Information systems in developing countires (Mar. 22)

Having covered the role of social and community informatics, we slightly shifted our focus this week towards developing countries in particular. The basic idea is the same: how to leverage ICT (information systems) to benefit a particular community. The change lies in the context of such communities, which in this case refers to developing countries or regions. Our first task then was to try to grasp the meaning of what a developing country is. Since development is by definition a progressive activity or movement, one could argue that all countries are developing in some sense, so this leads us to considering "developing" as coupled to a standard or desired state. In other words, developing means progressing towards the standard of development possessed by "developed" countries. The problem is that there is no such standard. We have mentioned Amartya Sen before, whose work puts the very notion of development into question. And going beyond the Nobel Laureates into the "alternative Nobel" (poor choice of label, by the way) Laureates, or Right Livelihood Awards, we can also mention Manfred Max-Neef's "human-scale development" which was designed specifically for Latin America and places the emphasis on people, not on objects as the units of development. As with Sen, the assumption that increased resources (such as GDP, sanitation or literacy) are indicative of development is criticized, because such resources do not automatically translate into increased quality of life for individuals, families and communities. Max-Neef explicitly includes dimensions such as freedom, protection, affection and understanding: human, rather than economic qualities.

Such a multidisciplinary and human-centered view of development is connected to another problem of classic understandings of development. Typically, development is attached to countries or regions, as when we say "Norway is a developed country". However, it is not always possible or desirable to make such generalizations, especially for "developing" regions. If we take Colombia as an example, we find that it is already ranked by the UNDP as a country with "High Human Development" (using 2010 statistics). This should mean that we are developing with respect to countries with Very High Human Development (e.g. Norway, Australia, New Zealand, USA...), but it also implies that we are developed with respect to countries with Medium (e.g. China, El Salvador, Sri Lanka...) or Low Human Development (e.g. Kenya, Bangladesh, Ghana...). Oversimplifying development like this completely hides the complex and unequal nature of development. Bogota is far more developed than Quibdó (a city in one of Colombia's poorest regions). In Bogotá, the northern part of the city is more developed than the south of the city. But it is also the case that even within a single neighborhood you can find a high standard of living comparable to that in developed countries side-by-side with slums with extreme poverty and basic necessities unfulfilled. You could say the same of China: while it is ranked as less developed than Colombia by the UNDP, its major cities far surpass most of Colombia's cities in terms of infrastructure, transportation or economic growth. And you could also say the same about developed countries: the US is increasingly showing neighborhoods or cities where poverty and unemployment are on par with some of the poorest countries in the world. In sum, "development" faces the same challenges we have seen when studying the digital divide: an overemphasis on material or economic indicators and an oversimplified resulting categorization.

Nonetheless, the broad and simplistic label of "developing" countries or regions has still been widely used within the information systems discipline as a way to study the implications of IS innovations in a context that is different from that in which most IS innovations have originally been created. In a 2008 paper, Chrisanthi Avgerou (working out of the LSE, as Walsham, whom we have already read) provides a critical review of the work that has been published in this domain. She classifies the contributions in terms of the discourse in which they most likely fit and which reflects a particular understanding of innovation and of information systems. The following figure presents a map summarizing Avgerou's review (click on the image for a full-sized view).

In class we used this map as an analytical tool to classify another paper presenting the case for ICT in developing regions (Brewer et al., 2005). In this IEEE Computer paper a series of ICT initiatives are presented for the reader to be convinced of the role of ICT in development (specifically referring to the UN Millennium Development Goals). The authors "travel the globe" presenting evidence of successful (?) ICT innovations in developing countries in the areas of healthcare, education, disaster management, e-government and economic efficiency, pointing out some of the challenges and future directions for further initiatives to be designed and adopted. The task was to attempt to classify this overview as either centered on a diffusion, socially-embedded or transformative discourse (as per Avgerou's proposal). The idea is not so much to question the authors' intentions (indeed it is possible that they exhibit traits of more than one discourse) but rather to be critical with respect to the assumptions behind the role that ICT has for development (as we have previously suggested in our discussions of the information /network society and the digital divide). The aim is to prevent us from becoming "victims" of our own discourse, which may happen if we uncritically and perhaps unconsciously adopt a specific view that may imply several ethical, philosophical and social worldviews. This risk, by the way, is pervasive in all design and engineering activities; hence the point of our course on ICT and Society. Each group is asked to post their analysis as a reply to this entry.