(These are notes for a talk to be given to an ITU sponsored workshop on Telecentre sustainability in Bangkok, May 23-25, 2011.
Almost since the very beginning of Telecentres/public access centres the nagging from funders – mostly governments but major NGO’s as well – has been directed towards making sure that these would somehow/sometime become financially self-sustaining i.e. “sustainable”. The idea was that once the initial investment had been made – mostly in providing hardware/software and some period of supported connectivity – that Telecentres would somehow magically be able to transform themselves into “social enterprises” which could get enough revenue from their local communities to:
•Pay salaries (and benefits) to staff
• Pay rent on buildings
• Cover access charges
• Cover charges for maintenance and replacement
Given that the Telecentres were established in the first place and located where they were precisely because the local population was for the most part poor, isolated, and other wise marginalized i.e. not in a position to pay for their own computers, Internet access etc. seems to have escaped the attention of those leading the demands for “sustainability”. That this sustainability was a more or less complete pipedream which any realistic assessment of the circumstances of Telecentres would have determined seems to have been overlooked as both funders and Telecentres themselves chose to hope somehow that the future reckoning in terms of funder expectations/Telecentre commitments would never arrive.
And so Telecentres have limped along without realistic plans for the future or sufficient funding to achieve even their modest goals and funders have turned to consultant study after consultant study to find the magic formula that would take off their hands/budgets this unwelcome dependency of providing internet and computer access to those on the other side of the “Digital Divide” i.e. those who for whatever reason were unable or unwilling to provide it for themselves.
To be very clear: certainly there are publicly accessible Internet centres in very many communities in all parts of the world. The most common name for them is Cybercafes. Cybercafes provide computer/Internet access primarily to young males to fulfill various fantasies via more or less violent games and other such pursuits. That it is widely headlined that these private enterprises have little or no redeeming social value (I won’t argue this at the moment) and certainly no value from a social or economic development perspective let alone resolving issues of a Digital or a Service Divide is almost unarguable.
The broader purpose of Telecentres was and remains to add value as social initiatives by governments or others by providing free or very low cost Internet access to low income populations, in remote regions, or for those with other forms of social disability that prevent broad participation in an increasingly digital society. If governments (or others) choose to de-fund existing Telecentres on the basis that they are saving them from the evil of “dependency” (or whatever) they should know that they are choosing to penalize precisely those whom they have otherwise identified as requiring support because of their social and economic circumstances.
Governments are not only unrealistic but they are deeply hypocritical in requiring communities in which they previously made these investments because of their overall lack of resources, to somehow now come up with the resources to support these facilities. One additional observation, Telecentre funders repeatedly confuse the issue of Telecentre utilization rates with the issue of funding and sustainability.
Cybercafes have high utilization rates (or they don’t survive) precisely because they are market driven and thus provide the kinds of services on which those without significant financial responsibilities are prepared to spend their money—i.e. entertainment. Telecentres have or at least should have the mission of providing Internet enabled services and opportunities for access and use to those otherwise unable to obtain such access, make such use and thus achieve a degree of digital inclusion.
These services (which of course, will vary from locations to location) are responsibilities and goals for which government funds have been budgeted. Attempting to download responsibility and cost for the delivery of these services onto the poor and marginalized themselves – which the continuing chants for “sustainability” in fact are, is both the height of irresponsibility and the height of cynicism.
The challenge is to design and develop Telecentres which are embedded (“owned”) by local communities and which provide those communities with among other capabilities the variety of services and supports (as for example e-government, e-health, small business development and support) which they require and which otherwise, in the absence of the Telecentre, would be much less accessible and much more costly and difficult to obtain (and to deliver).
Gurstein's Community Informatics 
Peter Day
May 18, 2011
Takes me back to 1997 and the COMMIT report that Kevin Harris (then of CDF) and I wrote. Has no-one learnt these lessons yet? Apart from you Mike that is?
Good post
Peter
Tracey Naughton
May 19, 2011
Sounds like community radio debate in the 90’s. That played out differently in various contexts. Look at South Africa’s case. A big issue in the early post Apartheid days was the unreconstructed advertising industry that was slow to embrace / respect non-white audiences. It took over a decade to get good income stream results there. I agree – the term sustainability doesn’t work in contexts where access to information / freedom of expression / poverty reduction are the key objectives. Globally I have seen in many projects that as soon as a viable opportunity to make money comes along, it is acted upon. The opportunity just isn’t always present for some time. I agree – sustainability – get over it. If it can happen, it will.
Sulah Ndaula
May 19, 2011
Michael Gurstein, aka MG – you wrote that telecentres can’t be sustainable. You pointed out that; first the location chosen – can’t support sustainability, funders never even thought about it, whatever ICT centre is sustainable – it is taken out of being a telecentre on the basis that it has no social angle – pointing out to cybercafés. As you wrap up, you note that people can’t pay therefore they can’t be penalized by asking them to pay or withdrawing support because they can’t pay, etc.
I agree with most of your reasoning but I aver a little different for closing, and what needs to be done for the future, as I say in what follows at http://themindmark.blogspot.com/2011/05/look-at-telecentre-sustainability.html
anita gurumurthy
May 19, 2011
From the perspective of institutional change in community
development, the role of a telecentre can be more fundamental – a
space that co-exists with the autonomous diffusion of and
decentralised access to technology.
The idea that there will be a deterritorialised, virtual public –
the informational commons – access to which can render redundant
the need for a physical, public space may only partially address
local, territorially-bound, collective, human architectures of
knowledge and action.
Perhaps then, we do need an institutional model that is dynamic –
telecentres that can as cultural institutions adapt to the needs
of local collectives – providing digital literacy, aggregation
of information, archiving of community narratives, etc – evolving
in their meanings and addressing community capabilities in
relation to local histories and visions for change.
Don
May 19, 2011
and always overlooked in this sustainability discussion – the ideal Telecentre is transitionary; the exact opposite of long-term sustainability. The best outcome for any Telecentre is to position itself as the pivotal/transitionary point between non access, and full access ? The best Telecentre is that which makes itself obsolete by virtue of decentralising services from the Telecentre to the populace.
Gene Loeb, Ph.D.
May 19, 2011
Beautiful, just what I was looking for because of its generalization to other similar situations of providing internet access to needy populations such as the BETOP program in Northern Illinois, providing broadband and computer lessons to disadvantaged elderly. It is easy to say that these programs should turn into self perpetuating, but that is because we live in fortunate advantaged situations, so it is easy to forget that there are very needy persons.
thanks.
Gene
Robert Kisalama
May 20, 2011
while the above debate is about sustainability,I would lie to argue that perhaps it is because at many fora we over emphasise what other circles have called technology determinism..rhetoric that we end up overlooking the realities in these communities.Until the communities view these telecentres as a path to resolving their already challenging environment,firstly they wont be used hence even the projected revenue from service can never be realised consequently thinking of sustaining an unutilised service may not be realistic.We should not forget lessons from the education sector where schools even in the developed world are wired but still technologies underutilised(BECTA report in UK, articles by Cuban etc)
John Hawker
May 20, 2011
Coming at this from another angle,
1 – I HATE the word sustainable. If a Wall Street company called
itself sustainable it’s share price would crash. Why do we apply the
same standards to the poorest of the poor?
Why must the rural poor, who often could teach the west a thing or
twelve about being truly “green” need to limit their growth? I think
it’s time we gave them space and if it means they pollute more than us
to grow fast, as the west did in the 50/60/70′, why not?
I find the term “sustainable” frankly insulting to the people I live
with, and work with. I want them to be VIABLE, and GROW and heavens
forbid, PROSPER. Yes someone used the word nicely once, but it’s not a
nice word, I’ve used the “F” word nicely but I don’t expect us to
adopt it either as a policy.
I’ll take the line telecentre – a term I already think obsolete, which
we called our selves “Learning Cafes”, is also already obsolete.
I’ll also take the tangent, that a telecentre or what ever you want to
call it needs to grow and offer greater and more varied services (as
per Sat-Ed model) and to do so it must be a viable concern.
I don’t think success is measured by the telecentre devolving, in fact
the opposite as is obvious by my words, it must evolve, into something
beyond what it is today.
Government can use it as a tool, as they use Toyota motor cars, ISP’s,
and other people and companies that provide services. I don’t trust
governments to do the right thing, by building a model that relies
upon continued funding cripples our growth.
A powerful network of sites, is a powerful thing, that can evolve,
should evolve, and be a major roll helping the community reach out and
those outside deliver in, and visa versa. They can and in my case are viable businesses, that provide social services not available otherwise.
Curmudgeonly John a I am sitting in a hospital bored to death.
Catalina Escobar
May 22, 2011
In Medellín, Colombia Telecenters are owned by the communities since the beginning. They are built based on participatory budgeting processes. The Mayorship assists during the installation and capacity building processes where they are thought: accounting, social entrepreneurship, team building, how to deal with conflict, they develop a business plan, they ID the needs of their community, etc. The Telecenters learn to do this by doing it themselves wit the support of NGOs (like Makaia – http://www.makaia.org). Now, what´s been happening lately is that the Mayorship is also buying services from them, for example a process that the Mayorship used to do off-line like the registration of youth to technical programs, is now done at the Telecenters and they are paid for this.
This can also happen with the support of the Digital City initiative called Medellin Digtal (www.medellindigital.gov.co)
This case is worth looking at!
Best
Catalina
Ricardo Gomez
May 23, 2011
Telecenters used to be the only place where people without a computer could use one… no longer. There are public libraries, increasingly offering access to computers, and especially, there are cybercafes: we have found an average proportion of about six cybercafes for every library or telecenter (average based on study of 25 developing countries), which means that while telecenters per se may not always be “sustainable” the concept of public access to computers and the Internet is very much alive and thriving. Dominated by cybercafes, which tend to provide only access: what does this mean to the efforts to use computers and the Internet in ways that contribute to people development?
Rather than the death of telecenters, we are facing the reinvention of an ecosystem of public access computing venues and facilities. This might be the best challenge to both libraries and telecenters: to make themselves relevant by providing the education, training, facilitation and information resources (in short, “social appropriation”, a concept borrowed from “apropiacion social” in Spanish), which is something that cybercafes won’t provide. How can libraries and telecenters better partner with each other and with cybercafes, in order to make public access to computers and the Internet a really meaningful tool for community development?
Left alone, access to computers seems to result mostly in facebook and porn. Effectively enabling social appropriation can make a huge difference, and it can happen in libraries, in telecenters or in cybercafes.
Sulah Ndaula
May 24, 2011
Well said, Ricardo. Cybercafes were nowhere until telecentres were born. Cybercafes learnt the concept of public access and deployed the profitable bit in a profitable sector, as it suited the entrepreneur. Some took out internet, some library, photocopying, public call centre etc.
The above strategy, didn’t or does not make public access venue in rural – call them telecentres – to be more of a telecentre than those operating with financial feasibility in mind, whenever they are, be it – urban, semi urban or rural. Neither, would it make cybercafes less impacting to social economic development processes.
Facts have it that telecentres charge as high as 5 to 10 times than what cybercafes charge. And we expect the digital revolution to lead to the creation of more and more hybrids of telecentres – probably more simplified than the present day cybercafe. In fact, they are already, here – as suggested by the emerged names of telecentres.
So – let us not be trapped in ideas, we must be embracing and open to cross pollination within the overall sector of public access. We should not look for uniformity and conformity but rather diversity that points it guns to development.
Meaghan O.
June 28, 2011
I work at an organization – IREX – that is implementing public access programs through library modernization, and we agree that libraries offer a kind of sustainability that telecenters and other newly-built institutions generally don’t offer. As we say in a blog response:
Libraries are an inherently sustainable community civic institution. They have existing relationships with local governments and typically have public funding mechanisms. Libraries are naturally accessible as they offer information access to any community member, regardless of ability to pay or social status. They belong to networks located throughout a country, often even in the smallest villages. At their best, effective public libraries are essentially local in that they respond immediately to specific, identified community needs. And most importantly, for a variety of reasons, they are already on the ground – they don’t require building something new from scratch. Despite these factors, we’ve found that many in the development field are simply uninformed of how libraries can support their projects.
Michael Gurstein
July 4, 2011
Excellent observations Meaghan but as someone else pointed out in another discussion on this blogpost the problem is that libraries and library networks are often unavailable in Less Developed Countries and particularly in Africa and parts of Asia. So the library solution to “sustainability” doesn’t really work in those countries and another solution needs to be found.
Michael Gurstein
May 24, 2011
I should say that based on the level and range of interest in Telecentres as expressed by the participants in the ITU training program I’m currently participating in the concept and practice of Telecentres is alive and flourishing in many parts of the world.
The challenge I think, is to resist if possible the temptation as evidenced by the Australian case where Telecentres have been seen as obsolete in the face of widespread (but of course not universal) computers in the home and mobile Internet access and rethink Telecentres as places of ICT enabled community focused service and other activities at the local level. The range of these services and the degree of utilization will vary–as for example whether it is widely used because alternatives aren’t available or has only limited use because it provides a public means of access/use where private means are unavailable/unaffordable.
However, my own (Next Generation Telecentre http://wp.me/pJQl5-6K) argument is that the Telecentre can and should survive as a base for local ICT enabled innovation, for structured and facilitated access to say e-Government services, and as a potential local anchor for integrated broadband enabled wireless and PC development oriented activities.
Note that none of these are directly “sustainable” in the pure cash in/cash out sense but provide a necessary service in communities that warrants (and could attract) various forms of external public and private sector support and as well would allow for as John Hawker would say, a variety of alternative income streams as well.
Aldo de Moor
May 25, 2011
On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 10:52 PM, Don Cameron wrote (on the ciresearchers-mailing list):
> Also for the most part – our various levels of Government have now lost interest in the
> concept of Telecentre’s and other physical points of access preferring to focus on the generic > ‘cloud’ and wide-area ICT access offered by projects such as low-cost satellite and fiber to
> the home (of itself another debate about the worth of the project for another day!). Start-up
> funding for Telecentre’s is no longer available.
Re the move from telecentre to fibre to the home: to what extent is the community meetup function of telecentres taken into account when deciding to close them down? I was recently told a story by a South African architect involved in a township housing development project which started to make me think: previously, everybody collected water at a communal water tap. A few months after all houses had got their own water taps, it turned out that nobody was using them anymore. The reason: people exchanged local news and gossip at the communal tap, which to them was more important than the luxury of having their own facilities. (Furthermore, most private taps had been sold to make some extra cash). Could a telecentre have a similar role to play? Or will everybody log in to the virtual village community site?
John Hawker
May 26, 2011
Ricardo – interesting point about Libraries, they rarely exist in the remote places I go.
From day one our handful of sites have always included a real, paper and print library, and most interesting, this has been one of the most popular parts of a site.
We’d include a lot of comic style books, as well as text books reference etc.
John
Lohento
May 26, 2011
Various comments on the initial article of MG sent to the CIResearch discussion list
—
In my opinion, the debate about telecentre sustainability has always been the result of, and polluted by two factors:
1) the confusion between private-owned cybercafés, operating in solvable environments and community/rural telecentres of which aims, since the very beginning have been, social, underprivileged communities’ capacity building, public information service delivery to those communities, which by definition don’t have sufficient resources to pay for various services,
2/ and the fact that most community/rural telecentres have been supported by donor agencies which need/are brought at some point in time to stop their support. Thus, somehow cynically as it may appear, sustainability becomes a compulsory requirement.
In countries that don’t need recurrent external financial support, I wonder if national public authorities require a local public info-com facility to become financially sustainable. Interestingly, while at the international level and in some circles, talking about telecentres is considered to be out-dated, at local level in many developing countries, investments in rural/community telecentres are increasing and undertaken with local resources. As someone said, it appears sometimes like some (past) debates around investments in radios.
—-
(…) In West Africa that I know the most, people are rarely ready to pay actual costs of information services (market information businesses using mobile phones have been for example facing that issue); thus private business in that area is not fully viable without supports or incentives of various natures, especially due to high operating costs (linked notably to energy availability or telecoms costs). And most importantly, I think some development information services that telecentres can offer in rural areas can be seen as social/public services and one cannot ask citizens to support their full costs.
—-
Some points that are important for me about this debate are that:
– some people should understand that it’s natural (and a positive move) that telecentres or public ICT public access points become less useful as individual access increases
– regarding the current situation or future of telecentres, there is no one-size-fits-all;
– in many regions these facilities are still very useful for a variety of reasons, and their function and role are/can be diverse.
As a matter of fact, as also illustrated by various contributions, new government initiatives in developing countries are being put in place (maybe it’s now some policy-makers are understanding better their need or maybe this is due to better ICT coverage occurring in many underprivileged regions); Obviously, some factors, traditionally pointed out, like managerial aspects and adequate development service implementation (which requires once again a strong multi-stakeholder collaboration) require more attention, first of all for the social sustainability of these facilities.
—-
Ken Lohento
Srinivas Garudachar (BG)
May 31, 2011
Hi Mike,
Telecentre, if it is supposed to be a collection of multidisciplinary types of services from across various segments, is really a near utopian idea just from the capability-to-run-it perspective, given simply the kinds of diverse skills that are required to fulfill the various holistic needs of the community. For the operator, village entrepreneur to have the exposure and understanding of say- eGov type of services, healthcare experience and innate community trust, education, microfinance as well as operational exposure of ICT and running of a business ground up- to find such a guy anywhere much less at the BoP rural grassroots would be like finding a needle-in-the haystack. So, if from the outset one is to make a business with these so many types of service offerings, it would be a hard wall to climb.
However, if you start off focusing on the most important societal problems areas, that one can set out to solve- say helping livelihoods improvement, where the impact is obvious and quantifiable, then that can actually bring success as seem by various metrics- such as entrepreneur profitability and community respect gained; community partnership/ownership in the enterprise; customer loyalty/volume of usage; gives and gets of the rest of the value-chain (for ex. in agriculture- the value chain would consist of farmer, entrepreneur, suppliers, experts, markets…how much these are engaged and what they contribute to and reap off, is a success metric). In total- this manifests itself in a return of “community or stakeholder trust”. Once this trust in the system has been gained, I believe this becomes the foundation for launching into other services, given the various other unmet needs (health, education, eGov, finance…) that present themselves as opportunities….as part of the vision- I think the concept of Telecentre being a provider of a host of diverse services can be a real end goal, but not a viable starting point at ground zero.
This is borne out of our experiences running our small farmer centric eAgro operation which has met with unqualified success across all metrics, and this is now leading us to foray into other areas just to holistically address the common social/developmental needs of the community in a sustainable manner.
Begzsuren Jamsranjav HarUhert
July 7, 2011
Hi all,
I was a one of the participant from Mongolia to the workshop of Sustainable Development of the e-Community Centers for Asian countries in Agra, India on May, 2008.
When, I believe, Mongolian 300 public libraries must do an innovation on service and management, then one main service of public libraries can be telecenters.
Here is a link of Mongolian ICT White Paper 2011 :
http://ictpa.gov.mn/uploads/book/White Paper 2011 (ICTPA).pdf
There is a no word about public library, so this is very sad for me.
We are looking for government adviser expert on Mongolian public library innovation and administration.
Don Cameron
July 19, 2011
I’ve tremendously enjoyed the way this discussion has led to a journey of
discovery – what did happen to those Telecentres of a decade or more past
that having now achieved a communal vision; morphed, evolved, faded away or
otherwise became something else, did the vision survive, Were the successes
of the Telecentre ultimately transformable and sustainable’
I also find the sub-thread on financial sustainability tremendously
interesting having sat through many local com-dev meetings privy to
different thoughts on the topic. What are we really trying to sustain, a
Telecentre as a single project and concept or a far wider communal vision?
Some argue a Telecentre is sustainable only when the physical Telecentre
itself can continue to exist without external support. Others the
Telecentre is only a means to an end; true sustainability happens when the
required community services are provided and sustainable irrespective of the
presence of the Telecentre. That sustainability in the concept of community
development is much larger than can be measured by the hours of operation of
any single Telecentre.. Others again argue that sustainability is a myth –
we have no more of a chance of making Telecentres sustainable than we did
the telegraph. A Telecentre must by design become obsolete once the provided
services are economical and pervasive; that we should gain as much as we can
from monies used to start-up a Telecentre in full knowledge that once it’s
gone, it will not be replaced.
This later view perhaps being that which most strongly drives the
entrepreneurial communal mindset.
My take leads to this entrepreneurial vision that most Telecentres are a
means to an end for communities wishing to improve levels of access and
education, promotions and self development. A Telecentre can only truly call
itself successful when it can close it’s doors without having an adverse
impact on the community ‘ this in part stems from the fact that funds are
limited so building any Telecentre usually involves taking one community
common (or asset) and making it into something else. Most Telecentre’s were
first commons of one sort or another; taken away from the community (as seen
by some) for the purpose of building a Telecentre. As someone internal to
these community concerns and discussions it was always apparent that some
people support this idea while others are understandably objectionable to
any concept that sees a preferred place of access filled with “geeks and
computers”.
And add to this a generational perspective – I still lead to a view of a
Telecentre as being somewhat innovative (my Baby-Boomer heritage), however
my children view the concept as old-world and inappropriate to the needs of
today. I do not see a lot of young people promoting Telecentres nowadays.
So despite the fact the majority of Australian Telecentre’s have now closed
or morphed… were the projects successful’ Were the underlying concepts
sustainable’ I argue they most certainly were successful and sustainable
(re-capping the Telecentre Champions hat 🙂
Revisiting the communities of my Telecentre days (and memories of terrible
pay and the long hours that come with these projects), I see communities
where access is nowadays pervasive and very wide-spread. Cottage industries
with web pages promoted and products sold online. Local tourism portals.
Politics discussed online and local issues raised, sometimes on global
forum. Politicians replying to the concerns of locals. Tiny community
libraries now equipped with free access public computers. Schools providing
laptops to students. U3A computer training being delivered to the elderly in
police citizens youth clubs. Mobile phone towers and kids with iPhones.
Local computer shops started by entrepreneurs that not so long ago had not
even seen a computer.
Communities online in every sense because the Telecentre provided education
and proved the community itself as being sustainable to those cynical of any
small rural community achieving sustainability in this wider world of ours ‘
I rather suspect that other than a handful of Champions nobody within these
communities really expected the Telecentre to be sustainable, what they
cared about was promoting that our community is sustainable to a wider
cynical world. Visit us, invest in us, trust us (buy from us). That’s what
the Telecentre was really about for a majority.
Yes we certainly made a difference.
Today these Telecentre venues have mostly reverted to other communal uses –
one a community hall, next a Telecentre, now a local Art Gallery. Another a
local Church public building, next a Telecentre, now a community training
centre. Another a Council meeting room, next a Telecentre, now a Small
Business Enterprise Centre. Yet another a community hall, next a Telecentre,
now a Government Telework Centre, and so on…
The one thing these communities all had in common was the strength to
identify the need, find funds and build the project, see it to completion
and redirect resources elsewhere (to other identified areas of need) once
the Telecentre project was done (so all that preliminary training in project
lifecycle management really was worthwhile :-).
But I acknowledge this is not a model that fits everywhere.
Don
Sulah Ndaula
January 5, 2013
MG and other telecentre friends, since I read this article, Telecentres are not “Sustainable”: Get Over It!” I have felt ashamed – that I probably did less to see that telecentres become sustainable. As a result I have been wandering for answers, within and without… And now allow me present to you a new model that I believe would guide the process of planning, implementing, evaluating and predicting telecentre self reliance.
Please read more of the story and the pdf file download of the model at:
http://themindmark.blogspot.com/2013/01/how-to-profit-from-telecentres-new_6.html#links
I have left the pages on the model’s application, limitation and recommendation blank on purpose – to invite sector appraisal and dialogue – in form of feedback about the model.
Michael Gurstein
January 6, 2013
Thanks for this Sulah and for pointing to your very interesting paper. I’m hoping that it will re-ignite a serious discussion on Telecentres. What I’m observing is that while Telecentres are still a widely recognized instrument for supporting rural connectivity, the overall thinking and policy discussions have faded along with the faded interest of the big donors who have gone on to the next shiny big thing without reflecting on the continuity and legacy of the very significant investments and continuing activities of Telecentres in the field.