I’m currently in the very final stages of a 2 ½ month series of travels/visits to various community informatics locations and individuals/organizations in South and East Asia.
While in Sri Lanka I had a chance to meet with the corporate social responsibility group of the largest local cell phone company. Among other things we discussed a project that they are developing for farmers which will allow them to phone into a central location to get regularly updated price reports on various crops. The project has just started so they don’t yet have data on user uptake but the project seems a viable one since the only cost to the company is the cost of the call centre (and compiling the information) and the call centre can be put to other purposes during those times of the day or year when inquiries are slack.
The project is a quite straightforward one and the company sees that it could very likely be financially viable (from the additional revenue generated by the associated traffic) while at the same time providing a useful service, disintermediating for the farmers from the need to rely on middlemen for providing prices. They further are looking on this as developing a cell platform on whose foundation a range of additional similar services might be provided to farmers or others (i.e. a call in to a human or electronic database for regularly updated information of value). As well they are looking at the possibility of establishing an exchange point where farmers or others could call in with something they have to sell and others could call in looking to buy certain items. (Notably, at this point they don’t see the need (or perhaps possibility) of charging for any of these services, relying on the increase in cell traffic (and presumably customer loyalty) as being sufficient to make the service(s) viable.
As we were discussing the service and its background (they appear to have adopted the overall strategy which was initially pioneered in Sri Lanka by one of the local NGO’s actively involved in telecentre development) the discussion shifted over to one examining the role of “research” in relation to the services they were developing and overall for their approach to providing (value added and other) services particularly in rural areas (which notably comprise some 80% of Sri Lanka’s overall population). What came out in our discussion was that the cell company sees itself as having a very significant untapped “research” resource in the nationwide grassroots network of local small entrepreneurs found in every village selling air time on their behalf. These independent agents are currently recognized by the company as a potential source of market information and I suggested that they might also be a source of ideas for new products as they are very close to the villagers and would very much have their finger on the pulse of what kind of cell based services might be of interest to end users.
I’ve been thinking about this research resource/research approach as I’ve been looking at other community informatics implementations and programs elsewhere in Asia and beyond.
As I’ve discussed elsewhere in part in What is Community Informatics (and Why Does It Matter? ) Community Informatics research differs from conventional social science research in a number of ways:
1. it is future oriented rather than retrospective i.e. it looks towards what could (should) be done rather than what has been done in the past
2. it is iterative i.e. it builds from research (and practical) result to research (and practical) result
3. its desired outcome is practical success rather than explanatory models with explanatory models being inputs to practice rather than vice versa
4. it operates in a highly volatile environment where basic conditions such as the underlying technology platforms, service offerings and cost structures, and policy contexts may be in rapid and unpredictably evolution
What is notable in my various travels and equally in reflecting on the experience elsewhere is how little actual useful research has been conducted or is being conducted into the community use of ICTs particularly from a perspective which attempts to understand the current in order to inform the future. Much of the research that has been undertaken is in the form of case studies many of which are interesting and even useful but most of which suffer from having been framed (for the purposes of academic credit) within the methodological or theoretical constraints of one academic discipline or another – thus we have anthropological studies of technology uptake which focus on how the technology reinforces (or not) existing cultural patterns of power and privilege, geography studies of how ICT uptake contributes to patterns of migration (rural-urban), sociological studies which examine ICT uptake through a lens of gender and local culture and so on and so on. Each of these is of course, valuable in its own right and together they can inform technology design, implementation strategy and ICT policy but they lack the immediacy or linkages to actual community informatics developments to directly influence how these are undertaken.
In practice it appears in fact, that none of the major community informatics program initiatives undertaken at the national level either by governments or NGO’s have had significant research components associated with them. Thus the programmes with which I have some direct familiarity (as for example in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, South Africa, Canada) all proceeded with major implementations in the field with no installed capability for acquiring information concerning these implementations in a systematic (methodologically rigourous) manner and thus had no capability of undertaking feedback based research as a means to “feed forward” into planning and programme evolution and development. What this has meant of course, is that these programmes have not had the capacity or the information resources to learn from their mistakes (or successes) or to plan for effective adaptations in the face of on-going and quite rapid evolution in technology platforms, service applications, policy contexts and so on.
The very powerful model for research suggested by the Sri Lanka mobile company i.e. using its field network as a source for information collection is one that would under certain circumstances transfer quite directly and usefully into other contexts where community informatics networks had been established (e.g. telecentre networks) as part of overall programs. Thus for example, in Bangladesh the 2000 telecentres affiliated with Bangladesh Telecentre Network (BTN) could, with appropriate training and direction from a central/core research facility, undertake a range of research activities supportive of the evolution of the network in a variety of ways including for example:
1. the identification and testing of appropriate business/sustainability models
2. the identification of new products and services for delivery via the individual telecentres
3. feedback on appropriate skill/training requirements for telecentre operators
4. the identification and testing of necessary technology and telecommunications platforms for the telecentres and other community informatics installations
5. data concerning outcomes and impacts of investment in the individual sites and the overall network
6. scans of local technology environments and innovation capacities as preliminary to new investments
7. and so on…
However, for any of this research to be conducted there is the need for a relatively sophisticated (and reasonably well funded) research capacity at or near the “hub” of the network which acts as to design the research, do research/data collection training for individual telecentre operators, do analysis of systematically derived data towards quantitatively robust results, do qualitative assessments of feedback from the telecentres in the field and so on. This core research capacity should be driven by those with formal research experience and qualifications since in some instances (but not all) formal research design and outputs will be required (as for example to support evaluations or funding proposals). As well, the research element will need to be in touch with the larger community informatics research community as a means to identify emerging issues, themes and opportunities as the basis for positive evolution in the local activities and network based programs and to extend horizons and overcome the parochialism which inevitably arises in many locally based networks.
Funding this type of research support to local network development would be a very cost-effective way for donors to contribute to the on-going sustainability and effectiveness of locally based community informatics. As well, it would be very desirable to find ways of bridging more academically focused research into this kind of research support as for example through linking on-going academic research into this as an element or through internships/post-docs and so on. But the key is find a means to develop and sustain a core “professional” research activity as part of the central network development and facilitation function presumably at a national level since the issues being addressed and the specialized skills required will have national implications (and the cost of which would be such as to warrant being amortized over relatively large networks).
A key element of the requirement is that the research and researchers be a constitutive element of the network being researched. Only in this way will there be sufficient trusted communication between the research core and the field to allow for effective data collection and truly informed data analysis and interpretation. As well of course, the availability of research such as this as part of the on-going operations of the network will strengthen the network considerably by providing background information for training, for technology change and upgrading, for proposal development and evaluation and so on.
A research approach which builds up from on-going telecentre networks into the work of research cores rather than down from the work of individual (usually academically located) researchers will thus be of immensely greater benefit to the central telecentre (community informatics) activities while also contributing useful information on a national and where there are suitable opportunities for inter-connections and linkages, on an international level as well.
Research funding which only focuses on and provides support to the academic element of the research in such a fragile and volatile area such as telecentres/community informatics runs the very real risk of ensuring the survival of the research while allowing what is being researched to decline and even expire. Community Informatics research if properly conducted and appropriately linked as a constitutive element of the community informatics practice can be a very considerable on-going support to the practice itself. Research (and researchers) which are not so embedded run the very real risk either of irrelevancy, of inappropriate distancing and detachment, or even of competing for those scarce resources required for network survival.
Gurstein's Community Informatics 
Pamela McLean
March 21, 2010
Thanks for writing this. It expresses something very close to my heart.
Ref – “What came out in our discussion was that the cell company sees itself as having a very significant untapped “research” resource in the nationwide grassroots network of local small entrepreneurs found in every village selling air time on their behalf. These independent agents are currently recognized by the company as a potential source of market information ……..Research (and researchers) which are not so embedded run the very real risk either of irrelevancy, of inappropriate distancing and detachment, or even of competing for those scarce resources required for network survival.”
I am so pleased to see you writing about this issue of the separation between research and the significant untapped local information resources.
One of the reasons that John Dada and I created Dadamac http://www.dadamac.net was because we share the feelings that you expressed so effectively.
Like the cell phone company we know we have a tremendous grassroots network which is a great potential resource to outsiders – and we are keen to collaborate in win-win ways with researchers. We also have a robust two way information flow between rural Nigeria and UK (which of course means that we have a good information flow, via the UK, with anyone in a “bandwidth-rich” location).
Regarding networks and knowledge for example, our sister organisation Fantusam Foundation (FF) has a microfinance programme serving thousands of women, spread over a wide rural area. Naturally the women are visited regularly by field officer to handle the loans. Repayments are normally close to 100% and if they falter it shows there is a problem. That is how FF picked up on the impact of HIV/AIDS locally and why it started a related health programme.
We also work with ZIttnet – Internet service providers at Fantsuam Foundation who are leaders in providing rural connectivity in West Africa.
We know the practicalities of things like the use of mobile phones, and Internet, and we know the human stories and genuine reasons behind patters of use. Anything we don’t know we can find out, either by asking around, or by helping people to set up formal research projects. We can do this because we are deeply embedded in local systems and we belong in many high trust social networks.
We have also thought long and hard about all kind of issues relating to ICT4D because, on a daily basis, we face the challenges of achieving maximum communication in areas with poor infrastructure. People in the Dadamac team have been forcing good person-to-person communication between UK and rural Nigeria through inadequate infrastructure communication channels since the turn of the century – always driven by need.
At Dadamac we want to help academic brain power to work in ways that are embedded in local realities and have relevance. We have keen to share our knowledge and our networks.
It is so refreshing to read what you are saying about this. How can we help each other to make it happen? (and BTW will you be at ICTD2010?)
Pamela
Polly Gaster
March 22, 2010
Hi Mike – just to agree, or rather insist – you say research CAN be useful or helpful to the local CI initiatives, I wd say SHOULD be. Yes, there’s a lot that cd be done, but even building in proper feedback/sharing mechanisms to places where research has been done all too often doesn’t happen, and wd be a good start.
NB Where wd you classify the ongoing big IRDC research project into impact of ICT4D?
gurstein
March 22, 2010
Good question Polly about the Gates/IDRC research project… I’m not close enough to the details of the project to give a very useful opinion but I would certainly like to hear from people who are. I think it would be fair as well to ask that project as others to give details on how they are contributing through their research to the groups/activities that they are assessing.
Duncan Sanderson
March 22, 2010
I agree, telecentres and other community networking initiatives could likely benefit from applied and or marketing research. I think that much of what is identified here is close to what many IT and telecomm companies consider to be marketing research, and the others could be called applied research. There is not a hard line separating the two, but there are differences.
The main issue of how to get someone to pay for this research can be partly answered by the above distinction. If a business case can be made, and accepted by the network or industry, then in principle they should invest in marketing research. However, I can easily imagine that a group of telecentre type organizations, even if they recognize their common interests and the potential benefits, do not have the means to invest in it.
In this case, and as well for applied research useful for a social sector, the ball then falls into the court of government or larger NGOs who recognize the strategic interests and have the means to finance the research. It may even be necessary to hire someone to put together the business or social case for the general research program or project. It seems to me that the analysis of the strategic interests has had a very good start here.
Duncan Sanderson
duncan_sanderson@yahoo.ca
Franz Nahrada
March 26, 2010
Great piece. How much of internal research needs did you meet when talking to practicioners or stakeholders?
gurstein
March 26, 2010
A problem is that practitioners seldom recognize that they have a need (or use) for “research”. Practitioners generally don’t think that way i.e. they tend to think in a quite practical and problem-solving mode rather than around more abstract issues which may be of “research” concern.
One of the roles for researchers here is to identify the need for “research” but the real challenge is to identify/design the research in such a way that it is useful/intelligible to the practitioner (not always an easy task but something that should be a central component of any training/educational program for researchers).
Pamela McLean
March 26, 2010
Ref “the real challenge is to identify/design the research in such a way that it is useful/intelligible to the practitioner”.
Exactly so. We need to build better lines of communication between practitioners and researchers at as early stage in the research.
As Polly Glaster wrote “even building in proper feedback/sharing mechanisms to places where research has been done all too often doesn’t happen, and wd be a good start.”
If feedback mechanisms (effective communication channels between the researchers and the researched) were built into the research design, surely the same communication channels could be used in planning the research as well. With such communication channels open then the researchers and the researched could co-design the research and so then it would have a better chance of being relevant.
In referring to “effective communication channels” I don’t mean that research should be limited to people who have Internet connections – there are ways of communicating beyond the reach of the Internet if you use established local communication channels. For example, in 2000 when Peter Adetunji Oyawale was setting up his Oke-Ogun Agenda 2000 plus project in a rural area, covering ten local governments, he did it via phone calls from London in collaboration with a city based fruit and vegetable wholesaler in Nigeria. The wholesaler’s business with fruit and vegetable growers throughout the region provided Peter with an extremely effective communications network into those rural areas where he needed to set things up on the ground before travelling out to start practical implementation. Communication channels do not have to be digital communication channels.
Obviously I can’t generalise, but I can speak for projects that I know. If the research is relevant, so that it is a win-win situation for researchers and practitioners, then certainly the people I know who are practitioners of one kind and another would be interested in collaborating with the researchers. (It is the “hit and run” researchers that we do not want.)
It would be wonderful to find researchers willing to spend time “researching what they should be researching” in collaboration with people on the ground. Then the researchers would arrive with relevant research projects, and established collaborative relationships. They and could hit the ground running with their field work, and afterwards there could be relevant online feedback – in both directions.
I don’t yet have an example for academic research, but can illustrate what I mean through an example of practical research/finding-out. In 2008 Marcus Simmons wanted to find out about technology transfer and eco-building techniques and so Dadamac set up an opportunity for him to find out at Attachab Eco-Village. http://www.dadamac.net/projects/ecodome
He is still in regular contact with the people he worked with then and continuing to collaborate on other projects. A similar approach could be used for academic research.
Is Community Informatics the subject area that should be taking the lead in this kind of genuinely collaborative research enabled by ICT?
gurstein
March 28, 2010
Thanks Pamela… Your comments very much illustrate the issue and the possibilities from the practitioner perspective… The problem is that the incentives from the academic/researcher perspective are not often well-aligned with those of the practitioners and choices, often very difficult choices need to be made. My suggestion is for the practitioners to make their requirements (and what they are offering to the researchers) very clear and then have the researchers respond and where possible put pressure on the academic environment as well. Universities and funders of academic research often make lofty statements about how their research is meant to be useful to those in the front lines and it is very well to keep up the pressure on those bodies to live up to their rhetoric.
Pamela McLean
March 28, 2010
Thanks Mike.
You mention the need to “keep up the pressure on those bodies to live up to their rhetoric.” I agree completely. How can I help you with this given that I don’t have any institutional links with “Universities and funders of academic research”? (They and I are on opposite sides of the academic-practitioner divide.)
I agree that if practitioners do want research to be relevant then it makes sense to make it easier for researchers to work with us. However, from outside the academic environment it is hard for me to understand where to start. (I thank Yishay Mor for enabling me to explore some of these issues at a pattern language workshop at London Knowledge Lab, which made me realise it is all more complicated than I had previously imagined.)
Until I understand more about how things work at present (ie what researchers are trying to do and what stops them from doing research that is relevant) it is hard to know what to tell them.
All I know is that some researchers do seem genuinely well intentioned regarding relevance. I do see some research that comes close to “my interests’ but somehow it is not close enough. Perhaps there is some somewhere, but I stopped reading research findings because the general lack of relevance wasted too much of my time.
I originally hoped for insights, models of good practice, things to replicate etc – but what I found was usually either irrelevant, or relevant but adding nothing useful to what I already knew (i.e. simply backing up with statistics various stuff the we already knew on the ground and had often known for a long time).
I think the “nearly relevant” research it the most discouraging research to find (i.e. research where we feel “we could easily have told you most of that before you even started”). Such research emphasises the divide between researchers and practitioners. It is actually quite distressing, as a practitioner, to see researchers’ brain-power and resources “wasted” on finding out what could have been found out much more quickly and effectively by better use of local networks early in the research projects.
There is also the “research that never happens” because we don’t realise anyone might be interested in doing it. That is something we have yet to explore.
I can see that relevance has to do with finding overlapping interests. Is the problem that we don’t have sufficient in the way of overlapping interests – or is it just that we don’t manage to explore them together? I hope that joining in this discussion with you may be one step towards discovering such overlapping interests.
I am also coming to the conclusion that I should take the opportunity of ICTD 2010 (in London) to explore some of these issues. It could be a good place to involve researchers and practitioners in some kind of discussion/workshop session. I am still thinking it through – today I thought of doing is as a “blu-tack blogging session” – and I have til Friday to decide if it is worth submitting in this format or any other. I wrote something about it at http://dadamac.posterous.com/blu-tack-blogging-and-ictd-2010
Your comments would be helpful if you have time to take a look, but time is short now so I’m not really anticipating feedback – just mentioning it so you know.
Thanks for providing the opportunity to explore some of these issues here – instead of just having them going round in my head.
Pam
gurstein
April 3, 2010
Thanks Pam, it is very good to hear from your side as a practitioner. ICT4D in London should be an excellent venue for this kind of discussion (are you listening Tim?)–There should be lots of researchers around and it is very good if they hear directly from practitioners on these issues. Attending events like that one and intervening from a practitioner perspective is a good way of supporting the position I’ve been trying to articulate.
One other issue is that these areas especially where there is a direct link between researchers and practitioners–is seriously under-researched… Making it known to politicians and university administrators that a partnership with a group such as yours is possible and likely could be mutually beneficial is one way of proceeding. From my experience this issue is particularly acute in universities in Developing Countries themselves where there is a significant tendency to attempt to participate in the same academic frameworks and pursue the same academic research issues as those in Developed Countries (where many of the LDC academics/researchers were trained) and to ignore the very real research opportunities for mutually beneficial partnerships that are just outside their doors (often quite literally).
Putting pressure on universities and researchers in LDC’s to engage directly with local issues and local initiatives is another way of promoting effective use of research in support of Community Informatics as for other areas.
Mike
Pamela McLean
April 3, 2010
Hi Mike
You make interesting points about research and possible topics for universities in developing countries, but I would need your help to follow that up. If you have any thoughts about appropriate universities please let me know.
From the field work side of things, it would make a lot of sense to work with an African university. Certainly John does have links with various universities. However it is not just a matter of the field work, it is also about use of ICT for planning and follow-up. I’m not currently aware of any who would fill the bill – i.e. be interested in development studies and also be easily able to link with us via the Internet. Do you have any in mind?
I agree with you that ICTD2010 should be an excellent opportunity for creating some research-practitioner collaborations.http://www.ictd2010.org/
In fact I have put in two submissions in the hope of helping that to happen.
One submission was partly influenced by your blog and is called “ICT4Research – Are ICTD research methods still “20th century”, or is ICT changing the way ICTD researchers do their research?”
The idea is that it seems reasonable to expect that the trailblazers for using ICT creatively within their research (to enable better research) would be ICTD researchers. So I want to find out if this is happening (and if so how is it happening) and if not why not?
Obviously I want ICT to be used for better collaboration between researchers and practitioners. (I quote your blog as academic evidence for such a session being timely.)
This session is planned to be highly participative, exploring what people are doing (or planning to do) i.e. given their experience of ICT how do they see “21st century research” being different from “20th century” research?
The other session is called “Reality check – an online Q and A session with the providers of Nigeria’s First Rural Community Wireless Network: Zittnet” http://zittnet.net/
The idea is that the format will be like Dadamac’s weekly UK-Nigeria team meetings – which we do via skype (typing).The big difference is the involvement of ICTD2010 participants, who will be able to type questions directly to the team in Nigeria.. The meeting will explore the practicalities of running Zittnet (Nigeria’s First Rural Community Wireless Network).
The online meeting will be chaired in Nigeria by John Dada. Bidi Bala the manager of Zittnet also plans to be there and other members of the team.On the UK side the meeting will involve ICTD2010 participants who are not used to how things go in a Dadamac online meeting, so I’ll be giving a bit of a commentary as things go along to explain who is who and to help overcome confusions and culture gaps.
I see two benefits from such a session. Through the Q and A people will get a reality check about connectivity in rural Africa (and other local issues). By participating (or watching others participate) they will get a flavour of what it is like to work on a project with us, helped by regular team meetings. At least that is the plan.
So – two submissions – and I’m looking forward to 11th June 2010 when the decisions on acceptance should be available.
If the sessions are accepted for ICTD2010 then I will try to make sure I “hit the ground running” by connecting up online beforehand with likely participants (on blogs like this, twitter etc). Of course if the sessions don’t happen I will still be trying to connect up with people in the same way – but without the extra boost of ICTD2010. So let’s keep discussing these issues and hope to meet up in December.
I am glad you started this blog topic. It is so helpful to be able to explore ideas with you. I hope we can keep strengthening this link.
Pamela
gurstein
April 4, 2010
Hi Pam,
I would think that John or someone else in Nigeria could make contact with a local university as per our discussion… If they don’t currently have those contacts perhaps this discussion might provide them with an opportunity to start up a conversation. (I’m sure that folks on the CI Researchers list as well as myself would be available to contribute once the discussion was on-going.
Good luck with the proposals to the ICT4D conference.
Mike
Pamela McLean
April 4, 2010
Thanks Mike
Ref “John or someone else in Nigeria could make contact with a local university as per our discussion”
In theory yes – but there is a world of difference between a theoretical “could” and a practical “should” or “would”.
John does have links with local universities:
> Fantsuam Foundation (FF) connects with Jos University through its CISCO courses (FF became a CISCO academy “under the wing” of Jos University).
> John is involved with other universities including the embryonic Midlands University.
> John used to be a professor, so he has quite a lot of links with that world.
However, given the high level of practical community based things that “must” be done at FF, I don’t see things related to contacting local universities to influence the direction of their research ever getting to the top of John’s agenda. If researchers are already interested in doing useful relevant research in a way that is win-win for local people (ie not “hit and run” research) then John is interested in collaborating – but he won’t be going out looking for it.
If bridges are to be built between John’s practical work at Fantsuam and academics it will be done through Dadamac – i.e.I will do the initial outreach via UK and the Internet, then we’ll all plan together through the Internet (making use of Dadamac’s UK-Nigeria weekly online meetings etc), and finally John will do everything concerned with local implementation. (This is the strategy we used with Marcus Simmons for his ecodome work http://www.dadamac.net/projects/ecodome )
I am currently exploring ways to do such outreach via ICTD2010 and via greater online visibility – such as through this blog, through our website http://www.dadamac,net and through open letters on dadamac’s posterous http://dadamac.posterous.com/.
The best I can do at present is simply to increase Dadamac’s visibility and let people know that we are ready and willing to arrange collaborations for research. I don’t yet have any formal connections with academic institutions and think that initially it is probably better to try to make connections with the people who happen to be academics (rather than with the institutions) and then see where that leads.
I am encouraged by this discussion and hope we can continue to explore ideas and look for practical possibilities for collaboration.
Pamela
gurstein
May 4, 2010
Thanks Pamela for your very interesting history which I think is paralleled in a lot of places and for your other insightful comments.
Best,
Mike