Introduction

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have repeatedly demonstrated their potential for alleviating poverty in developing countries. In many instances, poor people have experienced benefits in the form of; increased income; better health care; improved education and training; access to job opportunities; engagement with government services; contacts with family and friends; enterprise development opportunities; increased agricultural productivity, and so on. However, in probably all cases, these experiences have arisen from highly focused and locally intensive pilot projects that were experimental in nature. Whilst doubts and uncertainties continue to exist with regard to the applicability of ICTs to the problems of the poor, such projects contribute immeasurably to the growing body of knowledge and experience that is required in order to understand the conditions under which ICTs can be usefully applied to the alleviation of poverty.

However, the global problem of poverty alleviation is enduring and massive. Achieving the millennium development goal of halving global poverty by 2015 will require an enormous undertaking many orders of magnitude greater in resource mobilisation and complexity than even the most ambitious of the present ICT for poverty alleviation schemes to be found anywhere in the world. In terms of their global impact on the world’s poor population, the effect of the existing initiatives is undetectable. But in many cases their contribution is to show the way in important areas of activity that have emerged as critical factors for improvements in the lives of the poor through the application of ICTs to their problems. We are now beginning, for instance, to understand the critical role of community participation, in addition to institutional transformation, culture specificity, policy-making telecommunications reform, openness in government, the need for a suitable legal framework and the development of human resources.

In the light of the experiences and knowledge that can now be derived from the so-called success stories of ICT for poverty alleviation, it is time to take the next step towards propagating the benefits to the masses; the wider populations of millions of poor people for whom ICTs currently have no meaning whatsoever. Governments have the primary role to play here, and there is evidence to suggest that many government planners, whilst being aware of the opportunities that exist for ICTs in alleviating poverty, are uncertain as to how to proceed with national implementations that can distribute the potential benefits to widespread populations. Propagation here involves more than mere replication on a larger scale. If the unit costs of the pilot projects are scaled up to national proportions, then they immediately become prohibitive. Whilst localised adaptations to the opportunities offered by ICTs are fairly easy to achieve in the intensive atmosphere of pioneering projects, adjustments at national levels require wholesale institutional reform and change management practices that can be expected to encounter entrenched resistance, scepticism and interests that are vested in the status quo.

Justification
Research is now required in order to shed light on the knowledge required to scale up existing practices that are showing promise to wider populations at state and national levels. Governments need to know how to proceed in order to extend the results of a few pilots to entire nations. Development practitioners and policy advisers still cannot make a convincing connection between ICTs and poverty alleviation at the aggregate level and until this becomes possible, then the millennium goal will remain a dream. It is easy to ask, “if one (or a hundred) communities can see some benefit from ICTs then why not every community in the country?” It is much harder to prepare a programme with any confidence that poverty at the national level can be alleviated with ICTs. Moreover, as new experiments are being mounted regularly, it is questionable that they are addressing these concerns of propagation. What is the state of knowledge at present, and equally important, what is that we don’t know that must be learned before reliable methods, practices and policies can be put in place for the benefit of wider populations?

This proposal is for research into existing implementations of ICTs for poverty alleviation that are showing promise for the purpose of eliciting knowledge that can guide efforts towards propagating them for aggregated poverty alleviation among wider populations, at say state, provincial or national level.

Focus of the Research
The main focus of the research would be to identify community participation and collaborative activities leading up to or during the actual designing of these projects. These activities assist governments and development agencies to understand the specific needs of the community. Participatory activities include activities such as holding a community meeting to understand needs and acquire feedback at a preliminary level. We will also document the following: i) methods of improving channels and levels of communication between community and development agencies/government officials, ii) challenges in terms of drawing perspectives from local people - creating a feedback loop in the shaping of these projects, iii) the challenges of mutually identifying ways to improve social and economic possibilities, iv) The stage at which expert knowledge should be applied; and, most importantly, and v) the study will postulate reasons as to why and when effective community participation creates successful projects. The study will confirm the hypothesis that community participation is more often then not key to the success of such projects: why, how, and when it will work in future projects.

Research Methodology
The research methodology will be based on on-the-spot analysis of the e-initiatives. Various parameters like models of financing, especially level of community involvement and ownership, infrastructure set-up, appropriateness and penetration of the selected technology, socio-economic profile of the users, cost-benefit analysis, degree of success in capacity building, impact of the e-initiative on the social and economic life of the users, management practices and organizational structures, potential for adoptability and replicability, sustainability, etc. will be used for the study. Primary and secondary data will be used along with other resource materials. A structured questionnaire, sampling and survey techniques will also be used.

Several aspects relate to this concept of community participation. The following are some considerations in the research (-and in no particular order). Researchers will be expected to enquire into the following:

• Ways of identifying the appropriate mechanism (s) for community participation;
• Preparation process, outreach, sample segment of population (a good mix);
• The identification of needs, within a participatory framework;
• Identifying Strengths in Community, and of Gaps;
• Human Resource: incorporating local leaders, inducing local champions;
• Identifying appropriate end-goals - such as access for marginalised communities;
• Identifying services needed, and linking issue with sustainability/pricing mechanism for various segments of the communities;
• The setting up of locally-manned coordinating committees for implementation stage;
• Understanding when to apply expert knowledge; incorporation of technology element, clarification of priorities;
• Clarifying community participation vis-a-vis Policy/Regulatory environment;
• Clarifying linkages with political and social environment (-issues such as various freedoms, culture, democracy, and the acceptability of participatory processes);
• Clarifying linkages vis-a-vis local institutions (especially), government, donor community and stakeholders; and
• Means of improving channels of communication between government, development community and local community

Community e-Projects to be Studied
Please click here to see list of the community e-projects that this research project will analyse.

Expected Outcome
The new knowledge derived will be directed to development practitioners, policy advisers, community representatives and government officials who are responsible for influencing national efforts towards poverty alleviation. Little work so far has addressed such issues. Although the areas of telecommunications and legal reform, which are only sensibly examined at the national level, have been reasonably well articulated in the context of ICTs for widespread poverty alleviation, other issues, such as community engagement, institutional reform, content development, adaptations for cultural specifics and private sector participation are less well understood. This project seeks to understand the influence of these, and other, factors in the achievement of benefits so far from existing initiatives, and to develop a framework for addressing them within programmes that deploy ICTs for widespread poverty alleviation.

Outputs
The following outputs will result from this research::

1. A state-of-the-art review on ICT & Poverty (Primer Number 1; target audience: planners and policy-makers);
2. An analytic study report, developing a framework for widespread poverty alleviation with ICTs, and including recommendations for future action (Main Output/Analysis; target audience: policy- makers, planners, and resource allocators considering implementation of similar programmes and projects).
3. A simple, easy-to-use, “how to” handbook on planning and implementing similar projects (target audience: managers and implementers of similar programmes) The handbook will document findings on how to optimize community participation and the feedback process (Primer Number 2).

Timetable
The research will be carried over a period of nine months, beginning in April 2003.

Research Partners

1. Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (UNDP-APDIP)
2. UNDP India
3. Department of Personnel and Administration Reforms, Government of India

The Advisory Group

An advisory group will guide the study from beginning to end. Members include:

OP Agarwal, Joint Secretary, DOPT, Department of Personnel Administration and Reforms, Government of India
Shahid Akhtar, UNDP-APDIP
Subhash Bhatnagar, Professor, Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad
R Chandrasekhar, Joint Secretary E-Governance, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology
Rajiv Chawla, Revenue Secretary, Government of Karnataka, Bangalore
Satish Jha, President, Digital Partners, New Delhi
Kiran Karnik, President, National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM)
P.K. Pachauri, Tata Energy Research Institute, New Delhi
Pradeep Sharma, UNDP India

For more information, please contact :

James George Chacko
Programme Specialist
Access and Partnerships Development
Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme
Email: james@apdip.net