Publications
Internet & Communication Technologies
Reforming ICT Policy and Delivering Effective Online Applications in
Developing and Transitional Countries
By George Sadowsky, Executive Director, Global Internet Policy Initiative
May 10, 2007
The use of ICTs in development is not new. Computer technology has
been used by the UN Secretariat, the UNDP and other specialized agencies
since the 1960's in support of achieving sectoral goals. Communications
technology has been promoted for development by the ITU among others.
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Initial wave of technology supplied consisted of mainframes, starting
in 1960s and continuing into the 1980s.
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Some minicomputers supplied
since 1970s but use limited because of thin support strategy
and limited presence of suppliers.
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Starting in late 1970s,
microcomputers provided increasingly inexpensive and maintainable
user agents for supplying increasingly powerful computation.
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Starting in mid 1990s, Internet provided an interoperable
method of attaching computers in a world-wide network.
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Starting in 2000+, emergence of cellular phone technology
as a useful low cost portable user agent for accessing Internet
services.
Both bilateral and multilateral agencies have responded to the opportunities
presented:
- Bilateral aid (USAID, CIDA, SIDA, others) ramped up.
- World Bank infoDev program one of the first to go large
scale.
- Multiple multi-stakeholder events and programs starting
in late 1990s:
• G-8 DOT FORCE
- UNICT Task Force
- Markle-UNDP GDOI (Global Development Opportunity Initiative)
- WSIS-1 (World Summit on the Information Society)
- TFFM (Task Force on Financial Mechanisms)
- IGWG (Internet Governance Working Group
- WSIS-2
- Internet Governance Forum – an ongoing activity
- G@ID – an ongoing activity
- My personal view:
- generally unsatisfying progress, inadequate rate of
return on investment
- some genuinely useful results
- much hype, tendency to cling to positive anecdotal
evidence
- no "silver bullet" identified
- difficulty of identifying applications that scale at
marginal cost
- difficulty of replication in other environments
- One major breakthrough often associated with
ICT and development — Mohamed Yunnis' introduction of microcredit
in Bangladesh that translated into a retail cell phone business
in rural areas. — was really an innovation in business models,
not specifically related to ICTs.
This is an exciting time, for now we have all of the technical pieces
needed for significant, multidimensional citizen interaction with
government, among other sectors;
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inexpensive and easily available user agents – personal computers
and mobile phones with which to interact
- an easy-to-use and interoperable Internet, additionally
with a growing range of user agents (inexpensive PCs, 2G and
2.5G cell phones) that facilitate interaction with network resources
and applications
- applications that make interaction useful and productive:
- applications for access to content: the Web, and more
- applications for communication: e-mail, instant messaging,
VoIP, and more
- specialized applications of all kinds, including
for fulfilling government-citizen activities
In particular, this is a very exciting circumstance for e-government,
because appropriate applications (including some of the applications
that will be presented later) offer a lot of hope for increasing transparency
and for identifying and reducing or eliminating corruption. Reflect
that in the United States we have:
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an enormous amount of public data on-line — sometimes too much
when inappropriate personal identifiers are included and earlier
notions of privacy appear to be violated
- applications that provide very specific data, such as www.fec.gov
- an FOIA law that applies to most government information
- televised, and maybe soon to be webcast, sessions of Congress,
committees, trials and other proceedings
So in the United States, and in some other countries, e-government
activities have been introduced quite rapidly in this environment.
This leads me to the following question, which I think is key, and
which we will be exploring today: If all of these enabling tools exist,
why, according to a recent United Nations study, do 60-80% of e-government
applications fail?
Clearly the applications alone are necessary, but they are clearly
not sufficient.
There are a number of reasons for this. Some
are country or culture specific. But it's important to answer
the question in more general terms. For if we could identify the
necessary additional conditions for success, then e-government tools
might well succeed, including those that are gatekeeper applications
for increasing transparency and reducing corruption. Some possible
reasons for lack of success of such e-government applications are:
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not enough people have access to methods of interacting with
e-government applications
- users doubt the confidentiality of the content of their
interactions over the Internet; communications channels are not
trusted
- applications have been developed with too much of a top
down component, with insufficient input in design and implementation
from users in a bottom up fashion
- applications do not meet real needs
- access to the Internet is too difficult or too expensive
due to possible barriers to entry and/or growth for ISPs,
restrictive legislation and/or regulation, unfair competition
provoked by a monopoly telecomm operator or other causes
- users are not sufficiently educated, informed or
motivated to participate
I suggest that the methods of implementing the applications and the
environment in which the entire activity of process re-engineering
within government — which includes the implementation and activation
of the application — are critical for the success of an e-government
application.
During 2000-07, CDT and Internews have:
- Worked together and separately on multiple programs related to
ICT
- Participated in many of this decade’s activities mentioned above
related to development
- Studied and implemented applications in e-government
- Worked on improving the policy environment to enable use of Internet
in about 20 countries
- Had staff members thoroughly involved in many of the activities
mentioned above
The following presentations are the results of and reflections on
two of these projects, followed by the description of a model that
provides what we believe are the missing ingredients that could greatly
assist in making e-government activities more successful and in this
way could provide impetus for a major assault on non-transparency
and corruption in governments in developing countries.
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