This is part of a project run by the UNDP and the Instituto Distrital de Participación y Acción Comunal de la Secretaría de Gobierno de la Alcaldía de Bogotá (IDPAC: Participation and Community Building Institute at Bogotá, Colombia) whose main outcome will be the creation of the Escuela Virtual de participación y gestión social del IDPAC [IDPAC's Virtual School of Local Participation] — see also Digital Divide, Government and ICTs for Education.

The course is framed in one of the last stages before the actual creation of the Virtual School and it mainly deals with the definition of the overall strategy, identifying the context and the characteristics of the environment and see how the network of telecenters the school will heavily rely on have to be adapted to provide the expected output: digital competences and a much higher degree of e-Participation amongst the population.

The (my) course has four parts, two of which are related to knowing the grounds and concepts of the Digital Divide and e-Participation, and the remaining two deal with writing an Action Plan and reviewing the Strategic Plan in the framework of the Colombian Plan for the Information Society.

I here share the bibliography for the first two, would it be of any help to anyone: Brecha Digital y e-Participación ciudadana

Basic concepts: Analysis of the Digital Divide

e-Participation: Use of telecentres to foster participation

FreeVoice has an interesting blog post up on using the Internet and web for online activism.

The Invisible Ghost Writer: Using this strategy the person who has the “dangerous” information will build an alliance with another prominent blogger or writer in another country. The collaborator will then publish his article as if he is the one writing it. Prior to that, the ghost writer will conduct an analysis of his collaborator’s writing style, and adjust his writing styles. The collaborator will also do some editing to make it looks convincing that he is the actual writer. The Ghost writer will sometimes collaborate with another person who writes in a different language he is unfamiliar with.

The Trojan Horse Writer: In this strategy the writer will pretend as if he is supporting the government or the respective individual but will slowly discredit himself or shooting himself on the foot, thus discrediting the individual he is supporting. For an example the government may want to keep silent on a certain issue. However, the Trojan horse writer will continue to harp on an issue by defending it rigorously so that it will open more questions and scrutiny. The writers needs to be very delicate and not to be carried away with certain issues, as it may drives away readers who feels suspicious of his writing agenda.

The Multi-Platform Advocates: The champion of an agenda will use several delivery platforms concurrently to further support the points or assertion that he is making. The most popular support platforms that he can use are Wikipedia, Youtube and Flickr. For example he can ask a friend to write an article in Wikipedia and make a reference to that article. With respect to this he can actually use his actual name, but can make a reference to a source that is anonymous. When he is making a reference to a source he needs to do it concurrently with other bloggers so that he won’t be seen as the first person to make certain claims. Photographs and Youtube are important media to create satire and “poke fun” at politicians. It creates a lasting impression and people can remember it well. In Malaysia Today blog for example, photographs and youtube are being used by either the commentators or the bloggers to supplement the writing process.

As the blog post notes,

Even you think you could protect yourself from government detection, the government could simply ban the access to the website or content indefinitely. Then all your efforts will be futile and useless. As such, you need to assume that one day the government will block access to your website. The most logical thing for you to do is to collect the emails of your readers.

From the experience of creating and running Groundviews, there is actually much more you can do if the website you create risks being shut down, blocked or hacked.

I’ll cover these in detail in a subsequent post.

This post is part of a series of interviews collected at this years conference Coop 2.0 in Gijon.

Anriette Esterhuysen is currently working at APC (Assosciation for Progressive Communications), an organization which aims to provide a free and open internet to everybody. Before that she was Executive Director of SANGONeT, a development information portal for NGOs in South Africa, active in the human rights movement and involved in the fight against Apartheid.

Hear her talk about how she came to using ICTs, her criticism about ICT4D not considering the people with all their aspects - especially missing out in social terms. Also she talks about the activities of APC and the need to put pressure and regulation on the private IT sector and the industry to ensure positive outcomes for development.

“Social media is using the Internet to collaborate, share information, and have a conversation about ideas, and causes we care about, powered by web based tools.” – [We Media]

Background
From the learnings from the successful pilot (See blog posts about the event), and second Social Media Online Workshop, the CGIAR through its ICT-KM Program, is pleased to offer a new online opportunity for social media explorations, this time with the specific objective to embed social media in participants’ contexts of international development work. This fully online workshop will run from September 7 to 25, 2009.

Social media offers development practitioners and organizations a move from “push” communications towards a place where we can interact with our constituents, listen and engage with them in ways we never could before. It enables us to network with colleagues and some stakeholders. If facilitates collaboration in the lab and in the field.

Social media also offers so many options that it can be overwhelming. This workshop focuses on exploration of social media from some specific development contexts. So instead of saying “there is a tool, how can we use it,” this workshop seeks to answer “we need to do this activity, how can social media support it and under what circumstances.”

If you ask yourself questions like these, you might consider joining the workshop:

• How can I support collaboration in wide-spread teams?
• How can I provide opportunities for open dialogue with my stakeholders?
• How do we support communities of practice and thematic networks, online and offline?
• How do we share our content and knowledge effectively online?
• How can we make use of social media under low-bandwidth constraints?

This online workshop is designed for researchers, research and development communications professionals and knowledge sharing practitioners.

Objectives of the workshop
This three week online workshop will provide a collaborative, peer based learning opportunity for you, as development practitioners, to address if and how social media can help address your needs, opportunities or challenges related to collaboration, participation, or communication. By the end of the workshop you should be able to understand and analyze the opportunities that social media can offer in the view of your specific research and development context, identify some potential tools and create a plan of action.

During this workshop you will:

• Identify possibles usages of social media through small group synchronous and full group asynchronous conversation, exploring opportunities and constraints related to your work.
• Obtain an understanding and appreciation of the role and value of social media.
• Explore 2-3 different social media tools which may be appropriate for your context.
• Start to plan the implementation of one or more social media tools that fit our work environment.
• Learn from participants of mixed professional and organizational backgrounds.

Outline of the 3-week event

• Week 1 to 2 – Context and Application of Social Media: Introductions, and telephone conversations in small groups to assess your research for/and development context and identify opportunities for social media practices.
• Week 2 to 3 – Testing Social Media Tools. Explore select social media tools in small groups.
• Finalizing week 3 – Reflection for Action. Reflect on individual and group learning of the past two weeks and create an initial plan for social media implementation.

Maximum Number of participants: 18

Language: English

Participant Requirement/Dedicated time: This workshop offers an in-depth exploration of social media tools adapted to your specific context with personalized support and work in small groups. To do this, we ask the following of each participant:

• Organize your agenda to dedicate up to 1-1/2 hours per day during the three weeks. If you will be on travel and won’t have time in a particular week, save some time for “catch up.” If you will not be able to participate in more than one week, please consider taking a future workshop. It will become hard to catch up after missing significant time.
• Participate in weekly telecons of 60-90 minutes. These are scheduled for the afternoons for those in Europe and Africa, mornings for North and South American, and evenings for Asia. We will try to accomodate all time zones as best we can.
• Read and respond to blog posts
• Explore at least 2 tools
• Reflect and share your learnings on the workshop blog and wiki
• Complete a pre- and post-workshop survey.

Open to: CGIAR staff, not for profit partners, agricultural and development organizations. Individuals, consultants and members of for profit organizations may join on a space available basis as the unsubsidized rate. (See costs below)

Platform: Blog, Skype and/or telephone, email and wiki. Our teleconference platform allows you to call for free using Skype. If you choose to use a landline for the conference calls, you will be responsible for long-distance costs. You should have regular access to the Internet. Some tools may not be accessible for those with low bandwidths. You may need to check with your IT department, as some web-based services you wish to explore may be currently blocked in your organization and you may need to seek support to access them.

Facilitators: Nancy White (Full Circle Associates), Simone Staiger-Rivas (CGIAR-CIAT), Pete Shelton (IFPRI)

Cost: USD$ 850. Individuals who work for for-profits or consultants: USD$ 1050.

Contact: Please write to Simone Staiger-Rivas (s.staiger[at]cgiar.org) for questions and subscription by August, 10 at the latest.

The presentation began by Payal explaining that there is a certain level of abstraction in the topic.

It is excepted by most that deleivering telecom connectivity and services helps development.

The challenge now lies in go beyond voice and to see how the BOP can benefit from connectivity.

Insufficient attention to licencing can mean that radio frequencies are unaffordable and unattenable.

The presentation started by looking at the tradeoffs and incentives created by the mechanisms, and the relative merits and de-merits from and economic and social perspective.

Spectrum is a public good. There is alot of vested commercial interets. Commerrcial players need spectrum. Spectrum has been used speculativly. A ggod allocation method should be used so that spectrum is not squandered.

Possible links between Spectrum and BOP:

BOP has low level textual literacy, therefore more bandwidth requirement. More graphical methods ways may have to be made for BOP.

however, spectrum maybe unavailable, underprices.

If under-priced it can be used by commercial players strategically and to fore close on competiton.

This has a negative effect on the BOP.

Regulators and policy makers have to be mindful that the allocation will have an effect on the availability of wireless technology for the BOP.
Role of Regulators:

Augmentation of spectrum; alot of spectrum is used for defence.

Funding of R&D to bring about real time spectrum exchanges.

Real time spectrum exchanges does not give a dedicated chunk to one operator, so no scrambling. Current methid due to antiquated technology.

This will be a private public partnership.

Government may want to spend money on switching from analogue to digital television for the BOP to free up frequencies. It was done in India, after two failed attempts. Set top boxes now mandotory in metros.

Regulatory Instruments:

Market structure: if market entry is restricted, it lead to higher demand.

Competition rules: The more competitive the markets, spectrum will be better priced.

Allocation based on usage levels: Done in India, but leads to mis-reporting and may lead to opertors concentrating on subscribers bringing in more revenue. But as it is sold at assymentric rate so BOP not perversely affected.

Spectrum Trading: Similar to stock market, gives incentive to stop spectrum hoarding

Incentives for Innovatios:

Standards setting:

Goals of spectrum allocation policy:

Transparent and equitable regime

Allocation based on market demand

Create efficiency

Promote innovation to maximise value

Eliminate technical interferance

Spectrum being available for non commercial use

Approaches:

Command and control method: Beauty contests, used now, useful when allocating for non commercial use such as defence but leads to political determination of spectrum sharing rules, deters innovations, Maybe misused by beneficiries for speculative purposes. In india 3G allocation has been postpones twice.

private rights: Coase Theory, difficult to determine market rate so auctions best.

Commons exempt: Technology decideds, shared frequencies but problems is to deal with interferance and leads to tragedy of commons, cost of change over and easiest to implement where newer technology is used, where incumbancy challenges are not present.

Evaluating Approaches: BOP users’ Perspective

Inclusion:

Affordability:

Innovation:

Service Diversity:

Sustainbulity:

Institutional compatibility: most important in terms of political climate in a country. Admin approach works in a countries that have good governance as opposed to weaker governance. Market approches work in competitive markets. 3G licences in India expected to bring in about 400,000 corores.

Auctions:

Market approaches in a developing country maybe better not becaues it is superior but because it may mitigate the risks faced where there is a large BOP.

BOP mistly in rural areas. Auctions may not be necessary if rural areas are considered seperately. If auctions are necessary, then prices maybe low reflecting low demand.

Auctioning can lead to overbidding, information about secondary trading may lead to mitigating this problem. Cave recommends combination of auctions or market approaches.

Government may seek to maximise revenues from auctions when selling the spectrum. The revenue can then lead to covering other fiscal deficits.

Inadequate attention to auction designs may laed to reduced bidders which in turn deprives BOP consumers.

Giving spectrum in chunks to diverse bidders may laed to probelms in quality, ex. broadband.

Thumb rules in making auctions effective:

Auction larger amiunts of spectrum to reduce perceeption of scarcity

Reserce some spectrum bands for auctions to a different category entrants

Allow spectrum trading to reduse over bidding

Mandate spectrum sharing

Have tougher roll out conditions

Include rewards for efficient usage and penalities for wastage or spectrum hoarding

Final Observations:

Market mechanisans should not under estimated but should avoid a doctrinaire approcah.

market mechanisns work best when entry is open and abuse of market is precented.

Auctions suitable when demand exceeds supply

Careful design has to be done in order to protect the BOP

Spectrum for emergency, safety and other public services, administrative approach should be adequate

Ensure maximum flexibility in the future while allowing sufficient comfort to current investors

Exploit maximum potential; speedy move towards spectrum sharing, spectrum trading

Insist on technology neutrality and service neutrality in regulatory decisions to optimal usage

RS: If seperate policies are implemented for rural and Urban based on the assumption that poor people in rural areas, thenUrban poor would be getting the short end of the stick.

PM: Seperate auctions are needed for urban and rural. If thre is no differnce, then the operators will concentrate in areas where they can get more revenue sooner, which would be the urban areas.

RS: Have a look at early US auctions. Licences were given to native communities. Consortioms were formed after that.

PM: 3G in India will be a nationwide bid.
RS: Why do we have to 3G auctions? There is a possibility that 3G maybe run on 900 MHz.

Could this lead to India restricting the frequecies on which 3G can be run on?

From ITNews, ‘France’s largest entertainment group Vivendi, has reportedly taken over Zain Africa with a $12 billion bid, ending speculation regarding the future of the ailing telecoms giant. The Monitor in Uganda reported that the move signals an ironic return for the French firm which was forced to sell its stake in its Kenyan operation after the second tech bubble burst in 2003. The newspaper said that Vivendi which is also Europe’s largest entertainment group returns as a more healthy operation keen to capture a share of the growing African telecoms market which it was forced to abandon a few years ago.’ Read more.

Buy a company for 3.4 billion and then sell it a few years later for 12. This is really big news and I can imagine there is more to come!

A benchmarking study conducted by Research ICT Africa, LIRNEasia’s sister organization, on behalf of the NCC indicates that the cost of termination of an efficient operator in Namibia is NAD 0.24 (USD 0.03). The prescribed ceiling for the termination rates on 1 January 2011 includes a 25% mark-up over the estimated cost of termination. Any other operator can request a revision of termination rates by demonstrating that its forward-looking long-run incremental cost of termination is above the prescribed ceiling, through the use of the LRIC methodology.

More information is available here.

There were election rallies of United National People Alliance at 7th Mile post at Serawa,Thotillaketiya,Peekiriya in the suburbs to Pitakumbura.

A workshop for the teachers in the Wellassa region will be held at 1 PM on 09th of July 2009 at the Wellassa National School. The governor of the Uva province Mr. Nanda Mathew called teachers to participate to the workshop. Reliable sources said the Mr. Susil Prema Jayantha, the Minister of Education, Sri Lanka also participate to this event.

Great book on the history of the eastern province in Sri Lanka in the 1940’s wrote by Maya Ranjan. More information will follow!

One of the newly appointed teacher called Miss Nishani was wedded on 18th of June 2009. There was not a big ceremony but great!

All the staff with the principal of the Pitakumbura Navodya School were participated.

Making a speech the principal wished them and he hopes more functions like this!

We wish you!

As some of you might know, the VC4Africa.com initiative is now one-year old.

In celebration of this milestone, VC4Africa has been registered as a contestant of the Idea Blob contest. This is a chance for the VC4Africa community to win USD 10.000. Don’t worry, the money doesn’t go into private pockets Instead, the money will be used to pay the salaries of young developers in Kampala, Uganda. These funds mean the community can add new tools (Afridex.net) and improve the functionality of the VC4Africa.com community. Bottom line, the community can achieve more.

The competition lasts one week. If you like the idea, please take the time to vote and help us spread the word!

You can find our entry at: http://ideablob.com/ideas/5808-VC4Africa-com-Connecting-inve

Feel free to forward this e-mail to friends and colleagues.
The team looks forward to starting our second year with a bang!

The agriculture sector in Sri Lanka employs 31.3% of the total labor force of the country, but its contribution to the Gross Domestic Production (GDP) is just 11.9% (Central Bank of Sri Lanka). So, basically one third of the labor force is utilized to produce the just over ten percent of the GDP.

This is just one side of the issue, but when we consider other issues related to this, such as large amount of government’s money spent on agriculture as subsidies (fertilizer subsidies, etc.) which can be invested on some other sector for better results, continuous poverty of rural people who are engaged in agriculture, etc. – it is clear that we have a issue of productivity within the agriculture sector and we need to address it immediately.

There are many factors (policy, legal framework, technology, knowledge, markets, research, etc.) to be considered while trying to improve the productivity of agriculture, but in all of them the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can definitely play a role of a catalyst.

Fortunately this has been understood, by the various stakeholders in the agriculture sector and as a result we can see many initiatives under the theme of ICT4 Agriculture today in Sri Lanka. As an attempt to bring all those different initiatives to one platform, Prof. Mangala De Zoysa (University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka) and some other likeminded people have organized the Sri Lanka’s first ever ICT4 Agriculture Conference (http://www.itfac.mrt.ac.lk/conference/), which is really a need of the hour.

-Sameera.
http://ict4d-in-srilanka.blogspot.com/

28May 2009

The workshop started by Mr.Anura Dissanayaka, the project director-SEMP in the Ministry of Education. He introduced the e-village concept and the future developments. He hope to establish 500 evillages within 2 years.

Then Mr. Ranjith Kumarasiri hold a brain storming session on the evillage concept.

Mr. Nandasiri Wanninayaka participated to a discussion on the topic of the “Deeply in to the evillages.”He emphasized the importance of the legal structure of the transactions and the organization. He is the founder of the evillage concept and the chairman of the Horizon Lanka Foundation,Mahavilachchiya, Sri Lanka.

Next Mr. Ranjith Kumarasiri conducted an e-learning session in the evening. It was about the e-choupal project in India. Now the project is matured as the big community organization .

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echoupal

29^th of May 2009

Mr. Chanuka Wattegama, telecommunication engineer and the first editor of the Wijaya Pariganaka, conducted a discussion on the topic of “Issues challenges and solutions” He introduced KPO(Knowledge Process Outsourcing), BPO(Business Process Outsourcing) , virtual BPO(One man gets bulk BPO contracts and share on line with other groups).

He introduced Mr. Danesh Maduranga from Sarvodaya Telecentre family to the participants. He is an innovator who first introduced the online billing system which updates within a second.

Mr. Isuru Senevirathna, the Chief executive officer of the Ontime Technologies, Mahavilachchiya, sri Lanka described the importance of BPO industry to develop the rural community. He told that the quality and the punctuality are the most important factors in the BPO industry.

Mr. Batuwitage expressed his achievements in the Gemidiriya project in Sri Lanka. They have a fully organized system on the livelihood. They maintain a co-operate web site and the Gemidiriya People’s Companies submit data to the site.

They run a data base of crops of the year and the vendors can access the website to buy them online. The project has various success stories in the rural villages. As the moment their companies all over the country deals million of cost livelihood products in the rural villages.

In the end of the day Mr. Ranjith Kumarasirima made a e-learning session on “Information Centres in Bangladesh”. The story was related with award winning project called “Grameen”.

30^th May 2009

Mr. Waruna Dhanapala, assistant secretory of President in Sri Lanka made a workshop on the government policies.

Next Mrs. Pradeepa Serasinghe conducted a successful lesson on business proposal writing.

Then Mr. Denuwan Wijewardhana, veteran web designer in Sri Lanka, made a lecture on “Future trends of ICT and Information Centres”. He discussed the past and the future of the evillage concept which was started Mahavilachchiya in the Anuradhapura district.

Mr. Lalith Waduge, system analist, Ministry of Public Administration,Sri Lanka, conducted an e-learning session on social capital and the network affect.

31^st May 2009

Mr. Denuwan Wijewardhana conducted the lesson, relating the “Latest communication technologies.” Here he introduced various tools to web casts and podcasts.

Next Mr. Rizwan, manager,audio video centre, ministry of agriculture, Gannoruwa, conducted the workshop and introduced Macromedia director to develop e-learning materials.

Mr. S.S.R Kithsiri, veteran BPO specialist, made a lecture on the topic of “Experiences of BPO industry in Sri Lanka.” He emphasized the importance of the human resource and quality of the output to develop the industry and the knowledge of the English.

Mr. Lalith Waduge concluded the day with an e-learning session.

01^st of June 2009

Mr. Ajith pascuel, head of Schoolnet operating centre in Sri Lanka in the University of Moratuwa made lecture on how to assist e-village through the schoolnet.

They have developed various solutions to the schoolnet community. Some are blog spaces,unlimited domain space and e-mail storage, Ubuntu mirror,ftp server for open source softwares,education materials, schoolnet wiki etc.

Dr. Wijekoon, ministry of agriculture, Sri Lanka conducted a workshop on the topic of “eVillage position in agriculture.” He introduced the latest developments in the agriculture sector in Sri Lanka.

Useful links to the evillage

Nice story about the Ampara in the eastern part of Sri Lanka.

More updates will follow!

Annual blood donation camp is to be held on 28th of July 2009 at the Pitakumbura Navodya School in Sri Lanka. We cordially invite you!

The coordination is from the Ampara genaral hospital. It is the Asia’s best hospital award winners.

Three children in Bibile have suffering from dengue fever. The People Health Inspector in Pitakumbura held a successful workshop on Dengue recently. Here is his presentation slides

http://www.4shared.com/file/116655318/50051a82/dengue-fever-2009.html

http://www.4shared.com/file/116655331/1befc0a4/ferrous-for-children-2009.html

http://www.4shared.com/file/116655347/bdcdf356/VIT_A-school-children.html

An election campaign was held in the Govi Sevana premises in the Pitakumbura on 06th of July 2009. Mr. Chamal Rajapaksha- Minister of United Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, Mr. Wijitha Berugoda, Mr. Senerath Aththanayaka and the candidate for the Chief Minister Mr. Shashiendra Kumara Rajapaksha also participated.

Mr. Shashiendra Rajapaksha promised to develop the Pitakumbura Navodya School and to develop the road access to the village.

We went from Pitakumbura on 11 the of June 2009 to the Distance Learning Centre in Colombo 07 and they had contacted the hostels at the Hector Kobbakaduwa Agricultural Research Centre in the Wijerama in Colombo 07. The cost of the hostel room is 500 LKR without air condition facilities. Meals provided by the DLC in the Sri Lanka Institute of Development Administration. Only five of us spent the night.

 Dawning of the 12^th of Friday 2009 we attended the seminar in the DLC in the Malalasekara Mawatha. We had to attend the second ICT laboratory to the workshop. It was a new experience, because we did not participate a workshop in the second ICT laboratory.

The workshop introduced by Mrs. Yashinka Alles for Microsoft education, Sri Lanka.

.Net lesson was conducted by Mr. Gayan Fonseka (M.Sc) for Microsoft Sri Lanka. He introduced the basics of .Net platforms and to connect databases with the Microsoft SQL server.

He introduced express editions of the .Net versions. Express editions are free but have limitations of the program. 2GB data base is the limitation for SQL server.

He finally introduced North wind sample database and how to make updates such a data base.

Resources : www.codeproject.com

www.msdn.microsoft.com

www.learnvisualstudio.net

www.microsoft.com/express/vcsharp

His blog: www.gayans.spaces.live.com

We went to the hostel at around 6 PM.

Then the second day started with the workshop on SQL server 2008. Conducted by the Mr. Asanka for Microsoft Sri Lanka. He is specialist in the field and among three of them in Sri Lanka.

First we had to install the software. He paved way to create well organized SQL server data base to the school community.

And he asked us to participate the webcasts of them to update the knowledge.

Web casts:

.Net – First Thursday of the month 6-8 PM www.dotnetforum.net

SQL Server - Third Wednesday 6-8 PM www.sqlserveruniverse.com

Itpro - Fourth Wednesday www.itpro.lk

www.sql-server-performance.com

www.sqlservercentral.com

He is willing to help the rural community in Sri Lanka voluntarily.