Social Impact from Technology

The Illusion and Negative Effect of Social Impact from Information and Communication Technologies

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are wonderful tools with an enormous potential for Social Impact, Human Development and improving the lives of the people they serve.

Through ICT people can communicate better, have access to more information, develop collaborative and research skills, become aware of their options and opportunities and gain confidence on their potential. People can communicate, buy, sell and trade with the entire world; express themselves and made their voices be heard. People can be better informed and exercise their right to demand accountability from those supposed to serve them.

But just because they can, doesn’t mean they will.

Countless papers have been written on the infinite potential of ICT for social and economic change in developing regions (commonly referred to as Information Technologies for Development or IT4Dev). Several examples are pointed out as successful initiatives where people are empowered to do more, improve their living conditions and build themselves a better future for them and their communities. We all have heard the motivating stories, or can imagine them just the same, of change-making tele-centers, education networks, virtual marketplaces, community radio, distant learning and telemedicine initiatives to name just a few areas.

But for some reason, beyond the hype of connectivity, access to information and entering some informal markets, if we look closely into those communities, we will find that they remain poor and living conditions remain low. At best some individuals have been able to take advantage of the technology deployed and made some progress, becoming profiles and the center of case studies on the successful impact of technology in developing regions.

How Innovative is Technology?

Often we hear about the infinite potential of IT to enable communication among members of a community, or the revolutionary impact access to market information will have in the lives of people or the leap-frogging effect virtual collaboration spaces, knowledge repositories and learning tools will have on the people. But seldom is the question asked of why there is a minimal current impact of existing communication means, information services, collaboration spaces, knowledge centers and educational institutions.

Anywhere we look, we could make the case that there is communication among people, institutions and sectors; that market information is not secret or kept hidden, often available to those who request it or seek it and that community centers, libraries, schools and encyclopedias are not actively used, even though they could address the issues presented as critical.

This unnoticed oversight can spell doom for social impact from technology, for the same lack of motivation (tradition, attitude, distrust, etc.) that keeps people from taking advantage of the potential of existing resources is most likely to continue towards the new tools or even worsen.

There is an “old” saying in the technology world: “bring automation tools to inefficient process and all you do is automate inefficiency”.

Disruptive Social Process from Technology

The often quoted successes in IT4Dev are often accompanied by an undocumented and silent disruptive process that leaves behind a large portion of the community members and generates new divisions in social and economic structures within these communities. Those farmers with a young kid who attends school and is able to use a computer will have an edge on those who don’t. Those kids who have a computer at home or are able to spend time at the tele-center will have better opportunities than those who don’t. More often than not a new world is presented to the people and they make the unconscious decision of jumping in a boat to arrive to this new world and abandon theirs. The young are not only overwhelmed with all sorts of social behavior and cultural content traditionally alien to them but are blinded by the promise of a better future as computer language programmers, network technicians or IT slaves to the global corporate world.

Limited Social Impact of Information Technology Initiatives

Unless you work for a telecommunications, network, hardware or software company, the development or deployment of technology should not be a project or a goal by itself. Networks, web portals, communication and information systems, tele-centers or even digital communities, virtual learning environments and on-line markets do not guarantee any social impact other than the availability of these technologies to the people around them.

Information Technologies can only have a significant impact on human development if they address the needs, interests, ways, desires and limitations of its users and are used to empower them and enable them to take ownership and control of the tools that are meant to serve them. They will be only as good as the measure on which they are inspired by the people and inspire the people they serve and by how much of the building process is carried on by the people themselves.

Many IT projects labeled as successful when measured by the number of computers deployed, the number of people connected or communities “served” in reality turn out to have a null effect on the empowerment of people to build their own paths to better living conditions and to contribute to the human development of their communities and immediate environment.

If viewed as technology projects, defined, deployed and supervised by technicians, IT projects will be just that: “technology projects” with random impact on the potential of people and the danger of creating division, inequalities and second class citizenships in the global Information Society.

Give people access to technology, even teach them to use it and you end up with just one end of what’s needed to promote human development: users and consumers of technology, with access to services, information and content created by others, often alien to the nature of those we seek to serve.

Generating Second Class Citizens
for the Information Society

Give ICT tools to an illiterate community with a limited tradition of content generating and knowledge documentation and they will become consumers of information and technology, but not generators of information or active participants in the Information Society, therefore becoming second class citizens of it.

More often than not, people and communities in developing regions are recipients of technology and do not play an active role in the development of IT solutions or even social initiatives to improve their living conditions or empower them to do so.
We should not give communities anything. Communities should not be mere recipients of solutions, technologies or even social initiatives. It is of little help when outsiders come and "observe" their needs in order to decide what solutions are needed and return to provide them with those needs.

The Potential of Learning by Doing and
Continuous Direct Engagement of the Community

The problem with many social entrepreneurship and social initiatives is that they seek to develop and provide solutions for the needs of developing communities.
Communities need to be an active player at all stages of any social initiative, from diagnose to design, to development and implementation, to feedback and continuous improvement. Otherwise, the solutions provided are alien to them and often fail to truly empower them.

There is also a unique opportunity in engaging a community not only in the definition of its development goals, paths to follow (more than one there must always be) but in the entire process of building it.

This way they cease to be mere recipients of technology and solutions and are empowered by the experience and knowledge of creating a solution. This “learning by doing” can be more important and powerful than the very solution being built and provided. Even if the projects fail or are interrupted (as often happens), these skills and knowledge remain an invaluable contribution to the empowerment process of the people and their communities.

The Gap between Developers and Stakeholders

It is still very common for IT projects to be defined, ran and implemented by technology-oriented teams with goals measured in number of computers, tele-centers, internet connections and number of users. As a result, 15 years into the Internet revolution, with billions of dollars invested by governments and international organizations, billions more invested by profit oriented companies and exchanging hands in competitive markets where large corporations and small business compete side by side to deliver services and products, we are still to see any significant reduction of poverty, advances in human development or real improvement in the living conditions of any large number of people.

In other cases, these teams are led by bureaucrats, social or academic researchers and consultants. But even when care is taken to observe a community’s behavior, assess its needs and ways, and document its longings and desires, much is lost when these diagnoses are done by outsiders who filter their observation through their own paradigms alien to the reality they are observing.

Until now, however, there has been little alternative. Those interested in the potential of IT for human development, those engaged daily with the communities to be served and the beneficiaries themselves found themselves merciless to the jargon and complexities of setting up IT services and would hand themselves over to IT corporations and consultants to come up with solutions to address their needs.

But Information Technology is a wicked lady that enamors those who dare get too close and look her in the eye, all notion of humanity been subtly replaced by cool gadgets and features, unlimited, possibilities and infinite potential, completely alien to those still not enchanted by the tender witch of technology.

Stakeholders, common people, end users, beneficiaries and those targeted by IT initiatives, usually lack the skills to contribute to the process of defining IT solutions to serve them and end up being recipients of technologies and services often alien to them and that miss the critical aspects of their reality.
IT consultants and technical personnel lack the insight, skills and direction to delve into the reality of those they are meant to serve and discover the really important aspects that need to be addressed.

SIFT and CODE3: A social, technological and empirical approach to closing the gap between stakeholders and developers

Through years of invigorating, frustrating, rewarding and disappointing experiences developing IT projects, social networks and virtual environments, stumbling upon errors, making discoveries along the way and documenting the valuable lessons learned (from best practices to mistakes and unexpected complications) two methodologies have emerged:

Social Impact from Technology (SIFT)

SIFT is a step by step guide and methodology for the formulation of Information Technology Strategies for Human Development.

It seeks to close the existing gap between stakeholders, developers and program management by providing stakeholders with tools and skills to contribute to or lead the process of developing IT Strategies and by providing consultants and technicians a basic insight into Human Development and a methodology to generate relevant social impact from their work. This process generates a common language for better communication with program management.

Stakeholders, developers and project management are all guided through a clearly identifiable, progressive and incremental process to building together their own strategies and solutions through their active and equal participation:

• initial definition of the issues to be addressed.

• observation of the eco-system and identification of stakeholders and their existing and potential relationships.
• identification of environment, resources and actions.
• model building.
• roadmap definition and conventional strategic planning with a twist.
• definition and selection of technologies.
• prototype building, pilot testing, and feedback collectio
• matching social expectations with technological development and social impact with technological deliverance.
• engagement and participation strategies.
• shared vision and room for diversity and creativity.

Community Collaborative and Continuous Direct Engagement in the Design Development and Deployment Process (CODE3)

A horizontal approach and combination of methodology, techniques and tools for making possible the direct engagement of a community in the process of building their own development solutions and initiatives.

Rather than a top-down or bottom-up approach, CODE3 shows the many ways of implementing a horizontal approach to project development, management and growth, the tools that can be used and the techniques to deal with diverse skills, interests and communication and participation levels.

In particular it addresses the following issues:

• How to bring together, avoid conflict and allow collaboration among: Developers, Management (Funders or Policy Makers) and Stakeholders.
• Going from a discrete observation-design-implementation-feedback-improvement process to a continuous development process.
• Replacing intermediated observation with direct engagement.
• Community ownership through user empowerment.
• Definition of roadmap, stages and roles.
• Embracing end user diversity vs. standardization.
• From usability and user centric design to community focused development.
• Tools to use.