Donor Project funded ICT Initiatives in the Vocational and Technical Education (VTE) Sector of Asian Developing Countries

This chapter is set against a background of national ICT initiatives implemented in the Vocational and Technical Education (VTE) sectors of developing Asian countries through donor agency funded projects. This research is based on a ten year research study of ICT initiatives implemented in nine VTE sector donor funded projects covering Laos, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. The empirical data was gathered through contextual observations, action research and a review of project documentation. The ICT initiatives studied focussed on MIS (management information systems) aiding strategy formulation and management in the VTE sector and computer based training (CBT). The research reveals that the projects studied were designed by host governments and donor agencies in response to perceived problems in the VTE sector. The research also reveals that process of managing donor projects, which is largely based on hard approaches, is problematic. Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) is based on a learning and enquiring cycle. The research uses SSM to learn about the nature and scope of the selected donor projects in VTE, which can be conceptualised as Project Intervention Processes (PIPs).

Why Institutional Partnerships Matter

This chapter examines the role of institutional partnerships in making the ICT for development projects more successful and sustainable in developing countries. Employing a regional innovation systems (RIS) perspective, I examine this issue in the context of lessons drawn from the failure of telecenters in Melur taluka of Tamil Nadu under the Sustainable Access in Rural India (SARI) project. These telecenters aimed at delivering a host of services such as email, voice chat, health, e-government, and agricultural and veterinary services to the rural community. They were operated by two sets of operators: self-employed local entrepreneurs and a local NGO. After operating for nearly three years, most of the kiosks run by the self-employed entrepreneurs had closed down by mid-2005, whereas those run by the NGO were still operating. Using primary data from interviews with the kiosk owners and operators, I argue that the failure of the kiosks to sustain themselves was due to weak institutional linkages and networking among actors in the local and regional innovation systems, and the inability of the RIS to evolve and respond effectively and quickly to the changing preferences and needs of the rural community. I conclude that ensuring a project’s success and sustainability requires the presence of an effective regional innovation system with strong but flexible and dynamic linkages among the relevant actors such as the state, universities, private sector, civil society organizations, the user community, and the funding organizations.

Reducing Digital Divide

This chapter examines the role of People First Network (PFnet) services in enhancing information and communication and contributing to sustainable rural development and poverty reduction in Solomon Islands. More specifically, it examines two main issues. First, it examines the uptake and appropriation of PFnet services by rural Solomon Islanders. Second, it examines the impact of PFnet services on sustainable rural development and poverty reduction in Solomon Islands. This chapter is based on a empirical research conducted in Solomon Islands between January-May 2004. The chapter is organised as follows: Section one provides an overview of PFnet Project. Section two states the main aims of the study. Section three outlines the methodology used for the research. The Section four reports the main research findings. Section five discusses some problems and finally section six provides the conclusion.

“The Men Never Say that They do not Know”

There have been many case studies in the literature on telecentres, often seeking to analyse the usage of these facilities via surveys and covering gender issues by “counting women”. This chapter presents a more qualitative and ethnographic account, exploring one particular telecentre in a small town in rural Chile and comparing it with the seven local commercial cybercafés. This local reality is situated in the context of Chile’s national ICT strategy, the Agenda Digital, and linked to interviews with policy makers at the national level. The chapter examines the Chilean telecentre strategy, in particular the Biblioredes programme. The primary research included a short survey at the telecentre, on users’ age, gender, occupation, education, access habits and usages, but even more revealing is six months’ participant observation and interviews with users. The analysis confirmed availability, affordability and skills as important factors in determining internet usage, but also uncovered two other key issues: social norms around the use of time and of space. These social norms are heavily gendered. Social norms around time usage mean that married women struggle to fit in IT trainings with household duties. As far as space is concerned, it is far more socially acceptable for women to spend time in the telecentre than in cybercafés. In the commercial cybercafés, computers are placed in narrow cabins and screens are not publicly visible. There is little interaction between users, who are almost exclusively young men. The telecentre is situated in the local library, run by a female librarian and used as a social space by women of different ages. The space is wide enough for prams and wheelchairs and the screens are publicly visible. Users, often less affluent members of the community and/or women, are socially in a position to ask the staff questions, while men’s higher social status makes it harder for them to seek help with their IT skills learning. The chapter concludes with some practical recommendations for designing access spaces and IT training courses in a gender-sensitive way which may apply to rural Chile and other heavily gendered societies. It also calls for a more nuanced analysis of gender aspects in ICT4D research, one that goes beyond simply “counting women”.

Stronger Voices?

This case study focuses on a civil society organization called Radio Viva in Asunción, Paraguay. It was found that the interactive use of ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ technologies in locally innovative ways was able to meet community needs through the creation of two local products. Specifically, when radio and telephony were integrated with telecentre services (including internet access), new physical and virtual communication spaces were opened up for civic participation. Second, ICT interactivity was found to lead to the creation of locally relevant content production, helping Paraguayan communities to gain access to useful and contextualized information while also turning local ‘information recipients’ into ‘knowledge users’.

Bringing the Internet to the Rural Area

Malaysia aims to be an information society by the year 2020 can only be achieved if the mass population, that include those who live in the rural area, has the access to use the ICT. This is due to the uneven distribution of the basic telecommunication infostructure between the urban and rural areas in Malaysia that left the rural area to be at the disadvantage to access the ICT. Meanwhile, there are many programs that have been implemented by the government to encourage the rural population to use the Internet, such as ‘Kedaikom’, a community based telecenter serving the rural population. A questionnaire survey was conducted to investigate how ‘Kedaikom’ as a community based telecenter could assist in diffusing the usage of the ICT to the rural population. The result from the survey has indicated that the community telecenter could be used to bridge the digital divide between the underserved rural community and the well-accessed urban community. More of the rural population, especially from the younger generation and those with higher education background (irrespective of age) are using the community telecenter to be connected to the Internet.

Mobile Phones, Diasporas and Developing Countries

It is no coincidence that the mobile phone suits the lifestyle and needs of the mobile migrant worker well. Research into the role of mobile or cell phones by Chinese migrant labourers, migrating within and outside China, show that the phones are a survival device, a means to perpetuate an important sense of belonging to a community in virtual form, and a method of transferring resources back to poor parts of the homeland. Mobiles help to cope in a foreign culture and to find work and ethnic solidarity. Above all, they provide connectedness. This chapter summarises the findings of a survey of 74 Chinese migrants living in Prato, Italy, as an example of Chinese migrants in Europe. It was administered in late 2008. Prato as a province has the largest Chinese migrant population in Italy, numbering about 30,000. The research aimed to understand the usefulness of mobile phones to migrant residents who need to keep in touch with their friends and families, in China and Italy, and their other communication needs, and whether mobiles satisfy their expectations. Participants in this study are well-served by mobiles. The typical participant in the study was a recently-arrived young single male from Zhejiang, China, speaking Wenzhouese, but with proficiency in other languages, experiencing the novelty of using a recently-purchased ‘Nokia’ phone, and who, whilst spending more than 10 Euros a month on the phone for keeping in touch with friends in China, was very aware of mobile running costs. More research is planned to flesh out the findings further.

Information and Communication Technologies in Administrative Reform for Development

This chapter critically examines the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in governmental reform processes in development through a case study of the Indian State of Karnataka. This study explores the increasing use of ICTs for property taxation and its impact on municipal government reform processes within this developing world context. The case study is focused on a collaboration between the government of the Indian state of Karnataka and the eGovernments Foundation (a non-profit private sector organisation) between 2002 and 2006. This collaboration was designed to reform existing methods of property tax collection by establishing an online system across the municipalities of 56 towns and cities within the state. The case study describes the interactions between new technologies and changing information flows in the complexities of public administration reform. In doing so, this paper examines the interplay of local and external factors shaping the project’s implementation. On the basis of this analysis, this case study suggests that disjunctions in these local and external relationships have inhibited more effective exploitation of ICTs in this development context.

Localisation of Indigenous Content

The Northern Territory Library‘s (NTL) Libraries and Knowledge Centres (LKC) program is one of a number of programs across Australia designed to bring ICTs and Indigenous people together within an appropriate technology / community-networking framework. A center-piece is the use of the Our Story database to hold and display both repatriated and contemporary, including born-digital, cultural material relevant to local communities. The LKC model is distinctive in that it is fully implemented, uses proven technology, has a consistent framework of program delivery, and a clear business case. However there continue to be fundamental questions on striking a balance between technical innovation and sustainability; the capacity of the program to expand while maintaining support in geographically remote areas; and the challenge of maintaining a relationship of trust with local communities. Reviewing the challenges of the Our Story / LKC program sheds light on key reasons why ICT-based community-networking projects succeed or fail.

Does IT Help or Not?

The number of initiatives aiming at improving people’s living conditions through the provision of information and communication technology (ICT) has been increasing around the globe during the last decade. However, the mere provision of ICT tools is not enough to achieve such goals as this chapter illustrates through the examination of the existent conditions in Huanico, a remote village in the northern Peruvian Andes. Using an interpretive case study design, the author analyzes and explains why under circumstances of severe scarcity and geographical isolation computers can do little in helping local people. The findings challenge the sometimes over-optimistic stances on ICT benefits adopted by international development agencies and governments. Conversely, it confirms the need to provide basic infrastructure and stresses the importance of establishing priorities correctly before launching any ICT for development initiative.