Civil society has been working for years on participation, transparency, accountability and governance issues. Plenty of newer initiatives (small and large) look at new technologies as a core tool in this work. But are these groups talking and learning from each other?

What good practices exist for using new technologies to improve transparency, accountability and governance? What are some considerations and frameworks for thinking about the role of new technologies in this area of work? What needs consideration under this broad theme of good governance?

Tuesday's Technology Salon* in New York City focused on those issues, kicked off by our two discussants, Hapee de Groot from Hivos and Katrin Verclas from Mobile Active. Discussion ensued around the nuances of how, with whom, when, why, and in conjunction with what do new technologies play a role in transparency, accountability and good governance. Some of the key points brought up during the Salon:

Please join us for the next Technology Salon

What is "good governance?"

The overall term could be divided into a number of core aspects, and so the discussion is a big one and it's complicated. Aid transparency is only one small part of the overall topic of good governance.

The World Bank definition includes aspects of:

• Participation of citizens in political processes, freedom of expression and association, free media
• Political stability and absence of violence
• Government effectiveness in the delivery of services
• Regulatory quality, rule of law
• Control of corruption

There's a need to look at governments and aid, but also to look at the private sector. Some commented that aid transparency is in vogue because donors can drive it but it's perhaps not as important as some of the other aspects and it's currently being overemphasized. There are plenty of projects using ICTs and mobiles in other areas of governance work.

More data doesn't equal more accountability.

Data does not equal participation. Can mobile phones and other ICTs or social media reduce corruption? Can they drive new forms of participation? Can they hold power accountable in some ways? Yes, but there is no conclusive evidence that the use of new technology to deliver data down from governments to people or up from people to governments improves governance or accountability. The field of tech and governance suffers from 'pilotitis' just like the field of ICT4D. Some participants felt that of course open data doesn't automatically equal accountability and it was never the idea to stop there. But at the same time, you can't have accountability without open data and transparency. Opening the data is just the first step in a long road of reaching accountability and better governance.

Efficient vs transformational.

Transactional efficiency within a system is one thing. Transformation is another. You can enhance an existing process from, say, writing on paper to calling on a landline to texting in information, thereby improving accuracy and speed. But there is something more which is the transformational side. What's most interesting perhaps are those ways that ICTs can completely alter processes and systems.

Again, there are a lot of promising examples but there is not much evidence of their impact at this point. One participant noted that current evidence seems to point toward the integration of mobiles (and other ICTs) into existing process as having a greater impact and quicker uptake within large, bureaucratic systems than disruptive use of new technologies.

But the question remains - Are the systems good systems or should/could ICTs transform them to something totally different and better or can ICTs help do away with poorly working systems entirely, replacing them with something completely new?

Is open data just a big show?

Some alluded to opaque transparency, where a government or another entity throws up a bunch of data and says "we are being open" but there is no realistic way to make sense of the data. Some felt that governments are signing onto open data pacts and partnerships as a fake show of transparency. These governments may say, "The data base is available. Go ahead and look at it."

But it costs a lot of money and high level skills to actually use the data. In addition, there is a need for regulatory frameworks and legislation around openness. Brazil was given as an example of a country that has joined the open government partnership, but as yet has no regulatory framework or freedom of information act, even though the country has a beautiful open government website. "Checks and balances are not inherent in the mobile phone. They need to be established in the legislation and then can be enhanced by mobile or other technology."

Open Data Hackathons can help turn data into information. The question of "what does open data actually mean?" came up also and the "cake test" was recommended as one way of defining "open".

Is open data an extractive process?

Some at the Salon cautioned that the buzz around Open Data could be a bit false in some ways, and may be hyped up by private companies who want to make money off of nice data visualizations that they can sell to big donors or governments. The question was raised about how much data actually gets back to those people who provide it so that they can use it for their own purposes?

The sense was that there's nothing wrong with private companies helping make sense of data per se, but one could ask what the community who provided the data actually gets out of this process. Is it an extractive data mining process? And how much are communities benefiting from the process? How much are they involved?

Mikel Maron wrote a great post yesterday on the link between open data and community empowerment - I highly recommend reading it for more on this.

Whose data?

A related issue that wasn't fully discussed at the Salon is: who does the information that is being "opened" actually belong to (in the case of household surveys, for example)? The government? The International NGO or multilateral agency who funds a project or research? The community? And what if a community doesn't want its data to be open to the world - is anyone asking? What kind of consent is being granted? What are the privacy issues? And what if the government doesn't want anyone to know the number of X people living in X place who fit X description? Whose decision is it to open data? What are the competing politics?

For example, what if an organization is working on an issue like HIV, cholera, violence or human trafficking. What if they want to crowd source information and publicly display it to work towards better transparency and improved service delivery, but the host government country denies the existence of the issue or situation?

In one case I heard recently, the NGO wanted to work with government on better tracking and reporting so that treatment/resources could be allocated and services provided, but when the government found out about the project, they wanted control over the information and approval rights. Government went so far in another case as to pressure the mobile service provider who was partnering with the organization, and the mobile service provider dropped out of the project.

These are good reminders that information is power and openness can be a big issue even in cases not initially identified as politically charged.

Privacy and security risks.

The ubiquity of data can pose huge privacy and security concerns for activists, civil society and emerging democracies and some at the Salon felt this aspect is not being effectively addressed. Can there really be anonymous mobile data? Does the push/drive for more data jeopardize the political ambitions of certain groups (civil society that may be disliked by certain governments)?

This can also be an issue for external donors supporting organizations in places like Syria or Iraq. Being open about local organizations that are receiving funding for democracy or governance work can cause problems (eg., they get shut down or people can be arrested or killed).

Can new ICTs weaken helpful traditional structures or systems?

Is new tech removing some middlemen who were an important part of culture or societal structure? Does it weaken some traditional structures that may actually be useful? The example of the US was given where a huge surge of people now engage directly with their congressperson via Twitter rather than via aggregation channels or other representatives. Can this actually paralyze political systems and make them less functional?

Some countered, saying that Twitter is somewhat of a fad and over time this massive number of interactions will settle down, and in addition, not everyone gets involved on every issue all the time. Things will sort themselves out. Some asked if politicians would become afraid (someone - help!! there is a study on this issue that I can't seem to locate) to make some of the secret deals that helped move agendas forward because they will be caught and so openness and transparency can actually paralyze them? In other words is it possible that transparency is not always a good thing in terms of government effectiveness?

The example of paying Afghan police directly by mobile phone was given. This initiative apparently ended up failing because it cut decision makers who benefited from bribes out of the loop. Decoupling payments from power is potentially transformational, but how to actually implement these projects when they disrupt so much?

Does new technology create parallel structures?

Are parallel structures good or bad? In an effort to bypass inefficient and/or unaccountable systems, in one case, private business owners started their own crime reporting and 911 system to respond and accompany victims to report to the police and follow up on incidents.

Questions were raised whether this privatization of government roles was taking justice into ones' own hands, forcing the government to be accountable, allowing it to shirk responsibilities, or providing a way for government to see an innovation and eventually take on a new and more effective system that had been tried and tested with private funds. This same issue can be seen with parallel emergency reporting systems and other similar uses of ICTs.

It may be too early in the game to know what the eventual outcomes of these efforts will be and what the long term impact will be on governance. Or it may be that parallel systems work in some contexts and not in others.

And...

The Salon could have gone for much longer but alas, we had to end. Dave Algoso covers some of the other ideas from the Salon in his post Technology for Transparency, Accountability and Governance, including how to approach and define the topic (top down vs bottom up? efficiency vs transformation?) and the importance of measuring impact.

Thanks to UNICEF and Chris Fabian for hosting the Salon. Thanks to Martin Tisne from the Transparency and Accountability Initiative for sparking the idea to choose this topic for the first Technology Salon in NYC, and thanks to Wayan Vota for inviting me to coordinate the series.

In theory, making information open and available leads to more transparent decisions of governments, aid agencies, corporations and other such institutions because stakeholders at different levels push for accountability and better governance. That is why civil society actors have been working on transparency, accountability and good governance for years. Now new actors on the scene are developing technology tools and applications for use in this area.

From efforts such as Huduma, Twaweza,Cuidemos el Voto, CGNet Swara, Fix My Street, Sunlight Foundation, World Bank's Open Data, the Open Government Partnershipand the International Aid Transparency Initiative(IATI), and a wide range of others; new technology and social media are playing an important role in making information more accessible, holding leaders and decision makers accountable, and mobilizing citizens to participate and have their say.

But are these groups talking to each other? How do grassroots initiatives shape and feed into larger scale efforts and vice versa? What can existing efforts learn from these new entrants? What lessons and good practices learned over the years, should be upheld? Or discarded? What technology tools best support work in this area? What are the risks and challenges?  Where there are gaps and opportunities? And what are the best approaches for donors and key decision makers in the field?

We'll have two lead discussants start the conversation on these issues:

• Hapee de Groot from Hivos will talk about several initiatives that support openness and transparency along with engaged participatory citizen action and politics, including the work of some Hivos' partners, the Transparency and Accountability Initiative(TAI), IATI and open standards, and the Hivos/Omidyar collaboration through the ATTI fund.
• Katrin Verclas from Mobile Active will share highlights from the upcoming report mDemocracy: Power in the People's Hands. The report assesses the state of the field of mobile technology, good governance, democracy, and accountability, including aspects of human rights, elections and electoral processes, government services to citizen, and citizen action and advocacy. Copies of the report will be available to participants.

Please join your Technology Salon colleagues at our first (of many) Technology Salons in New York City organized by Linda Raftree of Plan International USA:

Transparency and New Technology
November Technology Salon
9 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.
Tuesday, November 29th, 2011
UNICEF House
3 UN Plaza East 44th Street
(between 1st and 2nd Avenue, south side of the street)
New York City, NY

We'll have hot coffee and donuts for a morning rush, but seating is limited and the UNICEF House is in a secure building. So RSVP ASAP to be confirmed for attendance or you are on the waitlist.

For those attending, please arrive 15 minutes early to clear security and be sure to bring photo ID. You will be escorted to the meeting room.

Is this the library the future of public access ICT after cybercafes and telecenters?

Back when Bill Gates was young, he had multiple opportunities to geek out - he had access to computers at home and at school - but he would sneak out of his house to go the library. Why? Because he loved the wealth of knowledge, curated and guided by libraries.

With that background, it's easy to see why the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has a strong focus on libraries. And that many communities have a library and it's seen as a knowledge repository already, makes it also easy to see why the Gates Foundation has added public access to ICT as a tenant of their library support. ICT-enabled libraries can provide guided access to the wealth of information that computers and the Internet can bring to young minds.

"Library" as a dirty word

Yet, let's be honest - what comes to mind when you read the word "library" or "librarian"? Long nights spent in the library as a youth, with an ever-present librarian quick to squelch any study-break frivolity. Not as a 21st Century guide to personal life-long knowledge or greater community development. This is true around the world, as EIFL found:

Most people in six African countries believe public libraries have the potential to contribute to community development in important areas such as health, employment and agriculture. However, libraries are small and under-resourced, and most people associate them with traditional book lending and reference services rather than innovation and technology.

In fact, say the word "library" in international development or technology circles and instantly half the room is bored or tunes out.

Libraries are the most effective public access to ICT

Communities need access to the benefits and services only found online but the ICT infrastructure is often prohibitively expense for individuals to buy for themselves. Mobile phones, while ubiquitous, do not provide for any meaningful depth of information acquisition - certainly not when compared to a computer. So we are looking at computer labs where the costs are best aggregated over entire communities.

As we all know, telecenters are not sustainable without donor funding, and local governments are loathe to add yet another infrastructure support demand onto their shrinking budgets.

Enter the library. Of all the public access to ICT models discussed at the Future of Public Access to Information Technology Salon, it was the library, or similar government-supported information infrastructure, that is the most viable, sustainable, and compelling model.

Governments already understand the need for libraries and their role in supporting them as a government-funded service. Adding ICT to the library model is a small marginal cost with great community development potential - even when the model doesn't look like a library at all.

Library Parks - a new public access model

Enter the Parques Biblioteca or "Library Parks" of Medellin, Colombia. There, libraries are the anchor for multiple municipal knowledge and community building services (public park, library, information center, cultural center, and entrepreneurship incubator) to bring a concentrated development impact to the city's poor areas.

ICT access is a central resource that supports these activities, but not the only one. In addition, there is an acknowledged role for the librarian as a knowledge guide with technology. Colombians, just like others around the world (including "digital natives"), may not have the greatest media literacy. The librarian is seen (and trained) to be a modern knowledge guide, conversant in books and bytes, to help users navigate the still wild online world.

Do libraries need better marketing?

But if libraries are to be more than book repositories, should we start calling them something else besides a "library"? Could there be a need to re-brand the library as a "community knowledge center" or "life-long learning center" to show they are for more than just students studying? Or maybe "media centers" or "knowledge factories" to show they are more than just a collection of books? And can librarians move beyond being "martyrs to knowledge" and be more the learning facilitators we also hope teachers to be in 21st Century schools?

Knowledge is power and therefore libraries should be the cool thing in international development and technology circles. The still-open question is how can we get from the dim mental image of the past to the dynamic reality of the future?

Access to information has been part of the development discussion since the Internet arrived. Previously, many saw community telecenters as the way to bring technology to the developing world. Yet telecenters are not sustainable without donor funding and the concept of public access hasn't kept pace with advancing technology.

The global penetration of mobile phones calls into question the need for public Internet access at all. Until you realize that mobile devices are limited in functionality and there is more development information than is convenient for a phone screen - such as government open data and transparency initiatives.

So the question remains: how can people participate? It is time to reconsider the question of public access. What works today? What makes most sense for the future?

We will explore the need for public access to information as a part of development and new approaches to provide it with two thought leaders on the subject:

• Sandra Fried, a program officer in the Global Libraries program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• Catalina Escobar, director of Makaia, which is involved in the Digital Medellin project.

Please join your Technology Salon™ colleagues for this conversation at the next Technology Salon in Washington, DC:

What is the Future of Public Access to Information?
November Technology Salon
8:30 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.
Wednesday, November 9th, 2011
UN Foundation
1800 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC

We'll have hot coffee and Krispe Kreme donuts for a morning rush, but seating is limited and the UN Foundation is in a secure building. So RSVP ASAP to be confirmed for attendance or you are on the waitlist.

A new form of capitalism is arising that recognizes our ability to direct the power and efficiency of market systems toward social impact, leading to a more balanced set of "returns". This social capital market is real and growing, and has real impact on emerging economies.

But does it impact ICT4D? How can technology companies leverage social capital for greater impact? And can NGO's and nonprofits that focus on technology also benefit from the flow of capital towards social good?

Join Kevin Jones, Co-Founder of the SoCap Conference and Good Capital, as he shares insights on the opportunities, challenges and prospects for social capital to advance technology interventions in the developing world.

How can social capital expand ICT4D?
August Technology Salon
8:30a.m. - 10:00 a.m.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
mission*social Conference Room
972 Mission Street, 5th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94103 (map)

We'll have espresso and donuts for a morning rush, but be sure to RSVP ASAP, as we only have room for 15 people, then there will be a waitlist.

Local Internet Service Providers woefully underserved rural communities in Haiti before the 2010 earthquake. ISPs said that broadband infrastructure was too expensive to deploy and there were too few customers to make the investment profitable. Using traditional sales models and technology, they were right.

Then the earthquake happened. During the humanitarian relief phase, Inveneo had the opportunity to deploy innovative long-distance WiFi technology and experiment with new revenue models for Internet service delivery. From that has emerged the Haiti Rural Broadband Connectivity Program.

This multifaceted initiative is brining carrier‐neutral, shared network infrastructure to rural areas using ultra‐low‐cost, wireless technologies, by selling broadband Internet access to "anchor tenants" through local ICT entrepreneurs trained in business and technology.

In the Bati Anfòmatik Teknisyen yo ak Inveneo (BATI) component of the program, these ICT entrepreneurs are reaching and serving clients (schools, NGOs, enterprises and others) cost effectively, through:

• Accelerating deployment of a high speed, broadband wireless network in rural population centers
• Receiving training and certification to deploy, operate and support this network
• Learning a sustainable business model of local network ownership and operations for the broadband wireless network,
• Deploying new, relevant technology in education to increase ICT knowledge and usage.

These "BATI" entrepreneurs and local ISPs are generating over $10,000 a month in revenue, forming a sustainable rural ICT ecosystem serving communities and organizations once thought unprofitable.

Please join FJ Cava, the BATI program officer for Inveneo, in a discussion on how ICT entrepreneurship and rural broadband Internet is building Haiti back better at the next Technology Salon.

Building Haiti Back Better with ICT Entrepreneurship
June Technology Salon
8:30 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.
Tuesday, June 14th, 2011
UN Foundation Conference Room
1800 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036 (map)

We well have hot coffee and Krispe Kreme donuts for a morning rush, but seating is limited and the UN Foundation is in a secure building. So RSVP ASAP to be confirmed for attendance or you are on the waitlist.

Let us start by agreeing that technology has great promise in increasing the economic empowerment of youth in the developing world. We all believe it. But what is that promise in reality? Which technologies hold greater promise? What innovations work? That was the issue we discussed at the Technology Salon on Youth Economic Empowerment with ICT with Fiona Macaulay and Linda Raftree (Join us at the next Salon)

Youth and ICT

First, let us define youth as young people ages 15-24, which is the UN definition, but in certain countries we can expand that age range to 15-35. Why? An example is Sierra Leone, where those 25-35 were denied opportunity during the civil war and therefore are only now reaching the status afforded to youth much younger in other countries.

And let us recognize that youth are already finding economic opportunity with ICTs. Linda Raftree did an informal survey among some colleagues working in Africa and found that:

In Egypt, colleagues said that youth are repairing cell phones, serving as DJs at wedding parties, setting up photocopy shops and internet cafes, selling phone calls and airtime, running shops that provide children and young people with the opportunity to play games, and using computers to make flyers and posters for certain producers and products in the communities. They also provide satellite connections for poor families to access national and international TV channels - this service is not legal but generates good income for young people.

In Kenya you'll find youth managing Mobile Phone Kiosks popularly known as 'Simu Ya jamii' (community phones). These double up as phone charging points. Pirated music is big business for some youth and phone unlocking services are increasing. One colleague noted that youth are not really creating applications, but in some of our programs, they are involved in piloting new applications, and thus influencing their development. In Zambia, you don't see much of this type of activity in rural areas, according to a colleague there. But there are village telcos being operated by youth groups and some village groups are setting up banks of solar chargers to support solar lighting. (Cool result: When they set them up at a schools, encouraging women to come each day to charge their lights, they found that school attendance increased).

In Burkina Faso it's common to see youth selling telephone scratch cards, renting out their phones, offering video services to film at private events, charging up phones for a price. In Senegal, some take phones from one area to another to charge them up for a fee. All over Africa you see video pirating and movie houses, video game houses, video downloading to mobile phones, music on flash drives and flash drives that plug into radios in cars and in collective transportation vans and busses.

So how can we increase their economic and social gain in these activities and new ones?

Financial Literacy

One way is to increase the overall financial literacy of youth - their ability to understand the value of money, the profitability of different ways to earn it, and the logic necessary to manage it. Work by the Population Council even suggests that financial literacy should start as young as 8-12, when ideas around money and math are first formulated. In fact, financial literacy was seen as a basic building block for any level of economic empowerment for youth.

ICT can of course make it easier to reach youth to inform them about financial literacy. Radio, TV, even Facebook are all educational mediums by which youth can learn the value of earning and saving financial assets.

Entrepreneurship vs. Employment

Once we start talking about gainful employment, there is often an overriding focus on entrepreneurship, or the starting of microenterprises. This should not be taken as a view that most youth are entrepreneurs by choice, but that often employment opportunities are so rare that they must become micro entrepreneurs by necessity.

And here, basic education on career development and employment choices can help inform youth on the realities of the labour market and help them form realistic job expectations, which can lead to better choices in education and job search activities for the jobs that do exist.

Direct employment efforts like SoukTel's JobMatch, which connects job-seekers with employers who are looking for staff using SMS, level the playing field of access to jobs that many youth face when they are not in the active workforce.

Micro Tasking

For those outside the formal sector - the majority of economic activity in most developing world countries - there are increasingly technology-driven opportunities. One is micro tasking, or small jobs that can be done by anyone with basic skills. Sites like CrowdFlower, CloudCrowd, and Amazon Mechanical Turk allow youth to perform simple online tasks for payment. SamaSource is similar but specifically focuses on engaging workers from the developing world.

A key aspect of micro tasking is the ability to build an entire value chain, which youth can use to climb out of poverty. Digital Divide Data has been using the data entry and digital preservation needs of publishers and libraries to empower youth in Southeast Asia with competitive wages, subsidized formal secondary and university educations, and achieve incomes with other employers that are four times the average income in Cambodia and Laos.

In a sign that there is real money to be made in the microtasking industry, TxtEagle just raised 8.5 million in start-up funding for their mobile phone based system.

Deskilling

An interesting phenomenon, which could offer opportunity to youth, is the ongoing deskilling of complex jobs, where technology allows lesser-skilled workers to fill roles of skilled professionals when the latter are not available. Deskilling in the health sector is a great example.

By reducing the barriers to starting in a field, deskilling, like micro tasking, can be an important first-step for youth to gain entry into employment and build job skills that can be applicable in higher-order jobs that would otherwise require large investments in formal education.

Technology's Many Roles

Overall, we found that youth are already using ICT for economic empowerment and we can help by using technology to increase opportunity for them in finding gainful employment and entrepreneurship. There are three roles that Information and communication technologies can play:

1. An informer of job opportunities that may or many not have ICT, such as basic literacy and job ads
2. A means for direct employment, such as Internet cafes and digital music sales
3. A medium by which youth gain employment, such as micro tasking and deskilling

In all of these roles, technology is helping rearrange the social norms around youth and their employability, and in some cases, adding weight to the social standing of youth. At least in computer and cell phone operation and repair, youth are seen worldwide as the best experts.

And in international development, youth and technology are both sexy, and adding a logical, well-researched intervention into your next RFP response (a "mYouth" initiative!) could help empower you and the youth of today.

Wondering how? Then sign up to be invited to future Technology Salons - so you can participate in discussions like this first-hand.

Today's youth population is the largest in the history of the world, and 90% of these young people live in developing countries. The global youth unemployment rate is the highest on record, and we're seeing discontent and disenfranchisement play out on the news each day. In fact, the revolution in Tunisia started with an under-employed youth committing self-immolation in frustration.

New technologies have promise to reverse global youth employment trends.

Technology-based models hold great promise for increasing and improving economic opportunities for young people: low barriers to entry for youth-built apps, the widespread use of Facebook and its promise as a marketing platform, the ubiquity and ease of mPayment systems like MPESA - these should be a recipe for youth economic empowerment.

But how are youth starting businesses or getting jobs in growth-oriented ICT sectors around the world? And there is still a digital divide, a technology gap between digital natives and their analog brethren. So how are organizations and programs utilizing technology to reach and engage young people? Where should we be cautious or enthusiastic with technology?

On April 14th, we'll deep-dive into youth empowerment using ICT, with the aim of generating new ideas for use in RFPs like the just released USAID Yes Youth Can Grant for Kenya.

We will have two respected leaders in youth and ICT leading our conversation:

• Fiona Macaulay, Founder and President of Making Cents and a DevEx International Development Leader
• Linda Raftree, Social Media and New Technology Advisor for Plan West Africa and Plan USA

Please join them and your Technology Salon peers to share insights on how to incorporate youth economic empowerment into future proposals at our next meeting:

Can Youth Find Economic Empowerment via Apps, mPayments, & Social Media?
April Technology Salon
8:30 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
UN Foundation Conference Room
1800 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036 (map)

We'll have hot coffee and Krispe Kreme donuts for a morning rush, but seating is limited and the UN Foundation is in a secure building. So RSVP ASAP to be confirmed for attendance or you are on the waitlist.

At the Technology Salon on "How to Incorporate ICT into Proposals", we discussed some of the challenges and solutions for proposal writers when they try to incorporate information and communication technologies into future program design. (Join us for our next Salon)

Problems with Incorporating ICT into Proposals

Essentially, short time frames for preparing proposals doesn't allow for participation and end-user involvement and feedback during development of technology solutions. Yet donors often want details about a technological solution within a proposal; however, in order to define details, more knowledge of local context, a participatory local communications assessment, end-user testing and more need to be done.

This causes proposal writers to sometimes put unrealistic goals in proposals in order to secure funding or because they don't have information about the local context and actual feasibility of a proposed technology solution; implementers may find later that they are unable to deliver

The issue is compounded by the real lack of organizational buy-in to allow for testing and iterating, for trial and error, and even failure, in organizations and within projects to learn what works and what can be scaled up through proposals and donor funding.

Solutions to Including ICT in Proposals

Overall, organizations that want to integrate ICTs in their work need to plan ahead, strengthen their staff capacity on the ground, and have a clear understanding of the steps to follow when integrating ICTs into proposals. And rather than detailing an exact tech solution into a proposal, the proposal writer could offer a few options, say that "a solution could be" or "might look something like this", or be clear when negotiating with the donor that an idea will be tested but may change along the way when participatory work is conducted with end users, and as it is tested and adapted to the local context.

This can help remind donors that digital technology is only one way to innovate, and technology needs to be seen as one tool in the information and communication toolbox. For example, SMS might be just one communication channel among many options that are laid out in a project or program, and the most appropriate channels (which might also include face-to-face, paper, community bulletin board, phone calls, etc.) need to be chosen based on a local situation analysis and end-user input.

For staff, integrating ICTs as smaller aspects in programs can offer opportunities for small trial and error and learning; eg., using SMS as one channel of communication in an education or health program and comparing results with a program that didn't use SMS could allow an organization to test small ICT efforts and slowly learn, modify and integrate those that work. (See How Plan Kwale has been using ICT in their programs since 2003)

When staff experiment with and experience ICTs in one program, they may be more likely to innovate with technology in another program. As ICTs become more commonly used in communities and by local development practitioners, space for innovations grows because innovation can happen right there, closer to the ground rather than being designed in an office in DC and parachuted into communities in other places.

Experimentation with youth programs are a good place to start with tech innovations because youth tend to be more literate (if they are school going youth) and they pick up technology skills easily in many cases. Adults need not be left out however, but the learning methodology may need to be different. Engaging the community in detailing potential protection and privacy risks in data collection is key to finding ways to ensure risks are minimized. (See 8 Elements for a Positively Brilliant ICT4D Workshop)

The Plan Example

Plan Finland with support from Plan USA commissioned the ICT Enabled Development guide (PDF) to better understand and document the ICT4D context in several of the countries where Plan is working in Africa. Country offices wanted to strengthen their capacities to strategically incorporate ICTs into their work and to ensure that any fund-raising efforts for ICTs were stemming from real needs and interest from the ground. Plan offices were also in the process of updating their long-term strategic plans and wanted to think through how and where they could incorporate ICTs in their work internally and with communities.

The report process included 2-day workshops with staff in 5 countries, based on a set of ICT distance learning materials and discussion questions. The idea was to combine background and situational research, learning about ICT4D, and further input from Country Office colleagues into this process to come up with a realistic guide on how and where Plan could begin integrating ICTs into its work directly, strategically and indirectly (See 3 ways to integrate ICTs into development work).

The report team worked by Skype and email with a point person in each office who planned and carried out the workshop, developed the multi-media training pack with materials that the point persons used to support the workshop, and compiled the ICT-Enabled Development guide based on the experience.

From the report and this experience, Plan produced a 10-step process for integrating ICTs into development initiatives:

1. Context Analysis: what is happening with ICT (for development) in the country or region?
2. Defining the need: what problems can ICT help overcome? what opportunities can it create?
3. Choosing a strategy: what kind of ICT4D is needed? direct? internal? strategic?
4. Undertaking a participatory communications assessment: who will benefit from this use of ICT and how?
5. Choosing the technology: what ICTs/applications are available to meet this need or goal?
6. Adjusting the content: can people understand and use the information provided for and by the ICTs?
7. Building and using capacity: what kind of support will people need to use and benefit from the ICT, and to innovate around it?
8. Monitoring progress: how do you know if the ICT is helping meet the development goal or need?
9. Keeping it going: how can you manage risks and keep up with changes?
10. Learning from each other: what has been done before, and what have you learned that others could use

See the 3-page "ICT-Enabled Development Checklist" for more detail on how to go about integrating ICTs into a development proposal and be sure to download the ICT Enabled Development guide (PDF).

We all want to add the technology sizzle to our proposals. Nothing wins an RFP these days like "e" this or "m" that. Yet ICT projects are complicated, and hasty technology additions in proposals often leave implementers struggling to achieve project milestones after the contract is won.

At the next Technology Salon, we'll have Linda Raftree, Social Media and New Technology Advisor for Plan International West Africa Region and ICT4D Technical Advisor for Plan USA, lead us through a design methodology for successful ICT projects that you can use as a guide in your next RFP response.

For those that want to read ahead, Linda will be drawing on the recent Plan report, ICT Enabled Development: Using ICT strategically to support Plan's work, and tailoring it to the proposal process, with your participation and input.

Please join her and your Technology Salon peers to share insights on how to incorporate ICT projects into future proposals at our next meeting:

How to Incorporate ICT into Proposals
January Technology Salon
8:30 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.
Thursday, January 20, 2010
UN Foundation Conference Room
1800 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036 (map)

We'll have hot coffee and Krispe Kreme donuts for a morning rush, but seating is limited and the UN Foundation is in a secure building. So the first fifteen (15) to RSVP will be confirmed attendance and then there will be a waitlist.