3 RD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ICT AND DEVELOPMENT

Transcription

1 PERSONAL REPORT 3 RD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ICT AND DEVELOPMENT April 17-19, 2009 Doha Qatar Pascal G. Bekono

2 Thanks to the Organising Committee for the Scholarship Dr Bernardine Dias, Conference Chair & Pascal Bekono, Conference Attendee 1

3 CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION... 3 II. KEYNOTES SPEECHES... 4 Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft corporation... 4 Carlos A. Primo Braga, World Bank... 6 III. WORKSHOPS & PANELS... 7 Workshops... 7 Panels... 8 IV. SESSIONS... 9 V. POSTER & DEMO CONCLUSION ANNEX

4 I. INTRODUCTION The 3 rd International Conference on Information Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD 2009) was held on April, , in the Carnegie Mellon University campus of Doha in Qatar. A large number of technology researchers, scholars, practitioners and social scientists from various countries presented and discussed the latest developments in the ICT sector. The organizing committee has selected 19 papers for the oral presentations, 27 full papers for the poster presentations and two keynote speakers, namely, Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft Corporation and Dr Carlos A. Primo Braga, Director of the Economic Policy Department at the World Bank. Many partners assured the success of this event, organized by the TechBridgeWorld research group at Carnegie Mellon. The Supreme Council of Information & Communication Technology (ictqatar) and Al Jazeera Children s Channel were respectively the organizing partner and the media partner of the conference. The Qatar National Research Fund, Qatar Telecom (Qtel) and International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Canada counted among the Platinum sponsors, while ExxonMobil and Microsoft were Gold sponsors. IBM and Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon Qatar were Bronze sponsors. The technical sponsors for the conference were the IEEE and ACM professional organizations. This report does not claim to be a complete presentation of what has been said during that three-day conference, but rather aims at presenting few points about the different phases of work undertaken throughout that great meeting dealing with recent researches in the field of ICT and development. 3

5 II. KEYNOTES SPEECHES BILL GATES, CHAIRMAN, MICROSOFT CORPORATION In 2008, Bill Gates has received, honorary doctorate from Harvard, which he left in the 1970ies without ending the curriculum. He is the author of many books and publications such as The Road Ahead in 1995 or the Speed of Thought in Bill Gates delivered a lecture titled TWENTY YEARS OF ICT FOR DEVELOPMENT: APPLYING NEW LESSONS OF THE PAST TO A NEW GENERATION OF TECHNOLOGY INNOVATIONS M. Gates expressed his appreciation to countries like Qatar, which are investing in the future and he said that he was excited to attend this conference and to talk about ICTD. He described technology as a catalyst of development. Information technology is a helpful tool for achieving better results in different sectors like health, agriculture or financial services, and in the educational sector. Bill Gates pointed out that as technology progressed, the rate of infant mortality decreased gradually. The figures have been phenomenal. This was due to information and communication technologies, which had an impact on development in the last 20 years. However, the benefits did not always come in the way people expected or on the scale they hoped. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation started to finance some healthy and educative programs in developing countries with some success. M. Gates dwelt on how much innovations in technology have reduced the prevalence of many diseases, especially among children, compared to 50 years ago. But he also added that there were still millions of people in developing countries, mostly children, who die each year from preventable and curable diseases. The world must do more to address these problems. Technology is a tool which can be used to solve the problems of health care globally, especially nowadays, as vaccines and medicines can defeat many of the world deadliest diseases, and he highlighted that while 80 percent of the vaccines are available worldwide, still millions of people die from diseases because of the lack of adequate health care. M. Gates hopes that with continuing medical research, the number of victims from diseases would be cut by half by Among the shining achievements of the ICT in the last 20 years, M. Gates named the developments in the fields of television and personal computers. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is working with governments in different parts of the world to achieve such drastic change in infant mortality scenario, he said. Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are involved in numerous ICT projects across the world including promoting programs which offer ICTD training and affordable access to technology in developing countries. 4

6 The Gulf leaders and regional foundations that I have been visiting are doing a great work that will have an enormous impact on the improvement of global health and will help to fight global poverty and I look forward to deepening our relationships there, he said. Another important challenge of the development of ICTD activities is the publication of the researches. According to Bill Gates, many important and good activities dealing with ICT4D have been done, but they are not expanded and shared as well as they should be. He pointed out that innovations in technology can help to combat poverty in the Third World countries, but we need governments, people and the private sector to all come together and work towards this goal. They are many challenges, and people, governments and the private sector must join hands to achieve development. Bill Gates has finally insisted on the importance of metric developments and on the means to measure and to evaluate development projects. According to him, all this should be integrated in the very conception on projects. 5

7 CARLOS A. PRIMO BRAGA, WORLD BANK Dr Braga is the Director of the Economic Policy and Debt in the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network (PREM) at the World Bank, which is the most important network on development policy in the world. He was a former lecturer at the University of Sao-Paolo and he has written thousands of books. The last one is titled Growth and Innovation Dr Braga has been presented as a visionary, he is the one who used the term ICT4D before we talk about it. Dr Braga s analysis is titled ICT, DEVELOPMENT AND THE FINANCIAL CRISIS. Dr. Braga discussed the opportunities and challenges of using ICT for economic development. He argues that ICT cannot solve all problems related to development, but they can significantly impact the development paths, as economies become increasingly servicesoriented, as companies shift from hierarchical structures to networked modes of production, and as the "knowledge worker" emerges as a critical economic actor. He explained that countries like Qatar are not affected by financial crisis because of the solidity of their economies and because of their absences within the stock exchanges. He said the world economy is leading by the US, Europe, and Japan. ICT and development: Dr Braga mentioned that ICT contributes to several aspects of development like economic growth, improved delivery of social services, greater transparency, sustainable development and empowerment of the poor. Then, he listed some problems related to the digital divide, as infrastructure (income levels, rural vs. urban), digital literacy, content, gender, large companies vs. SMEs, e-business practices, etc. He shows that the gap between northern and southern internet users is still important. Meanwhile, the access to advanced ICT services is growing in developed countries. Reality Check: Nowadays, many activities are undertaken to improve services, but some challenges are to be faced with: infrastructures, regulatory environment, digital literacy, content, etc. ICT and financial crisis: Dr Braga also discussed the inferences of the current financial crisis on the prospects for ICT investments in developing countries, and he explained that the financial crisis will cause a sharp decline in global growth and will affect many innovative sectors such as ICT; nonetheless there are reasons to be cheerful, he said. The ICT industry is better positioned to confront the crisis today than in the aftermath of the internet bubble; several governments see investments in ICT as an integral part of the recovery efforts as the telecom tends to be a leading indicator of recovery. For western economies, he predicted that the worst is not at the end. But developing countries will not be really affected. He concluded that it is important to coordinate the financial sector reform and to synchronize macroeconomic responses. Pascal Bekono & Dr Carlos Braga 6

8 III. WORKSHOPS & PANELS WORKSHOPS The workshops were an opportunity for participants to improve their skills. I. What Makes Good ICTD Research This workshop aimed at establishing and at defining what makes a good ICTD research, through a participatory approach. During the workshops, many gave a speech on how ICTD research can be, and on how it should be. The many discussions within different working groups with selected subjects proposed by each participant helped to find theses arguments: - Make use of existing data by making data accessible (required researchers to submit row data, etc). - Evaluation of research (publication of ideas online, creation of online forums, make accountancy of people underground, etc). - Unintended consequences (have an existing strategy, be honest, accept negative results, facilitate informal information exchange, etc.) II. Young researchers Workshop This workshop intended to highlight young researchers' work. Many students, mostly studying in computer sciences, presented their work and their feedback about their immersion phase on ICT for Development. The discussions organized after each presentation offered the opportunity to students to improve their work. Many of theses researches were made in developing countries, with a real innovative aspect. Among all the researches, we can cite: PDA for medical practitioners, Measuring e-learning impact primary, etc. III. ICT curriculum Workshop This workshop gathered ICTD instructors to discuss current effort in ICTD teaching, and begin a conversation on the content and issues that ICTD instructors should be taught at the undergraduate and graduate level for future researchers and practitioners. 7

9 PANELS Including the one which will be presented in the repot, four panels took place during the ICTD2009 conference: 1) ICTD Research: premise 2) Mobile Web for Social Development 4) ICTD Evaluation 20/20: Voices from around the world 4) Assistive Technology for Developing countries, special invited panel, with experts like Hamadoun Touré, Secretary-General of ITU. ICTD evaluation 20/20: Voices from around the world Panelists included Teresa Peters, of Bridges.org; Richard Fuchs, Regional Director of Southeast and East Asia IDRC; Professor Karen Fisher, from the University of Washington; Akhtar Badshah, Senior Director for Global Community Affairs Microsoft Corporation; and Richard Heeks, from the University of Manchester. Opening the discussion, Teresa Peters spoke about the various developments that have taken place in IT sector. Richard Heeks added that there is a lack of systematic guidance in information, communication and technology (ICT). We need to ensure that we keep pace with changes taking place in this sector and also take initiative to keep abreast with the developments which have already taken place in this field. The panel also focused on the impact of ICT evaluation, examining how we make research because it s the meaningful way for success. The panelists argued that the evaluation is useful for two reasons: proving and improving things. They recognized that many researchers do not have time for evaluation. Panelists recommended that researchers should be open to reports; they have to trust field learning because that very trust is key. 8

10 IV. SESSIONS During the sessions, researchers presented their paper to the participants. Here are some presentations that we have decided to report in this document. Results from a Study of impact of E-government Projects in India The paper presents the results from an assessment study of eight e-government projects in India. The assessment framework measures the total value delivered by a project to stakeholders on three dimensions: a) Cost for the clients to have access to services; b) Perception of the quality of service and governance; c) Agency cost and revenue. The project set out key findings and implications: - Significant positive impacts on the cost to access services in most cases; - Significant improvement in the quality of service and on the quality of governance in most cases; - Corruption was significantly reduced or even eliminated in five projects and had no impact on others; - Most projects are self-sustaining through revenues from user fee; - Considerable variability in composite scores across projects, etc. ICT4WHAT? Using the Choice Framework to Operationalise the Capability Approach to Development Dorothea Kleine, from the Royal Holloway of the University of London, is member of the Centre for Developing Areas Research (CEDAR) and the ICT4D Collective/UNESCO Chair in ICT4D. She has presented a paper dealing with the importance of the definition of theory framework of development. In her article, she suggested an analytical framework based on Amartya Sen s capacities approach. For M. Sen, development can be seen as a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy. [ ] Focusing particularly on people s capability to choose the lives they have reason to value (Sen 1999, Development as Freedom, Oxford, Oxford University Press). Mrs Kleine showed that the consequences of this framework, for practical and theory research, on ICT for Development are principally the use of a systemic and holistic approach, better suited for multi-purpose technologies, which impact in a systemic, pervasive and transversal way; and the seeking of mechanisms allowing people to express choice, (e.g. participatory monitoring and evaluation, voucher schemes, participatory budgets, participatory procurement, participatory tracking & tracing). This proves the use of participative research approaches and the implementation of projects whether ICT are used or not. 9

11 V. POSTER & DEMO Theses sessions intended to present experiences of ICTD activities. Here are some selected presentations. We can also mention theses demos: Cross Technology Comparison for Information Services in Rural Bangladesh; Challenges in Health Information System Integration: A Human Agency Perspective, in Zanzibar; Dimensions of IT Literacy in Arab Regions: A study in Barkha (Oman); Numeric paper forms for NGOs. 10

12 CONCLUSION The successful three-day conference on ICTD organized in the Middle East for the first time, reviewed applications of the information technology in developing countries, and its use in bridging the divide between the developing and the developed countries. NEXT EDITION: During this 3rd ICTD conference, the preparation of the next edition (in 2010 or in 2011), began. The University of Washington, near Seattle, USA and the University of London, England, are the two host universities which are candidates for the organization of the next ICTD. Their assets have been presented and a committee will proceed to the selection. Seattle, University of Washington (USA) University of London (UK) 11

13 ANNEX QATARI CONNECTION 12