Connecting People-Changing Lives in Asia
Chapter 3
Technology tools:
instruments for
community empowerment and development
"The barrier [is] not actually the tool. The barrier would be the education process. To educate the society to share the knowledge within the society, to encourage the society to produce their knowledge in local languages."
- Onno Purbo, ICT digital pioneer, educator and writer
Technologies are only tools for creating a desired result. In the case of PAN's support for research on ICTs for development, the intended result is useful information and knowledge placed in the hands of the most disadvantaged of society to empower them or help solve their development problems. Indeed, technology can be an important tool to improve health, bolster learning, and create economic opportunities. Certain recent technological innovations have opened up a whole new "spectrum" of opportunities to help communities access the knowledge they need. Among them is the creation of inexpensive equipment that allows for wireless local areas networks (WLANs), commonly known as "WiFi," which stands for wireless fidelity. These networks use high-frequency (2.4-MHz) radio signals to transmit and receive data over distances of a few hundred feet. WiFi is also known by the specification 802.11, conferred by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
WiFi has revolutionized connectivity since it has, to a certain extent, "liberated" the Internet. In Indonesia, for example, key PAN partners, including Onno Purbo, have been teaching people how to create WiFi networks to ensure that poor communities can share the cost of access to the Internet. Purbo also teaches these communities how to set up voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), which is the routing of voice conversations over the Internet or any other IP-based network, so that communities can more readily telephone each other. And Purbo explains the usefulness of adopting open-source software, which refers to computer software developed by a community that is available to anyone who wants to study and improve its design. Since open-source software is often, although not necessarily, free, using it is a way of avoiding the high costs of proprietary software. WiFi, open-source software and VoIP are key technological innovations that have an important role in reducing the digital divide.
However, all of these technological innovations assume there are Internet connections and services in a country. This connectivity dimension is exactly where PAN's work has been breaking ground in Asia. PAN actually ensured that several countries in Asia, notably Cambodia and Viet Nam, were able to develop their first Internet connection, allowing transmission of the first e-mail from within the country. Once the challenge of simply getting an Internet connection to a country had been dealt with, access in the main cities increased greatly. However, communities in rural areas seemed even more isolated from the world and were left out of the burgeoning "new economy." In response, PAN's focus shifted to supporting experiments in rural connectivity, particularly through the piloting of telecentres. More recently, PAN has looked at ways in which rural communities could more effectively use technologies such as WiFi, VoIP, and open-source software. At the same time, PAN has focused on activities, such as localization, that facilitate the
use of ICTs in local languages, which helps the vast majority of Asians, who do not speak, read, or write in English (the dominant operating language for software), use software applications.
Access to knowledge for rural
development and poverty reduction
In most developing countries, Internet services are available to those who can pay and who are in large cities with reliable telephone infrastructure. However, finding solutions to the problem of connecting far-flung rural communities to Internet services demands technical ingenuity, creative minds, the marriage of a variety of technologies, and the ability to pursue unconventional approaches. The situation in each country, and within the regions of such vast countries as India, can vary hugely. Moreover, the digital universe is never static, but is a dynamic place where what was not feasible a month ago may become feasible in a month's time as technologies develop or as costs fall.
To advance research in improving access for underserved areas, PAN supported a number of projects in rural areas of different countries, namely Pondicherry in Southern India; Nangrong in rural Thailand; Bario, a remote village of Sarawak, Indonesia; Mindanao in the Philippines; as well as in Bangladesh, Laos, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan. Research support had to include attention to challenges of illiteracy, a diversity of local languages, and the scarcity of web content in local languages.
Experience in India's Union Territory of Pondicherry provides one model of how affordable ICTs can be harnessed to serve people's interests in poor, rural communities. PAN supported the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) in its efforts to respond to the information needs of villages near the regional centre of Villanur. In 1998, the area had a reasonable telecom infrastructure, but the 11 villages had an average of less than one telephone (public and private combined) for every 500 inhabitants. The cost of running copper or fibre-optic cables to the villages was out of the question, even for the region's telecom operator. The innovative solution was to set up a
hub-and-spokes model, with the hub centre in Villanur able to serve satellite villages using wireless Internet connection. Initially, the villages achieved access to the network using wireless VHF (very high frequency) radio. Today, the "last mile" connection to the villages has been upgraded to a proprietary spread-spectrum technology that enables much more efficient communication between the hub and the villages. The larger bandwidth now makes it possible, for example, to hold interactive video conferencing with people in the villages. The computers and other electrical equipment are backed up by hybrid solar energy systems, which gets around the problem of unreliable electricity supply.
Although getting the technology right - which means that it must be technically robust but low-cost at the same time - was a necessary step in creating village information centres, the technology had to be matched with the right kind of social infrastructure. Community ownership must be emphasized, the community must want the centre, and information and services must be demand-driven. Finally, the centres must be located in public spaces and focus on inclusion of all castes and groups, gender equity, and accessibility. Project staff regularly hold village meetings to promote the knowledge centres, and they also use participatory rural appraisal techniques to ensure that peoples' information needs are being met.
Hybrid technologies: do not throw away your public address system
Information captured from the Internet and relayed to villagers can be highly relevant to peoples' livelihoods. For example, information on the height of waves on the Pondicherry coast is retrieved daily from the US navy website, translated into Tamil, and broadcast to coastal villages using an old, but functional, public address system. Another older technology - the newspaper - has proven its worth as part of the technology chain that brings useful information to villagers. A community newspaper containing a mix of information items is published twice monthly and distributed to those beyond the electronic reach of the village knowledge centres (VKCs).
In the 7 years since the VKC project was first established, new technologies have come on the market at affordable prices. The VHF radio system was replaced by wireless spread-spectrum technology, and soon, even more cost-efficient WiFi or WiMax networking equipment will replace the spread-spectrum system. The latest MSSRF project supported by PAN is also testing 2.5-G mobile technology, a global positioning system (GPS), and sonars for fisherfolk to improve knowledge of fishing zones and ocean hazards, VoIP for low-cost long distance voice communication, and caching servers for more efficient data management among villages and greater local content development. In this project, ICTs will be tested for use in village health programs, education for rural children, an indigenous knowledge directory, food security, and knowledge management for local women.
The success of the VKCs has captured the attention of media around the world, including The New York Times, the Economist, the Times of India, and New Scientist magazine. The centres have also been recognized through the 1999 Motorola Dispatch Solution Award and the 2001 Stockholm Challenge Award (global village category).
The rural knowledge centres have had a positive impact on villagers lives by providing access to information that increases the profitability of their farming, fishing, and other enterprises; allows better use of medical services; and informs people of valuable government services and entitlements. The centres have also contributed to acquisition of better ICT skills and higher educational levels and economic status, especially for women.
Bhutan: reducing the cost of rural access
As in Mongolia, the rural communities of
Bhutan are extremely isolated and the country's mountainous terrain not only makes the installation of communications infrastructure difficult and expensive, but it also makes travel demanding and arduous for the average Bhutanese. It can take as much as 12 days of walking to reach some towns from a road.
Internet access was introduced to Bhutan's citizens on 2 June 1999 on the 25th anniversary of the King's coronation. The country's first ISP, DrukNet, was established in part with support from PAN in a project that also established international e-mail access and built training capacities in Bhutan's Division of Telecommunications and the Royal Institute of Management.
From the beginning, the Government of Bhutan's Division of Telecommunications (now a private company known as Bhutan Telecom) made a concerted effort to equalize the cost of accessing the Internet throughout the country. Thus, the fees for dialing up to the DrukNet server are the same as those for making a local telephone call, whether one lives in the city or in the country. Unfortunately, dial-up Internet service still requires access to a telephone line, and the low bandwidth of dial-up systems means end-users cannot benefit from useful applications that can only run on a broadband Internet connection (e.g., live videoconferencing and distance learning).
To overcome the limitations of dial-up Internet services, the Department of Information Technology of the Ministry of Information and Communication is undertaking a new research project supported by PAN. The pilot project will examine the viability and robustness of WiFi as an appropriate technology to reduce the cost of land-based infrastructure. It also addresses the development of local content. The project will identify two communities that still have no access to Internet services, then equip them with Internet access. Using WiFi technology, the communities will be linked to a larger centre that has Internet connectivity. Residents will be able to access services and information that were previously unattainable without walking great distances. Using participatory planning methods, people in these rural communities will identify their need for information about agriculture, education, governance, and health. The socioeconomic impact of these interventions
will also be measured to inform future
policymaking processes.
Technology and culture in Sri Lanka
The Sri Lanka Virtual Village project addresses
the question of how to integrate ICTs into rural communities where temples, indigenous medicine, and farming have great cultural significance. The project will extend the reach of ICT and the Internet beyond the telecentre to address the last mile issue that often plagues many rural areas. Wireless technology will bring information and services beyond the telecentre to the household, school, community library, and the traditional ayurvedic doctor. One component of the project examines the appropriateness and adaptability of various ICTs (WiFi, open source applications, and other low-cost ICT applications) for last mile connectivity. Another component will be a socio-anthropological study that looks at how diverse community groups, including women, respond to the new technologies and how they affect community life.
How do you say "download" in Urdu?
While PAN initially focused on establishing connectivity and infrastructure in unserved or underserved countries, in recent years energies have turned to the issue of "localization," i.e., adapting ICTs to the user's local language, whether it is Urdu in Pakistan, Bangla in Bangladesh, or Dzongka in Bhutan. Localization is critical in widening the reach of ICTs and opening up the vast resources of the Internet to the majority of the population in many countries.
Sarmad Hussain is coordinator of the PAN Localization project in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. He makes the point that Asia is the most culturally and linguistically diverse region of the world, where several thousand languages are spoken. Only about 20% of Asians can communicate in English, which means that English language content on the Internet is inaccessible to most Asians, especially rural populations. Writing in the journal i4d (information for development), Hussain (2004) states, "Unless these large non-English speaking populations have the ability to generate and access content in their native languages, they will not be able to use ICTs for their development effectively." The first step toward content manipulation in local languages is to have the devices - computer tools and mobile phones - interface with the user in local languages.
PAN Localization is a collaboration with the Centre for Research in Urdu Language Processing (CRULP) of the National University for Computing and Emerging Sciences in Lahore, Pakistan. CRULP coordinates the work of the PAN Localization multistakeholder partnerships in seven countries. It is tackling an ambitious program to create tools to translate Internet content into local languages, strengthen capacity for local-language computing, and influence policy to promote local-language content across Asia. The project involves collaboration with institutions in each partner country - institutions that may continue the work beyond the life of the project. The challenge is quite enormous, and as Sarmad Hussain notes, localization is only starting for many Asian languages. One obstacle has been the lack of commercial incentive to address markets that may not bring adequate financial returns to software companies. Another is the complexity of Asian languages. Although many major Asian languages have developed character sets, other standards are required to carry out data processing. One example is collation sequences, which need to be defined
to enable applications that sort such data as a voters list.
Creating virtual marketplaces through e-commerce
Electronic commerce (or e-commerce) is a form of economic activity that is increasing throughout the world, although in Asia, Japan accounts for 70% of revenues generated via this means. Nonetheless,
e-commerce represents an important form of commercial transaction even for smaller Asian economies. The benefits can reach disadvantaged communities through employment growth, lower materials costs for businesses, and better marketing of goods from small producers.
The challenge of e-commerce is compelling to PAN, as IDRC supports research into innovations that can contribute to the knowledge and information economies of developing countries. When PAN introduced an e-commerce initiative in 1999, many countries where partners were operating were
still worried about the initial problem of getting connected. But e-commerce is a way to add value to the Internet infrastructure that PAN helped establish in many areas.
PAN supports research on various aspects of
e-commerce, from electronic payment systems and authentication to studying the policy environment for e-commerce activities. In this way, it has been able to help local researchers investigate obstacles they encounter when trying to advance this unique business model.
One of IDRC's steps into the world of e-commerce is its support of the PAN e-commerce mall. This not-for-profit e-commerce portal (www.panaseanemall.org) serves the development community in the Asia-Pacific region. It is a way of offering to the world the products of development organizations that otherwise would have limited market outlets. The initiative was the first of its kind in the region to overcome the issue of secure electronic payment. With contributions from 13 countries in the region (Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Thailand) in the form of arts and crafts, publications, videos, and CD-ROMs, this truly regional e-commerce site has been in operation since June 2000. The PAN e-commerce mall is part of a larger undertaking - the ICT4D Collaboratory, hosted at the ASEAN Foundation in Jakarta, Indonesia (www.ict4dasean.org). According to project leader Eddy Bahfen, annual sales at the e-mall stand at about US$12 000. Some 400 items are displayed, of which 80% are publications and the remaining 20% made up of handicrafts and CDs. Most buyers at the e-mall are from the United States and Europe.
References
Hussain, S. 2004. Pan Localisation regional initiative: developing local language computing. i4d, June: 27-30. Available: here (accessed 12 Oct. 2005).
Next Chapter |
Previous Chapter |
Table of Contents
