My experience as both an academic and a practitioner in two disciplines; Information Systems and ICT4D, has been that there’s very little interaction between practitioners and academics in either discipline.  Perhaps this is typical of other areas and therefore it may be naïve and/or unrealistic to expect that there should be with WG9.4.  But in the case of ICT4D this is a pity. There are many lines of enquiry that could be usefully explored by those who are equipped with the skills that academics possess and which could usefully inform practice towards ICT implementations that are more robust and effective in their pursuit of poverty reduction. 

Generally, practitioners in ICT4D don’t attend academic conferences because they know there will be little by way of any practical take-aways that they can use.  They don’t read academic journals for the same reason.  Moreover, it seems rare to see any summarised form of the findings of academic research in the media channels that policy-makers and their advisers do read.  The more serious media that such people tend to take notice of, such as The Economist or the Wall Street Journal, seem to conduct their own research and they nearly always come up rather superficial conclusions; like “telecentres are unsustainable” or “mobile phones have closed the digital divide” or “increasing the density of mobile phones boosts GDP.”  It needs an academic approach to dig beneath these superficial generalizations  to recapture the complexities and to help practitioners and policy makers come to the more nuanced conclusions that are closer to reality. 

Possibly the most important area where academic research can contribute to practice is in the area of project evaluation and impact assessment.  There are many aspects of orthodox development practice that do not lend themselves well to the application of ICTs to development problems.  What often occurs is that the problem is shaped to suit the tools available for solving it, rather than the other way round.  Evaluation is one area where this stands out as an inhibitor of learning within the practitioner community. 

We should ask if the academic community is concerned that practitioners remain largely un-interested in their work.  Perhaps they’re not; it’s clear that academics conduct research, attend conferences and publish their results in the leading journals in order to survive within their professional situations.  There doesn’t seem to be a component of any sort of practitioner linking that would contribute seriously to this process. I remember MISQ used to have an “Executive Summary” in each edition, presumably as a way of linking its research to practice, although I couldn’t find any such thing on their web site after 10 minutes of hunting.  In the closed-loop community of IS research there’s probably more effort goes into counting citations than reaching out to the IS professionals. 

It seems a pity for the same to happen in ICT4D.  The developing world academics that I work with seem to have a genuine concern for how their work can contribute towards their country’s progress.  They are under less pressure to publish in leading journals and they have less access to resources for attending international conferences.  Generally budgets for conducting research are miniscule anyway.  The bi-lateral and multi-lateral donor organisations that have far greater access to funds tend to conduct their own research, ignoring the in-country academic resources that they could bring into their programmes and squandering the opportunity for learning that such involvement offers (in both directions). 

So beyond the general question of the legitimacy of academic-practitioner links, what does this mean for WG9.4? Whilst others may disagree, I would argue that there are benefits to be had for both communities from closer links between the two.  ICT4D practitioners need practical solutions to their pressing concerns, a few of which can be identified briefly here as; achieving sustainability; rolling out applications for mobile phones; scaling up from pilot projects to national programmes; conducting evaluations and impact assessments; promoting technology convergence and synergies;  formulating pro-poor approaches; and devising demand-driven methods.

A cursory glance through the WG9.4 programmes since 1998 doesn’t reveal too many instances of these topics, which is an observation not a criticism, but for some researchers there is some satisfaction to be had from the knowledge that they are addressing real-world problems, so a mechanism for surfacing them could be of interest.  For the practitioners, there’s the potential benefit of rigour and independence in their evaluation research enquiries, which is again not always to be found in the sort of practitioner studies that confuse correlation with causation and which often generate rather predictable outcomes when conducted by the project implementers. 

Two particular aspects of WG9.4 present themselves in the context of fostering closer practitioner links.  They are identity and outreach.  The original remit of ‘social implications’ seems to have less clarity and to be less relevant than the current focus on ICT4D, which is emerging now by popular demand. Is WG9.4 doing ICT4D or is it just a sub-set of its realm?  There are practitioners in ICT4D but I don’t know any working in the area of ‘social implications of computers.’ The name continues to reflect the early conceptualization of 9.4 which arose before ICTs were recognized as a tool for poverty reduction (viewing poverty here in its widest sense of social and economic inequality).  It seems that the Group can no longer be regarded as a sub-branch of Information Systems, but whose members are now more likely to regard themselves as belonging to a branch of Development.  In either case, the issue of links with practice remains; the only question is; which community of practitioners to connect with?

The current name of the Group is therefore an immediate inhibiter of potential ICT4D practitioner interest. So along with the name and the identity which it conveys, the Group may wish to re-consider its core mission if there is a desire to engage with ICT4D practitioners.   If not, then there’s no such need.  Some may shrink from the idea, given that there’s already an ICTD conference, but surely there’s enough room for more than one? There’s another potential identity problem here regarding the difference between ICT4D and ICTD (if there is one), which I’m not going to debate here, but it may be worth mentioning that the recent ICTD2010 conference in London was organized by the ICT4D Collective at Royal Holloway, University of London, and it aimed to provide a forum for those with interests in information and communication technologies in development practice (my emphasis).

The second aspect is outreach – to members and potential members. With today’s technology it’s easy to cultivate an on-line community with more-or-less continuous interaction. Whilst we have the Group email list, there are more effective tools for supporting an on-line community and which would encourage new members by being more open and inviting and clearer about the Group’s identity, purpose and activities and therefore more appealing to non-academics. 

As a final point, I would like to raise another issue.  I attend many conferences/workshops /seminars on ICT4D (although not 9.4 for, as a practitioner, the reasons mentioned), but usually I notice that there are no poor people in the room.  In fact, the events take place in locations that poor people never visit.  Why is this?  Why should development issues be debated without any participation of those who are intended to benefit?  There are gains to be had from forging links not only between academics and practitioners but also between them and the poor people who suffer from the problems that they are trying to solve. 

Everybody benefits when this happens, and I have demonstrated how this can work with the eBario Knowledge Fair (eBKF). This is a multi-disciplinary biennial conference held in the remote indigenous village of Bario, Malaysia, in the central highlands of Borneo.  eBario is a multi-award winning telecentre project that I began in 1998.  We are setting up a community radio station there this year (Malaysia’s first).  The first eBKF was held on 2007, the next one will be in November 2011.  The event works because the community comes together with the pundits to discuss local (and wider) development issues.  It’s an approach that 9.4 could consider in bringing academics closer to practice.

Roger Harris; Hong Kong; January 2011

Conferences, workshops and seminars are regular features of international development practice. Many development projects are automatically wound up by such an event in which project participants share project experiences and promote the outcomes to a wider audience. Nowadays, I get invited to one such gig on average once a month, either to contribute my own experiences or as an opportunity to learn from those of others. Whilst it is always useful to connect with colleagues and to learn from them, the style of such events, along with the style of many other development practices, often leaves me feeling uncomfortable. It seems there’s money in poverty nowadays, and I’m concerned how much of it doesn’t actually percolate down to the poor.

I have long been rankled by conferences, workshops and seminars about poverty reduction that take place in luxurious surroundings – city-based 4 or 5-star hotels and conference centres – with no poor people in the room. Have you ever thought that the money spent on such events could be put to better use by helping to achieve what the participants are actually discussing? Development Conferencing turns the popular conference model on its head; by taking the pundits to the rural places and people they are talking about and mixing them together in the same room (most Asian poverty is rural). Everyone benefits from this. The practitioners, professionals and academics get a taste of rural poverty; for some of whom this may be a rare experience, and the poor people themselves (‘beneficiaries’ or ‘subjects’ as they are known in development parlance) get to hear how decisions that might affect them are made, something that is equally rare in development practice. Additionally, the money that goes into organising the event; the cost of accommodation, lodging and conference facilities, goes into the local economy instead of into the coffers of the hotel corporations, thereby contributing to local development. Another significant benefit arises in the form of cost savings for the organisers as local rural facilities cost less than the conventional city-based conference venues. Whilst access to the location for the outside visitors may present some challenges, the benefits will make the extra effort worthwhile.

Actually, travelling to attend a conference is a form of tourism. MICE Tourism refers to Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Exhibitions. It is a particular type of tourism in which groups of people are brought together for a particular purpose; perhaps to share knowledge, promote their products or just to enjoy the junket. The term Pro-Poor Tourism has emerged as a mechanism for ensuring a larger proportion of tourism revenue is earned by the poor residents of popular tourism locations; something that is not an automatic outcome of the growth of global tourism. Similarly, Community-Based Tourism is a type of Pro-Poor Tourism that is operated by rural villagers themselves whereby visitors stay in the households of the local residents, share in their daily lifestyles, enjoy the rural environment and learn about the local culture. So why not pro-poor MICE as a form of Community-Based Tourism - something that you might expect would be of particular interest to people working in poverty reduction?

A recent example illustrates the concept perfectly. The e-BarioKnowledge Fair held from 6-8 December 2007 was held in the remote and isolated village of Bario, in the Malaysian state of Sarawak, on the island of Borneo. Bario is a fly-in community of around 1,000 residents; there are no roads leading there and access is by a one-hour flight in a 20-seater Twin Otter from the coastal town of Miri. Nestled in a valley at 1,000 meters above sea level in the Kelabit Highlands, Bario is the heartland of the Kelabit people, one of Malaysia’s smallest groups of indigenous ethnic minorities and is surrounded by mostly pristine rain forest, including a newly gazetted national park. E-Bario is a pioneering project that brought computers, telephones and the internet to this hitherto isolated community. Bario is also a Community-Based Tourism destination; where visitors can enjoy the pristine rainforest environment as well as the unique culture and warm and hospitable nature of the Kelabit community.

The e-Bario Knowledge Fair was instigated as pioneering example of Development Conferencing. Its purpose was to bring together development professionals, academics and activists to share the experiences of the e-Bario project and its impact on the Kelabit community. It also incorporated a Workshop on E-inclusion and Media for Asia’s Indigenous Peoples, organised by the Regional Centre in Bangkok of the United Nations Development Programme. The purpose of the Workshop was to bring together individuals working for the betterment of Indigenous Peoples around the world and to formulate proposals for using the Media and Information and Communication Technologies to accelerate development for Asia’s Indigenous Peoples. Bario provided the perfect context for such an interaction as the e-Bario project has delivered considerable benefits to the immediate community as well as to the wider Kelabit people.

The Knowledge Fair brought together more than a hundred participants from 15 countries. Academic presentations of relevant research were mixed together with presentations from the residents and from the wider Kelabit community and in the presence of the overseas participants. The discussions resulted in a programme for further development of the e-Bario project; including plans for a community radio, a local telephone service and a community network to extend the reach of telecommunications further into the Highlands, to less accessible communities and even across the border into the neighbouring states of Sabah and Indonesian Kalimantan. E-Bario now intends to become the hub of a communications network that will serve the heart of Borneo and it now has a global network of friends and associates willing to provide assistance. An example of this emerged within just a few days of the Knowledge Fair when Professor Heather Hudson, a world renowned expert on village telecommunications, long-time friend of e-Bario and keynote speaker at the Knowledge Fair, caught the attention of the Malaysian Minister of Energy, Water and Communications at the 3rd Global Knowledge Conference in Kuala Lumpur the week after. Professor Hudson suggested that the regulations should be modified to allow e-Bario to develop into a communications hub, with the help of the Government’s Universal Service Fund, as the project has already demonstrated its capacity to deliver a desirable service and no other commercial operators were willing to operate in such a remote area. The Minister responded publicly with a promise to review the regulations regarding the fund and to visit Sarawak to better understand how it can be used to ensure improved communications services can be delivered to the largely remote and isolated communities there.

A further notable outcome of the Knowledge Fair is the e-Bario Vision for Indigenous Peoples, which was formulated as a response to the recent adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Whilst the Declaration contains a clause regarding the Media and Indigenous Peoples, there is no reference to their rights of access to information or to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), which was seen by the Knowledge Fair participants as a lost opportunity given the beneficial impact of the e-Bario project and the many others like it with which many of those present are involved. The e-Bario Vision for Indigenous Peoples foresees a world in which all Indigenous Peoples everywhere, irrespective of location, are able to make full and effective use of new media and ICTs towards the common goal of self-determination. In acknowledging the example of e-Bario and the many similar projects that exist world-wide, the Vision recognises the need for widespread development and deployment of contemporary and future ICTs and new media for the realisation of creative and effective solutions for the problems faced by Indigenous Peoples.

The e-Bario Knowledge Fair was important for many reasons. It delivered significant benefits to the community; the immediate benefits being the revenue from around 100 tourists in terms of accommodation, lodging, conferencing, handicraft sales and additional tours. It also brought together the Kelabit community, both from the immediate surrounding area and from further afield within Malaysia, to reflect on their own development trajectory and how their aspirations could be further assisted through the use of ICTs. In this, they received considerable advice and offers of support from the visiting participants, which will translate into longer term benefits as these ideas, and the relationships from which they sprang, are brought to fruition. The Fair was additionally important for the visitors as it gave them an authentic and first hand taste of living in an isolated location, as do many of the Indigenous Peoples of Asia, and how ICTs can be used to overcome many of the disadvantages that such locations suffer, without subtracting from the advantages. As the following participant quotes testify;
-“conferences such as these can only benefit Indigenous Peoples,”
- “such a great conference I ever attended in my life,”
- “great meeting in Bario, thank you for organising it in such an appropriate venue,”
- “I just got back after a few days in Kuala Lumpur for the GK3. It was not half as interesting as the workshop in Bario,”
- “what a lovely time with lovely people,”
-"thanks to UNDP who invited me to attend such a life-long memorable event at Bario. We didn't just come to share experiences and knowledge on using ICTs by and for Indigenous Peoples, but also come to nurture our brother-and-sisterhood among Indigenous Peoples,”
- “it was great hanging out with everyone and in such an appropriate setting,”
-“thanks to UNDP for making this happen and not putting us into yet another beige conference hall in one of the worlds capitals!”
-“visions of the Bario folk and the e-Bario gang still dancing 'round my head,”
- “an enriching experience indeed.”

The final reason that makes the e-Bario Knowledge Fair important is because it exemplifies the concept of development planning as a development process. The participants were walking the walk as well as talking the talk, and they, and their hosts, felt good about that. It was important that they met there, in Bario, as opposed to meeting in a homogenous banquet hall in an equally homogenous hotel or conference centre. Development Conferencing is a form of development planning that takes place at the locations that it affects. It also takes place with the people that it affects being involved, or in the case of Bario, actually running the event. Accordingly, Development Conferencing, when done properly, contributes immediate benefits to the local economy as well as fostering long term benefits from the outcomes. It engenders empathy among the participants with the issues being discussed and it promotes equality in participation with the residents of the location, which in turn ensures grass-roots input.

Many of those I have worked with in rural development over the last ten years or so will have heard me on occasion complain about those development professionals who ‘never get mud on their shoes’; referring to the army of desk-bound city-based pundits who seem able to download a few reports (‘knowledge products’ in development speak) off the internet and turn themselves into experts overnight without actually getting out ‘into the field’ (another development-speakism) where the knowledge is actually created and put into effective use. It’s safe to say that no-one at the e-Bario Knowledge Fair could be accused of falling into that category, either figuratively or factually. Call it “Development Conferencing” or “Pro-Poor MICE”, the event in Bario demonstrates how desirable benefits can arise from such an approach. I commend it to development practitioners who are equally concerned about the amount of development money that fails to reach its targets and who wish to enrich their activities with a taste of reality.