-Net has progressed along these lines and may be able to put it into a software solution later this year. Local governments should certainly look at reworking their business processes to take advantage of ICT, and again Kris Dev has developed some software applications that have been deployed in government offices to improve the handling of their paperwork. Deploying them in other situations is possible in cooperation with local ICT professionals who are able to provide the needed training and support. The software is based on an Open Source approach which reduces cost significantly. Government must be able to fund the implementation costs and ongoing support. Sincerely Peter Burgess ____ Peter Burgess Tr-Ac-Net in New York 212 772 6918 [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Transparency and Accountability Network With Kris Dev in Chennai India and others in South Asia, Africa and Latin America http://tr-ac-net.blogspot.com On 5/23/2005, Edward Cherlin wrote: > On Friday, May 20 2005, Janice Brodman wrote: > >> I would like to propose what may be a somewhat radical approach to using >> ICT to strengthen local governments (LGs): We should be thinking of LGs >> -- and encouraging them to think of themselves -- as companies do. > > We have had some very bad experience of this concept in various levels > of government. Too often, the company that government models itself on > is Enron. :-( > > I have a different idea. Let us make our NGOs into companies, like the > microcredit institutions, and like the organizations that help poor > artists and craftspeople sell their wares on eBay and Overstock.com, and > like ITC in India, which puts computers into villages so that farmers > can see world crop prices at no charge. ITC also offers to buy at prices > publicly pegged to the Chicago Board of Trade, thus increasing farm > income and (they say) getting better quality product at lower cost than > the alternatives. ..snip... 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
Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] How Can ICT Help Improve Local Governance?
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
Re: [GKD] RFI: ICT Demand Patterns in Africa
Dear Peter Baldwin, I would very much like to see the data that you are able to collect about ICT demand patterns in Africa, and have a chance to do some analysis on the data. There is a huge need for information, but most of the information that is available in the "north" about the "south" including Africa is either too detailed or too macro. There is very little of management information that can be used to control and help make best use of scarce resources. An enormous amount of community information never gets beyond the community because it is often assumed that this information does not exist. In this connection, I often remind myself that if I don't know it, it does not mean that it is not known. There is a huge need for communications. Very little of the available information is communicated. I would very much like to know the history of all the ICT projects that have been funded by the official relief and development assistance (ORDA) community ... how much was disbursed and how much value was realized ... and while this information is almost certainly available, there is hardly any mechanism for this information to be communicated. I don't think this is any accident; the ORDA community is apparently not very interested in transparency and accountability when it comes to looking at development performance. If any such communication process exists I would like to know about it. With respect to technology, there exists low cost and very powerful technology. But why is so much regulated so that the best cannot be deployed. Why is/was VOIP so difficult to deploy? Why is/was radio regulation the way it is? Why is monopoly use of technology the preferred way to "develop" when it is no longer technologically and economically favorable for national development (at any rate from a people perspective). >From my limited knowledge and understanding of development it seems that there is a huge gap in the information needed to make a success of development and very limited transparency and accountability. Good things are not being identified enough and funded, meanwhile bad things are not being made transparent and visible and appropriate accountability and sanctions applied. Sincerely, Peter Burgess Peter Burgess Transparency and Accountability a global not-for-profit Network [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: 212 772 6918 ___ Kris Dev - Tr-Ac-Net in Chennai India [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://Tr-Ac-Net.blogspot.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** 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.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
Re: [GKD] Soros: Transparency Can Alleviate Poverty
Dear Colleagues, I ought to be pleased that someone with the stature of George Soros is talking about transparency and suggesting that it can alleviate poverty. But frankly, it is not such a big deal unless there is a significant pick up of the idea by a whole lot of corporate, government and relief and development assistance (RDA) leadership. And so far, there has been not much practical change by the big organizations. The issues of corruption, inappropriate corporate behavior and mismanagement of resources have been around for a long time, maybe indeed for ever. But the scale of economic enterprise of various sorts is now much larger than in the past and the economic distortion caused by a whole range of inappropriate behaviors is far bigger and far more damaging than in past decades. What I find so distressing is that the cost of technology that can help in delivering excellence in accounting has dropped by maybe a factor of one million since the beginning of my career...yet accounting, transparency and accountability are worse now than years back. This is ALL about leadership and the ethics of our modern society. It is time for change, and we can make change happen. I welcome the observations of George Soros, and the initiatives he described, but a lot more is needed. There is a huge need for accountability...it is missing almost everywhere. Organizational leadership seems intent on avoiding transparency and accountability, and to the extent that organizational leadership won't do what needs to be done, then it will have to be done externally rather than internally. There is enough information now in the public domain to be able to build a systemic framework that will make fund flow information much easier to access and understand. It is already apparent that there are some organizations doing amazing work with few resources, and conversely it is becoming clearer and clearer that other organizations consume a lot of scarce resources without doing that much of tangible value. As more and more information is compiled and organized, it is going to be interesting to see which organizations are effective and those that are not. In the relief and development assistance (RDA) community, it is interesting to compare performance from the donor perspective and the beneficiary community perspective. Most poor communities get NOTHING tangible from the official relief and development assistance (ORDA) resource flows...and this is playing out right now in the SE Asia tsunami affected areas and in a lot of places around the world, especially in Africa. There is a lot of talk about much more money for ORDA activities in order to end poverty. It seems to me that first we should do a far better job of getting the existing fund flows to be used significantly more effectively. Management information for RDA is a wonderful way to use ICT. Organized information about great community based activities will help to "benchmark" the activities of the big ORDA organizations and show how costly simple things become when they are done using the prevailing ORDA methodologies. By using "standard costing" we can get a much better idea of the huge value generated by unpaid volunteers and community workers. By understanding corporate value chains we can identify the value destruction in the host communities and countries while super-wealth is being generated for foreign shareholders. There is a lot of work to be done...but it is getting interesting. Peter Burgess Transparency and Accountability a global not-for-profit Network [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: 212 772 6918 ___ Kris Dev - Tr-Ac-Net in Chennai India [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://Tr-Ac-Net.blogspot.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** 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.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
[GKD] E-Governance Is Not Getting The Job Done
Dear Colleagues, Kris Dev made some interesting points in recent messages. He has observed that one of the fundamental reasons that big organizations, like governments, big international multilateral organizations and international NGOs have embraced E-Governance is to control more and service less. This is a challenging remark. Big organizations have failed to embrace transparency and accountability that empowers people and sets the stage for a high quality of service, and instead, are working on strategies that make more and more control possible, while doing rather little for people and their communities. E-governance should not separate people and community-based civil society from the big institutions, but help make people and community based organizations more effective in progressing socio-economic development. Instead of ICT being implemented on top of the people and the community it should be implemented with the people and in the community. The Tr-Ac-Tool (formerly E-Administration) addresses this issue head on. With a good system, an organization can focus on providing service excellence, and on having the data that facilitates transparency and ensures accountability. In the recent experience of Tr-Ac-Net, lots of people want to see excellence in transparency and accountability, but suprisingly few big organizations are interested at all in such excellence. This is a terrible signal that these big organizations have too much to hide, and cannot stand a public light shining on their internal fund flows, their systems, procedures and performance. Some organizations are actively working on better transparency and accountability. More are talking about it. But not enough are heavily committed to the idea ... and at the moment the prognosis is that big organizations are quite happy with the status quo and being able to operate with virtually no transparency and accountability. Tr-Ac-Net is having an interesting time trying to track Tsunami fund flows ... there is talk about transparency and accountability ... but not much actual sharing of the information needed to have it. Tr-Ac-Net will keep trying. It is too important to stop. For more information please contact myself or Kris Dev. Sincerely, Peter Burgess Peter Burgess, Tr-Ac-Net in New York <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Kris Dev, Tr-Ac-Net in Chennai <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** 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.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
[GKD] Tsunami Disaster and Business Response to the Crisis
l "welfare" model where every service is a "right", or the "market" model which mainly encourages "anything goes" greed. The most promising way to implement the recovery stage is a community centric approach that takes full advantage of local resources and possibilities, and is culturally appropriate. In community centric development, the priority is community progress with external investment as beneficial as it can be and used so that people are facilitated to do what they can do. Equity needs to be addressed, and that can probably best be done by a loan regime of assistance rather than grants. A single thematic focus is probably wrong, because each community is going to have a different set of needs. And external investment should be brought in on terms that are advantageous to the local community. This is where the international business community, foreign direct investment and government controls have historically failed, and the repeat of past errors should be avoided. Unfortunately, it is not clear that the international business and investment community really is committed to the idea of investment in combination with a value chain that makes local communities economically successful. I wish I was wrong, but the facts seem to suggest that corporate stockholders are far more important than corporate citizenship and host community citizens. What is the goal of recovery? First, to start moving back to a working local economy. But it should be much more. Merely to re-establish the level of poverty previously enjoyed by the communities is not enough. Recovery and development should facilitate something more ambitious. I like to think this is something that is going to happen. And I also like to think that this is what should be happening with development everywhere. So back to the beginning. I am delighted to have the leaders of the business community thinking about the tsunami disaster, and want to see them engaged in the operation of a productive economy. But I also hope that they can be a big part of community development success, rather than being, more than they should, a part of the problem of endemic community poverty. Sincerely, Peter B Peter Burgess Tr-Ac-Net / WISPforD / CCCDO in NewYork Tel: 212 772 6918 Web: www.afrifund.com Email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Databasehttp://www.afrifund.com/wiki/index.pcgi?page=DBOrganizationS Blog: http://taame.blogspot ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** 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.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
Re: [GKD] Should "Developed" Countries Subsidize the Internet for LDCs?
Dear Colleagues, You really have to wonder. I started out as an engineer...slipped to economics...and then to accountancy. When you do an analysis combining all three, some interesting and depressing results come out. Who are we subsidizing when we get donors to give expensive obsolete technology, and encourage policy and regulation that outlaws best possible technological solutions. If available lowest cost solutions were encouraged rather than being discouraged or outlawed, there could be huge strides in making Internet access available. People don't talk about it very much, but technology is unbelievably powerful and low cost and able to serve the masses. In contrast, finance and banking services are powerful in a very different and negative way, and essentially serve and profit a tiny community of the elite, wealthy and powerful...and at this time in history, while there is a vast pool of capital, it is controlled in a way that ensures huge profits for the finance industry, and delivers a cost of capital for the entrepreneur that is obscene. All of this was aggravated by the dot.com boom, which created capital structures in the telecom industry that are hugely expensive and, in fact, unsustainable without rigging the competitive playing field...which is what legislation and regulation does. Bottom line...developed countries should stop everything that destroys economic value in developing countries, even if it is a win-win for the developed country (which is something of an 'oxy-moronic' statement). Systemic value destruction in development over the past 40 years explains why rich places are now pathetically poor. Everything should be subjected to an independent analysis so that the value proposition for developed countries' development agenda is documented. I will happily help do it. Sincerely, Peter Burgess ____ Peter Burgess TRACnet in New York Tel: 212 772 6918 Web: www.afrifund.com Email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Database: http://www.afrifund.com/wiki/index.pcgi?page=AfrifundDatabase Coffee: http://afrifund.coffeefair.com Blog: http://taame.blogspot.com ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** 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.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Win-Win Business Models
Dear Colleagues, Allen L. Hammond posted to the GKD-DOTCOM focused discussion about the upcoming WRI sponsored "Eradicating Poverty Through Profits" Conference in California. I did not go, (budget decision) but I have not seen that much dialog after the conference. I would imagine there was a lot of corporate sponsor hoop-la, but rather less about how to really have a win-win in practical terms where part of the win is the needy community. I tried to follow up on Allen's suggestions by following the links in his message, and it was interesting, but nothing in the way of numbers that showed the win-win that everyone wants to talk about. I am quite worried that when people use the win-win, and there is a corporate presence, what this really means is my corporate product can be sold into the community and I win because I have profit and cash, and they win because they have my product. The fact that the product that they now have is going to help bankrupt the community (nation, family, whatever) is not part of the equation. For a military equipment supplier a sale of guns or gunships is a win-win. The company has a sale, and the country is now in a stronger security situation. Sorry...but this is pure B___ S___ but is what corporate win-win too often looks like. For the oil company win-win means something again. I have had a few interesting exchanges with oil company spokespeople and it is just as well they do not work in the accounting department of the oil companies, because some of what they tell you would surely bankrupt the company or certainly make it lose out against the competition. But the bottom line is that the international oil company is a total 'lose' situation for most communities anywhere near where they operate. It is a lose situation because oil companies have tended to empower the government over the society, the people and the community, has encouraged property law that has wrecked traditional history and has encouraged a lot of behavior that your mother would be ashamed of. The oil companies may have a win-win for government leadership and oil company stockholders, but people and communities and the environment are big big losers. Let's take ICT for a moment ... and specifically printer ink. How much does it cost to keep a printer supplied with ink (ink-jet or laser). Everyone knows that the printer is sold merely to generate ink sales ... but exactly what is the moral justification for the ridiculously high prices being charged for ink. But I never hear this talked about in the sustainability dialog about ICT in development. Who is kidding who? HP, Cannon, Brother, Epson, Lexmark, et al may not have "illegally" conspired to create an oligopoly, but none of them is breaking ranks to get ink prices where they reflect costs ... rich countries aren't particularly bothered ... but a Community Internet Center (CIC) in the middle of Kenya, for example, is going to find the prices tough. Net-net, most countries would be better off if the multinationals had not been around during the past 30 years. FDI is almost always a 'lose' for the country and the people, even though it has been put into fashion again in the last 20 or so years. FDI is not much different from colonial exploitation, it just isn't called by the same name. Please can we continue to tell stories about development, but can we also add in some numbers so that the real issue about sustainability can be understood. And when people talk about win-win, please show the numbers so that we know what is really being talked about. Sincerely, Peter B Peter Burgess TRACnet in New York Tel: 212 772 6918 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: www.afrifund.com Database: http://www.afrifund.com/wiki/index.pcgi?page=AfrifundDatabase Coffee: http://afrifund.coffeefair.com Blog: http://taame.blogspot.com On 11/12/2004, Al Hammond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > For Tom Abeles and others who have joined the conversation recently, I > would like to point out that we have documented a number of what we > believe can be win-win models, and even sustainable models, in > connectivity, agriculture, finance, health care, and other sectors, in > detailed case studies that can be found on or > with links under the resources page of the conference website, > <http://povertyprofit.wri.org>. We have also posted earlier in this > discussion detailed market data characterizing the size of the > low-income or bottom-of-the-pyramid markets in a number of developing > countries. Many of the companies coming to the "Eradicating Poverty > Through Profits" conference in San Francisco next month are seriously > exploring how to serve such markets in ways that generate real local > value, while also yielding a profit. ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: <
[GKD] Community Planning Models - What is Everyone Using?
Dear Colleagues, There was a point in my career when I used the newly invented spreadsheet technology to build village models. Because of memory constraints, I recall we had to use a lot of linked sheets! But the results were very interesting. I am now rethinking these models...but instead of me doing the thinking, I thought I would ask you what village or community development models you are already using. My economic training was in the Keynsian school, and, over the years, I have tried to combine typical corporate thinking about business financial projections with Keynsian economic behavior (which in my view is very "pure" in a remote village environment). One of the things that is very clear, if the model truly reflects the Keynsian mindset, is that the sequence of development initiatives in any community is a big determinant of the outcome, and frankly, it explains why the relief mode for development investment does almost nothing to support development success. The sort of modelling I am looking for is a (much simplified) village version of the UN System of National Accounts developed, I believe, by Dr. Stone at Cambridge in the 1950s. The important essence of Dr. Stone's work was the idea that the assets of the entity (nation or village) should be in the equation...and of course, that is what corporate accounting does. I would be very interested to get some help in "modernising" my ideas about community economic modelling...and look forward to seeing what is now being done! Peter Burgess [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** 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.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Win-Win Business Models
Dear Colleagues, The dialog has been / is being very stimulating, with a good number of the participants with significant contributions to make to have success in development ... and I think we probably have a reasonable common understanding of what we believe success in development to be. However, a win-win business model is not enough, as several contributors have indicated over the past weeks. It is a win-win business model AND a win-win community model (on up to a win-win national economy model) that we need. I have done a lot of village development models over the years using a combination of accounting and economics and it is very clear that the value chain that generates development value needs to be one where ALL the participants are winning. This requires not only thinking about whether the little community ICT business will make a profit and survive, but also whether the user of the service truly benefits, and generates more family wealth as a result of using money for the ICT service. Will the community end up richer as a result of ICT, or any other development initiative. Using micro-finance as an example ... more and more people with their micro-financed businesses probably ends up with a whole lot of marginally successful entrepreneurs. But in addition, putting money into a local production facility that is going to be able to preserve fruit and sell products that would otherwise go to waste really adds value in the society. We have to work on both levels...good for individual...good for community. My current view is that we need to start looking very hard at how human resources in communities can be used best to produce the most ... and then market to get the most cash revenue and at the end have the most value for the community as a whole. A community truck to haul firewood and water could save a lot of labor, and if the labor then was used to do tree planting to rehabilitate land .. and funds were made available for local people to fix local roads .. and buy local food that is now more abundant because people were farming rather than carrying firewood ... we make community progress. And, by the way education and health and ICT might get paid for. In my view this is the sort of community financial and economic modelling that should be going on ... and we should be getting resources into communities where the money is going to have a chance to generate real value. We need to channel resources to build value, and then locally generated value can start to take care more and more of local problems ... and bit by bit put the international humanitarian relief industry out of business. To the extent I can help I am at the end of an e-mail. Sincerely, Peter B 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 ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** 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.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Is Profitability Essential for Sustainability?
Dear Colleagues, I will not make this a long post. From what I learned as an engineer and economics student, and then as an accountant and involved with business management and consultancy, and then relief and development ... it is absolutely clear that profitability is needed for sustainability. The word for profitability can be changed to suit the not-for-profit world or the public sector ... but nothing survives in the long run unless its value creation is greater than its cost. In my view there can be enormous value in using modern ICT to facilitate productivity improvements ... but as private practitioners know, governments and regulators and incumbent controllers of local monopolies are not encouraging new innovations, but rather are discouraging valuable innovation. Hopefully enlightened leadership will soon embrace the great possibilities of modern ICT and make progress possible. My favorite major development project ... one that resulted in enormous improvement in US productivity was the US Interstate Highway System ... initially promoted by President Eisenhower ... and eventually built at tax-payer expense for the profit of almost everyone in the USA. The cost was huge but the incremental economic value was many times as much. And the capital markets encouraged the program. From the perspective of the US economy as a whole this was a profitable investment, though costly for the government. In contrast the information highways in developing countries are not getting built and the political and business leadership and the financial community (capital markets) have not yet become committed beyond the easy high profit elite (rather than universal) market. Hopefully this is now changing and will soon change a lot more. Some time ago I evaluated an FAO - UNDP project. It was an excellent project that did not cost much, and made a huge difference to a quite large rural community. The project was sustainable ... bit it did not sustain because, in this case, the country itself could not sustain anything beyond mere subsistance. The country had become totally dependent on foreign donor funding and then landed in the vicious cycle of guns and diamonds and all that. Sad. But the lesson is that both micro (the entity) and macro (the nation) need to be profitable to be sustainable. 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 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. 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.dot-com-alliance.org/archive.html>
Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Social As Well As Business Metrics
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
Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Win-Win Business Models
Dear Colleagues, I would also like to thank List Members for their interesting contributions, and I would very much like to hear from other list members about financing modalities to implement a real win-win for socio-economic community development. I very much like the small-scale low cost business model that starts slow and grows organically as fast as it can. (Pam McLean's CAWDNet approach in Nigeria). I also like the big initiatives like BusyInternet in Ghana that struggle to overcome big local constraints to attempt to be of international quality and profitable. The win-win of ICT needs to be funded, but the mechanisms for doing this really don't exist at the present time. The UN Year of Microcredit starting today is going to help improve access for some but there also needs to be mini-finance for small business operations and muni-finance to help communities pay for what the community needs in common. All of these finance segments can be profitable and support a proper sustainable finance sector based on value-adding that happens in the local community. Sadly, the viability and profitability and sustainability becomes much more difficult when the borrowing or lending is international and denominated in a currency such as the dollar, Euro or Yen and exchange risk is factored in. I look forward to getting some help about financing opportunities for community-based for-profit ICT initiatives. Sincerely Peter Burgess in New York 212 772 6918 www.afrifund.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://TAAME.blogspot.com On 11/18/2004, Arrigo della Gherardesca wrote: > Now, how could one go about financing the TeleCentres, on a reasonably > wide scale? A mix of donor-grant and debt financing? Does anyone on this > List have any experience in this and would like to share it? 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. 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.dot-com-alliance.org/archive.html>
Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Is Profitability Essential for Sustainability?
small piece in the development puzzle...and without all the other pieces it will not be enough. Certainly value adding is a requirement for sustainability and success in development. But is anyone going to measure this and put it into the public domain for analysis and review? Maybe it is time for this to be done. Transparency, Accounting and Accountability and effective Monitoring and Evaluation (TAAME) needs to be on the agenda and implemented so that all can see success and failure. The NGO community and many development experts seem scared of the idea of profit. Creating value is a responsible approach to development. Profits in a good business are a good thing. They help fund the next generation of good business. Spending good money on bad development is criminal. What resources are available should ALL be used on value adding activities. ALL. Sincerely, Peter Burgess Peter Burgess in New York Tel: 212 772 6918 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Database: http://www.afrifund.com/wiki/index.pcgi?page=AfrifundDatabase Coffee: http://afrifund.coffeefair.com 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. 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.dot-com-alliance.org/archive.html>
Re: [GKD] Knowledge Bank Evaluation Criticizes Dev. Gateway
Dear Colleagues, I hope that others will pick up on the cost issues relating to World Bank and other Official Development Assistance (ODA) initiatives. Value for money is what will drive success in development, and it is abundantly clear that the process being used in development, and the organizations involved at the center of the process just do not get it. As an aside, two big building projects in the middle of Washington DC with very big cost overruns were the World Bank building and the IMF building just a few years back. Is it any surprise that projects in development do not get implemented cost effectively? The problem of costs and cost effectiveness runs very deep. Very few of the staff of the World Bank (and other ODA organizations) have ever been in charge of operations where cost control and efficiency was the determinant of success or failure. Few (maybe even none) of the staff have had experience of the stress of "making payroll", so the interest in cost and cost effectiveness is at best an academic interest. After more than 25 years of exposure to the World Bank and its methodologies I don't think it has the capacity to reform. I think the President of the World Bank would have done reform if reform could be done. So what to do? Give up on development? Or perhaps we should start to think through what it is that will work. My starting point is to start asking about what will work in Lima and Lilongwe (but maybe not Liverpool!). And since I have already done a considerable amount of this over my consulting career in development I want to be ready to respond to their priorities with something tangible and easy to use when we get their replies. There are all sorts of details and little issues that can get in the way, but it is fairly easy to discern some common threads. Though I don't want my ideas to get in the way of the ideas from Lima and Lilongwe, I think there will be issues around enterprise financing, missing infrastructure, problems with regulation and governance, access to relevant information, access to useful enterprise support services, lots of need in the communities and no funding to turn need into purchasing power ... and others around these themes. In most cases I want merely to insist that resources are used to do good, and that whoever funds (or provides other non-financial resources to) the activity is remunerated and the funds (resources) are repaid on time. I also want to insist on accounting and accountability and transparency. I do not want to define local priorities, but I do want the local economy to be "sustainable". There are cases where there is social good and not much purely financial return. There is every reason to get these works funded, but the source of funds has to be the philanthropic world. My goal is that most philanthropy is derived from locally generated profits near Lima and Lilongwe and not merely from the accumulated wealth of the NORTH. In my view the goal of sustainable development is achieved when local profits are big enough to satisfy ALL the needs of the local community. And this is achievable as long as the needs are primarily defined by local input and not thoroughly distorted and made unrealistic by unachievable global "norms". Give education a chance, and then have ways in which young people can put their learning to work. Jobs. Opportunities. There is plenty to be done. The right mix of resources is needed for it to get done, and get done driven by local initiatives and local entrepreneurs. And yes, there is a profitable market in the NORTH for some products and services. And by all means have the SOUTH earn some of the profits (in our own case we are working on ICT outsourcing and coffee marketing both to get more of the profit into the hands of African stakeholders). But we need an alternative organization other than the World Bank and the ODA establishment to manage all this. All the pieces are available. It just needs putting together. Sincerely Peter B Peter Burgess ATCnet in New York Tel: 212 772 6918 Email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.afrifund.com http://www.afrifund.com/wiki/index.pcgi?page=DevelopmentDialog http://www.afrifund.com/wiki/index.pcgi?page=DevelopmentData ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** 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.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
Re: [GKD] Knowledge Bank Evaluation Criticizes Dev. Gateway
can start addressing issues at an operational level rather than at a policy level where little translates into operational progress on the ground. It is bizarre how much money gets used in the ODA community for so little value. Especially when there are so many good things going on with great results and rather little funding. I want to see an independent development management information system emerge that systematically calls for performance feedback on the whole portfolio of ODA projects. And for good measure, I want to see the same methodology applied to foreign direct investment (FDI), especially FDI from the oil and gas industry and other resource exploitation initiatives. There is work to be done. Don't wait on the World Bank's independent Development Gateway to give the answers. The DeviPedia Database is our contribution to a new framework for development. This is a "Wiki" based database that we are using to collect and organize development dialog and development data. The goal is to know a lot more about specifics of development, and then to be in a position to use the information to get better performance in development. The WiKi approach lets everyone be a party to pulling the information together. The URL for this is: http://www.afrifund.com/wiki/index.pcgi?page=DeviPediaHome Looking forward to more success in development, Peter Burgess Peter Burgess AfriFund ATCnet in New York Tel: 212 772 6918 Email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.afrifund.com ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** 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.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
Re: [GKD] Wireless Network May Replace Phones Altogether
Dear Colleagues The idea that a wire communications paradigm established 100 years ago should be so powerful now is really quite ridiculous and shows how financial clout and political power can dramatically constrain progress. I was delighted to read the posting about the possibilities of the wireless technology (802.nna) and will collaborate all I can. I am optimistic that modern technology has cost characteristics that make mass distribution financially more attractive than elitist low volume marketing. If that characteristic is exploited it will spell real trouble for the established incumbent telecoms . and about time too. They have been living on borrowed time for a long time now, so good riddance. But there has to be thinking about security issues and identification problems. Again technology can help if we allow it. And again laws and regulation may well get in the way of best technological practice. Enough Sincerely Peter Burgess Peter Burgess ATCnet in New York Tel: 212 772 6918 [EMAIL PROTECTED] for secure messages [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.afrifund.com www.ryze.com/go/PeterBurgess www.mothertruckerscoffee.com In a message dated 12/10/2003, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > Some interesting information for your review and evaluation: > > a) $3-5 a week > > b) no phone bill > > c) free 710Kbit dedicated Internet access > > d) free video conferencing > > e) free mobile phone calls > > f) free instant messengers > > g) free SMS, free MMS > > h) more > > > Too good to be true? > > Read on... > ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** 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.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
Re: [GKD] Geographical Information Systems and the Developing World
Dear Colleagues, I have been interested in the potential of GIS since it first arrived in a primitive form fifteen years ago. My interest was created by work I had been doing in "development planning" and the realization that most of what was being done in this area was worse than worthless. Resources kept getting used for emergencies that should never have happened in the first place, and little went to development that could be sustainable. The system kept replicating economic value destruction...without ever realising that this was what was going on. Some planning work that I had the good fortune to be associated with was amazing and done with tremendous geographical and social and economic understanding (for example the post independence health sector planning prepared by the Namibian Minstry of Health staff - not the international work but the locally prepared plans). But most planning (done by international experts) was done without very much understanding of what was possible, in part because the detailed geographical understanding of natural resources was not easily accessible. I have a caveat about GIS in development. It tends to need allocation of scarce resources that arguably would be better used for other priorities. The biggest problem is not planning and knowledge needed for planning, it is the management of resources to get the priority work done. Without effective management of resources, resources end up in the wrong place, and not doing much good. Most resources over the past forty years have been poorly used, and the "system" has never been fixed to ensure that scarce resources get used as well as they possibly can be. If management of resources can be implemented, and it can include GIS in a cost effective manner, I would be an advocate...otherwise, I will drop back to a simple accounting framework for resource management. Sincerely Peter Burgess ____ Peter Burgess ATCnet in New York Tel: 212 772 6918 [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] for secure messages www.afrifund.com www.ryze.com/go/PeterBurgess www.mothertruckerscoffee.com ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** 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.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] The Role of the Private Sector
Dear Colleagues, I was interested in the post by Daniel F. Bassill in large part because his goal is similar to my own and his accomplishments rather modest. The opportunity to use modern ICT to achieve a breakthrough in the use of knowledge to improve development performance is huge, but it is not happening. There are two big problems: (1) the important information is fragmented and difficult to use in a coherent manner, and (2) there is no organization that is willing to put itself on the line to get accounting and accountability and to use information to improve development performance. Accordingly, our group is now trying to build a useful database, in part using a WiKi technology so that text can be more easily shared, and in part using MySQL for numbers. The goal is to let people who are doing worthwhile things to have a way to put their work "on the record". Related, but not directly linked, is a goal to show how development resources are flowing, and to highlight excellence in the use of resources. This is the beginning of a system for universal accounting and accountability. A third part of this is to arrange for the database and the information to be a foundation for fund raising. Obviously this requires a strong information system so that a good idea does not disintegrate into a scam. I liked what the "tutormentor" was writing. And I want to reach out to people around the world so that the information system is driven by the SOUTH and not the NORTH. Sincerely Peter Burgess ____ Peter Burgess ATCnet in New York Tel: 212 772 6918 Fax: 707 371 7805 [EMAIL PROTECTED] for secure messages www.afrifund.com www.ryze.com/go/PeterBurgess Daniel F. Bassill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > For several years I've been searching out partnerships in US business > schools aimed at researching for-profit sector organizations with the > purpose of building internet-based databases with the information > collected. So far, no luck. > > However, I keep looking. Why? Because if I can point to a list of > examples that show how specific for-profits use their assets (people, > philanthropy, facilities, technology, etc.) to PULL youth and families > from poverty to self-sufficiency, anyone can use those examples to > motivate other businesses to duplicate those actions in their own > community. At the same time, any for-profit can borrow from the > good-work of others to innovate even more effective ways to help the > poor. 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 the GKD database, with past messages: http://www.GKDknowledge.org
Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] What's on the Horizon?
Dear Colleagues, I am not sure that what I have to say can be described as "valuable input and insights!", but here goes anyway! > 1. What new "high impact" technologies are on the 3-year horizon? Who > (exactly) needs to do what (concretely) to make those technologies > widely available? Affordable cost. What this means is that in order to have an impact in developing situations the technology has to get mass produced and be "consumer" costed. Items need to be available for $10, not $1,000 or even $100. There has been a lot of talk over the past 25 years about "appropriate" technology and this was often interperted to be old technology. With ICT the most appropriate is more and more the most modern. Wireless minimum power using devices ... reliable . > 2. What's the most valuable area for technology development? Voice > recognition? Cheap broadband delivery? Cheap hand-helds (under $50)? Reliability / Affordability / better ways to get from electronic to traditional (reduced cost ink! and paper). > 3. Where should we focus our efforts during the coming 3 years? On ICT > policy? Creating ICT projects with revenue-generation models that are > quickly self-supporting? Demonstrating the value of ICT to developing > country communities? Innovators need to be able to implement best technology for development without running afoul of law and regulation that constrains best ICT practice in the interest of one particular group of stakeholders. We (in the NORTH) need to be more willing to see and listen and understand the needs of people who might be able to benefit from ICT's use parents, children, educators, students, medical service personnel, farmers, market folk .. people can use I and people can use C . maybe we should just help to see that there is access to T, and access to resources to implement T. We need to remember that the technology needs to help not only those with academic training and education, but also those who have had no formal education, but can still benefit from more knowledge, especially practical relevant local knowledge. > 4. What levels of access should we be able to achieve by 2007 in each of > the major under-served regions? Who (exactly) must do what (concretely) > to attain them? Find successful and sustainable activities. Replicate. Get constraints out of the way. Get funding on the right basis. Let the demand pull what is wanted. > 5. What funding models should we develop over the next 3 years? Projects > with business plans that provide self-sustainability? Support from > multilateral corporations? Venture capital funds for ICT and > development? The funding model that is needed is one that allows the SOUTH to do "value adding" within its own economy. Most foreign direct investment pulls a lot more value out of the SOUTH than it generates. So something different is needed. From a financial planning perspective the policy direction should be to have private local equity supported by external loan funding. The external loan funding should be rewarded for both use of money and the risk being taken. This is the AfriFund model that has been described elsewhere from time to time. This is "for profit", but it is not for profit at any cost and not all the profit for the financial stakeholder at the expense of everyone else. Grant funding has been dangerous and has contributed to value destruction. Grant funding pulls local resources into areas of activity that do not have any inherent sustainability beyond the grant subsidy. Among other things, grant work gets good local people working where they essentially do little of real practical value, rather than having these people serve the local interest in struggling but essentially sustainable and priority local business (or service). This is the same sort of damage that the "project" form of organization has been doing for years, pulling good people into projects rather than having good people working inside the mainstream local (and underfunded) institutions. Planning should get less funding and pilot implementation should get more funding and replication of success should get most funding. A key step in this is to get information about success so success can be replicated. This is accounting and related output analysis, not the more common "monitoring and evaluation" exercise that serves to "satisfy" donors and grant givers, but so often does little to set the stage for replication . the reason being usually that the project has really failed (again) and replication is not economically worth doing. Going forward is going to be exciting. But the policy framework and the organizational design needs to be as modern and functional as the technology that has emerged over the last few years. Sincerely Peter Burgess Peter Burgess ATCnet in
Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] How Much Bandwidth is Necessary?
Dear Colleagues, I like a lot of what I am seeing on this discussion dialog and the commentary by Cliff Missen. But this got my attention: "If someone needs to get a letter to another, they need a word processor and a printer." Whatever happened to the idea of pen and paper, and typewriter (manual)? When it comes to communications in poor rural areas the most cost effective might well be very old fashioned. I am always amused to see 3M stikits all over high powered computers .. and highlight felt tip pen markings all over computer printed documents. But the rule is easy. Whatever works and is affordable. Computer printed letters are expensive in most development situations, mainly because of the profit model associated with paper and ink supplies. Sincerely Peter Burgess ________ Peter Burgess ATCnet in New York Tel: 212 772 6918 Fax: 707 371 7805 [EMAIL PROTECTED] for secure messages 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 the GKD database, with past messages: http://www.GKDknowledge.org
Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Misunderstanding Broadband
Dear Colleagues, Thank you, Allen Hammond, for your clarifying message. The difference between ICT, the tool and the information that gets communicated using the tool is, of course, fundamental. When I used the phrase "narrowband everywhere", I was not intending this to be construed in a very narrow literal way, and refer just to, say, the use of outmoded technology. Far from it. What I intended to have understood is the idea that the very best of technology should be used to get the lowest cost of communication, AND the information going over the infrastructure is simply what is most valuable and at the same time affordable to the user. And I should, of course, stress that value in this case is not what I think is valuable but what the user of the tool thinks is valuable. And this issue of value to the user is critical to the question of sustainability. I have written many times that there are three numbers that are important. The cost, the price and the value. A development initiative has the chance of being sustainable when the cost is low and the value is high. The price needs to fall in between the low cost and the high value, and it needs to be affordable to the users in the context of the local economy. [As an aside, if all development projects were put through this test during the appraisal and justification process, most would never get approved for funding and resources would be much less wasted]. ICT and connectivity, like so many other themes of development, tends to be "pushed" into development rather than getting "pulled" in by the intended beneficiaries. I cannot tell you how many times over my career in development consultancy that local people have asked me why development money never is available to help them get what they need, but only for things that are in our projects [that is on our NORTH agenda]. So back to the basic question. How to get the most value from ICT into the beneficiary community? And my answer to that is very best technology being used to facilitate some (rather than narrowband) electronic two way communication everywhere. This should give the right cost, price, value and affordability profile and therefore be sustainable. Sincerely Peter Burgess Peter Burgess ATCnet in New York Tel: 212 772 6918 Fax: 707 371 7805 [EMAIL PROTECTED] for secure messages 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 the GKD database, with past messages: http://www.GKDknowledge.org
Re:[GKD-DOTCOM] Connectivity Is Not The Right Word
Dear Colleagues, Broadband is a real enemy of development. One of my staff summed up the situation in the underdeveloped SOUTH way back in the 1970s when he said that "Every year that goes by they get another 10 years behind". And broadband is the sort of technology initiative that helps make this a sad reality. There is nothing wrong with broadband as a step forward from other connectivity, but making broadband the standard before any other form of connectivity is universal (not to mention a lot of other basic needs) is a humanitarian disaster. Once again we have an obscene allocation of scarce development resources. We need to systemicly optimise value adding in development and end value destruction through development and foreign direct investment. I agree with Simon Woodside that connectivity is not the right focus. Export driven development has failed largely because when everyone is exporting to drive development, the supply booms and nothing happens with demand .. d .. the prices go down terms of trade tank. Development is about the quality of life in a community getting improved, and that is about value adding in the community. Having the ability to communicate LOCALLY is enormously valuable, and should be done better than yesterday, but it need not be done using broadband! Simon has described the importance of the nodes. Absolutely yes. And the key nodes in quality of life are those that relate to the living that goes on in the community. My vote is for narrowband EVERYWHERE connecting little local nodes. Improve the local infrastructure, and don't focus just on the international part of it. And my vote is for using technology to reduce the cost and price of basic communication rather than to maximise revenue for the technology producers by selling more and more complexity that adds a lot to the visual experience but not very much at all to the underlying messages being communicated. Sincerely Peter Burgess ________ Peter Burgess ATCnet in New York Tel: 212 772 6918 Fax: 707 371 7805 [EMAIL PROTECTED] for secure messages Simon Woodside wrote: > I was paying attention when the internet was first developing in the > west, here in Canada in particular. I think that the history of the > internet is largely ignored by those who are developing connectivity for > the developing world. But ignored, at the risk of going off in the > completely wrong direction. > > The internet is all about "nodes". A node is a knot between strands, a > place where many lines come together. In a computer network, it's a > point of interconnection, where two data lines cross. What happens in > the node, is that the data intermingles and doubles. Data that enters a > node can exit in any direction, or in all directions at once. ..snip... > So ... connectivity is not the right goal. The goal should be, what are > you doing to build the LOCAL internet. Not just to connect people but to > interconnect them by creating internet nodes? 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 the GKD database, with past messages: http://www.GKDknowledge.org
Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Bringing Connectivity to Under-Served Communities
Dear GKD Colleagues, The first question is : * Week 1: What activities are bringing connectivity to under-served communities? (10/27 - 10/31) The bottom line . looking at the question from the point of view of underserved communities is simply that essentially NO ACTIVITIES ARE BRINGING CONNECTIVITY TO UNDERSERVED COMMUNITIES. Almost everyone that lives in an underserved community is as lacking in connectivity today as they were one year ago and five years ago and 10 years ago. The REAL penetration of connectivity FROM THE VIEW OF THE THE SOUTH is almost NOTHING. The sad tragedy is that this is NOT the way it looks from the NORTH. While a few years ago there were no connectivity projects to visit and write about, now there are hundreds, maybe thousands. So we get the IMPRESSION that there has been significant progress. This is B*** S***. Almost everyone in the poor and hungry world (about 3 billion people at last count) is as poor and unconnected now as they were before ICT became fashionable. And will be for the foreseeable future. There can be activities to bring connectivity to the underserved, but it will never be done with the organizational and funding framework that dominates development space today. The technology is available. The people are available. But the business model and value chain being used does not optimize what is available and use it to support development, but organizes to reward investors and corporate management OR government and the repayment of WB/IMF debt. The big corporate world has actually created a connectivity monster ... with $zillions of investment that now is unbelievably surplus to their needs and obsolete as well. To some extent we have a replay of the AT&T fiasco of the early 1980s when they suffered from an earlier version of the corporate obsolescence crisis. If anyone wants to invest in solutions that use best technology and can deliver affordable connectivity in the SOUTH, I would like to hear from them. It is clearly obscene that connectivity costs so much in the SOUTH when the use of modern technology is so low cost. I would like to ask the development expert analysts to wake up and do the numbers. And then change the policy framework and funding allocations. Sincerely Peter Burgess ____ Peter Burgess ATCnet in New York Tel: 212 772 6918 Fax: 707 371 7805 [EMAIL PROTECTED] for secure messages 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 the GKD database, with past messages: http://www.GKDknowledge.org
Re: [GKD] The Phones Keep Ringing in World's Poorest Country
Dear Colleagues, I cannot resist making a further comment about telecom and policy options. Thank you Harun Hassan for writing the article and Fred and Simon for starting the feedback. Isn't it interesting that a "failed state" can have some of the lowest cost telecommunications in the world? What are the reasons why a failed state can have low cost telecom and the better "governed" countries with their national telecom organizations and lots of regulation have rotten service and high costs (at any rate for the general public). The policy options getting recommended by the "experts", especially experts funded by the World Bank and the IMF (and probably other donor entities) are often absolutely wrong. Because "privatization" is the policy flavor of the month (actually for a good few years now), and getting the highest value from telecom privatization would appear to be a good objective, experts recommend selling the franchise to the highest bidder, and to get the highest bids, the franchise gets "protected". In other words the high bid buyer is going to get a monopoly for quite a long time. And while this is good M&A thinking from the investment banking standpoint, it is awful development thinking. Modern success in development is enormously assisted by communications and information, and by making this technology low cost, low priced and accessible, there are all sorts of development possibilities that open up. One is the ability to have better and more transparent elections. Another is to get knowledge flowing round the economy in ways that helps end exploitation and improve the "efficiency" of the market. Another is to help with health interventions especially in an emergency mode. The list goes on. Somalia and Somaliland have reasonably modern telecom technology that is low cost, there is competition to keep pricing in line, and very little messy regulation to confuse the investing entrepreneurs and push the costs up. The idea that the telephone operators are making profit is good, not bad, especially when they are doing it at relatively low affordable prices. This is a development success story, done without the help of government or development experts, or UNDP, or WTO or the WB or USAID or any of the other alphabet soup of development entities. The global development crisis that has delivered more than half the world's population into poverty and hunger is sustained by entities that have high costs, charge high prices, deliver pathetic service and still cannot make a profit. Sadly this is what the experts from the World Bank and the UN and the other elements of the official development assistance (ODA) community seem to think is the preferred business model for development, and have done so for the past three or four decades. I am an optimist. Entrepreneurs can make development successful. The global market will work when the SOUTH has enterprises funded to do what is priority in their communities and do it profitably. But development fails when it is driven by the NORTH and the development and investment modalities being used destroy economic value in the SOUTH host countries. Sincerely Peter Burgess Peter Burgess ATCnet in New York Tel: 212 772 6918 Fax: 707 371 7805 [EMAIL PROTECTED] for secure messages ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** 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.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
Re: [GKD] RFI: Computer Donations To The Third World
Dear Colleagues, I have been following this thread with interest. And quite a lot of what has been written conflicts considerably with my current view of how development has to work in order to achieve sustainable success. The underlying issue is all about value and opportunity. If there is an opportunity to create value with the resources at hand, there is the possibility of value creation and sustainability and development progress. Very little in the development arena has these characteristics, and as a result no sustainability. The process ends up being essentially a value destruction process. If everything in development had to be paid for, there would be a far better allocation of scarce resources. Maybe not very much of what the NORTH offers as "development assistance" would actually be purchased. But what would get purchased would be things that really have value. If people with no money are loaned money to purchase what they need, there would be minimum use of resources and maximum value from the use of the resources. And repayment requirement ensures that only productive use of resources gets to happen. Clearly this is very different from what has been going on for the past several decades. But changing to this would improve development performance enormously. Simon Woodside's suggestion that donated computers should find their way to small businesses that should sell them and support them has merit. But don't deliver them at cost deliver them at the price / value that makes sense for the small business. Cost in this situation has little to do with value and it is value that should determine the transfer price arrangements. If the cost is out of line and higher than value, the item should have been junked long ago. Some of the issues surrounding software (bloatware) and the seeming never ending upgrade cycle that has taken over the computer world are important. My hope is that there will be a general rebellion against the Microsoft software use model and that open source solutions will take over. With growing acceptance of the Open Source solution . and a migration to LINUX from the multitude of MicroSoft operating systems ... the value or utility of old (low speed) computers will increase significantly. And a quick note about duties. One of the worst distortions in SOUTH economies relates to duties. The UN system and the World Bank and bilateral donors all find ways not to pay duty. Yet it is duty that is one of the most important revenue elements in the government budget. It is an abberation that the private sector gets to pay all the duties and ODA gets exempt . and worse, some big FDI initiatives are also exempt from this important source of government revenue. I favor low duty rates, but I also favor a strong government revenue base that pulls from all segments of the economy. If a government chooses to exempt a product from duties, it should be based on solid economic advantage. And there should be fewer exemptions that are routinely given to the ODA community as of right. Sincerely Peter B In a message dated 6/25/2003, Simon Woodside wrote: > What about importing to small businesses instead? instead of donating > the computers, provide them at cost to small business owners who can > resell them and provide support services? On Monday, June 23, 2003, at 12:29 AM, Raju Dev Acharya wrote: > > I totally agree with Guido Sohne. In Nepal I can buy a new PIII for > > US$300. Also importing PC for distribution into the country takes a lot > > of time and effort due to the never ending red tape and can take > > months. This increases the cost of the PC if the cost incurred in the > > host country is added to the total cost of the donor. > > > > > > "Guido Sohne" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > >> I was in a thread elsewhere that discussed this same issue and I also > >> thought that shipping used PCs makes perfect sense. The problem is the > >> actual cost of the used PCs when other overheads are taken into > >> account. Peter Burgess ATCnet in New York Tel: 212 772 6918 Fax: 707 371 7805 [EMAIL PROTECTED] for secure messages ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** 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.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
Re: [GKD] RFI: Computer Donations To The Third World
In a message dated 6/25/2003, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Does anyone know if there are computer donation programmes that go > beyond one-off donations? What if after a while people using donated > computers need upgrading and/or replacement? Who takes responsibility > for meeting with the created (long term) expectations of using > computers? I like your question. One of the prevailing problems with development is that all the official development assistance (ODA) community loves to announce that they have started a program to address some currently popular problem, but they rarely do enough of anything to make much of a success possible. Development should be about replicating success and ensuring that the scarce resources are used most wisely to achieve the greatest results. But that rarely happens. There is little "knowledge" used in the management of development and the allocation of scarce resources. Instead scarce resources are squandered over and over again starting things over instead of optimising what one might call a "continuum" of development activities. This is not a question of "capacity" in the SOUTH, or of "corruption" in the SOUTH. This is a creation of the ODA community and the NORTH. It optimises (maximises) the use of consultants from the NORTH while reducing the resources available to the SOUTH. But the SOUTH also has to figure out how to get what it needs without being totally dependent on "gifts" from the NORTH. The SOUTH should be able to make the case for getting help because it is doing great things with the resource help, and is making measurable progress. With the information easily available, it is not at all clear that "gifts" are doing as much good as they could ... and it should be clear . not necessarily before the "gifts" are given, but certainly afterwards. In too many cases in my experience, computers were set up, computer training took place, but the graduates of the computer training did not have any jobs to go to. Yet the value of computers and trained computer operators in the right business situation could be enormous .. which brings me back to two recurring themes .. the need for better understanding of the development process and the need for jobs. Sincerely Peter Burgess Peter Burgess ATCnet in New York Tel: 212 772 6918 Fax: 707 371 7805 [EMAIL PROTECTED] for secure messages ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** 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.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
Re: [GKD] Attempts to Bridge Digital Divide Could Be Costly to Africa
Dear Colleagues, I think Sally got it right when she said "Attempts to bridge the 'digital divide' could lead Africa down a costly path" and I think John was right when he sugested that we should "focus on the last sentence, and NOT the first!". The last sentence said "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." Everything that is done in development in Africa has to be done on a "triage" basis. Tough choices have to be made. There is just not enough "public" resource to go round. And the development community has not yet got round to addressing the crisis in the banking and finance sector, both public finance and private financial services. Development cannot get driven either by public initiatives nor by private enterprise, because resources are just not available for what would do the most good. Professionally, I am working to use ICT in support of development, and I have had a long time interest in the economic dynamics of computerization. From the early days when IBM dominated the mainframe business to today when Microsoft dominates in the simple application software area, the dominant force in decision making was driven by the "ideas" of first IBM and now Microsoft .. and these ideas have had nothing to do with what is best for society, or the economy as a whole, or anything BUT what is good for IBM, and now Microsoft. The Open Source movement can be to Microsoft what Microsoft was to IBM. And that is good. The stage is set for big changes. In fact, I do all my work now with Open Source software and it works just as well (for me) as my Microsoft software used to do, and I don't have to worry all the time about the terribly frequent upgrade processes, and then the computer hardware upgrades needed to keep up with Microsoft software bloat. But is any form of computerization through public fund resource allocation appropriate in situations where society is hungry and sick and dying? What is the "triage" dynamic that should be being used. With hunger and famine all over Africa, and health and HIV-AIDS a galloping pandemic, and war and security and displaced people WHAT COMES FIRST? The crime against humanity is that global resources are being allocated to use that ignores the issues just recited ... it should not matter that computerization and learning about computers is maybe 5th on the list of priorities . but the reality is that there is not even resources for the 1st item on the list to get fixed properly. From my perspective, and the perspective of the poor and hungry, let's use computing to start understanding just how badly the world's economic resources have been and are being used and let's start using computing to get some analytical and management control over the prevailing aberration of global resource allocation With modern technology we can deliver a smart bomb into any room anywhere in the world from thousands of miles away, yet we cannot get development resources anywhere near where they will do the most good. There is something terribly wrong. Sincerely Peter B PS .. Please remember that within the crisis in Africa there are elements of development excellence. The sad fact is that it is difficult to see the good because there is also so much that is bad .. and in a lot that is bad the NORTH is terribly implicated Peter Burgess ATCnet in New York Tel: 212 772 6918 Fax: 707 371 7805 [EMAIL PROTECTED] for secure messages John Lawrence <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > 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 ignor
Re: [GKD] Security Issues and Open Source Software
Dear GKD Colleagues, I am glad that Ashish Kotamkar brought up the issue of security. But this is not really an issue about Microsoft versus Open Source .. but is absolutely fundamental to the operation of any computer system or network and the Internet itself. With present day hacking capacity almost everything that is put into electronic form can be seen by official or unofficial snoopers. Yes almost everything. Both Microsoft and Open Source are problems with few simple solutions. Security has been a primary concern of my group as we have been developing some Internet based database applications it is quite easy to build a database system . but it is another matter to build tham so that they are secure and have permanent reliability . and remain easily Internet accessible ... rather than operating simply behind some corporate firewall. And it is very disturbing that public policy in both free and less than free countries is moving in the direction that secure Internet transactions are bad policy because the authorities cannot look at what is being transacted . yet without security excellence the Internet is one day going to be the site of the biggest financial heist in all of history . and an open book on everyones "private" information. Our group has a solution in development . it is not ready to be announced quite yet, but it will address some of the issues that are of concern to anyone faced with the need for distributed secure information, including financial information. Sincerely Peter Burgess ATCnet __ T. Peter Burgess VP and CFO ATCnet New York USA Tel 212 772 6918 Fax 707 371 7805 website: www.atcnet.org email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] ATCnet Project for Universal Accountability ATCnet Community Cyber EduCenter Networks ATCnet Database on African Development and Enterprise ATCnet Database on the African Health and HIV-AIDS Crisis ATCnet Trade Networks ATCnet Consultancy and Management Services ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** 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.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
Re: [GKD] Proposed Open Knowledge Network
Dear GKD Participants, I have just read the posting by Sam Lanfranco only minutes after sending a post to another list about "accountability" in development, and bemoaning the fact that we have failed terribly to use modern computer and communications power to bring accountability to development, even though it is technically quite easy to do. WalMart can do amazing things to understand its business, and weather forecasters routinely use the most powerful computers on the planet to simulate weather patterns, and we use computers amazingly for "real" war games, and we use poweful computers and computer technology for entertainment and all sorts of game playing, but when it comes to accountability in development, we remain in the "stone age". The people who want accountability and need accountability do not have the money to pay for accountability, and the people who have and who control the money do not want either accountability or transparency. There is no major organization in either the public or the private sector that has willingly introduced excellence in public accountability and transparency . no corporation, no donor government or government agency, no international development institution, no beneficiary government . yet the public in the SOUTH needs this accountability and transparency as does the public in the NORTH. The technology to do this is at hand ... the systems can easily be developed and deployed ... but the established leadership ... corporate, political, academic, adminstrative ... in both NORTH and SOUTH ... for some reason does not seem to be willing to help get such a program funded. Surely it is time for alternative leaders to emerge to get an accountability and transparency program funded and implemented Sincerely Peter Burgess __ T. Peter Burgess VP and CFO ATCnet New York USA Tel 212 772 6918 Fax 707 371 7805 website: www.atcnet.org email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] ATCnet Project for Universal Accountability ATCnet Community Cyber EduCenter Networks ATCnet Database on African Development and Enterprise ATCnet Database on the African Health and HIV-AIDS Crisis ATCnet Trade Networks ATCnet Consultancy and Management Services ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, an NGO that is a GKP member*** 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.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
Re: [GKD] More information on AIDA Database
Dear GKD Participants I think V Yee's message about the AIDA database on July 4 was very helpful. But it really confirmed my worst fears. I certainly appreciate the open response by V Yee, but the bottom line is that the database is really little more than a rather big listing with a sort capability ... the sort of work that I was pretty proud of when I first did some programming courtesy of an IBM Executive Introduction to Computers Course in 1966. It certainly does not start to provide the sort of "data analysis" capabilities that turned WalMart into the dominant retailer in the world during the past ten years and should be used by now to manage development resources. >>>>>> AIDA can also help to reduce duplication of efforts on the ground, >>>> Good point, but this is nothing that a decent filing system could not accomplish >>>>>> promote donor and government transparency >>>>>> How? Giving the name and title and location and sector and a little bit of description without any financial numbers feeds into one of the big problems of development ... if I have a project name .. I have a project success. This is boloney. And if there is expenditure there is not necessarily any benefit .. expenditure is expenditure .. benefit is benefit. There are activities in between which hopefully will turn expenditure into benefit. Good performance is when the ratio between benefit and expenditure is high. Low performance is when the ratio between benefit and expenditure is low. The database absolutely must have financial information and benefit information in order to be of serious development value. I cannot see that the database is doing much more than the UNDP Development Cooperation Report and the DCAS system that was being run on FoxPro 15 years ago with floppy disks. In fact, it is probably doing less. >>>>>>>>and greater collaboration between institutions.>>>>>>>> hopefully SNIP SNIP >>>>>>>> While having this basic information on so many activities is already a step in the right direction, we are working with participants to provide more up-to-date information on operational implementation, budgets, and programmatic results. AIDA does not provide data for financial, cost benefit, and impact analysis directly. >>>>>>>> Without the financial numbers this database as far as I am concerned is pretty much a complete waste of time >>>>>>>>However, AIDA will link users to sources such as the Creditor Reporting System (CRS), which is managed by the Development Assistance Committee of OECD (http://www.oecd.org/dac/htm/crs.htm). CRS contains data on donor financial flows.>>>>>>>>> DAC data is almost impossible to reconcile with the activities on the ground. (unless there has been very substantial recent reform) The DAC information is (as I understand it) a compilation of data from the donor groups . with little or no validation on the ground. Many donors seem to use very funny accounting to come up with the numbers that are given to the DAC, and rarely give the accountants of the beneficiary country governments the sort of information that is needed to do decent accounting ... and certainly not enough information to reconcile what DAC publishes with project level resource use on the ground. I can go on ... the unwillingness of the official development assistance (ODA) community to get to grips with the financial information and the accounting needed to establish accountability and transparency bothers me enormously . and I have become convinced that if ODA financial information was accessible to independent analysis the outrage would be enormous. Regards Peter Burgess __ T. Peter Burgess President and CEO AfriFund Management Limited 1173A Second Avenue #221 New York NY 10021 Tel 212 772 6918 Fax 707 371 7805 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***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] ATCnet Database for the African Health and HIV-AIDS Crisis
Dear All I am taking the liberty of sending you a press release from ATCnet regarding its Database for the African Health and HIV-AIDS Crisis ... a practical use of ICT and Information .. to address a problem of enormous scale in Africa Your HELP in spreading the word would be very much appreciated. The database will have huge value if it can be populated well with critical data about Africa quickly. It is part of theme that ICT has the power not only to send information TO Africa, but also to get important information FROM Africa to counteract the uninformed world and the disinformation of the prevailing media leaders in the NORTH Best regards to all Peter Burgess __ T. Peter Burgess President and CEO AfriFund Management Limited 1173A Second Avenue #221 New York NY 10021 Tel 212 772 6918 Fax 707 371 7805 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ATCnet Information Dimension of Development ATCnet Database for the African Health and HIV-AIDS Crisis PRESS RELEASE Washington, July 13, 2001 ATCnet has launched an easily accessible Internet database for the African Health and HIV-AIDS Crisis to consolidate information about organizations and individuals that are working to combat the crisis. There is a growing global appreciation of the enormity of the health and HIV-AIDS crisis in Africa. With this database it will be possible to publicize the enormous amount of work that African organizations and individuals are doing in Africa to address the pandemic. ATCnet is an organization with tax exempt status for charitable contributions in the United States and is an African network of networks in Africa and among the African Diaspora. ATCnet is using modern and information technology (ICT) to make it possible for value adding development to become the norm in Africa, building on the incredible wealth and resources of the continent. Modern ICT makes it possible for the first time to build a single database for all the many African organizations and individuals doing work on thecrisis and for the information to be easily accessible via the Internet anywhere there is Internet access. Health and HIV-AIDS is a huge crisis in Africa. The health and HIV-AIDS crisis threatens everything. HIV-AIDS appears to be out of control and other even more infectious diseases could easily emerge from the crisis and bad practices of the health sector. ATCnet regards health and HIV-AIDS a priority issue for Africa. The enormity of the crisis is difficult to comprehend. Between 5,000 and 7,000 Africans die every day as a result of AIDS related infection. More than 12,000 a day become infected. Millions of young people have nobody to take care of them, because parents and all the adults of the extended family have died. Old people are also living with nobody in the extended family left to help care for them. The ATCnet database documents information about the organizations in Africa that are presently doing incredible work to confront the health and HIV-AIDS pandemic with extremely limited financial and material resources. But the enormous value of the work that these organizations are already doing is not at all reflected in the deliberations of policy makers regarding the crisis, yet it is a powerful resource for success in the battle against the pandemic and it is already deployed around Africa. The new ATCnet database makes it possible to identify the successes that there have already been in addressing the health and HIV-AIDS crisis. Though the gross statistics are horrible, they might encourage inaction because the problem appears so huge. The ATCnet database makes it possible to recognize that there is already an existing deployment of people and organizations that can easily be assisted to do even more valuable work in Africa. The ATCnet database makes it possible for money and in kind donations to be mobilized for use by registered organizations doing work in Africa. The ATCnet database and search engine will now make it easy for American philanthropists to select specific projects to support. The ATCnet network in Africa makes it possible to ensure that the resources are used as the donors intend. The ATCnet database and the financial analysis system makes it possible to ensure that funds are used effectively to improve the health environment in Africa and contain the HIV-AIDS pandemic. The database will help African organizations publicize their priority needs in a systematic way. The database will help the global community help African organizations improve their productivity in the work by making it much easier to get access to critical resources. It is recognized that there are many resources that are needed, both financial and material. There is also the need for resources associated with education and training. The ATCnet network provides a link between those with resourc
[GKD] Re: ICT for income generation in Zimbabwe
Dear Participants I have just read the contribution by Dumisani Nyoni from Zimbabwe .. and earlier I read a message from Meddie from a UNESCO funded project in Uganda. The issue of sustainability is absolutely fundamental to socioeconomic progress and is inextricably linked with the concept of value adding or value destruction within an economy. The collapse of dot.com startups should be coming as no surprise since their basis business model in so many cases was pure value destruction . delivering product in volume below cost . simply by a simple click on your web browser!!! On the other hand, there are parts of the technology industry that are thriving . because they are making it possible for major functions within the economy to operate substantially more efficiently and therefore use less resources for the same job than before . and that is progress. I am waiting for someone in the development community to show us exactly how we can increase production (of needed products like food and fuel and electricity and water and housing and clothes and medicine and . ) in an affordable way through ICT . how job opportunities can be increased . how social services can be expanded within limits of affordability, both budgetary and affordable user fees .. how government can be made more efficient .. how issues of accountability and transparency can be addressed . etc. The power of ICT is enormous .. but it must be used in a way that respects basic fundamentals of economics .. and the underlying needs of real people. I would welcome feedback on any of these issues . privately or through the list Regards Peter Burgess __ T. Peter Burgess President and CEO AfriFund Management Limited 1173A Second Avenue #221 New York NY 10021 Tel 212 772 6918 Fax 707 371 7805 website: www.afrifund.com or www.profitinafrica.com email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Subj:[GKD] ICT for income generation in Zimbabwe Date: 2/28/01 11:20:35 AM Eastern Standard Time From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Dumisani Nyoni) Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dear GKD members, My name is Dumisani Nyoni. I am from the City of Bulawayo in Zimbabwe and am currently with the Youth Employment Summit, a project of the nonprofit organization EDC, in Massachusetts. Through SNIP SNIP >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Subj:sustainability strategies Date: 2/28/01 4:36:04 AM Eastern Standard Time From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Uganda National Commission for UNESCO) Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dear friends, I am developing a critical paper on the issue of sustainability of Telecenters and community information centers in developing countries. As a practitioner, I am following up key practical SNIP SNIP ***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] Re: Time to Net the Debt - OneWorld launches DebtChannel.org
INANCE developing countries is not going to do much good. At the end of the debt forgiveness process the countries are still going to be in a development crisis and a health crisis. In addition to refinancing the public sector, there also needs to be a new business model for socioeconomic progress in Africa that mobilizes resources for the entrepreneurial private sector. In the old development model, almost all the ODA resources flowed through government and the public sector .. and more recently into the NGO sector. All of these moneys were earmarked for works that in the end result destroyed economic wealth in Africa .. including most of the humanitarian interventions. The need is to get resources flowing into an entrepreneurial African business community that is looking to grow and make profits and deliver needed goods and services and employ local staff. And when they have made profits, the goal should be for them to reinvest to start the whole growth cycle over again. For every foreign dollar that goes to government and the public sector in a developing country, between 3 and 10 dollars should go into the entrepreneurial sector. Finally, the major international organizations engaged in foreign direct investment (FDI) should be made accountable for their role in the disasters of development. In this regard the oil, diamond and gold industries are priority though far from the only culpable groups. If the forgive debt alliance can make progress on the debt problem . and also set the stage to make a new business model for socioeconomic progress come about .. then their efforts would truly have been worth while With regards Peter Burgess PS . my remarks are most relevant for Africa but might be just as valid for many other parts of the world __ T. Peter Burgess President and CEO AfriFund Management Limited 1173A Second Avenue #221 New York NY 10021 Tel 212 772 6918 Fax 707 371 7805 website: www.afrifund.com or www.profitinafrica.com email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***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] Re: Gateway on development in Tanzania
Dear Colleagues The Internet is powerful technology . and is going to make an enormous difference in the way the global economy functions .. IF .. its use reflects a value adding activity for the local and global economy . and IF .. the work results in incremental valuable information. Yesterday . we were invited to look at the Tanzania Online development gateway .. and it is an interesting site to look at .. but actually how big an investment has been made to get to this stage . and actually what "added value" does the site provide. I would be very interested to see the budget for this work and how much money has been spent to date . and actually what the spending has been for. I was interested to note that the site lists the following development partners ... ADB / CIDA / FAO / DANIDA / IMF / DFID / OAU / European Commission / SADC / Embassy of Finland / UNDP / GTZ / UNESCO / Netherlands / UNFPA / USAID / UNHCR / SIDA / UNICEF / NORAD / UNIDO / JICA / WFP / Ireland Aid / WHO / World Bank / ILO / ACBF Now if these are the supporters of the gateway site then it looks like a lot of money for not much result. On the other hand . if this is a listing of key development information . then I would like to be able to see the list of Institutions and then go on into a database of projects . and for each project well organized information about how much has been invested and what results and what time frame and what is expected from the project immediately and also on an ongoing basis. What seems to be happening at the moment is that there is a lot of activity doing web "fronts" with really not very much work being done to improve the organization of the data that are needed to do a better job of managing development resources. I have made similar observations about the main Gateway site . that has a database of projects . but as far as I can see . it is nothing more than a simple collection of very basic text information with no financial numbers that can be used for any sort of meaningful analysis. Because it is now 23 years since 1978 when UNDP was given the assignment to implement Development Cooperation Reporting .. that later evolved into the UNDP Development Cooperation Analysis System (DCAS) and several years since UNDP launched the annual Human Development Report with a Human Development Index .. these data are still unconnected . and have never been worked on so that they would really tell the story of what is happening with development resources. The failure to have useful financial data about development 40 years after ODA became the dominant element of public finance in developing countries is amazing. There is little indication that the present high profile work on improving knowledge about development is including even simple elements of the financial dimension of data, let alone a comprehensive collection of financial information. Financial information is a factor within the budget cycle of a project . but it is only a process to control spending against what has been budgeted. There is no budget process that relates the amount of expected outcomes with the budget being authorized .. so budgeting is merely a reflection of the power of the decision makers rather than being a management tool to promote performance. There have been efforts to improve the financial systems in order to provide a basis for managing performance .. but strong accounting and management initiatives keep getting eliminated in favor of the status quo which from a management analysis perspective is a failed status. I am not optimistic that there can be the change that is needed within the ODA community and the global public sector. On the other hand I am very optimistic that a new business model for socioeconomic development is possible and will be implemented with or without the cooperation of the existing ODA establishment of today. There is work to be done to bring about major change .. but with the entheusiasm of the private entrepreneurial sector and civil society major change can be achieved. I realise I have posted before along similar lines and I expect to post again and again . and again . because the evidence shows that until there is good financial information there will be ineffective and inappropriate use of financial resources Thank you Peter Burgess __________ T. Peter Burgess President and CEO AfriFund Management Limited 1173A Second Avenue #221 New York NY 10021 Tel 212 772 6918 Fax 212 585 2501 website: www.afrifund.com or www.profitinafrica.com email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***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
