Lecture 6: Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and rural development

10th Sep 2012

Lecture Outlines• ICT as an enabler of socio-economic development• ICT for rural development >The ‘Development’ challenges and the role of ICT.

>Technologies and their uses.• Education:

> ICT based solutions and distance learning

> Education examples from Middle East and Africa• Health:

> Telemedicine and rural health initiatives• Media

> The role of the media in peace education• ICT and Place:

> The importance of place: language, culture and identity

> E-Government and governance issues• Case studies

ICT as an enabler of socio-economic development

A tool for socio-economic development • A formal definition of IT terms it as a broad subject concerned with

technology and other aspects of managing and processing information and that it deals with the use of electronic computers and computer software to convert, store, protect, process, transmit, and retrieve information.

• The term Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) was coined to reflect the seamless convergence of digital processing and telecommunications.

• ICTs have been in use since long for instance postal services and radio as communication mediums to transmit information even to very remote places.

• For ease of use, we can divide these into old and new ICTs wherein the former one includes Radio, Television, Telephone, Fax, Telegram, etc while the later comprises of data networks, e-mail, World Wide Web (or internet) and cutting-edge wireless & wire line technologies.

• ICT plays a vital role in advancing economic growth and reducing poverty.• Businesses and organizations that use ICT grow faster, invest more, and are

more productive and profitable than those that do not.

• ICTs can be used to directly influence the productivity, cost effectiveness and competitiveness in industries, which is the advantage developing countries can build their economies upon.

Means but not an End • People do not need word processing to survive, but they may want efficient

ways of sharing information about livelihoods and employment.• ICTs for human development are not about technology, but about people

using the technology to meet some basic need.

Knowledge as a Competitive Advantage • The advantages of previous decades, i.e. abundant natural resources or

cheap labour are no more the advantages in the newly emerging “Information Society” or “Knowledge Economy”.

• Developing countries can no longer expect to base their development on their comparative labour advantage.

• The competitive advantage that now counts is the application of knowledge.

Approaches to develop ICT Strategy • Government of Pakistan has adopted covering all the short-term and long-

term growth objectives.• The sectoral approach focuses on developing a country’s economy by using

IT as a production or sector.

• In short term the human resources as inputs and markets to absorb the outputs are required for success i.e. strategies for industry promotion, incentives for investors, training and development of human resources etc.

• GoP has already taken the challenges of raising, feeding, educating and providing economic opportunity for a large population to gain the 18 targets set under Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

• Medium Term Development Framework 2005-10 of Government of Pakistan is clearly in line with these goals.

• ICT as a means only for improving the efficiency of planning, executing and monitoring of the projects.

• IT is being considered as a source of economic growth and faster competitive advantage in Pakistan as well.

• Government of Pakistan has focused on ICT as one of the four priority areas which are selected to integrate the country into the global information economy.

Figure: ICT Strategic Topology of Pakistan

ICT FOR RURAL DEVELOPMENTICTs for Rural Development in Mountainous & Remote Areas of Pakistan • During the late 1990s COMSATS was supported by IDRC to setup an ISP

facility in the Northern Areas of Pakistan providing internet access and awareness to the people around there.

• In 2004, IDRC funded this larger project targeting at use of ICTs for poverty alleviation and sustainable livelihood of locals through access and education about economic opportunities.

• The project makes special efforts to improve the livelihoods of women in the area, through the provision of specialized health services and more accessible education.

• promotion of sustainable livelihoods and extradition of extreme poverty in the remote areas of Pakistan through action research in the application and integration of ICT.

• As of July 2005, computers and networking facilities have been installed in two schools. to access low cost, effective, and high quality learning material.

• A full-fledged Tele-health centre with link to Islamabad is functional. Hundreds have benefited majority being women.

• E-village resource centers have been established in two villages (as of July 2005) .

• E-School and distance learning had been initiated .

Education: ICT based solutions and distance learning

National ICT Strategy for Education

• The basic aim of the National ICT Strategy is to formulate a long-term strategic plan that is designed to reap maximum benefit from the advantage of ICTs in education.

• Enhancement of teaching, learning, and education administration through ICTs.

• Provision of equitable access to quality with intelligent ICT solutions and also attempt to overcome the digital divide by improving access to ICTs.

• In December 2005, the NICT Strategy document was approved and passed to the MoE’s Planning Wing for finalization.

• Revolutionize the use of ICT in tertiary education in Pakistan as well teaching of ICT as a subject.

• Developing access models for distance education provision • Developing shared resources (including software) for distance education • Learn, exchange, collaborate and sharing information with major tertiary

institutions in developing countries working in distance and flexible learning• Prepare policy guidelines and/or standards for ICT-supported distance

education in the region

Education examples from Middle East and Africa• ICT Policies for Education in Africa• There is a great deal of variance in ICT policies for education among the

African countries surveyed.• South Africa clearly is unique in terms of being able to move its ICT agenda

forward.• Several of the countries of North Africa that have both resources and high

bandwidth connectivity with Europe have also been able to make excellent progress in implementing their ICT plans.

• Those countries that are steadily moving to sustainable economies (Mauritius, Ghana, and Botswana, for example) constitute another group making remarkable progress.

• The largest group is made up of those countries that are in transition from a sustained period of conflict and economic instability and are looking to ICT applications to help them meet myriad challenges – particularly the development of their human resource capacity.

• unfortunately, there remains a group of countries that are still plagued with political instability and internal conflicts that make progress on the ICT for education agenda impossible.

Africa’s National ICT Policies• Future socio-economic development will need to embrace the use of ICT appears to be widely

recognized by governments throughout Africa• The policies in through out Africa vary in several ways. First, a few, often those that have been

in place for some time, are more likely to focus on telecommunication technologies and their regulation and less on the importance of information technologies for development

For example, Libya’s policy• Supporting the government's initiatives on the Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Program

(iPRSP) using ICT.• Standardizing ICT operational systems and administrative procedures.• Setting the framework to develop and implement ICT programmes in the counties and local

communities.• Broadening the national academic curriculum to create careers in the ICT sector and raise

overall awareness.

Rwanda, for example, focuses on the following 10 pillars• ICT in education• Human capacity development• Infrastructure, equipment, and content• Economic development• Social development• E-government and e-governance• Private sector development• Rural and community access• Legal, regulatory, and institutional provisions and standards• National security, law, and order

Take Home Exercise

• Write down a case study about the use of ICT in promoting Agriculture, Health, Education or Human Resource Development in rural or remote areas of Pakistan

Health and ICT

Telemedicine and rural health initiatives• Telemedicine is the use of telecommunications to transfer medical

information for diagnostic and educational purposes or:• Telemedicine is the use of electronic information and communications

technologies to provide and support health care when distance separates the participants

• Telemedicine can be used to bridge the distance barrier in delivering healthcare to rural populations.

• Specific rural telemedicine applications include  monitoring chronic health conditions, providing:

• Support to rural primary care clinicians• Access to a physician specialist• Allowing healthcare professionals to participate in continuing medical

education• The rural health administrator make an informed decision about the viability

of telemedicine as a healthcare delivery option.

Applications of Telemedicine

• Telemedicine has a variety of applications in patient care, education, research, administration, and public health.

• Some uses such as emergency calls to 911 numbers using ordinary telephones are so commonplace that they are often overlooked as examples of distance medicine.

• Other applications such as telesurgery involve exotic technologies and procedures that are still in the experimental stage.

• The use of interactive video for such varied purposes as psychiatric consultations and home monitoring of patients.

• For many decision makers, the case for new or continued investment in telemedicine remains incomplete, particularly given the competition for resources in an era of budgetary retrenchment in health care.

THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA IN PEACE EDUCATION

• Poverty makes people easily manipulated.• ICT and media empower people.• The power of the web leads to the power of people.• Media literacy is to equip people with critical thinking skills. • Its role has become very crucial in the modern information age.

The role of media can be easily explained with Trans-national

Advocacy Networks (TANs)• Advocacy groups represent a wide range of categories and

support several issues.• Strengthening the capacity of political, social, and economic

justice.• Advocates to influence and change social policy domestically,

regionally and trans-nationally.

TAN in Action:

• Information Politics

Telephone, e-mails, fax, newsletter, pamphlets and bulletins.• Symbolic Politics

Pictures, Signboards and billboards• Leverage Politics

International allies, most powerful approach• Accountability Politics

Influencing governmental organizations (GO’s)

Apply to Save Durfur Campaign

ＵＳSudan govt

Citizen in Darfur

China

UN

Olympics

Other countries NGOs

The Janjaweed

AU

Journalists

ICT and Place

The importance of place: language, culture and identity• Places and Languages (from local to national and international)• Literaciesi. Traditional approach: To use text to communicate.ii. Modern Approach: Reading and writing at a level to communicate at certain

levels of society.iii. Digital literacy: The ability to understand and use information in multiple formats

from a wide range of sources when it is presented via computers.iv. Visual literacy: Learn to read and write (computers reading to you and writing

your voices) (for example voice recognition for blind people and Natural Language Processing)

• Language-based learning disabilities: Language-based learning disabilities or LBLD are “heterogeneous” disorders associated with young children that affect their academic skills such as listening, speaking, reading, writing, and math calculations. It is also associated with movement, coordination, and direct attention.

• Globalization as tensioni. Between the local and the globalii. Between one’s own identity and identity of the masses.• ICT can empower disadvantaged language communities.

E-Government and Governance Issues

• Also known as digital government, online government, or connected government and can be defined as:

• “The employment of the Internet and the world-wide-web for delivering government information and services to the citizens.”

• E-government includes the use of ICTs in government such as the use of telephones and fax machines, as well as surveillance systems, tracking systems such as RFID tags, and even the use of television and radios to provide government-related information and services to the citizens.

• A digital interactions between a:• Government and Citizens (G2C)• Government and Businesses/Commerce (G2B)• Government and Employees (G2E)• and also between Government and Governments /Agencies (G2G).• This digital interaction consists of governance, information and

communication technology (ICT) and e-citizen at all levels of government (village, town, city, state/province, national, and international).

Recommended Readings

• Information and Communication Technologies and Rural Development . Published by : OECD Publishing

• Survey of ICT and education in Africa: A Summary Report Based on 53 Country Surveys

• ICT as an enabler of Socio-Economic Development by Tahir Hameed• Telemedicine: A Guide to Assessing Telecommunications for Health Care by

Marilyn J. Field, Editor; Committee on Evaluating Clinical Applications of Telemedicine, Institute of Medicine.

• Case Studies on Telemedicine