More Tech Salons About donor funding
-
The recent Technology Salon on How to Counter Malign Influences in Digital Development was a fascinating discussion that should start with the idea that we are mainly talking about the Chinese and Russian country governments. These governments may not reflect the will of its citizens, or even a majority of them, and the governments themselves…
-
Most government funded international development programs start with a Request for Proposal (RFP) that has to follow strict government procurement processes. These systems are designed to protect taxpayer money from waste and fraud and generate very detailed proposals. However, this very focus on risk aversion could actually be increasing the risk that humanitarian relief programing,…
-
Our sixth virtual Salon in the “Tech in the Time of Coronavirus” series revolved around the role of funders in the COVID-19 digital response. The pandemic has laid bare the vulnerabilities in our economic models and systems. As we look to the future and strive to build a world that is more resilient, funders have…
-
33,000 stores, 61 years of business, and more than 1 billion served. Can you guess which organization these numbers are associated with? McDonald’s. Imagine if development organizations had these kinds of statistics. Imagine if they could track results to this degree. Would programs save money? Be more efficient? What would it take to harness data…
-
Let us start with the classic (borderline cliché) development proverb: if you give a man a fish, he eats for a day, but if he is taught how to fish, he will eat for a lifetime. It was this analogy that got conversation started at the latest Technology Salon, “Are Mobile Money Cash Transfers the…
-
The February 5 Technology Salon in New York City asked “What are the ethics in participatory digital mapping?” Judging by the packed Salon and long waiting list, many of us are struggling with these questions in our work.
-
You might think that the topic of collecting data via mobile devices would be a rather dry discussion of data management and statistical methodology. You would be very, very wrong. The Technology Salon all but came to blows as we wrestled with privacy issues, total costs of ownership, and other elephants in the room. When…
-
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?
-
No one ever fails in ICT4D. Isn’t that amazing! Technologies come and go quickly – bye, bye PDA’s, Windows Vista, and soon Nokia – yet in ICT4D, each project has impact and we never fail. We just have lessons learned. In fact, can you name a single technology program that has publicly stated that it…
-
At the Technology Salon on “How to Incorporate ICT into Proposals”, we discussed some of the challenges and solutions for proposal writers when they try to incorporate information and communication technologies into future program design.
-
We all want to add the technology sizzle to our proposals. Nothing wins an RFP these days like “e” this or “m” that. Yet ICT projects are complicated, and hasty technology additions in proposals often leave implementers struggling to achieve project milestones after the contract is won.
-
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has a proud history of transforming development through science & technology. As part of the ambitious reform effort, USAID Forward, USAID is developing a set of Grand Challenges for Development, a framework to focus the Agency and development community on key barriers that limit breakthrough development progress….
-
Young people make up 18% of the world’s population today, or 1.2 billion in absolute terms. Of these 15-24 year-olds, 87% live in developing countries. At the same time, their basic educational needs are not being met. More than one-third of all youth around the world are not in the classroom – 73% of youth…
-
Competitive private companies know that just adopting the tools of ICT will not magically lead to productivity gains – it takes much change and investments in business processes to really reap the rewards that ICT can bring. But this basic tenant can be lost in the hype around specific devices or technologies.
-
Whew, I think this was one of the most intense and contentious Technology Salons yet! After an hour of lively discussion around what “sustainability” and “scale” means to information and communication technology programs, we were just starting to pull back the layers around the topics.
(Want to attend the next Technology Salon? Then subscribe to our meeting announcements to be invited.)
Sustainability Means Many Things
We quickly found that there were many definitions of sustainability and scale. Maybe too many, as these terms differed wildly across implementers and donors. It was even suggested that in the realm of ICT, development has an unbroken string of failures since none of the projects have scaled to the extent of mobile phones.
Before we cast out the entire body of work to date, much of ICT4D is done as experimentation – there is an expectation of failure while we figure out models that would work. At least we have mobile phones to show that there are ICT models that can scale, sustainably.
-
What do you think is the single most important issue at the intersection fo technology and development? Recently, the twin issues of sustainability and scale have come to the forefront in many conversations, with both peaking in October in several forums:
Is it only about money?- Sustainability: This month’s Educational Technology Debate is focusing on ICT4E sustainability and at an IADB meeting, virtually everything that USAID does was suggested to be unsustainable.
- Scale: I was recently reminded that while there is an incredibly vibrant mobile phone industry, after 15 years of PDA and mobile phone pilots there are few, if any, sustained mobile technology development projects that are more than 5 years old, continued after funding ended, and scaled beyond pilots.
But what do we mean by “sustainability” and “scale” in ICT4D?
Now here’s the real issue. What might be our shared definition of both “sustainability” and “scale” with information and communication technology programs in international development?