Taking ICT to the poor via ?tech peace corps'

Perhaps the best and most widely accepted new idea to emerge from the three-day global workshop at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) here to identify research guidelines for harnessing ICT (information and communication technology) for sustainable development was the creation of a 'technology peace corps'.

It had been suggested on the first day by Prof. A Richard Newton, dean of engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.

Such an organization, he felt, would harness some of the passion that young technology workers felt for their work. Others built on the idea by hypothesizing that such foot soldiers of technology would be both a boon to their host communities as also pick up invaluable insights on how to refine the ICT package for development.

The workshop was a follow-up to the global summit on information technology held in Geneva and the first workshop held thereafter in Washington.

The workshop was sponsored by the UN, World Bank, National Science Foundation of the US, Carnegie Mellon University, the Indian Institute of Science and NIAS. Its concluding session today was addressed by President Abdul Kalam.

Dr V S Arunachalam, currently a professor at Carnegie Mellon, summed up what had been achieved thus: a beginning had been made in identifying the challenges that lay ahead and zeroing in on specific R&D projects would have to follow.

Areas of research cooperation had been identified and these implied linkages between organizations and communities in the ICT field. He visualized autonomous and independent but linked projects as a likely research model.

He also floated the idea of research centers for ICT development all over the world.

The 'autonomous' configuration was emphasized by Dr Peter Freeman, assistant director of the National Science Foundation, USA who opposed the idea of a grand global research setup and instead reiterated the principle 'think globally, act locally'.

Several speakers underlined the role of social science research and made clear that it was not just technology solutions that were being pursued but a linkup between social science and technology research.

"Keep sight of the human dimension and focus on people," advised Dr Freeman. He identified the 'civic scientist' as the agent for this, a term for which President Abdul Kalam expressed great appreciation during his valedictory address.

Thomas Kalil, special assistant to the chancellor for science and technology of the University of California, Berkeley and earlier President Clinton's IT adviser, produced a comprehensive list of research ideas that the workshop had generated.

Another research area highlighted is how to cope with the phenomenon of planned obsolescence which raises the issue of junking your entire infrastructure every few years.

On e-governance, the prominent research ideas mooted were how to spread e-governance where interent access is low, which services are the most compelling, which applications have the highest potential to reduce corruption and raise accountability, how citizens can use ICT for the public purpose and how the role of the media can be enhanced at a time when there may be government control in developing countries and concentration of power in developed countries, as has been achieved by Rupert Murdoch?

The research ideas for the business sphere revolve around the basic premise: is it possible to serve the poor profitably through the use of ICT?

The established models listed were, shared and community access, franchising as practiced by the Grameen Phone and n-Logue and the marketing interface as provided by the e-choupal.

Research projects suggested which help uplift the poor revolved round the key theme: what services raise income for the poor?

This can be done through price discovery for crops, e-learning of skills which enable people to get better jobs, lower distribution cost of goods and devices to improve productivity.

Another research area listed to aid poor people, which has now become controversial in developed countries, is what aids low end business process outsourcing?