geoffrey kirkman's blog

Several years ago my colleague Carlos Osorio remarked upon a feature of the international development technology landscape that is even more apparent today than it was then, but still does not seem to be acknowledged by the development community at-large.

Carlos pointed out that just as most Web businesses had turned out to be failures, in all likelihood, most “e-projects” in the public sphere (e-government or e-development projects) would also turn out to be misconceived as well.

Carlos was right. Most ICT projects have not been successes — any ICT for Development practitioner knows that, and that is the real buzz in the hallways and dinners that surround conferences and workshops. Whether an e-development project is putting computers in secondary schools, establishing telecenters, or creating transparency in government operations, it is an open secret that failure is the general result. But why does the funding for bad projects still flow? Not to mention bad project design? And why doesn’t the development community seem to learn from its mistakes?

Here are a few reasons:

1) Most e-development projects don’t have clear objectives. The “if we build it, they will come” mentality still dominates technology projects. The “wow” factor still hasn’t gone away, and the technology remains the ends rather than the means of many projects. Nowhere is this more apparent than in ICT/education projects, where the overwhelming focus is almost always on buying computers, and not on teacher training, curriculum design or actually improving learning.

2) Without clear objectives, it isn’t clear how to measure results. There are very few ex ante attempts to figure out what the point of ICT projects should be, let alone to quantify the results. In the end, this means a lot of anecdote and not much analysis. Or even material to analyze.

3) Bad feedback loops. Development organizations are not effective nor timely in learning from mistakes and incorporating those lessons into new project design or implementation. As my colleague Ethan Zuckerman has pointed out on numerous occasions, there is a real need in the development profession to be able to identify failure and walk away from bad projects (a trait more often found in the programming community). But because of the way that project pipelines and lending portfolios operate, projects that are receiving funding now most likely were designed 2 or so years ago — in the meantime, needs have most likely changed, we’ve seen the flaws in the project design, and the project is doomed to failure.

4) Technology isn’t the problematic part of most ICT for Development projects — bad management, training, analysis, politics and bureaucracy are the real culprits. But since we still don’t deal too well with these age-old challenges, even more emphasis is placed on the technology and vague hopes that it be a tool for positive change all by itself.

And here is why all this matters:

1) International development projects by-and-large use limited, public funds to keep them going. The nature of the funding means that development money that goes toward technology is not going toward health, education, housing or other projects. The imperative of these public funds to be spent responsible is essential.

2) Technology for many parts of the world is a one-shot deal. If major investments are being made in computers in a developing country, even if the use of those computers turns out to be a disaster, it is not so likely that another round of funding will come through — both the scarce nature of the funds available and the issues surrounding technology lock-in (particularly a concern in e-government projects) limit more technology investment for a long time.

3) We are in danger of squandering a major opportunity to leverage the excitement over ICTs to create real positive change. The window is rapidly closing, but there is still time to use the major technology projects to pry open and make progress on even more difficult issues such as educational reform, transparency/corruption, foreign direct investment or the spread of democracy. Conversations about technology inevitably lead to discussions about the intractable problems of development. I always thought that as a result, technology should open the door for major change and reform elsewhere. But unfortunately, I don’t see that happening.

4) Technology is expensive. But sometimes technologies that are simpler than computers may be more effective at solving the problem (if the real problem is identified). The problem with holding a hammer is that everything looks like a nail. The problem with holding a computer is that every problem can be solved with word processing software and the Internet. But that just isn’t true. Sometimes a radio, a cellphone, or a pad of paper might do a much better job.

Six years ago, there was a lot of excitement about how ICTs were going to change the field of international development. A lot of that was hype, but it also was a breath of fresh air in a tired, bureaucratic profession.

I want to find a way to bring that enthusiasm back. And to focus more on results than on the hype.

If we could be more open and honest about the failures of ICT for Development, and try to understand them, it isn’t too late to try to change the course.

There are a few distinct campaigns in international development that I admire for having injected badly needed energy and innovation into intractable policy discussions.

First, the International Labour Organization has shown real spunk and creativity in forging an alliance with the F

I somewhat belatedly read the Jan/Feb issue of the Atlantic Monthly and its excellent survey on “The Real State of the Union,” put together in partnership with the New America Foundation to explore some of the biggest challenges that the U.S. is facing.  I was struck by the occasionally radical and consistently non-traditional thinking that marked all of the articles in the survey.  The New America Foundation is clearly a place to watch.

One piece that really caught my eye was David Friedman‘s “One-Dimensional Growth ,” which lays out the argument that in the euphoria for all things technological during the past few decades, much of the U.S. has become overly dependent on investment and incentives relating to the New Economy.  Friedman points out that productivity gains in the 1990s were not as great as originally thought, and that the dependence on New Economy sectors has implications for income inequality, housing prices and private debt.  In the interest of job creation, greater long term economic stability and economic diversification, Friedman argues that industrial policies need to be put in place that strengthen growth of traditional industries, and move away from the New Economy.

The implication for the developing countries is something that should give pause to a lot of “progressive” thinking in the developing world – that is, the desire of so many leaders in developing coutnries (and in the international development community as well) to create “knowledge industries” that will catapult their economies into the Information Age and create significant numbers of jobs.

Friedman’s arguments would suggest that such an emphasis is misplaced — that instead of focusing on call centers and IT-enabled services, that developing countries should use IT to improve their existing industries.  Perhaps textiles and light industry are not as sexy as offshore programming or financial services, but shoring up what they have may be a better strategy than trying to overcome all the hurdles needed to create a world-class knowledge industry from scratch.  A balanced approach that targets realistic adoption of IT into the particular situation of each country while identifying existing sources of competitive advantage makes sense.

And in the long term, if the evidence that Friedman presents is relevant, then countries that continue to rely upon a diversified economic base, rather than putting all their eggs in the IT basket, may find that their efforts to boost employment, a perennial development challenge, are more fortified.  The diversification argument, a basic tenet of good financial planning, resonates deeply. 

Rather than continuing to believe the lingering hype of how great IT was for the U.S. in the 1990s, and extolling the tremendous virtues of IT for everyone else as well, the development community should take a harder look at what the real experience has been in the U.S., and transmit those lessons in the form of responsible advice and projects in the developing world.  And leaders in the developing world should feel no need to adopt the very same snobbery towards traditional industry and blue collar work that Friedman so aptly identifies as one root cause of our one-dimensionality in the U.S.

My colleague Jim Moore has done a great job in his most recent piece at capturing some of the flavor of how the Internet has made an impact globally in linking voices and views that could never before have been heard in such force.  The sociology and politics of how the Internet can strengthen civil society — the story behind the Second Superpower story — are fascinating.  We can only hope that this kind of trend that Jim points out indeed overshadows and counteracts the ignorance and apathy that seem so rampant these days.

This strand of thinking is one of the things that is needed more within the international development community — instead of fixating on numbers of Internet connections and on what consulting firm is going to design what “e-Strategy,” it is much more useful and important to figure out how people are using the new technologies and how that use is re-shaping the world.

With such powerful geo-political shifts going on right now, the political and sociological impacts of the technology need to be acknowledged and better understood.  And the international development agenda needs to be reworked accordingly.

This Blog is meant to be an experiment in which I try to share some of my thoughts on various issues.

Geoffrey Kirkman is a Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. His work focuses on fostering innovative and interesting ways to think about international affairs. He currently thinks about linkages between technology, international development and baseball. You can find more information about him here.