The model citizen participation process has citizens holding their governments accountable to deliver quality public services in a transparent and responsive manner. At the recent Technology Salon on How Can ICT's Support Citizen Engagement with Governments? around 30 thought leaders debated the best ways to empower citizens and governments to define what a government should do, express that desire, see it enacted, and rate the result.

Sign up to get invited to future Salons

While the discussion was lively and off-the-record, I did have a few takeaways that should give you a pause and have you thinking for a moment on citizen engagement and technology:

Participation Prerequisites

Before any technology can be introduced, you need to know what the existing relationship is between governments, its constituents, and civil society. Are they antagonistic, complimentary, or indifferent to each other? The answer has a huge impact on project approach.

Note that civil servants, who are usually long-time government employees looking to maintain status quo, may have competing priorities with politicians, who themselves have shifting priorities depending on the election cycle.

Interestingly, the group decided that democracy is not a prerequisite for citizen participation. All governments seek some level of legitimacy from those it governs, and that need for legitimacy increases as you go more local - "all politics is local", holds true regardless of national government structure.

In fact, there are two main reasons why participation at the local level is the greatest across countries:

• A name not a number: At the hyper-local level, politicians and citizens know each other intimately, often living side-by-side.
• Direct accountability: Citizens directly feel the impact of local government actions, or inaction, which isn't always true of national actions

Now "local" is relative and can be defined based on different needs - a school's catchment vs. a school district catchment - but it was agreed that participation projects should always start as local as possible. Also, urban areas were easier than rural areas as you have a greater population density and population from which to start raising awareness.

4 Drivers of Participation

One of the participants defined four reasons that citizens get involved with governments and seek to create change:

1. They care about the issue
2. They feel they can change the issue
3. They feel its "easy" to get involved
4. They feel that their efforts are noticed

These sound deceptively simple, yet often once citizens feel all four and start participating, they have a challenging path to scale. Those that are most passionate about an issue are not always the ones with the resources or capacity to change that passion into action, and action into results. So how can technology help bridge those gaps?

Technology for Participation

Before the Salon, we developed three pages of resources to inform ourselves on the use of technology in citizen participation. I suggest you read those first.

Then, before you consider a technology intervention, understand the technology capacity of the citizens. Know if they are computer literate or mobile phone users, and what level of digital literacy and technology sophistication they possess. Then analyze the same technology traits in the government and civil society to find the simialrities and the gaps.

Youth can be keen on using Facebook or Twitter on their mobile phone to document and coordinate, but many organizations and most governments are still paper-driven. This isn't always a problem. Paper is still a legitimate survey tool and can be less threatening than a video camera or Google Map.

In fact, choice architecture can play a major role - the way (and device) used in presenting a choice or action can influence the outcome.

Positive Participation Example

One aspect of citizen participation is participatory budgeting, where citizens have a direct dialogue with the state to decide where to spend government resources. Brazil has used participatory budgeting for many years now, and recently experimented with an online version:

In 2006, the government dove into its first e-democracy experiment [PDF], allocating additional funds for citizens who participated online. This portion totaled about one-fourth of its regular participatory budget. Instead of face-to-face meetings, the online platform educated citizens through text and rich multimedia. Online forms permitted extended dialog between citizens, experts, and politicians, and a dedicated staff member provided timely e-mail responses to direct questions.

Among countries with e-democracy measures, none are "even close to the results of [Belo Hoizonte's] e-participatory budgeting both in terms of citizen participation and positive impacts in policy-making processes," says Tiago Peixoto. Overall online civic engagement dwarfed traditional offline participatory budgeting and accounted for a sevenfold increase in votes cast over the prior year when no online component was present.

We also heard an additional result from this activity that should impress you: 50% of those who participated went on to social media to persuade others to take action and 60% of those that interacted with the online participatory budgeting process were previously "politically dead" - they had not participated in government activities before.

So when done right, technology can have a huge impact on citizen participation.

Wanna join the next Salon? Sign up to get invited

Technology hubs, innovation spaces, hacker centers, incubators, telecenters, libraries, co-working offices, etc, there are many names to call the places where like-minded people come together to focus on a challenge. We do this because we believe in them as a model for facilitating collaboration, yet at the January Technology Salon in DC, we asked Do Tech Hubs and Innovation Spaces Really Work?

First, A Definition

Let us first create a broad definition of what we're talking about, and I think Christine Prefontaine has a great one:

Innovation spaces are physical environments that promote community, learning, and making. They come in different flavors: Hubs, labs, libraries, hackerspaces, makerspaces, telecentres, coworking spaces. Yet all provide opportunities to (1) engage with people, ideas, and technologies, (2) experience participatory culture, and (3) acquire the literacies and skills needed to prosper in the 21st century.

I personally like this definition as it focuses on capacity building - growing the skills of the community as a key goal and success metric. Working in the OpenGov Hub, I certainly see this on a daily basis. Members of disparate organizations are all learning and collaborating with each other to achieve a common goal.

Then, Should the Development Community Be Involved?

The "hub" movement across Africa is often portrayed as a grassroots network of self-replicating innovation spaces that developed independent of donor or outsider support. However, iHub Nairobi, arguably the flagship African tech hub, was made possible with funding from the Omidyar Network and Hivos. infoDev at the World Bank funds mLabs and mHubs and many of the African tech hub founders have roots or very strong connections in OECD countries.

As a result, we can say that this question is moot. The development community is already involved innovation spaces - in Africa and around the world.

Get involved with Technology Salon - sign up to get invited

Next, What is The Impact?

We all know that collaboration happens when you bring people together, and we can assign many intangible outcomes to places like iHub Nairobi, but what empirical evidence do we have that tech hubs have impact?

To start with, innovation spaces should not be evaluated solely on economic outcomes. Building an ecosystem of excitement, skilled participants, and then organizations of those people that then develop products or services for others is a years-long process. Commercial incubation centers take 5-10 years to fully mature, we should not expect socially focused innovation spaces to be overnight successes.

In addition, the physical space and the community building that comes from bringing people face-to-face is a powerful outcome in of itself. This "buzz" is hard to measure yet key: new technology is cool, and everyone loves a flashy, shiny, new app, but people are cooler.

We must not lose sight of the human side of innovation. In fact, the real challenge is turning this buzz and energy surrounding innovation spaces into a sustainable, durable development process that excites the larger community to recognize the value of the innovation space and join the innovation space participants in effecting lasting change.

Finally, What Works the Best?

Is there one type of innovation space that works better than the other? Short answer: It depends on your goal.

In a country like Liberia, the iLab is focused on basic technology skills training. While in Benin, eTri Labs has hackathons and supports indigenous hardware design. ActivSpaces Cameroon is a startup incubator, Hive Colab Uganda is a coworking space, and iHub Nairboi supports everything from training to venture capital funding.

Best is to do research on what others are doing - here are 30 innovation spaces resources and research links Salon participants compiled before the meeting to inform our discussion.

And if you've read this far, you may want to apply for a consultancy with Unicef to launch innovation labs in Central and South America using their excellent Innovation Labs DIY Guide.

Join us for the next Technology Salon - sign up to get invited.

Let us be honest with ourselves. Most of the shiny, flashy new technology is not designed for the developing world we care about.

Technology is designed for the rich

Hardware designers in rich countries are turning out super light laptops and tablets of glass to impress their rich peers. Software developers are creating apps for customers with credit cards and high-speed Internet. And it's only the rare initiative that thinks beyond the BRICs when going global in product development.

But does it matter for ICT4D?

Even though most phones are not designed for Africans, cellular penetration will pass 80% in the first quarter of 2013. Africans are designing their own tablets, and if you believe the hype, Kenyans now manage their cattle herds via mobile phone. So with these two seemingly contradictory technology paths, we have to ask ourselves: What is holding us back from using technology in more ways, in more communities, to tackle even more pressing problems?

ICT is good, it could be better

At the first Nairobi Technology Salon, we asked ourselves what are the top technology constraints and how can we overcome them? Now beyond the obvious issues of power, access, bandwidth, cost, maintenance, and content, we did find a few challenges with technology as we find it now:

1. Ease of use: Technology can be daunting to use, even for digital natives. No one ever learned how to program a VCR and today, many smart or even feature phones are only used for voice. To overcome this, some phones now come with a "Facebook button" to quicken adoption and usage. Even better would be a programmable button that could be directed to something more useful than a social network.
2. Its all in the voice: Today, it seems like everyone is using SMS. And while "proximate literacy" - asking a friend to read the text - can work for general discussions, in international development we are often asking very personal questions. Focusing on voice communications and exploiting the anonymity of technology could allow for much greater depth in delicate data collection & dissemination.
3. Data security: In the process of data collection, security is everything. Some organizations are still using 10-year old HP and Palm devices because they passed the security requirements of the FDA and other data-strict donors. So how can the current and next generation of mobile devices have data security protocols - at the hardware and software levels?
4. Open interfaces: Right now, many mobile devices are black boxes. We can replace parts and write apps, but the core hardware and software are off limits. Thankfully, the Raspberry Pi is bringing hacking back to schools. While we wait for the next generation of programmers to appear, current technology should allow for more and better standardized input/output interfaces so we can have more feature phone EKGs
5. Multi-modal data transfer: While we're on I/O, right now mobile devices are either WiFi or 3G with only smartphones usually having both. Why limit the wireless spectrum? Each device should have the capacity to receive and transmit on as many standards as possible - yes, 3G and WiFi, but also Bluetooth, USB, NFC, and even old school AM/FM radio. Remember, FM radio still has the greatest penetration rate of any ICT in the world.
6. It all comes down to price: What did we agree was the most effective way to increase ICT adoption? Reduce the cost of ownership. Mobile phones beat laptops and tablets in the mobile race to full adoption because the cost of ownership - purchase price plus ongoing costs - was the lowest for the most number of people. And this is why radio still has the lead - FM receivers are almost free. Yet, that's a key point, to really scale, the technology cannot be free. There has to be enough value that people will pay for it. We cannot 100% subsidize our way to scale.

People are smart, empower them

Overall, while we did find a number of challenges, the Salon was very optimistic. We all believe in the power of technology to accelerate our development objectives, and we recognized that we - the collective development community - do not have all the answers.

In fact, we came back again and again to the user, the beneficiary, the field staff who face these challenges and more every day. They are innovating, they are adapting, and they are re-purposing even the most specialized technology in the most creative and practical ways. As much as we learned in the Salon, we all recognize we are but beginners on this voyage of technology discovery.

Now join us for the next Nairobi Technology Salon discovery session - sign up to get invited.

.

I am Amos Cruz and below are my thoughts around a recent Technology Salon on "How Can We Make 'Cloud' Solutions Relevant in the Offline World" with a cohort of though leaders and decision makers in information technology and international development. Sign up to get invites to future discussions.

Cloud Patterns

The perception of the "cloud" will vary greatly depending on who you ask. Like actual clouds in the sky, the clouds vary by shape, composition, and behavior. The "cloud," at its most fundamental level, refers to a collection of one or more servers that host data and/or applications that users access through the "window" that is their computing device. The primary benefit of the "cloud" is a reduced burden (and responsibility) placed on the user machine for processing and provisioning of information. Additionally, advancements in virtualization and bandwidth capacity increased utilization, processing power, and versatility of hosted data server leading to cloud formations around the world.

Despite rapid developments over the past five years, the essence of "cloud" has been around much longer in the form of hosted information located on websites, blogs, and email services. The emergence of "cloud" in current technical discussion and commercial reference has been a means of packaging possibilities and potential associated with big data and high speed connectivity. Collaboration was always possible, only now things happen faster and are more accessible. This is the world that many of us live and breathe as we look out of our "windows" at the clouds of data all around us.

But, metaphorically speaking, there are places where the weather is anything but predictable and where clouds in the sky are few and far between. Countless factors influence weather patterns and, to the extent that every location is different, the weather will always be local and require appropriate accommodations.

This Technology Salon conversation explored ways to make the benefits of cloud more accessible in areas where "clouds" formed sporadically at best. Discussion ranged from appropriate use of information, approaches to socializing data, and the role of intermediaries and informediaries in realizing the benefits of cloud for various groups. Ultimately, looming over the discussion was the challenge of reconciling the clash between the aspects of the international development sector business model and the collaborative potential of open data that the "cloud" enables.

Dealing with the Local Weather

The discussion highlighted the challenges and differences between (and within) two different stakeholder groups. The first group consists of communities that would use applications and information based in cloud based technology. The second group consists of the intermediaries (and infomediaries) gathering, analyzing, and providing information and resources to both local and global communities. Regardless of whether the cloud instance is hosting data or applications, the larger question centers on how to realize the possibilities of cloud in the lives of target beneficiaries.

The difference in capabilities and intentions inherent to the beneficiary groups pose a challenge to making cloud relevant and, eventually, more prevalent in lesser developed countries. The real work lies in bridging the gap between communities and the very technology that the intermediary groups believe could improve their lives. Some will point out that, within target communities, there isn't the requisite education available to utilize the information and applications provisioned by the aid community. This isn't a new observation and is a reality that organizations deal with to varying levels of success. Educational, along with infrastructural, economic, social and political conditions can create huge divides between beneficiaries and intermediaries. Ultimately, what could happen (and in some cases does) is that international organizations and government agencies produce answers to questions that completely miss the target on the ground.

Putting environmental conditions aside, there is the socialization aspect of new technology that centers on a trust building process and relationship between users and their technological environment. Where devices bring with them direct and indirect costs, adoption rates can be slow, especially in resource constrained environments where user focus is more on the function rather than the form of a technology. In the case of cloud in developed countries, there is an understanding of the benefits and value that it brings to activities in our society. In countries where social norms and activities on the ground differ greatly than those of host governments and international organizations, the first step in the trust building process is to reframe technology solutions that are cognizant of the on the ground conditions and the "local weather."

Putting information access into context and making data sensitive to existing social norms and resources is vital to realizing technological capabilities. The reality for many countries is that infrastructure is inconsistent and the absence of electricity undermines interconnectivity, which in turn breaks up the "cloud." This reality begs the question "Is the cloud still valuable if it is not available 24/7?" The obvious answer is that it "depends." Resource restraints force one to think of the best solution given the circumstance. In areas where internet is limited by cost or infrastructure, partially online services and hub-and-spoke implementations are ways that mitigate some of the risk factors and restraints. eGranary is as an example of how content, that might otherwise sit on the cloud, can be brought off-line in areas that lack internet access. It is not "cloud" as we have come to know it, but it is a solution that

Realizing the Benefits & the Silver Lining

A benefit of cloud computing is the open data initiative that fosters collaboration and information sharing. Whereas information was traditionally siloed in local storage devices and networks, cloud data presents an opportunity for more groups to share data and perform value-added activities to that information. The national weather service is an open data success story where open access to government provisioned scientific data provided an opportunity for websites and application developers to produce value-added services and products built upon that open data. Indeed, in theory, international organizations and their government partners could develop more informed solutions.

However, open data and cloud computing must still overcome a few challenges. The ease of access that characterizes open data on the cloud requires a paradigm shift from a focus on owning data, instead to a focus on using data. Organizations whose value-proposition comes from the acquisition and possession of specific knowledge and data will be reluctant to open their data if it reduces its competitive advantage over other organizations. However, as information becomes increasingly available, organizations will need to reinvent themselves around the use of data rather than its possession.

To communities on the ground, they will directly realize the benefit of the cloud as infrastructure progresses and the local conditions allow acquisition and adoption of technologies aligned with their everyday activities. What results may not be the cloud as "we" know it, but rather reflect the "local weather" be it in the form of partially on-line systems or manually synchronized data networks. Indirectly, communities will realize (or not realize) the benefit of cloud as government agencies shape policies affecting the flow of information into the environment. There will be obvious differences in governance that may pose challenges to how information is accessed, but this has always been a risk factor for information access.

Another benefit may come from the international development sector. As development organizations spend less time gathering data, they will be able to spend more time using the data to develop successful projects. And that would be the best weather prediction we could ask for.

We all know that broadband connectivity is an accelerant for social and economic development. And we know that in the developing world, women are the key investors in family health and education. So shouldn't we be working towards a world where every African woman can have access to broadband Internet?

But what does "broadband" or "access" really mean? And how can we accelerate connectivity?  Yes, mobile operators will play a role, as will ISPs, national backbones, sea cable operators, and the private ICT ecosystem. In fact, in driving better access, there will be policy, regulatory, financial, and cultural challenges, all of which will take many actors working together to achieve impact.

How do we start? What advice do you have for the international development players? The technology community? Or the US and other governments? What levers and leverage can we employ make broadband ubiquitous?

Come to the next Technology Salon for a lively discussion at the intersection of technology and development, boosted with broadband. We'll be joined by Priya Jaisinghani of USAID, Ann Mei Chang of the US State Department, and your forward-thinking peers - so please RSVP early - we will reach capacity fast.

   Broadband Access for Africa
   October Technology Salon in Silicon Valley
   9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.
   Friday, October 12, 2012
   Vodafone Americas Foundation
   275 Shoreline Dr., Suite 400
   Redwood City, CA 94065 (map)

We'll have hot coffee and donuts for a morning rush, but seating is limited at Vodafone Americas. So RSVP ASAP to be confirmed for attendance - once we reach our 30-person capacity there will be a waitlist.

Recently, ICANN, the organization that controls the highest levels of the Internet naming system, made it possible for groups to apply for new TLDs - new names to the right of the dot - that would join the likes of .com .org .edu. Along with the many commercial entrants were a number of applications that could have real development impact, including .Africa (for which there are competing bids) and .Zulu (applied for by a US firm).

There was also significant controversy surrounding the fact that of the nearly 2000 applications, only 17 were from the African continent.

Who should own .Africa?

Should the new online space be run by a commercial entity or NGO? Is it important that it be run by an African group, and if so, why? And what if any is the appropriate role for international organizations like the African Union or others?

And what about a future community application, like a .Hausa or .Kiswahili? Who should have the rights to operate generic names? Just to make it more murky, Africa.com is owned by Teresa Clarke, an American business woman.

Will .Africa have international development impact?

Regardless of who owns it, can a .Africa accelerate the economic and social advancement of the continent? How will this top-level domain -- or new TLDs -- increase digital investment or help Africans navigate the wilds of the Internet? Or is it just a handy way to extort domain name registration fees from pan-African companies? Could it be that country level domains, like .ke or .ng already provide for Africans online, or will a .Africa put them out of business?

Please RSVP ASAP to join Andrew Mack of AMGlobal, who has advised ICANN on this issue, in a lively debate around the development impact of TLDs in the next Technology Salon:

Will .Africa have development impact?
July Technology Salon
8:30 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
IREX Conference Room
2121 K Street NW
Washington, DC (map)

We'll have hot coffee and Krispe Kreme donuts for a morning rush, but seating is limited at IREX's headquarters. So RSVP ASAP to be confirmed for attendance - once we reach our 20-person capacity there will be a waitlist.

At the global level, a very small percentage of development funding goes to urban spaces, yet hard-hitting issues impact many of the urban poor: lack of tenure, lack of legality of land, informal settlements, lack of birth registration and civil registration in general, waste disposal, clean water, politicizing of local authorities and more. Can new technologies be a solution for some of these issues?

Tuesday's Technology Salon NYC offered a space to discuss some of the key challenges and good practice related to working with children, youth, and urban communities and explored the potential role of ICTs in addressing issues related to urban poverty.

According to UNICEF, who co-organized and hosted the Salon at their offices, half of the world's people - including over one billion children - live in cities and towns. By 2030, it is projected that the majority of the world's children will grow up in urban areas, yet infrastructure and services are not keeping pace with this urban population growth. (See UNICEF's 2012 State of the World's Children or Plan's 2010 Because I am a Girl Report: Digital and Urban Frontiers).

We welcomed 3 experienced and engaging discussants to the Salon, who commented on the intersection of children, youth, urban environments and new technologies:

1. Doris Gonzalez, Senior Program Manager Corporate Citizenship & Corporate Affairs at IBM Corporation who manages IBM's grade 9-14 education model Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH), a program that maps work-based skills to the curriculum and provides mentors to students and teachers
2. Ron Shiffman, a city planner with close to 50 years of experience providing architectural, planning, community economic development, and sustainable and organizational development assistance to community-based groups in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods; and the co-founder of the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development [PICCED]
3. Sheridan Bartlett, a researcher affiliated with the Children's Environments Research Group at CUNY and the International Institute for Environment and Development in London, co-editor of the journal Environment and Urbanization, supporter of Slum Dwellers International, and researcher on the link between violence and living conditions as they affect young children.

Doris shared IBM's experiences with technology education programs with children and youth in New York City, including the highly successful P-TECH program which prepares youth for jobs that require 21^st century skills. Some of the key aims in the PTECH program are making technology accessible, engaging, relevant to children and youth, and connecting what kids are learning to the real world. Through the program, IBM and partners hope to turn out skilled employees who are on entry-level career tracks.

They look at what jobs are hiring with AAS degrees, what skills are attached and how to map those skills back into curriculum. Helping children and youth acquire collaboration, communication, and problem solving skills is key to the approach, as are broad partnerships with various stakeholders including government, private sector, communities and youth themselves. The program has been lauded by President Obama and is in the process of being replicated in Chicago.

Ron highlighted that working on urban poverty is not new. His involvement began in 1963 when John F. Kennedy was elected and there was a thrust to address urban poverty. Many, including Ron, began to think about their role in abolishing (not just alleviating or reducing) poverty. 'We thought as architects, as planners about how we could address the issues of urban poverty.' Broader urban poverty initiatives grew from work done forming the first youth in action community based organizations (CBOs) in Bedford Sty, Harlem and the Lower East Side.

Originally these programs were empowerment programs, not service delivery programs; however because they confronted power, they faced many challenges and eventually morphed into service delivery programs. Since then, this youth in action community based model has served other community based initiatives all over the world. Ron emphasized the importance of differentiating among the roles of CBOs, technical assistance providers, and intermediaries and the need to learn to better to support CBOs who are on the ground rather than supplanting their roles with NGOs and other intermediaries.

Sherry picked up where Ron left off, noting that she'd collaborated with a network of federations of the urban poor in 33 countries, looking at ways they've used technologies and how technology presents new challenges for communities.

A large percentage of the urban poor live illegally in non-formal settlements where they can't vote and don't have legal representation, she said. They want partnership with the local government and to make themselves visible. The first thing they do is to count themselves, document the land they live on, map every lane and garbage dump, every school (if schools exist), their incomes, livelihoods, and expenditures. This body of information can help them engage with local authorities. It's an organizing tool that gives them a collective identity that can lead to a collective voice.

This process seems to be a natural fit for technology, in that it can allow for management and storing of information, she said. However, technology use can be incredibly complicated. Traditionally the process has been managed manually. The information comes in on paper, it is fed immediately back to community members, contested and corrected right there. The process is very participatory and very accurate, and includes everybody. Things that have been mapped or measured are validated. Boundaries are argued and joint agreement about the community reality and the priorities is reached right there.

Sherry noted that when technology is used to do this, participation becomes more restricted to a smaller, more technically savvy group rather than the entire community. It takes longer to get the information back to the community. Many urban poor are technology literate, but there are complexities. Sometimes youth want to go with technology and older leaders are more comfortable with the more manual, inclusive processes.

The complexity of urban environments was addressed by all three discussants. According to Sherry, many people still hold a development image of the 'perfect village,' contained, people sitting around a tree. But urban communities are very complex: Who owns what? There are landlords. Who represents whom? How do you create the space and the links with local authorities? Ron agreed, saying that cities and settlements tend to be far more pluralistic. Understanding the nature and differences among them, how to weave together and work together is critical. Doris noted that one organization cannot work on this alone, but that multiple partners need to be involved.

Key points brought up during the ensuing discussion included:

Process, product and participation:

• It's important to work directly with community based organizations rather than surrogates (in the form of external NGOs). It's critical to work on building the capacity of people and organizations on the ground, recognizing them as the core actors.
• The process by which people engage is just as important as the end product. If new technologies are involved, participation needs special attention to ensure no one is being marginalized and the data is interpreted by local people, and they play a role in gathering it and learning, sharing and discussing during the process.
• Digital data collection and fly-over mapping should not replace participatory processes of data collection and local interpretation. Bringing in more efficient processes via new technologies is possible, but it often means losing some of the richness and interpretation of the data. If you're not including everyone in this process, you risk marginalizing people from the process.
• Every community, village or barrio has a different personality. No one size approach or model or technology fits all.
• It's important to let people create solutions to their own challenges; set the right policies so that what is produced can be scaled (open/open source); and make sure things are hyper-local - yet help move the ideas and build networks of south-south collaboration so that people can connect.
• The technologies only make sense when they are done within a participatory framework or context. People get excited about technology and the idea of really iterating and trying things out very quickly. But this only makes sense if you have a bigger plan. If you go in and start playing around, without context and a long-term plan, you lose the community's trust. You can't drop in tech without context, but you also can't come and create such a huge infrastructure that it's impossible to implement. You need balance.

Children and youth:

• We shouldn't forget protection and privacy issues, especially with children and with mapping. These need to be carefully built in and we need to be sure that information and maps are not misused by authorities.
• We can't forget the young people and adolescents that we are working with - what do we want them to gain out of this? Critical thinking, problem solving skills? This is what will serve them. Educational systems need to address the pedagogy - if children are even in schools - where do you get that critical thinking? How do you create space for innovation? What is the role of tech in helping support this innovation? What is the role of mapping? Just accounting? Just quantifying? Or are you helping youth know their communities better? Helping them understand safety? What are we mapping for? Community self-knowledge or outside advocacy?

Technology:

• We need to always ask: Who owns and manages technology? Technology is never neutral. It can both empower and disempower people and communities, and certain groups of people within communities.
• The technology is a tool. It's not the technology that teaches, for example, it is teachers who teach. They use the tech to supplement what's going on in the classroom.
• Rather than bring in 'really cool' things from the outside, we should know what tech already exists, what children, youth and communities are already using and build on that.The challenge always comes down to the cost. Even if an idea works in the US, will it work in other places? Can other places afford the technology that we are talking about? There are some very good projects, but they are impossible to replicate. We need to find feasible and sustainable ways that technology can help reduce costs while it improves the situation for the urban poor.

Engaging local and national governments and the private sector

• Bottom up is important, but it is not enough. The role of local authorities is critical in these processes but national authorities tend to cut local budgets meaning local authorities cannot respond to local needs. It's important to work at every level - national policies should enable local authorities and mandate local authorities to work with local communities.
• Local authorities often need to be pushed to accept some of these new ideas and pulled forward. Often communities can be more technologically savvy than local authorities, which can turn the power dynamic upside down and be seen as threatening, or in some cases as an opportunity for engagement.
• Communities may need to learn to engage with local governments. Adversarial or advocacy techniques may be useful sometimes but they are not always the right way to go about engaging with the authorities.
• It's useful for CBOs to work with both horizontal and vertical networks, and NGOs can play a role in helping this to happen, as long as the NGOs are not replacing or supplanting the CBOs.
• There needs to be support from the local city government, and an interest, a need, an expressed dedication to wanting to be involved or these kinds of initiatives will fail or fizzle out.
• There is a tendency to seek quick solutions, quick fixes, when we all know that creating change takes a long time and requires a long-term perspective and investment. The city of Medellin for example has done a good job of investing in connecting settlements to the city through infrastructure and access to technology. Long-term vision with participation from private, public and community engagement is critical.
• The quality of investment in poor areas needs to be as high as that in wealthier areas. Many interventions are low quality or limited when they are done in poor areas.
• Multiple partners and collaboration among them is necessary for these initiatives to move forward and to be successful. You need to bring everyone to the table and to have an existing funding structure and commitment from local and national governments and ministries, as well as local communities and CBOs, NGOs and the private sector.
• A role for the UN and INGOs can be to help ensure that the right channels are being opened for these projects, that the right partnerships are established, that systems and technologies are kept open and not locked into particular proprietary solutions.

Learning/sharing challenges, approaches and good practice:

• There is much to learn from how marginalized youth in communities have been engaged without technologies. Once they have the information, no matter how it was gathered - in the sand, by SMS, on the wall -- then how can marginalized young people access and address local authorities with it? How can we help enable them to feel more empowered? What can we learn from past efforts that we can apply?
• There is a lack of exposure of those working in ICT to the urban space and vice versa. This reflects a need to break down the issues and opportunities and to think more deeply about the potential of technology as a part of the solution to urban poverty issues.
• We need to make a distinction between wonderful projects that some are doing, but that are very costly and have a high cost per participant; and programs that can be done in developing countries. Consider that 75 million youth are now unemployed. The more we learn about what others are doing, the more information we have on how to do it, the better.
• ICTs are a relatively new element in the urban space. It would be helpful to have a a follow-up report that focuses on how ICTs have been used to address specific issues with children, youth and communities in urban spaces and what specific challenges are posed when using ICTs in this space. What projects have been done or could be done? What are the challenges in implementing projects with refugee populations, undocumented populations, migrants, and other groups? We need to understand this better. We need a document or guide that explores these issues and suggests practical ways to move forward.
• Social media and new technologies can be used to spread information on successful case studies, to share our learning and challenges and good practice so that we can apply the best approaches.

A huge thanks to ICT Works, UNICEF, our discussants and participants for making this 2nd Technology Salon NYC a success!

Save the date for the next TSNYC, on April 13, 2-4pm at New York Law School. The topic will be the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI); how it can contribute to better aid coordination and effectiveness; challenges and opportunities for CSOs in signing onto IATI; and ways that technology and open data are supporting the process.

At a recent Technology Salon, we were discussing the countries that have the best environment for ICT innovation that will accelerate economic and social development. Quickly we listed the following four countries:

1. Kenya has the potent mix of multiple fiber optic cables connecting to aggressive ISPs and mobile operators operating in a relatively open and transparent regulatory environment with strong government support for telecommunications competition.
2. Ghana has a similar enabling environment, if a somewhat smaller population & therefore market size.
3. Nigeria is the largest market but doesn't quite have the same level of openness and transparency, though it is working hard to compete with Ghana and Kenya.
4. Tanzania is aspiring to join this elite group with many of the right steps and investments that should pay off soon.

After these four, there was a collective pause, as the next country to be a hotbed of ICT innovation is not so clear. A few countries were mentioned and then quickly discarded, among them Angola. This surprised me, as I thought it a contender. Yet others pointed out that besides the oil economy, not much else is happening there. Then two countries emerged specifically because they didn't have an ICT ecosystem:

1. South Sudan is the newest country in Africa and by all accounts, it's a green field - there isn't any ICT there so it's a fully open market.
2. Liberia is another green field, with even better political and national security.

Where else?

Let us not stop there. If you were to make a list of the top 5 countries for ICT4D in Africa, which would be on your list? Which would not? And why?

If we are serious about ICT as an accelerant for social and economic development, and we know that a) women are the key to investments in family health and education, and b) broadband connectivity is a major ICT catalyst for both, then we should be working towards a world where every African woman can have access to broadband Internet.

But what does "broadband" or "access" really mean? And how can we accelerate connectivity?  Yes, mobile operators will play a role, as will ISPs, national backbones, sea cable operators, and the private ICT ecosystem. In fact, its a policy, regulatory, financial, and cultural challenge, which will take many actors working together to achieve impact.

How do we start? What advice do you have for the technologists? The technocrats? The ICT4D community as a whole? Or the whole US government foreign assistance framework? What levers and leverage can make broadband ubiquitous?

Come to the next Technology Salon for a lively discussion at the intersection of technology and development, boosted with broadband. We'll be joined by Priya Jaisinghani of USAID, Ann Mei Chang of State via Google, and your peers - so please RSVP early - we will reach capacity fast.

   Broadband Access for Africa
   March Technology Salon
   8:30 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.
   Tuesday, March 20, 2012
   IREX
   2121 K Street NW, Suite 700
   Washington, DC (map)

We'll have hot coffee and Krispe Kreme donuts for a morning rush, but seating is limited at IREX's headquarters. So RSVP ASAP to be confirmed for attendance - once we reach our 20-person capacity there will be a waitlist.

Civil society has been working for years on participation, transparency, accountability and governance issues. Plenty of newer initiatives (small and large) look at new technologies as a core tool in this work. But are these groups talking and learning from each other?

What good practices exist for using new technologies to improve transparency, accountability and governance? What are some considerations and frameworks for thinking about the role of new technologies in this area of work? What needs consideration under this broad theme of good governance?

Tuesday's Technology Salon* in New York City focused on those issues, kicked off by our two discussants, Hapee de Groot from Hivos and Katrin Verclas from Mobile Active. Discussion ensued around the nuances of how, with whom, when, why, and in conjunction with what do new technologies play a role in transparency, accountability and good governance. Some of the key points brought up during the Salon:

Please join us for the next Technology Salon

What is "good governance?"

The overall term could be divided into a number of core aspects, and so the discussion is a big one and it's complicated. Aid transparency is only one small part of the overall topic of good governance.

The World Bank definition includes aspects of:

• Participation of citizens in political processes, freedom of expression and association, free media
• Political stability and absence of violence
• Government effectiveness in the delivery of services
• Regulatory quality, rule of law
• Control of corruption

There's a need to look at governments and aid, but also to look at the private sector. Some commented that aid transparency is in vogue because donors can drive it but it's perhaps not as important as some of the other aspects and it's currently being overemphasized. There are plenty of projects using ICTs and mobiles in other areas of governance work.

More data doesn't equal more accountability.

Data does not equal participation. Can mobile phones and other ICTs or social media reduce corruption? Can they drive new forms of participation? Can they hold power accountable in some ways? Yes, but there is no conclusive evidence that the use of new technology to deliver data down from governments to people or up from people to governments improves governance or accountability. The field of tech and governance suffers from 'pilotitis' just like the field of ICT4D. Some participants felt that of course open data doesn't automatically equal accountability and it was never the idea to stop there. But at the same time, you can't have accountability without open data and transparency. Opening the data is just the first step in a long road of reaching accountability and better governance.

Efficient vs transformational.

Transactional efficiency within a system is one thing. Transformation is another. You can enhance an existing process from, say, writing on paper to calling on a landline to texting in information, thereby improving accuracy and speed. But there is something more which is the transformational side. What's most interesting perhaps are those ways that ICTs can completely alter processes and systems.

Again, there are a lot of promising examples but there is not much evidence of their impact at this point. One participant noted that current evidence seems to point toward the integration of mobiles (and other ICTs) into existing process as having a greater impact and quicker uptake within large, bureaucratic systems than disruptive use of new technologies.

But the question remains - Are the systems good systems or should/could ICTs transform them to something totally different and better or can ICTs help do away with poorly working systems entirely, replacing them with something completely new?

Is open data just a big show?

Some alluded to opaque transparency, where a government or another entity throws up a bunch of data and says "we are being open" but there is no realistic way to make sense of the data. Some felt that governments are signing onto open data pacts and partnerships as a fake show of transparency. These governments may say, "The data base is available. Go ahead and look at it."

But it costs a lot of money and high level skills to actually use the data. In addition, there is a need for regulatory frameworks and legislation around openness. Brazil was given as an example of a country that has joined the open government partnership, but as yet has no regulatory framework or freedom of information act, even though the country has a beautiful open government website. "Checks and balances are not inherent in the mobile phone. They need to be established in the legislation and then can be enhanced by mobile or other technology."

Open Data Hackathons can help turn data into information. The question of "what does open data actually mean?" came up also and the "cake test" was recommended as one way of defining "open".

Is open data an extractive process?

Some at the Salon cautioned that the buzz around Open Data could be a bit false in some ways, and may be hyped up by private companies who want to make money off of nice data visualizations that they can sell to big donors or governments. The question was raised about how much data actually gets back to those people who provide it so that they can use it for their own purposes?

The sense was that there's nothing wrong with private companies helping make sense of data per se, but one could ask what the community who provided the data actually gets out of this process. Is it an extractive data mining process? And how much are communities benefiting from the process? How much are they involved?

Mikel Maron wrote a great post yesterday on the link between open data and community empowerment - I highly recommend reading it for more on this.

Whose data?

A related issue that wasn't fully discussed at the Salon is: who does the information that is being "opened" actually belong to (in the case of household surveys, for example)? The government? The International NGO or multilateral agency who funds a project or research? The community? And what if a community doesn't want its data to be open to the world - is anyone asking? What kind of consent is being granted? What are the privacy issues? And what if the government doesn't want anyone to know the number of X people living in X place who fit X description? Whose decision is it to open data? What are the competing politics?

For example, what if an organization is working on an issue like HIV, cholera, violence or human trafficking. What if they want to crowd source information and publicly display it to work towards better transparency and improved service delivery, but the host government country denies the existence of the issue or situation?

In one case I heard recently, the NGO wanted to work with government on better tracking and reporting so that treatment/resources could be allocated and services provided, but when the government found out about the project, they wanted control over the information and approval rights. Government went so far in another case as to pressure the mobile service provider who was partnering with the organization, and the mobile service provider dropped out of the project.

These are good reminders that information is power and openness can be a big issue even in cases not initially identified as politically charged.

Privacy and security risks.

The ubiquity of data can pose huge privacy and security concerns for activists, civil society and emerging democracies and some at the Salon felt this aspect is not being effectively addressed. Can there really be anonymous mobile data? Does the push/drive for more data jeopardize the political ambitions of certain groups (civil society that may be disliked by certain governments)?

This can also be an issue for external donors supporting organizations in places like Syria or Iraq. Being open about local organizations that are receiving funding for democracy or governance work can cause problems (eg., they get shut down or people can be arrested or killed).

Can new ICTs weaken helpful traditional structures or systems?

Is new tech removing some middlemen who were an important part of culture or societal structure? Does it weaken some traditional structures that may actually be useful? The example of the US was given where a huge surge of people now engage directly with their congressperson via Twitter rather than via aggregation channels or other representatives. Can this actually paralyze political systems and make them less functional?

Some countered, saying that Twitter is somewhat of a fad and over time this massive number of interactions will settle down, and in addition, not everyone gets involved on every issue all the time. Things will sort themselves out. Some asked if politicians would become afraid (someone - help!! there is a study on this issue that I can't seem to locate) to make some of the secret deals that helped move agendas forward because they will be caught and so openness and transparency can actually paralyze them? In other words is it possible that transparency is not always a good thing in terms of government effectiveness?

The example of paying Afghan police directly by mobile phone was given. This initiative apparently ended up failing because it cut decision makers who benefited from bribes out of the loop. Decoupling payments from power is potentially transformational, but how to actually implement these projects when they disrupt so much?

Does new technology create parallel structures?

Are parallel structures good or bad? In an effort to bypass inefficient and/or unaccountable systems, in one case, private business owners started their own crime reporting and 911 system to respond and accompany victims to report to the police and follow up on incidents.

Questions were raised whether this privatization of government roles was taking justice into ones' own hands, forcing the government to be accountable, allowing it to shirk responsibilities, or providing a way for government to see an innovation and eventually take on a new and more effective system that had been tried and tested with private funds. This same issue can be seen with parallel emergency reporting systems and other similar uses of ICTs.

It may be too early in the game to know what the eventual outcomes of these efforts will be and what the long term impact will be on governance. Or it may be that parallel systems work in some contexts and not in others.

And...

The Salon could have gone for much longer but alas, we had to end. Dave Algoso covers some of the other ideas from the Salon in his post Technology for Transparency, Accountability and Governance, including how to approach and define the topic (top down vs bottom up? efficiency vs transformation?) and the importance of measuring impact.

Thanks to UNICEF and Chris Fabian for hosting the Salon. Thanks to Martin Tisne from the Transparency and Accountability Initiative for sparking the idea to choose this topic for the first Technology Salon in NYC, and thanks to Wayan Vota for inviting me to coordinate the series.