Premier Series on ICTD for Youth an Introduction (Dr. Usha Vyasulu Reddi)

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Primer Series on ICTD for YouthIssue 1: An Introduction to ICT for Development

Fifth Digital Youth of Asia ForumICT Centre, Tajikistan

12 November 2011

Dr. Usha Vyasulu Reddi, Former Professor and Director, Centre for Human Development,

Administrative Staff College of IndiaE mail: [email protected]

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From Knowledge Economies to Knowledge Societies

• There is sufficient global evidence to show the relationship between ICTs and economic growth

• Countries that have high levels of economic development also have high ICT penetration rates

• Research results show that for every 10 percentage points increase in the penetration of broadband services, there is an increase in economic growth of 1.3 percentage points

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From Knowledge Economies to Knowledge Societies

• The knowledge economy is based on the development and trade of knowledge products and services, dependent to a large extent on the innovations in ICTs made by others.

• The knowledge society is about a society’s “capabilities to identify, produce, process, transform, disseminate and use information to build and apply knowledge for human development

• The link between knowledge and development is fundamental to the building of knowledge societies—where knowledge is both to achieve economic goals as also to enable human development

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Changing landscapes of literacy

Source: http://www.eur.nl/ub/english/instruction/skills/informationliteracy, used with permission David M. Kennedy under a creative commons license.

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The Importance of Capacity Building

Any technology will be insufficient if people do not understand how to put it to effective use as part of their lives or their work, either because they are trained to use it, or they cannot the possibilities for how they could use it……….It is essential that people understand the broader potential for technology so that users are empowered to innovate for themselves and use technology in ways that may not have been envisioned by the project or policy”

Source: Bridges.org, “Real Access/Real Impact Criteria” http://www.bridges.org/Real_Access

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ICTD Human Capacity Building• Basic ICT literacy for all

– Everyone needs to become minimally ICT literate• Developing specialist skills

– Creating people with specialist ICT skills to meet a country’s ICT sector and economy needs

• Developing ICTD skills– Creating a pool of talent which can use ICTs for

sustainable social and economic development

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Who Needs Capacity Building?

• Policymakers and Decision makers • Planners and Project Designers • Champions • Trainers of Trainers• University level students—today’s youth

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Capacity Building for the Future

• Future Proofing– anticipate future needs and developments in ICTD and

create learning programmes designed to address human capacity building needs for such developments

• Only a couple of academic programmes in the field of ICTD

• These are in developed countries—none in the Asia Pacific

• There is also a severe shortage of learning materials

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Introducing the Primer Series

• Today’s youth are tomorrow’s leaders• Their ability to leverage and use ICTs is important• Creating a critical mass of future leaders• APCICT’s wider programme “Turning Today’s

Youth Into Tomorrow’s Leaders”• Creating learning materials to meet capacity

building needs• The Primer Series is part of this wider programme

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Introducing the Structure of Issue 1

Three Sections

Section I - ConceptsSection II – ApplicationsSection III - Managing ICTD

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How to Use this Primer

• To provide logic and a sequence that will be useful for students of all disciplines, the primer has been structured for use as basic reading for an estimated three credit course, provides a foundation and is to be seen as an introduction

• Faculty and institutions can use the primer as essential or supplementary reading; as a whole or in parts

• Not exhaustive nor stand alone

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How to Use this Primer

• Three sections and 11 chapters• Each section has learning objectives and outcomes• Each chapter has a practical exercise and a small

multiple choice test• Case descriptions for further study• Cases can be used or new ones created• A suggested template for case studies

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Introduction to Development

• Unevenness of economic and social change and development across the world

• Development understood in many ways depending on disciplines and perspectives

• The role of information and knowledge in making a difference to lives

• The importance of ICTs as development tools to enable ‘information literacy’

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Understanding Development

• Difficult to define and understand• Development is a highly complex concept, contradictory,

and full of debates and discourses • Means different things to different people, based on

economic, geographic, political, social, cultural, religious and ethnic contexts.

• Can be viewed from the perspectives of a number of ‘academic disciplines

• Extensively studied from the 2nd half of 20th C onwards• The term became synonymous with growth, modernization,

change, democracy, and many similar Western values and in the beginning was focused largely on economic development.

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• Three major dominant political perspectives to the study of economic development – The Western ‘Free Market’ approach

• Economic indicators such as GNP, GNP per capita, GDP and GDP per capita

• As GNP and GDP grew, and as per capita income increased, development would gradually percolate, move or “trickle down” to the larger population and the poor.

• Many countries adopted this model and the reforms proposed by international agencies such as the IMF

• there was extensive criticism of the social and political consequences of such reform

• The economic crisis of 2008 effectively ended this paradigm

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• Planned economic approach with extensive state involvement in planning and management of economic systems– The collapse of the erstwhile Soviet Union and many

changes in economic policies in China effectively ended this paradigm

• The mixed approach with combines the first two followed by countries such as India until the early 1990s.

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• Teams of social scientists from different disciplines sought to understand the forces that would bring about change and development at an individual and a larger societal level

• Drew contrast between ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ behaviour; and looked at modernization in stages

• Modernization and development for these scholars meant a move from traditional, community based, feudalistic societies to ones that stressed innovativeness, education, political participation and access and exposure to information that changed people’s way of thinking.

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• Neither mutually exclusive nor exhaustive• Criticisms of these approaches emerged

– Macro level statistics did not reflect ground reality– Economic growth did not necessarily lead to poverty

reduction– High growth rates alongside large scale poverty and

deprivation, inequalities, social disorder and environmental degradation.

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Understanding the Human Development Framework

• A new paradigm on development emerged which looked at the process of development through a more people centred and humane approach

• Pioneered by the work of Mahbub ul Haq and Amartya Sen

• The human development approach was introduced by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 1990 and supported later by other international organizations

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• Stresses human well-being as an end for any process of economic and social development.

• Overturning the view that focuses on material progress as the sole end.

• Instead, the new approach focuses on the well-being of individuals as the ultimate objective.

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• Embedded as the guiding principle on which the annual Human Development Reports (HDR) are based.

• HDR combines annual thematic presentations, preceded by definition, measurement, and policy analysis of indicators of education, health, and income sufficient to ensure adequate living standards, to develop the Human Development Index.

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• The human development approach has changed the way that the world currently looks at development.

• This view is reflected both at international debates and underscores the commitment given by the global community to actively pursue development

• A major such commitment is reflected in the Millennium Development Goals

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The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

• The most broadly supported and specific poverty reduction strategies that the world has committed itself to

• Common denominator to which all countries, irrespective of their ideological, political, or cultural affiliations, have adhered

• Each and every stakeholder in the global community accepted the common goals, targets, and strategies for achieving them

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Managing Development• Principles upon which current perspectives of

human development build– Inclusiveness—a pattern of growth that allows all people to

contribute to and benefit from the development process– Equality—that all citizens are equal but there are inherent

inequalities in any society. Therefore, a policy which enables systematically disadvantaged and vulnerable groups to share in development through positive discrimination is necessary to ensure that benefits reach them.

– Quality—that is not just the provisioning of services, but ensuring that these services are of good quality

– Accountability—that citizens are partners in the development process and that governments need to engage with them and be held accountable to the citizens.

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Communication and Development

• Communication is a process as old as human society itself and is a process in which all of us are engaged

• We are constantly either receiving or sending messages, non-verbal (i.e. without sound) or verbal, through sound signals

• Communication can be described as a process whereby someone sends a message to someone else through a channel and gets a response or feedback.

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Communication and Development

• The process of communication has to be delinked from the technologies of communication.

• Communication is a process, while technologies are the tools or media employed in the process.

• ICTs are the tools that enable communication to take place

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Timeline of ICTs

Dates

ICT Tools

3000 B.C.-1600 A.D.

Early scripts and printing (Egypt, Middle East and China; Gutenberg’s printing press

1800 -1900 A.D. The rise of newspapers, the invention of the telegraph, the telephone and the phonograph

1900 to 1970s The Golden Age of Radio, Television and Films

1970s to 1995 The beginning of satellite communications, the computer age, the era of convergence

1995 to 2000 The Digital Age, the Internet and World Wide Web2

000 onwards

The age of convergence, iPod, Mobile Communications; Social Networks, Web 2.0, etc.

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ICTs and Development

• Development Support Communication

– refers to the organized and systematic use of communication to support the development process, either at a national or location and project specific level

– it is the integration of communication (and in today’s parlance) the use of ICTs as part of the planning, design, development, delivery, and evaluation of developmental projects

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Linking ICTs to Global Development Goals

– A History of Use• From the middle of the 20th century• Keeping pace with technological change• Two factors spurred interest in last two decades

– Technology convergence and the Internet– Global development goals as expressed in MDGs

– Target 18, Goal 8 of MDGs• “In cooperation with the private sector, make available

the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications technologies”

– ICTs become tools that governments can deploy

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Linking ICTs to Global Development Goals

• Governments that use ICTs as part of an overall governance and administration role find that ICTs can help enable– Linkages for complex planning processes– Coordination across sectors– Enable increased information sharing,– Outreach and monitoring of services– Scaling up access to education– Linking communities to markets– Creating disaster warning and decision support systems– Provide a direct link with citizens by providing greater access

to information and communication ensuring a greater degree of accountability and good governance.

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Current Trends in ICTD

• Focus on ICTD shifts from access to knowledge to sharing and participation in the creation and use of knowledge for economic and social advancement.

• From ‘e readiness’ to ‘digital economy rankings’ benchmarking the quality of a country’s use of ICTs for their economic and social benefit.

• To see how ICTs have transformed society

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Understanding ICTs--Scope and Definitions.

UNDP Definition

• “ICTs are basically information handling tools—a varied set of goods, applications and services that are used to produce, store, process, distribute and exchange information. They include the “old” ICTS of radio, television and telephone, and the “new” ICTs of computers, satellites and wireless technology and the Internet. These different tools are now able to work together, and combine to form our ‘networked world”, a massive infrastructure of interconnected telephone services, standardized computer hardware, the Internet, radio and television, which reaches into every corner of the globe’

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• Traditionally, possible to distinguish different ICTs by their unique features (text—print; audio—radio; audio visual—television)

• Since 1990s, such distinctions have become blurred as convergence, or the blending of what were discrete media, onto a single platform has become a reality.

• ICT devices and applications are used in the production, storage, and sharing of information and knowledge

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• Applications of technologies have also changed from traditional sectors of development (agriculture, education, health) to

• Industrial processes, supply chain management, prediction and control, surveillance and control; etc…..

• ICTs can also be unpacked into technologies, applications, services, and content

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Taxonomy of ICTs—Technologies, Applications, and Services and Content

Hardware—goods, Radios/TVs Computers, Modems, Mobile phone

Connectivity media Telecommunications—fixed, wireless, and satellite

Softwares--proprietary--open source

Content--External--Local language--Locally produced

Services--G2G--G2B--G2C--B2B--B2C--C2C

THE USER

Supporting Environments--physical--Power and energy sources--Buildings: telephone exchanges; telecentres; access points--Internet and Internet access devices

Supporting environments—policy and legal and regulatory financial--Licensing arrangements for telecom operators, tariff structures--Standards (network operations, switching, transmission, languages--Licensing for broadcasters and the media--Competition regulation

G2G=Government to Government; G2B=Government to Business; G2C=Government to Citizen; B2B=Business to Business; B2C=Business to Citizen; C2C=Citizen to Citizen

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2.4 Attributes of different ICTsICT Attributes Limitations

Print technologies

FamiliarityReusableCan provide depthAllow economies of scaleAllow uniform content and standards

Limited by literacy

Static in time

Updating difficult

Passive, one way technology with little or no interactivity

Broadcast Analogue Technologies (Radio and TV)

FamiliaritySpeed of deliveryProvides vicarious experienceAllow Economies of scaleUniform content and standards possibleRugged, ease of use

Limited accessStatic in time, SynchronousUpdating difficult Not problem or location specificPassive, little or no interactivityOne size fits all content for all groups of peopleHigh start up, production and distribution costs

Digital (Computer and Internet Based Technologies)

InteractiveLow per unit costAllow Economies of scale Uniform content and standards

possible

Can be updated easilyProblem and location specificUser friendly

Limited access stillHigh development costsCapacity of providersComputer literacy essential for useLocal content

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2.4 Attributes of different ICTs

ICT Attributes LimitationsMobile Technologies •Interactive

•Lost cost per unit•Allow economies of scale•Uniform content and standards possible•Can be updated easily•Problem and location specific•User Friendly•Unbundling of content possible•Local content possible•Computer literacy not essential for use

•Limited by physical constraints such as signal strength•Limited by social factors inhibiting access to and ownership of instrument

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2.5 Trends in ICTD evolution and Growth

• In Hardware– The Mobile Phone

• The small mobile phone in the hand of a person is a very powerful device

• Highest rate of growth in Asia Pacific• Low energy consumption, does not require stable and

continuous electricity supply• Low carbon footprint, green technology

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• In Applications– Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)– Web 2.0– The Internet of Things

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• In Content– User Generated Content

• Social Networks—Face Book, Twitter, Flickr, etc.• Blogs and Wikis• Learning Objects and Learning Object Repositories

(LOR)• Open Educational Resources (OER)• Digital Stories

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• In Services– applications and content are limited only by the

imagination • banking to health care,• education to gaming, • music and live streaming of television content, • government, • travel and tourism, • news and emergency information, • culture and heritage

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• The factors determining direction of ICT growth – Adaptability – Leverage – Ease of mastery – Accessibility – Affordability – Participatory – Transferability – Generative capacity

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In Conclusion

• The use of ICTs for development is not new• ICTs use is only limited by the imagination and

human capacity to use• But, based on the experience of two decades of

experimentation, there is a better understanding of what works, what does not, and why, in ICTD

• This primer series in general, and Issue 1 in particular is meant as a learning support for students and faculty in the Asia Pacific region

• Use it as you think appropriate; experiment with ICTs and enjoy the pleasure of innovation and success.

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THANK YOU

Premier Series on ICTD for Youth an Introduction (Dr. Usha Vyasulu Reddi)

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