Information society for grassroots development

Information Society: Voices from the South

Summary of discussions on the topic
Knowledge Societies

Prepared by Partha Pratim Sarker
Co-editor, Bytes for All
& Moderator, Information Society Discussion Forum

Main theme line of discussion

Information Society: What does it mean for the South?

Sub-topics:

(1.A.) Should ICT be always associated with Information Society?
(1.B.) Information society for grassroots development: Who takes the most important role (of the information intermediaries)? Government? Private sector? NGOs? Community cooperatives? Individuals? Who and why??? What could be the possible roadmap?
(1.C.) Indigenous knowledge and information for local needs: How to collect, process and deliver that?

Les Breiner, Senior IT Specialist of Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), raised an important point to the discussion – Intermediaries, who would lead the development at the grassroots development. In his own words: ‘I am of the opinion that we are still some time off until we achieve a real Information society which will provide connectivity, input and direct involvement for every member of the society. What we need to do instead is to help create and throw our support to what I call the "Information Intermediaries" or the NGO's and civil society who are interested in providing support to all the disadvantaged who are otherwise unable to have their voices heard’. He also made a framework in selecting those NGOs/Intermediaries. ‘We need to support those NGO's which are interested in sharing their knowledge, teaching their skills and transferring this knowledge to other NGO's and civil society members.’

Les’ mentioning of ‘Intermediaries’ sparked off a whole new debate on the question of Intermediaries and their role: Do we really need them? Who are they? Only NGOs or other bodies such as, government, private sector, individuals, community owned cooperatives or a mix of them? What would be their possible role? How can we develop required parameters for the intermediaries?

Obviously there were users who principally opposed the concept of ‘Intermediaries’ and proposed to keep the way open for people. Also many felt that the concept of ‘Intermediaries’ is based on a wrong idea that poor people are unable to make best use of resources and knowledge unless an intermediation is made.

For example, Paul Swider from USA mentioned his views this way: ‘The whole question of intermediaries revolves around the seminal issue of ICT proliferation discussions: good use. Those who discuss these issues are fearful that ICTs will be put to the "wrong" use so they would rather hold back proliferation while they circumscribe possible activity. This is condescending, paternalistic and neo-colonial. Those who use ICTs will be the ones to decide the uses, no matter how outsiders define them…The weed-like sprouting of cyber-cafes throughout Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia, even heavily restricted China, has not occurred because of intermediaries. It has occurred because there is value in the technology and the market drives demand for more of both the technology and its value’.

Yaacov Illand, though in a different position, made a similar response from Kenya. ‘I think the point of the Information Society is to get rid of the information intermediaries, or more accurately, allow the people to choose the intermediaries they wish to use. In reaching that goal, I think that all the suggested groups are indispensable, though those who can put the infrastructure in place (government, business) play an earlier role than the others,’ said Yaacov.

Atunu Garai said that despite needs, this intermediation is not there in practice. ‘Generally governments, NGOs or even individuals seldom seek the intervention of information intermediaries for variety of reasons. One reason is traditional reservation to seek information from others. Farmers rely on their own community for information for problems on farming. Students seek information from their parents or friends. NGOs rely on their own traditional invisible college, postal service and newspapers’.

Iftekhar Islam from the World Bank in Washington, DC, did not seem to be willing to place too much emphasis on NGOs. He said, ‘NGOs should not be considered as a focal point, especially when there is an ever increasing demand for resources. Resources need to be garnished around building government's capacity to use ICT strategically for the betterment of the country. NGOs often has their own mandates and seldom lacks institutional capacity and power to access to inflict positive changes in the policy framework and infrastructure, the two major stumbling block of a given country's e-development’.

Many on the other hand stood by the fact of NGOs being the proper intermediaries at the grassroots level. Reza Salim of the Bangladesh Friendship Education Society, Somnath and O P Goel from India and Angela M. Kuga Thas from Global Knowledge Partnership Secretariat in Malaysia expressed views in this direction. Somnath made an interesting point. He said, ‘Although elected political party leaders and members are actually supposed to act as the true intermediaries between people and their respective govt - sadly it does not always happen for a variety of reasons. True "grass-root" NGOs can thus not only act as an information intermediary but by virtue of being closer to their needy constituents act as an articulate "voice of the people".

Yacoov Illand as always brought an interesting dimension to the discussion by putting emphasis on the individuals. According to him, ‘for a widespread user base to form, adoption of "information practices" (whatever those may be) must occur at the individual level. It is not enough for only government, only business or only NGOs to adopt "information practices”. The individual members of the society must adopt these practices if an Information Society is to be created’.

Although Ajit Maru supported the role of intermediation, he was cautious on some aspects of Intermediaries, as it is really difficult to define this group clearly when it comes to use of ICT for information access and use. ‘Information intermediaries in agricultural information sharing can be those who manage community information access points such as tele-centers or information kiosks, those who make content from research more easily accessible and useful like web masters, those who enable direct interaction of users to ICT tools etc., For example in Mauritius, children help their farmer parents to access information from the Internet. Logically, they are information intermediaries’.

Chris Zielinski seemed to be a bit undecided to the whole question of intermediaries. As he pointed out, ‘Well, this sounds like a contradiction to me. On one hand we hear that until end-users feel a positive, immediate need for ICTs, they won't be adopted, and on the other we know that it is the infomediaries - the health information resource centres, the doctors, the agriculture extension centres, etc. - who find a real use for them, because almost the only reason for them to exist is to mediate information - select what is best, adapt it for local use, blend it with locally derived information, and apply it to bring health, good crops, etc’.

Given the diversified and confused nature of opinions in the context of ‘Intermediaries’ it was therefore relevant to ask for an opinion poll with multiple options and to let the participants decide as to who they think could be the possible intermediaries for grass-roots information society development. The poll was kept open for 16 days as long as the discussion continued and got 226 votes in total. The following chart shows the final results of the opinion poll.

It is clear from the poll that many subscribers would actually prefer to assign the role of intermediaries to a number of organizations/bodies, rather than any single independent organization. NGOs seem to be the most favorite option but it is selected along with other kinds of organizations. Role of NGOs along with community-owned cooperatives is mostly welcomed (30% of total votes). Next to that, many voted for the combined role of NGOs, government and private sector (29% of total vote). It is interesting to note that community-owned cooperatives (who may be more linked to the poorer people in the South) received 32 votes, while on the other hand, NGOs and private sector, a slightly unlikely combination, has got 18 votes too.

Go to other sub-topics:

(1.A.) Should ICT be always associated with Information Society?
(1.C.) Indigenous knowledge and information for local needs: How to collect, process and deliver that?

Information Society: Voices from the South is an online discussion forum run by Digital Opportunity Channel in partnership with Bytes for All. The forum will run until December 2003 and will discuss a number of broad themes related to the emerging information society and the process of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).