ICT Supporting good governance E-governance is an area of ICT use that shows rapidly increasing promise for alleviating the powerlessness, voicelessness, vulnerability and fear dimensions of poverty. Where national or local governments have taken positive steps to spread democracy and inclusion to the poor, ICTs have dramatically demonstrated how they can be used to facilitate the process. The effect can be to break down traditional patterns of exclusion, opaqueness, inefficiency and neglect in public interactions with government officials (Bhatnagar, 2002). In the Bhoomi project of online delivery of land titles in Karnataka, India, the Department of Revenue in Karnataka has computerized 20 million records of land ownership of 6.7 million farmers in the state. Previously, farmers had to seek out the village accountant to get a copy of the Record of Rights, Tenancy and Crops (RTC), a document needed for many tasks such as obtaining bank loans. There were delays and harassment and bribes often had to be paid. Today, for a fee of Rs.15, a printed copy of the RTC can be obtained on-line at computerized land record kiosks (Bhoomi centres) in nearly 200 taluks (districts) or at Internet kiosks in rural area offices. The Bhoomi software incorporates the bio-logon metrics system, which authenticates all users of the software using their fingerprint. A log is maintained of all transactions in a session. This makes an officer accountable for his decisions and actions. Previously, requests for changes to the records could take months to process and were subject to manipulation by the officers. Now, farmers can get an RTC for any parcel of land and a Khata extract (statement of total land holdings of an individual) in 5-30 minutes from an RTC information kiosk at the taluk headquarters. There are plans to use the Bhoomi kiosk for disseminating other information, such as lists of destitute and handicapped pensioners, families living below the poverty line, concession food grain cardholders and weather information. The response of the people at taluk level has been overwhelming. Queues can be seen at the kiosks, and 330,000 people have paid the fee without complaint. When asked what single factor contributed most to the success of this project, the manager unhesitatingly replied, “political will”. In Kerala, the state government is sponsoring the e-shringla project to set up Internet-enabled information kiosks throughout the State. The concept grew out of the state government’s experiences with a bill-payment service called FRIENDS, (Fast, Reliable, Instant, Efficient, Network for Disbursement of Service), which operates as a one-stop service centre equipped with computers for paying bills as well as for obtaining applications and remitting registration fees. E-shringla is the next logical step from FRIENDS. It networks with a variety of government departments and providing Internet access, enabling online services and e-commerce facilities for citizens. The Karakulam Panchayat has developed a Knowledge Village Portal as an example of a community portal system that delivers a range of government and community information. Since January 2000, Gyandoot, a government-owned computer network, has been making government more accessible to villagers in the poor, drought-prone Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh. Gyandoot reduces the time and money people spend trying to communicate with public officials and provide immediate, transparent access to local government data and documentation. For minimal fees, Intranet kiosks provide caste, income, and domicile certificates, helping villagers avoid the common practice of paying bribes to officials. The kiosks also allow small farmers to track crop prices in the region’s wholesale markets, enabling them to negotiate better terms for crop sales. Other services include on-line applications for land records and a public complaint line for reporting broken irrigation pumps, unfair prices, absentee teachers and other problems. Kiosks are placed in villages located on major roads or holding weekly markets, to facilitate access by people in neighbouring villages. The network of about 30 kiosks covers more than 600 villages and is run by local private operators along commercial lines (World Bank, 2002). Building capacity and capability The meaning of the term capacity building seems to vary according to the user, but there appears to be no doubt that ICTs can help achieve it. Capacity building refers to developing an organization’s (or individual’s) core skills and capabilities to help it (him/her) achieve its (his/her) development goals. This definition suits the context of ICTs well as it assumes knowledge of the existence of development goals without which ICTs are unlikely to be of much value. Hans d’Orville, Director of the IT for Development Programme, Bureau for Development Policy, United Nations Development Programme, puts it simply: “The full realisation of the potential of ICTs requires skills, training, individual and institutional capacity among the users and beneficiaries”. But the key question for poverty alleviation seems to be whether ICTs can build the capacity of the poorest people to achieve whatever goals they may have. If you are illiterate, destitute, disabled, malnourished, low caste, homeless and jobless, will ICTs help? The most likely scenario is that these very poor people will receive assistance from organizations and institutions that use ICTs and whose programmes specifically target them as beneficiaries. ICTs in the form of multimedia community centres/telecentres, especially at the rural level can act as a nodal point for community connectivity, local capacity-building, content development and communications, and serve as hubs for applications, such as distance education, telemedicine, support to small, medium-sized and micro-credit enterprises, promotion of electronic commerce, environmental management, and empowerment of women and youth. Where such services have a pro-ultra-poor strategy, then the benefits of ICTs can be directed to them. The Village Information Shops in Pondicherry, India have adopted such a programme. They have used ICTs to build awareness in poor communities of the government programmes and entitlements that are available for their assistance. They have a database of more than 100 such entitlements. Moreover, they have acquired the list of ultra-poor people that the government maintains, and made it available through the centres. The staff proactively notifies the people on the list that they are entitled to claim certain benefits (the government officials had not been well known for promoting these schemes), and they provide assistance in submitting the claims, contacting the appropriate bureaucrat and moving the application forward. As a result, every household in one fishing village is now in receipt of the housing subsidies to which they are entitled, whereas previously none of them were. Capacity building also relates to the accumulation of social capital, which refers to those features of social organization such as networks, norms and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit. The establishment of networks for mutual benefit can be nurtured and extended through the use of ICTs. ICTs can help create and sustain on-line and off-line networks that introduce and interconnect people who are working toward similar goals. Many organizations in the women’s movement recognize this potential and have projects that provide support for ICT to be used as an advocacy tool. ICTs can also enable certain individuals, especially early adopters, to spark catalytic change in their communities. For example, one very resourceful lady in a small Mongolian town who single-handedly runs an NGO supporting women’s micro-enterprises used the local telecentre to contact a donor agency in the UK and received an award of US$10,000, a huge sum in that context, to help her in her work. The 220,000 women members of India’s Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) who earn a living through their own labour or through small businesses have started using telecommunications as a tool for capacity building among the rural population. SEWA uses a combination of landline and satellite communication to conduct educational programs on community development by distance learning. The community development themes covered in the education programs delivered include organizing, leadership building, forestry, water conservation, health education, child development, the Panchayati Raj System and financial services. Enriching culture ICTs can simultaneously be a threat and an opportunity to a culture. On the one hand, ICTs threaten to engulf indigenous minorities in the relentless processes of globalization. On the other hand, ICTs can be used as tools to help indigenous minorities to engage positively with globalization on their own terms. The concern at this stage is that the former is more likely to happen than the latter. ICTs alone will not achieve cultural diversity. As with all successful applications of ICTs, adaptations in the behaviour of individuals, groups and institutions are necessary before significant cultural benefits can emerge from the deployment of ICTs. Existing institutions such as libraries and museums can help in the process of democratizing ownership of cultural assets, provided they face up to the limitations of their traditional roles. The Internet has made the conventional role of libraries and museums obsolete. Yet such institutions have major roles to play in mobilizing communities towards a more open and dynamic approach to the assembly and preservation of indigenous culture. Libraries and museums can facilitate a more dispersed pattern of ownership and custodianship of cultural artefacts that can be increasingly represented digitally. Networks that connect digitized cultural artefacts to the communities from which they were derived can be used to foster a wider appreciation of their value and importance as well as a more inclusive approach to how they are used and interpreted. Studies of indigenous communities regularly point to the importance they place on their cultural heritage. But they also highlight the almost complete lack of control or participation such communities have in how their culture is collected or represented. The Kelabit people in Sarawak, for example, do not feel that they exercise ownership rights over their own cultural heritage. They are concerned that outsiders are able to more easily gain access to both the records and the artefacts related to their cultural heritage than they are. They are also concerned that this can give rise to misinterpretation of the meaning of their cultural heritage. They feel powerless to present to the outside world a picture of themselves, their history and achievements, which they themselves would wish to have known. They see the situation getting worse rather than better, as technology empowers a few people to engage with information relating to their heritage, while depriving the majority of an equal opportunity. On the other hand, ICTs can be used to help rural indigenous and minority communities achieve custodial ownership and rights of interpretation and commercialization over their own cultural heritage. The Kelabit people of Sarawak are in fact starting to use their telecentre to redress this imbalance by recording their oral histories and genealogical records. UNESCO is currently formulating a charter and guidelines for the preservation of digital heritage. Digital heritage is that part of all digital materials that has lasting value and significance. New strategies need to be developed to ensure that they are saved for posterity. Digital heritage is either ‘born digital’ where there is no other format, or created by conversion from existing materials in any language and area of human knowledge or expression. It includes linear text, databases, still and moving images, audio and graphics, as well as related software, whether originated on-line or off-line, in all parts of the world. The preamble to the UNESCO charter states that the intellectual and cultural capital of all nations in digital form is at risk due to its ephemeral nature. Thus, the charter details the need for digital preservation principles and strategies to ensure that this heritage is available to all now and into the future. Aside from digitization of indigenous cultural artefacts, ICTs provide a means for cultural communities to strengthen cultural ties. To cite an example, the Internet is a means to unite the more than five million Assyrians who are scattered all over the U.S., Europe and Australia. The Assyrians are the direct descendants of the ancient Assyrian and Babylonian empires. The Internet is finally uniting Assyrian communities, regardless of their geographic, educational, and economic backgrounds (Albert). ICTs can either homogenize cultures or provide an opportunity to celebrate the diversity of culture. Whichever outcome prevails depends on how ICTs are used. Among the few experimental ICT projects involving ethnic indigenous people, short-term thinking and the pressure for tangible results (deliverables) cause donors to focus on poverty alleviation outcomes alone. However, when you talk to members of the communities themselves, it is easy to find considerable interest in using the technology for preserving and strengthening their cultural heritage. Supporting agriculture Research suggests that increasing agricultural productivity benefits the poor and landless through increased employment opportunities. Because the vast majority of poor people live in rural areas and derive their livelihoods directly or indirectly from agriculture, support for farming is a high priority for rural development. ICTs can deliver useful information to farmers in the form of crop care and animal husbandry, fertilizer and feedstock inputs, drought mitigation, pest control, irrigation, weather forecasting, seed sourcing and market prices. Other uses of ICTs can enable farmers to participate in advocacy and cooperative activities. To illustrate how useful ICTs can be for farmers, consider the case of farmers in India who in the past were harvesting their tomatoes at the same time, giving rise to a market glut that pushed prices to rock bottom. At other times, when tomatoes weren’t available and the prices shot up, the farmers had none to sell. Now, they use a network of telecentres to coordinate their planting so that there is a steady supply to the markets and more regulated and regular prices. The Maharashtra State government has plans of linking 40,000 villages with Agronet, a specially developed software package for farmers that aims to provide the latest information on agriculture. Samaikya Agritech P. Ltd. in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh operates 18 “Agritech Centres”, which provide agricultural support services to farmers on a commercial basis. They are permanently operated by qualified agricultural graduates called Agriculture Technical Officers (ATO) and are equipped with computers linked to the head office in Hyderabad through a modem-to-modem telephone connection. Through these centres Samaikya provides technical assistance to member farmers; inputs such as seeds, fertilizers and pesticide, machinery hire, tools and spares for sale; soil and water analyses; weather monitoring; field mapping; weekly field inspections and field visits by specialists. Farmers register with centres and pay per growing season (two or three seasons per year) a fee of Rs.150 (about US$3) per acre/crop. A farmer registers by the field and receives support services that are specific to the fields registered. On registration, the farmer provides detailed information concerning his farming activities; the information is kept in the centre’s database, providing the basis for the technical support provided. The centre in the village of Choutkur has 53 registered farmers, covering 110 acres of registered land. This is out of a total of around 1,000 farmers within the centre’s catchment area. Major crops include sugar cane, padi and pulses. Advice from the centres is based on data generated from pre-validated crop cultivation practices adopted in the State and provided by government agricultural services and local institutions. Farming information is up-linked from headquarters to the computers at the centres. If farmers have specific needs for information that cannot be satisfied immediately by the ATO at the centre, then the technician completes an on-line enquiry form on the computer and transmits this via modem to the headquarters. At the headquarters, specialists with more experience and qualifications organize and coordinate replies, which are typically transmitted back to the centre within 24 hours. The database and information systems are operated in the English language. Information is interpreted for the farmer by the ATO. Because some farmers are illiterate, the technicians have to spend time with explanations and descriptions. There is no standard for a computerized Telegu script. Prior to setting up a centre, Samaikya performs a survey of local farming and cultivation practices and ascertains the political and cultural context of the potential centre. It conducts a pre-launch programme to familiarize farmers with the services. One centre closed down within three months of opening as no farmers registered for the service. This was due to the pressure placed on them by local marketeers, financiers and suppliers of inputs who perceived a threat to their livelihoods from the competing Samaikya services. Farmers were told that anyone who registered with the centre would not receive credit or essential supplies. Creating employment opportunities Two areas of employment opportunity arise from the deployment of ICTs. First, unemployed people can use ICTs to discover job opportunities. Second, they can become employed in the new jobs that are created through the deployment of ICTs. Poor people in rural localities lack opportunities for employment because they often do not have access to information about them. One use of ICTs is to provide on-line services for job placement through electronic labour exchanges in public employment service or other placement agencies. Normally, job brokering is carried out as a closed system involving intermediaries on behalf of their clients. The greater transparency enabled by ICT opens up possibilities for more precise information seeking. Through open job seeker banks, for example, employers can search and directly access résumés, which in turn are linked electronically to job vacancy banks. Tools have been developed to assist employers in screening résumés, or to send e-mails automatically to jobseekers when job vacancy announcements fitting certain pre-selected criteria are posted. The ILO notes that some developing countries have been able to create employment for thousands of women and men through community-access points and telecentres. One common option is to purchase a mobile phone through a micro credit program and to earn income by providing low cost phone calls to others (Curtain, 2001). Telecentres can also offer use of ICT facilities for business purposes to small and micro-enterprises that do not have their own private facilities. In some countries in the region, telecentres are being set up through public and private initiatives in telephone shops, schools, libraries, community centres, police stations and clinics. Sharing the expense of equipment, skills and access among an ever-increasing number of users also helps to cut costs and make these services viable in remote areas. India, for example, has seen rapid growth in cyber kiosks that provide access to social communication as well as business support services for underprivileged groups. The kiosks are often upgraded Subscriber Trunk Dialling booths that are widely found in all parts of the countryside in India. These are small street shops, offering access to public phones for long distance calls. They number about 300,000 and have generated more than 600,000 jobs. Youth unemployment constitutes over 30% of total unemployment in Asia Pacific and young people are particularly well placed to take advantage of such growth areas. People with appropriate skills, possibly obtained from ICT-based learning facilities, may gain employment as a result of the growth in remote ICT processing facilities that are located outside high-income countries. The facilities provide a range of services, including help lines, technical support, reservations handling, sales, data conversion, as well as voice and data transcription. Other remote processing services are payroll accounting, internal auditing and credit appraisals. High-end remote processing includes creating digitized maps of townships, utilities, roads and other facilities. It is claimed that back office functions that are likely to grow in importance are settling insurance claims and summarizing legal documents, such as witness depositions. The widespread use of English on the Internet has created the need for local content and applications for non-English speakers. For the poor in particular, the vast amount of information on the Internet requires an intermediary to sift through it to identify what is relevant and then to interpret it in the light of the local context. People with language and ICT skills are well placed to perform this role of ‘information intermediary.’ A related source of ICT-generated employment for young people is through Call Centres. These offer telephone-based services from a central office to customers in a variety of business sectors. Call Centres handle telephone calls, fax, e-mail and other types of customer contact, in live and automated formats. They have expanded rapidly in Europe and are important sources of work in Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines. The Internet can also play a pre-eminent role in a pro-poor tourism marketing strategy by providing information about remote tourist locations, including photos of key features, and by providing a ready means of low cost communication via e-mail. The Namibia Community-Based Tourism Association in southwest Africa assists local communities to set up tourism enterprises in the previously neglected rural areas of Namibia. The Association has set up a web site with detailed information, including a map about each of the seven regions in rural Namibia and the community-based tourism facilities in each region. An example of the use of ICT to help bridge the gap between employment in the informal sector and the mainstream economy is India’s Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA). Its 220,000 members are women and young women who earn a living through their own labour or through small businesses. SEWA was one of the first organizations in India to realize the potential for harnessing ICT to help women in the informal sector. It has sought to develop the organization’s capacity to use computers by conducting awareness programs and imparting basic computer skills to its team leaders, “barefoot” managers and members of its various member associations. Many of SEWA’s member organizations have launched their own web sites to sell their products in the global virtual market place. Reinforcing social mobilization Social mobilization is a process for harnessing local resources that can foster sustainable forms of community self-development. This was pioneered by the UNDP South Asia Poverty Alleviation Programme (SAPAP), which was established in 1993 to enhance national capacities for integration of growth and poverty alleviation policies and to demonstrate the feasibility of functioning social mobilization mechanisms in each of the participating countries. SAPAP is UNDP’s largest regional programme in Asia, with an allocation of $11.3 million. The programme is operating in six of the seven SAARC countries: in the Syangja District in Nepal, in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India, in the Kishorganj Sadar Thana in Bangladesh, in the Kohat District of the North West Frontier Province in Pakistan, in the Nuwera-Eliya District in Sri Lanka and on the Noonu Atoll in Maldives. The programme’s major aim is to help remove the constraints that poor rural communities face in harnessing their potential to develop themselves. To this end, a three-tier strategy is followed, based on social organization, capital formation and human resource development. First, villagers are brought together to discuss local development issues of common interest and to initiate local development initiatives. Second, they are persuaded of the need to save, which after some time becomes an important source for credit operations. Third, they are trained, mainly in management techniques and income generating activities, in order to create the foundation for grass-roots institutional development, to improve sectoral service delivery and to support those who want to undertake socio-economic activities. What is relevant here is not just that all these activities can be facilitated through the use of ICTs, but that such activities have been demonstrated to be instrumental in helping communities make the most out of ICTs. A study of the Nepal component Failed information and communications technology (ICT) projects Article Learning from the mistakes of others 10 January 2012 The continuing high failure level of ICT projects, with attendant implications for costs and efficiency, should be a serious cause of concern for businesses around the world, including in Hong Kong. The good news is that thanks to a recent in-depth study in Australia, our understanding of the problems can improve, along with our ability to take measures to prevent them developing. The rate of failure is remarkable. In September 2011, Harvard Business Review reported that one in six ICT projects examined had a cost overrun averaging 200% and a schedule overrun averaging 70%. The phenomenon is not new: it was defined back in 1995, when Martin Cobb worked for the Secretariat of the Treasury Board of Canada. The high level of failure he observed in ICT projects led Cobb to state what has since become known as Cobbs Paradox: We know why projects fail; we know how to prevent their failure - so why do they still fail? Part of the reason that the high incidence of project failures baffled Cobb – and continues to baffle executives today – is that there has been little proper evidence available about how and why ICT projects fail. Few organisations which experience a failed project have spent much time investigating or analysing the causes of the failure. And those that have done generally have had no interest in publicising the results of their investigations. This means that it has often been difficult to base our discussions of the reasons that ICT projects fail on actual examples. However, in November 2011, George Brouwer, the Ombudsman for the state of Victoria, Australia, released a report of his investigation into 10 major ICT projects commissioned by the state over the past decade. Each of the projects examined failed to some degree: most failed to meet their original timetable and all ran over budget. From an original budget of HK$10 billion, the latest estimated combined cost of the 10 projects is HK$21.3 billion. The Ombudsmans report analyses the failures of each project in detail and makes a series of recommendations for the future. The main findings of the report included: • Agencies failed to spend enough time or resources in planning and developing a business case. In some projects, business cases were not prepared at all. In others, the drafting of the business case was seen as an administrative requirement, in which the boxes were ticked with a minimal amount of effort. • In several cases, agencies failed to give proper consideration and gain adequate understanding of the current state of the systems and business processes which would be affected by the project. This led to increased costs and delays, as more work than anticipated was required to prepare systems, implement processes and train personnel. • There was often a failure to define clearly roles and responsibilities, both between the vendor and the customer and within the customer’s organisation. This meant that it was difficult to hold anyone accountable for failures. In only one of the projects examined did the failure to achieve a deliverable result lead to the departure of the responsible officer. • Senior officers and departmental heads often had insufficient involvement in the projects. The Ombudsman highlighted that these were not simply technology projects; they were business transformation projects enabled by ICT and as such, needed cooperation from the whole business and oversight from senior management. • Brouwer criticised agencies for taking on overly ambitious and complex projects. Many of the projects examined involved highly customised systems designed to suit existing business practices and minimise training. The prime example of this was the Link project to develop a new database for Victoria Police. The system was customised to make it look and feel like the existing system. This approach greatly increased costs involved in implementing and maintaining the system, and the project was eventually abandoned. • Some agencies failed to ensure effective transfer of risk to the vendor in the contract. Witnesses stated that large ICT vendors were well versed and experienced in contract negotiations and this put relatively inexperienced customer staff at a disadvantage. In the HRAssist project to develop a human resources system for Victoria Police, the contract was based on time and materials-based fees (which led to cost overruns) and did not contain fee abatements for delays. Conclusions The Ombudsman’s report provides an invaluable source of detailed evidence about why ICT projects fail and should be compulsory reading for ICT project managers and procurement officers. While the report deals only with ICT projects carried out by the Victorian public sector, the mistakes made are certainly not unique to the Victorian Government of Australia or to the public sector, and Hong Kong businesses have a good opportunity to learn from them.
Posted on: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 10:59:21 +0000