The Problem With Open Data

Recent initiatives have dramatically increased the range of previously “closed” data being made “open” by the government, including data sets on travel, weather and healthcare. This data can then be used by anyone to create great new products, business opportunities and community services.

Although clearly “a good thing” in theory, in practice Open Data is more likely to increase the digital divide and socially inequality than it is to reduce it, unless we approach the subject critically.

There is a clear and compelling case that information produced at public expense should be made open and freely available to benefit the public. However simply declaring data sets to be open does not, in itself, make it of any practical use to the public.

When released in its raw form, data is not open to the public in any meaningful sense. It is only open to a small elite of technical specialists who know how to interpret and use it, as well as to those that can afford to employ them. Providing open data uncritically in this way is therefore likely only to further advantage already privileged groups. There is a real danger of adding a new “data divide” on top of existing digital and economic divides.

As masters in the art of misdirection, magicians use dramatic flourishes to divert our gaze from what is really going on backstage. When politicians now trumpet a new-found fondness for transparency, the sceptic in me suspects a sleight of hand.

Does Open Data, as practiced by government, genuinely serve the public interest, or are we being beguiled by political PR and media spin?

I believe that two things need to happen to steer Open Data away from a reality where the primary benefits are PR for politicians and to those employing graduate data technicians, towards an Open Data that prioritises public benefit.

First, data needs to be made easy-to-use (or actionable) and second, public awareness and training needs to take place to enable communities to apply data to solve local problems.

Governments should be required to release data in actionable formats conforming to open data standards – and to be fair there is already progress in this regard. But comparatively little is being done at community level to promote the re-use of public data for public benefit. Almost nothing is being done to create capacity within communities to interpret and apply open data themselves, without creating technical dependencies. This is essential work that can perhaps be enabled by the proposed Public Data Corporation?

Improving the ability of community members to transform local service delivery is key objective 7.6 in the Cabinet Office public consultation document Opening Up Government. No adequate provision has yet been made to engage with community organisations to create public benefit from public data.

The government consultation document quite rightly says, “Providing wider online access to medical and educational records will enable service design and delivery to be changed radically, reducing cost and improving quality… [and] …create a platform for more informed public debate. This in turn means the public is better equipped to hold local, and central, government to account”.

These are objectives that we can all support and which require an integrated approach that goes beyond PR and grapples with the relatively messy business of community engagement and training to ensure that ordinary people know what data exists and how best to use it.

To truly give “users more power to self-serve” as Opening Up Government suggests, we need to motivate public engagement by creating awareness of great initiatives like Wheredoesmymoneygo.org.

Making data open is not enough to realise these goals. It is necessary to make data actionable in open standard formats; but this too is insufficient. To maximise the public benefit derived from public data we must raise community awareness about the potentials of open data and develop the practical skills and capacities so that those potentials are realised in practice.

The only sustainable basis for delivering public benefit from public data is to motivate and enable communities themselves to innovate local service provision, social enterprise and job creation.

If we fail to achieve this then we are certain to exacerbate already growing social inequalities by adding a new data divide to existing economic and digital divides.

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This post originally appeared in my Computer Weekly column in February 2012

What Computers Can’t Do

Sorry to rain on your parade, but computers can’t transform education any more than social media can depose dictators.

This blunt response is directed at US IT guru Nicholas Negroponte following the announcement of his latest hair-brained scheme to organise helicopter drops of laptops to remote villages.

As any IT manager will tell you, in any corporate change project hardware is only 10% of the overall cost. So imagine what tiny percentage hardware costs make up when the change project that you’re trying to pull off is entrenched poverty or political despotism.

All of us get sucked in by sensationalist stories about how a $100 laptop will revolutionise education in Africa, how telemedicine hardware will transform rural healthcare, or how social media can sweep away dictatorships. We really want to believe it’s true.

I confess that I too am easily led by talk of how great gadgets or amazing apps might solve some hitherto intractable area of inequality, exploitation, or injustice. In our defence I might point out that, despite the global economic meltdown, there have been some pretty ginormous marketing budgets at play working to sustain the illusion that there is no adversity over which technology cannot triumph.

Emotion aside, we all understand perfectly well that technology is inanimate: nuts and bolts, chips and wires. We all know that it’s not the technology on which we rely, but the ingenuity of the people that conceive of, create, and creatively apply technology to society’s for-profit and not-for-profit challenges.

Technology does not have a life of its own. Technology can’t end poverty; oust dictators; heal the sick; or educate the illiterate.

It can certainly assist us in our efforts in all of these regards but – and here’s the rub – only in proportion to the non-technical capabilities that we must first put in place. As Kentaro Toyama, an expert on technology and international development, has clarified, technology can only amplify pre-existing human capacity and intent.

If we succeed in hiring, training and developing a world-beating workforce, motivated to deliver against clear organisational objectives, then we can expect their skilful use of IT to add real value. No question.

People can use technology to amplify their capabilities in many respects. Mobile phones and Twitter were clearly useful to the young radicals in Tahrir Square – yet Egypt remains a military state. Since former President Mubarak retired to his Red Sea resort, many thousands more activists have been jailed, tortured and subjected to military trials. Realising a genuine transfer to democracy, it seems, cannot be accomplished by tweets alone.

Hopes of true democracy in Egypt still rely upon the courage and vision of the young people of that country; on their capacity and intent – as well as on their ingenuity in using technology to amplify their message.

In rural healthcare, information and communication technologies can greatly amplify the reach of public health information but healthcare professionals must still be adequately trained and paid, and clean water and sanitation systems must be put in place.

Delivery of rural education and healthcare is, first and foremost, the task of thousands of dedicated but under-paid and poorly trained nurses and teachers. The inadequacy of their training and of the schools and health centres that they staff is something that we should all lament.

What Negroponte needs to appreciate is that you can rain computers on remote populations all you like but if you are not prepared to invest the other 90% of the necessary funds in training, planning and coordination you are certain to stunt development.

Even assuming rural kids were able to teach themselves some subjects from the helicopter-dropped laptops, who would be responsible for ensuring they received the kind of well-rounded and balanced education they need to make a real difference to their lives and to that of the community?

Any IT professional could tell Nicholas Negroponte not only does he need to budget for technical support and end-of-life recycling, he also needs to invest in the best training and support staff.

If you want to drop laptops from helicopters into remote villages you had better be sure that all your previous year’s budget was spent on teacher training, curriculum development, staff retention, and so on – you know, the 90% of stuff that technology just can’t do.

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This post originally appeared in my Computer Weekly column in January 2012

Reflecting on 15 years of ICT4D

Last week the not-for-profit agency Computer Aid International celebrated providing its 200,000th computer to education and health organisations working in 112 countries worldwide (including the UK).

Computer Aid’s Founder & ex-CEO Tony Roberts reflects on changes in the field of information and communication technologies for Development (ICT4D) over the last fifteen years. [A version of this post originally appeared on the Computer Aid website].

In 1997 when we founded Computer Aid International, silver-haired senior managers in the London headquarters of international development agencies were sceptical of our suggestion that ICT had a role to play in international development. It just wasn’t the way development was done back then.

However our experience on the ground told us that local staff in developing countries were more than eager to apply ICT to enhance service delivery and empower communities, so we persevered.

We made mistakes though; a technology-centred approach limited the value of some initiatives.

Hype and enthusiasm often proceeds the application of sound development practice in the arena of technology and development. This is equally true whether you look at Computer Aid in those early days; the rural telecentre movement; MIT’s one-laptop-per-child initiative; the bubble of mobile apps for development, or some of the current activity around Open Data and transparency.

In the cycle of innovation diffusion and adoption, hype precedes substance; technology-push precedes genuine demand-pull; and technology-centred precedes people-centred development.

In Computer Aid’s case we addressed these challenges by working in partnership with many of the best-known and most experienced development agencies, drawing on their operational experience. This ensured that each deployment of computers to end users occurred within an integrated development program that included capacity building and appropriate support.

In East Africa Computer Aid worked with AMREF to equip hospitals with computers so that nurses could use e-Learning to upgrade their skills, and we supplied rural hospitals with telemedicine kits so that isolated doctors could get life-saving advice and support from senior clinicians at the national referral hospitals. Hundreds of schools were equipped with IT labs via partners such as TodoChilenter and Computers for Schools Kenya who provide teacher training and long-term pedagogical and technical support. In partnership with universities and the UK Met Office we equipped local weather stations in Kenya, Zambia and Uganda and local staff trained to analyse local weather systems alongside agricultural extension workers, and produce climate data for national and international use.

Over the years the logic of using information and communication technologies in development became compelling and most development agencies now embrace the use of ICTs to increase the efficiency and efficacy of people engaged in front-line development work.

The landscape of ICT4D couldn’t be more different now than in 1997 when Computer Aid volunteers prepared the first PCs for shipment to ‘previously disadvantaged’ universities and hospitals in post-Apartheid South Africa. Today many development agencies have full-time ICT4D managers; in others ICT4D has already been ‘mainstreamed’. The nature of ICT4D techniques and sectoral applications continues to diversify and the proliferation of devices and applications continues. ICT4D now has its own dedicated communities of practice, international conferences, and undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes.

Whereas in the 1990s the constraints were experienced as the access issues of internet availability and hardware affordability, today the focus of ICT4D is shifting toward accessibility and effective use. Whilst access issues remain problematic for millions, the situation is improving. The same cannot always be said for accessibility and effective use.

Little attention has been paid to accessibility. Disabled users are being excluded due to a failure to provide adaptive technologies. There is too little focus on whether ICT can be accessed at times and in locations that are convenient for women and girls, and too little investment is being made in producing local content to counter the domination of colonial languages on the internet and software production. There are notable exceptions.

Effective use must also become a key consideration in all ICT4D initiatives. Making ICTs ‘freely available to all’ is not the same thing as equipping people with the skills to effectively use ICTs to realise the developments that they value.

Whenever we fail to build the capacity of disadvantaged and excluded communities to make effective use of ICTs in an ICT4D initiative we run the risk of actually widening the divides between advantaged and disadvantaged people.

If we create mobile apps and simply make them ‘freely available’ on the internet or if we release government information as ‘Open Data’ without building the capacity of the ‘intended beneficiaries’ to use it, who do we expect to benefit?

It is the already privileged that are best placed to exploit the potential opportunities of Open Data or of new mobile apps. They are able to do so by virtue of their existing advantages in education, technical knowledge, wealth and social capital. So unless ICT4D initiatives integrate capacity building to enable effective use by disadvantaged communities they risk actually widening the digital divide and inequality.

The last fifteen years have taught us that success in applying ICT for Development is 10% about technology and 90% about people processes. Computer Aid addressed this reality by partnering with local civil society organisations and investing in some good old fashioned empowerment.

At the end of the day translating the potentials of ICTs into valued development outcomes is about building people’s agency and capabilities to appropriate the technology and to apply it effectively to their own valued ends. Achieving effective use of ICTs requires adopting an agency-focused capacity-building that recognises Paulo Freire’s dictum that the real challenge of any development initiative is to make sure that people who are the“objects”  of development are also its subjects.

[Tony Roberts stood down as CEO of Computer Aid in December 2010 to become a full-time PhD student of ICT for Development at Royal Holloway, University of London. You can find him on Twitter as @phat_controller]

Open-Source Technology in ICT4D

This week I had to prepare a tutorial on ‘Open & Subversive Technologies’ for students of ICT4D at Royal Holloway, University of London. It got me thinking about the importance of enabling users to genuinely ‘appropriate’ ICT for Development, and the extent to which free & open-source technology might help make user appropriation of ICT for Development possible.

I am conscious that I’m still a long way from having a clear articulation of either (a) the importance of users being able to appropriate technology for development or (b) the benefits of free and open-source production for users’ appropriation of ICT4D, but I’m hoping that drafting this blogpost will take me one step further down that path.

Enabling User Appropriation of ICT4D

Paulo Freire taught us the critical importance of ensuring that the people who are the “objects” of development are also its subjects. Two generations of development practitioners have since focused on how to operationalise this aim of to ensuring that development is people-centred and community-led, including by using the kind of participatory practice popularised by Robert Chambers. Most recently Amartya Sen has argued that disadvantaged people have the right to be the principal authors and actors in their own development process. In his agent-oriented view of ‘Development as Freedom’ Sen argues that,”Greater freedom enhances the ability of people to help themselves and also to influence the world, and these matters are essential to the process of development”.

In ICT4D, my gut feeling is that open technologies offer the most freedom for the “objects” of development to be its subjects; that is for genuine appropriate of technologies by local actors to realise the kind of development that they most value.

Benefits of Openness

Open licensing removes the unfreedoms and dependencies of proprietary technology and creates the potential for users to be the architects of their own (ICT4) development.

When technology is transferred from one context to another it is often desirable to make modifications to optimise its (re)use value. This might mean changing the user interface language or producing content to reflect local culture or other preferences. It could mean a more substantial re-engineering to align the technology with local infrastructure, climate or available peripheral technologies.

In the case of a ‘closed’ or ‘proprietary’ technology such as Microsoft Office or an Apple iPad making any such modification is illegal and prohibited by restrictive patents and copyrights.

On the other hand, technologies such as Open Office, the Android mobile phone operating system and Arduino hardware are produced using permissive open-source licenses that are specifically designed to give users three freedoms: the freedom to learn how it is produced; the freedom to modify and improve it in any way they value; and the freedom to freely distribute either the original or modified versions to anyone, giving them the same freedoms. 

One example of why this matters in development is the fact that a country like Nigeria has 510 living languages, the majority of which do not constitute commercially profitable market opportunities for proprietary software producers. Open licensing gives communities the freedom to appropriate and modify technology to meet their self-defined needs. Nigerians can and do produce local language versions of Open Office and Android but are prevented from doing so with Microsoft or Apple products.

Open-source production models can be used to develop not just software but hardware, music and written work, as well as any other technologies. Open-source production often achieves its social objectives by mobilising the collective efforts of a virtual community in a process of collective production. By working collaboratively participants are able to share the responsibilities and rewards of production and to put into the public domain new goods and services for the benefit of all. And everyone is free to take, modify, further improve and redistribute.

The freedoms of this open, participative method of community (software) development seem to me to have obvious resonance with the aims and methods advocated by Freire, Chambers & Sen.

Limitations of Openness

Before you start thinking Tony’s been drinking the open-source Cool-Aid (OK, so I had a sip or two!) so let’s do a reality check here and ask the critical questions: ‘Open to whom?’, ‘What power relations are in play?’ and ‘Who benefits?’

As is the case with ‘Open Data’, in a society where inequalities exist, when you make something passively ‘open’ you actually risk making existing inequalities worse. It is likely to be the already advantaged that are most able to exploit the potential of openness due to their existing preferential access to resources including education, social capital and technology. If this holds true for open-source software then we might expect open-source communities to be dominated by white, male, graduates from the global North.

Openness is not enough; if want currently disadvantaged and under-represented people to be able to appropriate technology for development then we must purposefully set about building the capacity for what Mike Gurstein calls their ‘effective use’ of technology.

Building Capacity in Effective Use of Open ICT4D

It is not enough that the technology is open. Openness may be necessary but it is not sufficient. People also need practical skills and a sense of agency to make effective use of technology in development.

The logical conclusion here then is that some good old fashioned ‘empowerment’ and ‘capacity building’ needs to be built into every ICT4D initiative to ensure, as Amartya Sen says, that people are not ‘passive recipients of the benefits of cunning development programs’, and instead ‘can effectively shape their own destiny’.

If we are serious about reducing external dependencies and enabling local ownership and control of development then we need to make technology choices that provide the potential for local talent to become active producers of local content in local languages. Some capacity building will be necessary to give local talent the practical skills and sense of agency it needs to translate the potential of open technology into new community capabilities and practical development outcomes.

By choosing open technologies and building capacity for effective use communities can be empowered to genuinely appropriate and make effective use of ICT for Development, so that the people who are the “objects” of development can truly be its subjects.

Raspberry Pi – Total Cost of Ownership

The Raspberry Pi is a computer on a single printed circuit board. It centres around a mobile phone micro-processor and has various input/output sockets that allow you to attach the essential peripherals that you need but which are not included in its $25 purchase price.

As their own FAQ diagram makes clear the Raspberry Pi needs a computer monitor or TV screen and USB power charger (the kind that comes with many smart phones). You need a USB keyboard and mouse and an SD memory card. Headphones are required for sound and an HDMI cable is necessary to link video output to your screen. None of these peripherals comes included with the $25 Raspberry Pi. The peripherals are readily available where I live in central London for around $150.

However in rural Zambia (where I will be working for the next two months) they are only available from the main cities and are more expensive. A round trip to Lusaka will cost around $200 and the same peripherals will cost another $225.

And whatever the cost of building a working computer around a Raspberry Pi it serves no purpose whatsoever without trained staff and technical support in place.

Today most schools, in England or Zambia, do not have the skills or training to make effective use of the Raspberry. Teacher’s rates of pay and conditions of service do not make working additional hours in after-school clubs an attractive proposition.

So without this provision of resources essential to effective use, what will happen?

Only the most privileged schools will be able to make available the extra resources necessary to make effective use of the Raspberry Pi.

The problem here is that giving additional advantages to already privileged children only widens the existing digital divide.

Top Ten ICT4D Conferences of 2012

It seems that we need some sort of clearing house for scheduling ICT4D conferences. A quick review of events already announced for 2012 reveals that we have some ICT4D Conference Clashes this year. If you are still planning your event then perhaps consider either avoiding the second half of March and May or maybe piggy-back on someone else’s event – by scheduling in the same town on the days immediately preceding of following an existing event – so that we can reduce the environmental and financial costs of attending international conferences.

Bring on the day when we can enjoy meaningful online participation of any ICT4D conferences. There are some aspects of face-to-face meetings that will never  be equaled online, but given that there are many more conferences happening every year than anyone can afford the time, money or carbon emissions to attend in person, it would be great to have the option of attending some events virtually.

…and this years Top Ten ICT4D Conferences are ….

Feb 28-29th, New Dehli, India: Mobiles for Development

Mar 12-15th, Atlanta, USA: ICTD 2012 - preceded on Mar 10-11th by co-located ACM DEV

Mar 19-23rd, Abuja, Nigeria: Idlelo5 – Free & Open Source Africa

Mar 21-24, Kampala, Uganda: ICT for Africa – eInclusion

May 14-18th, Geneva, Switzerland: WSIS Forum 2012

May 23-25th, Cotonou, Benin: e-Learning Africa

May 29-31st, Lausanne, Switzerland: Tech4Dev 2012

May 29th-Jun 1st, Cape Town, South Africa: Mobile Health Summit

Sep 5-6th, Kristiansand, Norway: IPID 2012 ICT4D Symposium

Nov 13-15th Kathmandu, Nepal: 6th ICT for Development & Education Conference

N.B. This draft, no doubt, contains errors or omissions so please let me know in the comments section below or at @phat_controller on twitter where amendments are required.

Thanks in advance.

Rant in Defense of ICT4D

Erik Hersman is due a great deal of respect for his work with Ushahidi and iHub Nairobi. I am a confirmed fan of both. On a personal level he’s a genuinely nice guy. However, in my humble opinion, his rant on ‘The Subtle Condescension of “ICT4D” includes misapprehensions and misjudgments (as well as some condescension of his own).

I trust that he will not be offended if I just rant right back at him.

Actually my guess is that Erik is mischievously trying to court controversy in order to stimulate debate. Otherwise why would someone with a problem with “ICT4D” be featuring the advertising logos of ‘ICTD’, ‘Web4Dev’, ‘Tech4Africa’ etc. so prominently on their own blog?

Erik builds his entire argument upon the premise that the term “ICT4D” is used only about Africa & Asia, and that for this reason, the use of the term is condescending and hypocritical. This is a false premise. It is a misapprehension that the term ICT4D is only used about Africa & Asia. The term ICT4D is frequently used about initiatives in the UK and elsewhere, as well as about initiatives that are global in nature.

Erik attends more ICT4D events than almost anyone else, so I am absolutely sure that he has heard about ICT4D initiatives outside of Africa & Asia as well global ICT4D projects. Erik was at the recent Power of Information ICT4D event in London so I know that he is familiar with projects such as MySociety, TalkAboutLocal and FixMyStreet here in the UK.

Scrolling through the #ICT4D posts on Twitter is also a quick way to locate initiatives not about Africa or Asia but which are global in character. #ICT4D includes the latest in debates around ICT & Climate Change, Open Data and Open Access as well as many other global concerns which are neither focused on, nor confined to, Africa and Asia.

As @phat_controller I use the hashtag #ICT4D to tweet information on rural internet access in the UK as well as on using social media to mobilise community activism in the UK – including applications of Ushahidi for London Transport and London Riots.

Twitter aside, there is plenty of other evidence of ICT4D activity outside Africa and Asia. This month’s London ICT4D Group meeting is a presentation by, and discussion of AppsForGood a non-profit that enables young people in UK schools to build mobile apps to change their world.

Another UK example would be the ICT4D agency Computer Aid International which has provided hundreds of computers to education and community development initiatives in England and Wales on exactly the same basis that it provides them to non-profits in Latin America and Africa.

The third fundamental flaw with Erik’s blogpost is his proposed solution of ICT4$. He says “We have to think less of ICT as something about development, and more of it as a commercial venture. We need more focus on ICT4$ than ICT4D”.

I am especially grateful to Erik for giving me this excellent opportunity to inject a little bit of politics into the ICT4D debate and to use this rant to get a couple of other things off my chest…..

The problem with relying on commerce is that the ‘free’ market is fundamentally flawed; for 300 years it has abjectly failed to meet the needs of millions of people at the periphery. Whilst elites in capital cities enjoy relative opulence, marginalised communities are unable to secure adequate nutrition, basic healthcare or human rights. These divides continue to widen. In response people form not-for-profit organisations to have their voices heard and their community development needs addressed; sometimes employing ICT for these Developmental ends. Not-for-profits exist because of the failure of markets.

ICT4$ alone is not capable of fixing this problem.

Here in London inequality is growing rapidly. The average pay rise of CEOs was 49% this year at a time when three million have been made unemployed and our healthcare, education and pension funds are being looted by government to pay for bankers bonuses and bailouts following the the havoc caused by casino capitalism.

The violence wrought by the free-market condemns marginalised communities to suffer systemic unemployment, inadequate healthcare and piss-poor education; yet people continue to resist through their collective agency. Some sneer at the word ‘charity’ but not-for-profit organisations are how ordinary people organise to proactively redress the indignities and deprivations suffered by their families and by their neighbours. They work hard to raise funds through public subscription to fund their work, and they use the legal vehicle of a registered ‘charity’ to avoid paying tax on that donated income. The objective of their organisation may be to address hunger, oppose slavery, tackle violence against women, challenge a hospital closure, or to build social housing.

When communities refuse to accept injustice and deprivation and form associations of solidarity with those at risk we should give them our respect. If they seek practical assistance in applying ICT for Development we should offer whatever assistance we are able. There will often be a positive role for ICT in community development.

ICT4D alone, of course, is not capable of fixing the system.

Most would agree that the development funding that Ushahidi receives is ‘a good thing’ as was DFID start-up funding for m-Pesa. Building support and recognition for the role for ICT in Development has taken twenty years of hard work. Obtaining the support of funders was extremely difficult in the 1990s and it should not be taken for granted today. I would caution that it may prove to be a misjudgement to now fracture the community of support and practice that exists around “ICT4D” by getting dragged into internecine semantic strife - simply to replace ICT4D with some other – inevitably flawed – term.

If it has taught us anything at all, twenty years of ‘post-modernist discourse’ has at least demonstrated that literally any term can be endlessly deconstructed, with no discernible overall benefit.

“ICT4D” is imperfect as a name, but then so are others including @whiteafrican or @phat_controller.

The word ‘Development’ simply means advancing from an imperfect situation to an improved one: this can be with respect to education, healthcare, physical safety or democratic rights. These are things that we are all at pains to secure for our own children, and should prize equally for our neighbours’ children. I am confident that ICT has a valuable part to play in the process of development: amplifying the voice and agency of marginalised communities and enabling them to hold government to account, amongst other key areas.

In closing I would counter Erik’s closing remark about ICT4$ by suggesting that “We have to think less of ICT as a way of making money and more of ICT as a tool for development”. 

Maybe we should judge people by their deeds and not by their hashtags.