Guide to ICTs for Development

["Irfan Khan" <khania2@super.net.pk>]

Guide to ICTs for Development
by Aditya Dev Sood

Published in 2002 by the Center for Knowledge Societies in Bangalore 
(first published in 2001 as A Social Investor's Guide to ICTs for 
Development)


Preface

Here we are concerned with the relations between development and 
technology -- Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) in 
particular. Development is often understood in terms of advocacy, 
social work, voluntarism, selfless charity and other palliative 
social services. But perhaps the term is better used to signify the 
transformation and expansion of a society's infrastructure.

Commercial projects become viable when consumers are willing to pay 
for a product or service at a sustainable cost. In some cases, 
however, the very existence of this product or service is a 
precondition to many other kinds of social or economic activities. In 
such cases, the project not only meets the minimum criteria for 
financial success, but also provides some additional benefit to its 
community. It is with regard to this second set of potentialities 
that arise from the existence of a product or service, that we begin 
to recognize it as a resource, as infrastructure. We recognize 
Information and Communications Technologies as a new and yet 
essential form of infrastructure necessary to the process of 
development.

ICTs represent an unprecedented opportunity to make new knowledge, 
services, and opportunities available in underserved areas. Both 
urban and rural citizen consumers may benefit from ICTs by receiving: 
(i) enhanced access to information and communication across large 
distances, (ii) improved access to governmental and quasi-
governmental resources and services, (iii) new credit and financial 
services available through palmtops and information kiosks, (iv) new 
opportunities to design, manufacture and market their products 
through internet or intranet systems, (v) more and better education 
through computers or about computers or both, and (vi) superior 
medical advice, diagnosis or knowledge in their own locality. In the 
long term, rural ICT projects could prove to be the most effective 
means of driving change in rural areas: socially, by ensuring equal 
access for disprivileged groups, economically: by creating new kinds 
of work and financial transactions, and politically: by improving the 
quality, speed, and sensitivity of the state apparatus to the needs 
of local citizen-consumers.

Many important challenges to the viability of rural ICT projects 
remain, given the limitations of electricity, telephony, net-
connectivity, and other kinds of basic infrastructure. Furthermore, 
it is very likely that in these initial stages, ICTs will 
asymmetrically benefit landowning elites, relatively disprivileging 
landless artisanal groups in many rural areas. For this reason, rural 
ICT projects must be constantly monitored, evaluated, and redesigned, 
so that they are inclusive in their operation, and progressive in 
their effects. Social research, economic analysis and demographic 
surveys are all central to the process of conceptualizing and 
designing new applications, services, and business models for the 
rural sector.

This book addresses many of the problems and possibilities of using 
networked technologies for developmental objectives. We lay out our 
views on how best to create digitally-enabled infrastructure in 
chapters 1 and 2. In chapter 3 we describe the social and economic 
impact of networked technologies on rural societies and various kinds 
of organizations, based on our own experiences. Chapter 4 discusses 
statistics and recent trends within the sector, that are based on an 
analysis of our extensive database on this sector. Sections 5, 6, and 
7 of this document describe actually existing technologies, projects 
and resources in South Asia that use or facilitate the use of ICTs 
for various developmental objectives. This listing is by no means 
encyclopedic, and is intended only as a guide to the unfolding 
landscape. Investors and entrepreneurs are invited to think of these 
resources as an incomplete toolkit, or kit-of-parts, that may be 
assembled together for new and innovative applications, experiments, 
and projects. Although the majority of cases discussed here are from 
India, they may serve as resources for the rest of South Asia, as 
well as other parts of the developing world.

Click here to download the full document in PDF format. 
http://www.comminit.com/pdf/CKS_Guide_to_ICTs_for_Development.pdf


source: http://www.comminit.com/st2002/sld-6852.html