Access
to Information and Communication for Sustainable Development Opportunities and Challenges for the International
Community
Recommendations
of the Access Working Group
of
the Global Knowledge Partnership
by
Kerry McNamara and Rory O’Brien
February
4, 2000
There is broad consensus within the international community that
gaps in information and knowledge, both within and between countries, are
increasing. The new information and
communications technologies, which are being rapidly deployed throughout the
world, are important factors in both creating and addressing these gaps. At a time when these critical tools hold the
promise of allowing the local and global information-sharing needed for
sustainable development in the 21st century, there is broad concern
that gaps in access to these tools and resources are increasing, and that the
information revolution could paradoxically become a cause of even greater
inequality and worsening poverty.
There is an urgent need for the international community – including public, private and not-for-profit agencies – to work together to promote universal access to information and communication technologies. Yet it is equally important to make the right choices about the scope and focus of those interventions, so as to encourage and complement, rather than interfere with, the innovation and private initiative that are a vital source of these new technologies and their global extension. In addition, it is important to give particular attention to the specific needs and diverse traditions of poor communities. “Universal access” should mean access by all to all the world’s diverse riches of knowledge and information, including the knowledge of poor and traditional communities, not just the universal spread of the “content” of those countries at the forefront of the information revolution.
The challenge for the Global Knowledge Partnership in the area of Access, then, is to identify key areas of need and opportunity for joint action that will facilitate the growth of diverse, innovative solutions to the access challenge. These solutions should foster private sector innovation and investment while preserving a legitimate concern for equity and sustainability, encouraging the preservation and spread of diverse sources of information and knowledge (including the information and knowledge of poor and traditional communities), and mobilizing information and communication technologies as tools of broader sustainable development objectives. These solutions should focus, in particular, on ways to empower poor communities and individuals with and through information and communication. Governments and civil society organizations, in particular, have an important role to play in ensuring that ICT is used to support citizen participation in meeting needs not addressed by the private sector.
It is highly recommended that interventions target specific
communities most likely to suffer from inadequate access. Access for rural communities is especially
important, given the large number of people in the world that do not dwell in
large cities. In addition, there are
many traditionally disadvantaged people who must be given more consideration in
matters of access. These include women
in general, as well as poor, illiterate and disabled people. In conjunction
with these communities, the barriers to access that challenge them must be
singled out and overcome. These
barriers include such things as differences in cultural practices and
languages, gender issues, lack of affordability, inadequate infrastructures,
and censorship concerns. All
ICT-related interventions would benefit from including these communities in
efforts to eliminate their difficulties
in achieving equitable access.
The Access Working Group has identified six key areas where the greatest need and opportunity exist for effective collaboration by members of the Partnership that will help advance the goal of universal, sustainable, economically viable access to information and communication technologies, particularly for the world’s poor.
1.
Sharing Information, Analysis and Evaluation on the Scope and Nature of the
Access Challenge
Much of the work of the international community on Access issues
in the past few years has been based on spotty information and limited
research, insufficiently rigorous
analysis of the nature and scope of the market demand and market failures,
little effort to inventory what we already know and what we've already done,
and little understanding/evaluation of the IMPACT of those interventions we
have made so far. So the first priority
area for action is a much stronger commitment to information-sharing, analysis
and evaluation in order to properly inform our actions.
Within countries, it would help if local users were consulted and
research done on their needs and circumstances prior to the implementation of
ICT initiatives, such as telecentres.
This will help identify the configuration of technologies and their
utilization that are most appropriate to the local situation. Between countries, more effort must be made
to include voices from developing countries in international research and
decision-making forums regarding the use of ICT. This will avoid creating patterns of ICT deployment that are
biased in favour of the advanced economies of the world.
2. Encouraging
Well-Targeted Public and Private Investment
One of the critical, and complex, dimensions of the access problem
is identifying the proper focus and scope of public (local and international)
and private investment in creating conditions and resources for universal
access. Addressing legitimate equity
concerns and public sector priorities while at the same time encouraging
private sector innovation and investment is particularly tricky, but
particularly important, in the area of information/communication technologies
and the infrastructure of universal access.
Recent research has suggested that there may be many more opportunities
for effective and sustainable private investment, and much more real and
sustainable demand, than the development community has traditionally
believed. The public, private and
non-governmental members of the GKP need to work together much more effectively
to push the envelope of what is commercially attractive, so that we can at the
same time more effectively TARGET public investments in priority areas where
commercial approaches are not likely to be viable for some time and/or where
critical public needs/interests/goods are at stake. Given the scope and speed of private sector innovation, and
spread of technology, we need to be very careful not to crowd out incipient
private investment by poorly targeted and unsustainable public investments,
particularly by international organizations.
There is a fine line between pilot projects that test and stimulate
demand and pilot projects that distort or stifle indigenous responses to
incipient demand. (For example, and
relating this point to priority #1, we urgently need to assess the impact of
the various telecenter projects of the past few years.)
In addition, the Partnership should consider carefully targeted
“venture capital” investments to foster private innovation in areas where new
forms of technology could generate significant opportunity for
developing-country entrepreneurship in the information economy. A prime example is the Open-Source software
movement. A consortium of Partners,
working creatively with the private sector in developing countries, could play
a valuable role in seeding the emergence of robust, innovative, and globally
competitive software industries based on the Open Source model.
Here again, the Partnership could best contribute to the growth of
innovative applications relevant to the needs of developing countries and the
poor by fostering an environment for innovation and private investment and
helping the emergence of INDIGENOUS innovators. Devoting resources to applications that are designed and built
in developed countries for use in developing countries should be a last resort
in urgent cases. Priority should be
given to fostering the growth of indigenous applications developers.
3. Strategy, Policy and Regulation: Creating an
Environment for Innovation and the Free Flow of Information
In order to foster universal access to information and
communication tools and resources, the international community needs to pay
attention not only to specific policy/regulatory areas such as
telecommunications reform, but also to broader issues of helping developing
countries create and implement a strategy for joining the information
economy. This involves giving clear and
unambiguous messages to decision-makers about the need to make planning and
preparation for the deployment of digital communications a priority, and on the
negative consequences of following a strategy of centralizing control of public
information. It also involves developing templates and toolkits for policy and
regulatory reform that promote the growth of the information economy and enable
the free, multidirectional flow of information and knowledge, both within and
among countries, and coordinating more effectively the training and
capacity-building efforts of the Partners in policy and regulatory areas. The Partnership also needs to give more
attention to building the capacity of non-governmental
groups in developing countries, including the private sector, both to play an
active role in creating the enabling environment for the information economy
and to assert the rights and principles of universal access to information and
knowledge. Part of their role is to
help foster an environment of greater accountability and transparency in the
use of, and policy affecting, information and communication.
Specific instance:
Internet Governance
Access by developing country representatives (from government, the private sector and NGOs) to international decision-making bodies on Internet governance and related issues of the information economy is an important issue. It may be an exaggeration to say that in the area of telecommunications, standards setting is replacing legislation, but the standards that are adopted, whether by international governance bodies or private consortia, determine the choices that are available in the future. This can have a tremendous impact on access. One could argue that the best thing developing countries could do over the next 2-3 years to assure themselves a meaningful and credible voice in international governance mechanisms for the information economy is to make their countries full and vibrant participants in that economy by an aggressive program of policy and regulatory reform, creatively-leveraged public sector investment, and encouragement of domestic and international private sector investment and entrepreneurship.
Specific instance:
Access for Rural and Disadvantaged Communities
In
the next 2-3 years, the best contribution the Partnership can make to
increasing access for rural and disadvantaged communities is by focusing intensely on fostering positive policy and
regulatory environments for innovation and private investment (including
competition in the telecommunications sector), by helping to find creative
solutions for DEMAND in rural and underserved communities to express itself,
and by directing private investment to those opportunities, in partnership with
the public sector and the international community. Subsidies and other non-market interventions should be used
whenever it is clear that the private sector is unable to adequately provide
the access required.
4.
Targeting Public-Sector Access Interventions for Short-to-Medium Term Impact on
Universal Access, Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Development
To the extent that the public-sector members of the Partnership do
engage in specific access-related interventions (projects), they should be
targeted more tightly on interventions that have an urgent, short-to-medium
term impact; i.e., things that might get done by the market in 3-5 years, but
for which the wait would be unacceptable because the damage in terms of inequitable
access and poverty is too great. We
should be more disciplined in asking ourselves whether a specific public-sector
project (particularly by the international community) is responding simply to
an opportunity for public investment, or responding to an urgent need that
would not otherwise be addressed in a timely fashion by private investment even if the proper environment for such
investment were created.
Government-sponsored ICT initiatives will likely be required most in the
areas of universal access, poverty reduction, and sustainable development.
5. Human Resources
and Capacity Building
Here again, the Partnership’s priority should be on focus and
selectivity. The market will
increasingly take care of the "retail" demand for training/capacity
building if the international community would focus INTENSELY over the next few
years on training/capacity building for those KEY sectors (both the government
and "intelligent intermediaries" such as the media, NGOs, teachers,
etc.) that are either the impediments to or the key vectors of the spread of
the information economy. Business and
government leaders should be especially encouraged to improve their knowledge
of ICT and related issues, particularly where access is concerned. The Partnership’s greatest contribution in
this area over the next 2-3 years could be to combine an intensive and
coordinated capacity-building effort for key audiences with technical
assistance to emerging private and non-profit providers of training in
developing countries, to promote and facilitate the emergence of diverse and
locally-relevant capacity-building initiatives.
6. Access to
What? Supporting Diversity of Global
Information/Knowledge Flows
Even a highly successful, coordinated international effort to
foster universal access to information/communications technologies will not
advance the underlying goal of sustainable, equitable development if it only
assures global access to the “content” disseminated by advanced economies. The public, private and NGOs members of the
Partnership need to work together to create opportunities for the development
and dissemination of information and knowledge from a variety of sources, in a
variety of languages, representing a variety of views and traditions. Here again, selectivity and focus are
key. The priority should not be on
“retail” content projects, but on supporting indigenous capacity and creating
the conditions for the more effective dissemination of diverse content. The 'many-to-many' communication channels
available could prove highly beneficial, if, for example, it allowed rural
farmers to access expertise provided by local and international scientists, or
if access to information on the operations of government and corporations
allowed citizens to more fully participate in democratic policy-making.
Citation reference:
McNamara, K., & O'Brien, R. (2000, 7-10/March). Access
to Information and Communication for Sustainable Development Opportunities and
Challenges for the International Community - Recommendations of the Access
Working Group. Presented at the Global Knowledge II conference. Kuala
Lumpur, Malaysia: Global Knowledge Partnership Secretariat.