Development Informatics Workshop

Collaboration 4 ICTs 4 development

The waffle factor

Academics are notorious for wasting time discussing the meanings of terms. At Monash South Africa on 5 July the audience managed to keep the discussion practical, down-to-earth and relevant to South African needs. The Workshop was convened by Doctor Jacques Steyn, Head of the School of Information Technology (http://sit.monash.ac.za/) . In fact no time at all was devoted to an actual discussion of the meaning of ‘development informatics', nor of its ugly sibling term ‘ICTs4Development'.

What is Development Informatics?

The day-long workshop covered essential features of ‘DI' nevertheless. For us Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) are a key. Vigorous discussion centred around these crucial issues:

1. Collaboration and support.

DI links community-based ICTs in developed countries with initiatives in developing countries. DI programmes are funded by national governments, aid agencies such as the UN Development Programme, the World Bank, Global Knowledge Partnerships, charitable foundations such as the Shuttleworth Foundation, and businesses like SAP which are committed to corporate social responsibility. Each group was well represented on 5 July. Serving the expectations of all partners successfully is a continuing challenge.

2. Equitable economic and social improvement .

An overarching aim is to serve national economic, social, and learning needs, and ultimately to help to reduce poverty. These ideals are hard to achieve; there is a long journey ahead. Accountability, serving the public good and self-empowerment are active shared values.

3. Local input, local control.

DI encourages locally-based grassroots community technology and decision-making. Rather than imposing strategies from abroad, policies, models and answers must derive from the bottom up. The aAQUA project ( www.aAQUA.org ) from Mumbai , India , was one such success, described eloquently by its visiting founder, Professor Krithi Ramamrithram. DI uses ICTS to promote skills, training, and all forms of practical peer-to-peer learning. DI endeavours to elicit local know-how and promote its dissemination, and to engage rural, agricultural and small business stakeholders on an on-going basis, to expand their contributions nationally and intenationally.

4. Mutiple technologies.

DI uses all sorts of technology, from the simplest, from the radio and mobile phone, to combinations with e-mails, fax, CDs, multimedia, and Worldwide Web resources. DI promotes maximum access to ICTs.

What will the project do?

In order to achieve our objectives of DI in the South African context, the Workshop proposed to seek support to develop and evaluate a Web portal which will attract young South Africans to engage in skills, training, and job placements. This project will make use of existing infrastructures and access points. The new portal will focus on the 2010 Soccer World Cup, as a vehicle to relate to the business opportunities, tourism, logistics, leisure, games, simulations (and other activities) which football fervour will inevitably attract in the lead-up to the exciting 2010 event.

Support planned.

The project partners are very dependent on much hoped-for financial and human support (local and international) for refinement of the proposal, and then for its iterative implementation step-by-step over the next 4 years. The Chair (Professor Don Schauder) and Director (Doctor Graeme Johanson) of the Centre for Community Networking Research ( www.ccnr.net ) at Monash in Melbourne attended the Workshop, and are keen to continue to promote the project as a significant research joint venture. Monash University (with bases in Johannesburg , Melbourne , Malaysia and Italy ) looks forward to taking the lead with the project.

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