DIGITAL REVIEW of
AsiaPacific
2009–2010

To obtain a comprehensive picture of the state of play of ICT development and application in any given economy, the chapters on individual economies should ideally be read alongside the chapters on these economies in previous editions of the Digital Review of Asia Pacific, all of which are available for download at:

http://www.digital-review.org

DIGITAL REVIEW of
AsiaPacific
2009–2010

EDITORS: Shahid Akhtar and Patricia Arinto

EDITORIAL BOARD:

Danny Butt

Claude-Yves Charron

Laurent Elder

Alain Modoux

Suchit Nanda

Maria Ng Lee Hoon

Rajesh Sreenivasan

Krishnamurthy Sriramesh

Jian Yan Wang

CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS:

Musa Abu Hassan

Ilyas Ahmed

Salman Ansari

Lkhagvasuren Ariunaa

Jon Baggaley

Tian Belawati

Axel Bruns

John Budden

Danny Butt

Chriv Kosona

Abel Pires da Silva

Masoud Davarinejad

Fortunato de la Peña

Chamindra de Silva

Deng Jianguo

Tan Sri Dato’ Gajaraj Dhanarajan

Paz Hernandez Diaz

Timoteo Diaz de Rivera

Anita Dighe

Donny B.U.

John Yat-Chu Fung

Maria Teresa Garcia

Goh Seow Hiong

Lelia Green

Hameed A. Hakeem

Greg Hearn

Jong Sung Hwang

Malika Ibrahim

Seungkwon Jang

Arthur Jorari

Kuenga Jurmi

Keisuke Kamimura

Robyn Kamira

Syed S. Kazi

Kyungmin Ko

Thaweesak Koanantakool

Emmanuel C. Lallana

Luiz Gonzaga Lau

Heejin Lee

Molly Lee

Lim Hock Chuan

Yu-li Liu

Harsha Liyanage

Luis Chi Meng Loi

Naveed Malik

Osama Manzar

Muhammad Aimal Marjan

Fengchun Miao

Rapin Mudiardjo

Mahendhiran Nair

Wai-Kong Ng

Nguyen Thi Thu Huong

Siti Zobidah Omar

Thein Oo

Pan Sorasak

Sushil Pandey

Sang-Hyun Park

Adam Peake

Phonpasit Phissamay

Hitendra Pillay

Kishor Pradhan

Ananya Raihan

Massood Saffari

Shahida Saleem

Partha Pratim Sarker

Sheldon Shaeffer

Tengku Mohd Azzman Shariffadeen

Basanta Shrestha

Abhishek Singh

Rajesh Sreenivasan

Samuelu Taufao

Myint Myint Than

Chadamas Thuvasethakul

Tran Ngoc Ca

Kalaya Udomvitid

Sambuu Uyanga

Eunice Hsiao-hui Wang

Sangay Wangchuk

Ruvan Weerasinghe

Yong Chee Tuan

Zhang Guoliang

The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and editors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publishers. The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the publishers concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area of its authorities, or concerning the delimitations of its frontiers or boundaries. The publishers do not guarantee the accuracy of the data published here and accept no responsibility whatsoever for any consequences of their use.

Copyright © Orbicom and the International Development Research Centre 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any from or by any means, electronic, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

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The Digital Review of Asia Pacific wishes to acknowledge the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) for its proactive engagement and financial support, for its commitment and encouragement to regional research and authorship, and for its dissemination of research results within and beyond the Asia Pacific region.

Contents

Foreword Noeleen Heyzer     vii

Preface Claude-Yves Charron, Alain Modoux, Laurent Elder, and Maria Ng Lee Hoon     ix

Introduction Shahid Akhtar and Patricia Arinto     xi

Acronyms     xv

A. Regional overviews

ICT for development in Asia Pacific: Emerging themes in a diverse region
Danny Butt and Partha Pratim Sarker     3

An overview of regulatory approaches to ICTs in Asia and thoughts on best practices for the future
Rajesh Sreenivasan and Abhishek Singh     15

Managing innovation in the network economy: Lessons for countries in the Asia Pacific region
Mahendhiran Nair and Tengku Mohd Azzman Shariffadeen     25

B. Regional issues in ICT in education

Education for All in the digital age Tan Sri Dato’ Gajaraj Dhanarajan     45

Distance education in Asia Pacific Jon Baggaley, Tian Belawati, and Naveed Malik     51

ICTs in non-formal education in Asia Pacific Anita Dighe, Hameed A. Hakeem, and Sheldon Shaeffer     59

Capacity-building for ICT integration in education Wai-Kong Ng, Fengchun Miao, and Molly Lee     67

Public-private partnerships in ICT for education Hitendra Pillay and Greg Hearn     77

C. Sub-regional perspectives

Pacific Island Countries Arthur Jorari, John Budden, and Samuelu Taufao     91

Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Maria Teresa Garcia with Emmanuel C. Lallana     103

Association of Southeast Asian Nations Lim Hock Chuan     111

South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation Kishor Pradhan and Harsha Liyanage     119

D. Review of individual economies

About the contributing authors     367

Index     382

Foreword

The current edition of the Digital Review of Asia Pacific vividly paints the picture of a major dimension of change in the Asia Pacific region, and indeed in the world. Asia Pacific is my main concern at the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), but changes here and globally are quite similar. Communication and networking enabled by information and communication technologies (ICTs) are proving to be economically, socially, and politically transformative over time. For example, in both poor and wealthy countries, mobile phone use has been skyrocketing and facilitating the expansion of markets, social business, and public services. In fact, an entire range of economic services, enabled by mobile phones, has begun to emerge: micro finance and insurance, marketing and distribution (for example, farmers and fishermen connecting with markets, reduced distribution margins, and buyer control), employment services (for example, drivers and casual workers), personal services, and public services (such as telehealth and distance education). And beyond the economic impacts, improvements are being made in other freedoms or dimensions of well-being — personal security, political participation and accountability, social peace, dignity, and opportunity.

These developments are important, where they are thriving. But we should not forget the negative aspects and possibilities of communications-based transformation, such as mobile phones being used to fan violence, cybercrime and terrorism, and our vulnerability to disruption of communication. Nationally and internationally, control of communications is contended, and openness generally considered best. Internationally, the spread and appropriation of ICTs is a key globalization driver and knowledge carrier. In these circumstances, societies need to build communications systems and manage them well, develop infrastructure and the capacity to use it, and implement good policy and regulation. In the right environments, both business and non-profit enterprise are effective in rapidly expanding connectivity, using low-margin, high-volume business models. Affordable mobile Internet — smart phones and data services — exists today in wealthier societies and could be near universal in the next generation. These are stories that the Digital Review of Asia Pacific 2009–2010 tells, in vivid and thoroughly researched detail, in snapshots as well as dynamic pictures of the development and use of digital storage, processing, and communications systems in 30 economies, with sub-regional and regional overviews.

Browse and be drawn into these pictures and narratives. Read previous editions of the Digital Review of Asia Pacific online to highlight changes and trends. In 2009 and 2010, partners of ESCAP, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and many other organizations will be monitoring the impacts of the global financial and economic crisis on economies, businesses and employment, public services and households, and identifying and carrying out key mitigation measures. Negative impacts spread through international ‘transactions’, falls in exports, remittances, foreign direct and portfolio investment, possibly official development assistance and, increasingly, transactions in knowledge. Impacts on digital systems and their users in particular could be substantially negative, arresting progress in economic and other spheres, with particular impact on the poorest. At stake in all sectors are advances in incomes, jobs, work, education, health, security, equity, and social functionality. Good management and responses, reported in the current and future editions of the Digital Review of Asia Pacific, will be central to reducing negative impacts. So enjoy, respond to, and do not miss the next editions of the Digital Review of Asia Pacific.

Noeleen Heyzer
Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations
and
Executive Secretary, ESCAP

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Preface
ICT FOR DEVELOPMENT IN THE ASIA PACIFIC REGION:
RIDING THE WAVES OF CHANGE IN A ‘FLAT WORLD’

The Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries of the world,
long ago made the choice to invest the present and the future of the poor in ICT.
ICT is a new opportunity for grassroots innovation.
I saw an opportunity for the poor people to change their lives
but only if this technology could be brought to them to meet their needs.
(Muhammad Yunus 2007)

The sudden onslaught of the current economic turmoil comes just when this edition of the Digital Review of Asia Pacific (DirAP) went to press and long after the authors had submitted their manuscripts. But the publishers, editors, and authors of DirAP will be closely monitoring the impact of this turbulence on the appropriation of information and communication technology (ICT) in the region throughout 2009 and 2010. Dr Yunus has showed the way to all who are working toward empowering poor communities, to address their development challenges through effective access to ICTs. At the same time, we are learning that even as communities adopt and use ICTs, it is imperative to track and understand the positive and negative effects of ICTs on specific communities. Each wave of global change impacts not only the international and regional levels, but also, more and more, poor rural households.

In the maiden 2003–2004 edition, we referred to DirAP as an analysis of ‘a new type of public sphere [that is] more participatory and intentional’. That statement was made at a time when we had yet to see the real power of ICT. Since then, we have seen ICTs completely transform our lives, including the way politics and governance are played out. This started in Asia with the now famous ‘coup de text’ in the Philippines, followed by similar innovations in China, Korea, Malaysia, and Pakistan. More recently, in the United States (US), the Obama campaign demonstrated the importance of ICTs in creating awareness and motivating action. The 2005–2006 edition of DirAP sought to prepare the DirAP audience for this kind of phenomena. The edition included reference to disruptive ICTs, with a close-up examination of the social, political, and cultural aspects of e-governance and the need to develop appropriate ICTs using Open Source programs and local language tools. In the 2007–2008 edition, we featured developments in mobile and wireless technologies, as the remarkable growth of cellphone technology and Web 2.0 tools are impacting on public socialization and conscientization. This prognostic element is central to our motivation in producing DirAP as a regular Asia-watch serial.

In addition to tracking the way ICTs are used for political change in Asia, DirAP keeps a close eye on the impact of ICTs on the education, health, and livelihood of communities in the region. For the 2009–2010 edition, we have selected education as a principal theme. We are focusing on the state of ICT deployment and innovation in basic education, non-formal education, distance education, capacity-building for education policymakers and practitioners, and public-private partnerships in ICT for education.

DirAP has evolved since its inception in small and big ways. It has increased in volume, with a growing network of writers from the Asia Pacific region. It has adopted a co-authoring style to reflect multiple voices — a methodological posture that has been constant since the creation of DirAP and that can be summarized as follows:

The voices of DirAP are independent and if they are ideological at all, they are the voices of these writers who are the key movers and shakers in the ICT for development arena in the region. We believe that this multiplicity of voices, which includes those of policymakers, professionals from the private sector and senior scholars, offers a unique opportunity to access the richness and the complexity of the debates, of the choices being made and to be made, and of the major issues in the interface between communication and development. And we strongly believe in the importance of this complementarity and diversity of voices, ensuring that, as in Kurozawa’s Rashomon, the perspectives of the different actors are represented but also debated through research and statistical evidence. (Ng and Charron 2007)

The last three editions of DirAP were launched at the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva (2003) and Tunis (2005), and at the Global Knowledge Partnership GKIII Conference in Kuala Lumpur (2007). They reached both Asia Pacific and international stakeholders in ICT for development (ICTD). Chin Saik Yoon and Felix Librero expertly served as chief editors of these previous editions. This year, we are most grateful to Shahid Akhtar and Patricia Arinto for convening this diversity of voices. We thank DirAP’s editors and the editorial board for helping to transform the ferment in the field into a rather unique series of studies over time.

DirAP has ventured outside the ICT arena to bring in other disciplines to explain the effects of ICT in their fields. DirAP will continue to evolve, perhaps toward more interactive, participatory electronic formats. Whatever changes we make for the future editions of DirAP, we hope that the publication remains a useful source of research in ICTD that allows for an unfolding view and narrative. We hope too that ICTD stakeholders in Asia Pacific see DirAP as an opportunity to publish about ICTD efforts in the region and to reflect on platforms that they consider important for influencing change. And we hope that other ICTD stakeholders around the world will learn from these testimonies and experiences of ICTD in Asia Pacific unfiltered by what Edward Said (1978) referred to as an Orientalist bias.

Kenichi Ohmae’s (1990) metaphor of a ‘Borderless World’ and Thomas Friedman’s (2005) concept of a ‘Flat World’ might sound a bit stale to some. But in the current global crisis, one could argue to the contrary — that they are absolutely right. Moreover, Servaes’s (2000) view that strengthening the educational sector through the use of technology is a necessary precondition to meeting the challenges of a global world seems to ring more true today than it did at the beginning of the millennium. As publishers, we are proud to share with readers these narratives from different voices in the field, each of them attempting from their own perspective to respond to the current and future imperatives of ICTD in a networked society that seems to have shifted to a new age from that foretold by Castells (1996).

Claude-Yves Charron and Alain Modoux
Orbicom, Network of UNESCO Chairs
in Communication

Laurent Elder and Maria Ng Lee Hoon
International Development Research Centre

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Castells, M. (1996). The rise of the network society. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

Friedman, T. (2005). The world is flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century. New York: Farar, Strauss and Giroux.

Ng Lee Hoon, M. and C.Y. Charron. (2007). Preface. In F. Librero (Ed.), Digital review of Asia Pacific 2007–2008. New Delhi: IDRC, Orbicom, and Sage Publications.

Ohmae, K. (1990). The borderless world. New York: HarperCollins.

Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.

Servaes, J. (Ed.). (2000). Walking on the other side of the information highway: Communication, culture and development in the 21st century. Penang: Southbound.

Yunus, M. (2007). Foreword. In F. Librero (Ed.), Digital review of Asia Pacific 2007–2008. New Delhi: IDRC, Orbicom, and Sage Publications.

Introduction

The information age has been driven and dominated by technopreneurs — a small army of ‘geeks’ who have reshaped our world faster than any political leader has ever done…. We now have to apply these technologies for saving lives, improving livelihoods and lifting millions of people out of squalor, misery and suffering. In short, the time has come to move our focus from the geeks to the meek.
(Sir Arthur C. Clarke)

When Marshall McLuhan coined the term ‘global village’ in 1962, he was referring to the removal of space and time barriers in human communication as a result of the communication revolution taking place at the time. Today, we are living in a global village in every sense of the term. This has never been more evident than in the financial and economic crisis gripping the world today.

Banks are failing and stock markets are tumbling. The automotive, construction, insurance, manufacturing, tourism, and other industries are suffering their greatest losses in years. The prices of commodities like oil, copper, lead, nickel, platinum, and wheat have fallen 65–88 percent from their peaks. Households have lost billions in real estate and pension fund reserves are dwindling. Countless small and medium-sized companies are going bankrupt and millions of jobs are being lost. The Asian Development Bank estimates that more than USD 50 trillion in invested wealth vanished into thin air in 2008. The world is in a deflationary spiral.

Much of the crisis concerns the United States (US) and countries in the European Community. But given the interconnectedness of the world’s financial and economic systems, economies around the world are experiencing a downturn. Even the biggest economies, like China, are hurting. Li Yizhong, head of China’s Ministry of Information and Technology, has noted that ‘the international financial crisis is having a severe domestic impact’ and ‘just about every industry has over-capacity’. Zhang Ping, head of China’s planning body, predicts that ‘[e]xcessive bankruptcies and production cuts will bring massive unemployment, stirring social unrest. Owing to dramatic changes in the international economic and financial environment, the Chinese economy faces growing downside pressure’. And the head of the Australian central bank, Glenn Stevens, whose country is one of the key suppliers of natural resources to China, has said that ‘[t]he most striking real economic fact of the past several months is not continued U.S. economic weakness, but that China’s economy has slowed much more quickly than anyone had forecast’ (Sagami 2008).

It will take several years, maybe even a decade, before the recession (some call it ‘depression’) that the world is facing today can be fully turned around and all the losses made up. The next several years are not going to be easy for most developing countries and many that were already struggling to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) goals and targets are going to be facing even greater difficulties in realizing these goals. The new information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been a driving force of the globalized world in which we find ourselves today. Do ICTs have a role in helping to turn the global situation around?

Now more than ever, countries need more efficient, accountable and transparent government. And it is a well documented fact that use of ICTs assists in sharing information more effectively and delivering better services to the public. ‘ICTs, wisely deployed, can potentially impact almost every sector, making development budgets, private sector investments and commitments from development partners go that much further in terms of cost effectiveness, impact and reach’ (UNDP 2005, p. 1). ICTs help to increase transparency and accountability and decrease corruption. They promote economic growth by improving the interface with business and empowering citizens to participate in advancing good governance. ICTs also help to accelerate the pace of sustainable human development and to ‘… increase the effectiveness of new and more responsive solutions in the fields of health, education and related MDG focus areas’ (UNDP 2005, p. 1).

The Digital Review of Asia Pacific (DirAP) aims to serve as a guide for ICT-related policy development, planning, research, and project implementation in the region. Like the previous editions, the 2009–2010 edition of DirAP reports on key ICT for development (ICTD) initiatives across the Asia Pacific region. The present edition of DirAP consists of four parts:

• Part A includes regional overviews on ICTD, regulatory approaches to ICT, and managing innovation.

• Part B, consisting of five chapters, focuses on various aspects of ICT in education.

• Part C assesses the ICT initiatives of four sub-regional groupings.

• Part D reviews the digital status of 30 economies.

The chapters in Part D report on the status of the technology infrastructure, ICT industries, digital content, online services, key ICT initiatives, enabling policies, regulatory environment, education and capacity-building programs, open source initiatives, ICT-related research and development, and ICTD trends and challenges up to mid-20081 in each of the 30 economies covered. The common framework that underpins these reports allows readers to undertake a comparative analysis and assess progress across the region.

The chapters in Parts A and C provide two types of comparative analyses of the ICT initiatives presented. In Part C, the comparative perspective is sub-regional, with four chapters reviewing the ICT initiatives of four political and economic groups. Budden, Jorari, and Taufao describe the digital status of the Pacific Island Countries. Garcia and Lallana provide an overview of the ICT initiatives of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). Lim outlines ICT-related aspects of the work of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) toward building the ASEAN Community. Pradhan and Liyanage review recent initiatives by the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to foster regional collaboration in ICTD.

Part A provides regional perspectives. In ‘ICT for development in Asia Pacific: Emerging themes in a diverse region’, Butt and Sarker outline some key concepts that are useful for analyzing and evaluating ICTD initiatives in the region. In ‘An overview of regulatory approaches to ICTs in Asia and thoughts on best practices for the future’, Sreenivasan and Singh compare regulatory approaches in Asian jurisdictions, and describe what they consider to be the four pillars of ICT policy, namely, citizen-focused e-government services, improving access to education, open source software development, and localized and indigenous digital content development and regulation. In ‘Managing innovation in the network economy: Lessons for countries in the Asia Pacific region’, Nair and Shariffadeen consider the role of national innovation ecosystems in enhancing the innovative capacity and competitiveness of nations in the network economy. They propose a quantitative method of assessing national innovation capacity and outline strategies to close the digital and innovation divides between countries in Asia Pacific and other regions.

The chapters in Part B of this edition of DirAP revolve around the theme of ICTs and education. Strengthening the innovative capacity of countries and ensuring broad-based and equitable development require, among others, giving priority to education for all citizens. Indeed, the second MDG is the achievement of universal primary education. Education is a basic human right, and it is a precondition of economic and social development. ICTs are increasingly recognized as an important means of providing education for all and building the capacity of individuals and communities to survive and thrive in the knowledge-based economy. The 2005 UNDP Regional Human Development Report notes that ‘ICTs are already creating new possibilities for “reaching the unreached” and also for making lifelong education feasible for all’ and that ‘these trends would only gather momentum and could imply a revolution, provided determined efforts are made to promote appropriate use of ICTs as innovative new delivery mechanisms for system-wide provision of education’ (UNDP 2005, p. 12).

In the chapter titled ‘Education for all in the digital age’, Dhanarajan describes the important role that the new digital technologies can play in the global movement toward Education for All (EFA) that was launched in 1990 at Jomtien, Thailand, and affirmed in 2000 through the Dakar Framework for Action. The chapter also outlines factors that policymakers must consider in harnessing ICTs to provide education for all. These include the need for policy recognizing different modes of education, including open and distance learning, and alternative learning.

Baggaley, Belawati, and Malik, in their chapter titled ‘Distance education in Asia Pacific’, provide an overview of trends in distance education in the region, including the use of mobile phones in learning. The chapter discusses issues affecting Asian distance education institutions, such as lack of access to e-learning technologies, and the need to develop a distinctively Asian approach to distance education.

ICT use in non-formal education programs for out-of-school youth and adults is the focus of ‘ICTs in non-formal education in Asia Pacific’ by Dighe, Hakeem, and Shaeffer. Arguing that non-formal education has an important role to play in achieving quality education for all sectors of society, especially marginalized groups that comprise a significant percentage of the population in developing countries, the chapter critically examines the progress made and the lessons learned in the use of ICTs in non-formal education in the Asia Pacific region.

In ‘Capacity-building for ICT integration in education’, Ng, Miao, and Lee focus on building the capacity of policymakers and educators in Asia Pacific countries to integrate ICT in education. The basic elements of a holistic ICT in education policy and an ICT in education toolkit for policymakers and planners are detailed, as well as the dimensions of integrated teacher professional development that would enable teachers to use ICT effectively and appropriately to support national education goals. A case is made for moving away from technocentric planning and implementation approaches to ICT integration, to models that focus on establishing sound policy and support strategies leading to capacity development and empowerment.

The final chapter in the thematic section on ICT and education is on ‘Public-private partnerships in ICT for education’ by Pillay and Hearn. ICT-supported education requires large investments not only in equipment and infrastructure but also in human resource development. Public-private partnerships are described as a means for governments to meet increasing demands for ICT-supported education reform and expansion.

In describing and analyzing trends and issues in the use of ICT in key areas such as education and governance in the Asia Pacific region, this edition of DirAP hopes to give its readers greater insight into the application of ICTs for sustainable human development. ICTs have been instrumental in the realization of a globalized world. Globalization has brought greater interdependence, with both positive and negative effects on economies and societies. When used wisely, ICTs can help mitigate some of the negative impacts and maximize the positive outcomes of interdependence, through better coordination and monitoring of development efforts, building partnerships between the public and private sectors and between governments and citizens, and fostering the innovative capacity and entrepreneurial spirit of individuals and communities.

Shahid Akhtar and Patricia Arinto
Editors, Digital Review of Asia Pacific 2009–2010

NOTE

1. As is normally the case with analytical reviews, there is a time lag between when such reviews are actually written and their formal publication. The chapters on the individual economies reflect conditions at the time of writing, which was essentially around early to mid-2008, prior to the global economic and financial crisis beginning in late 2008.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sagami, T. (2008). Five insiders give dire warnings about China. Money and markets. 16 December. Retrieved 16 December 2008 from http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/five-insiders-give-dire-warnings-about-china-2-28749

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). (2005). Promoting ICT for human development in Asia: Realizing the millennium development goals. The regional human development report. New Delhi: Elsevier. Retrieved 15 December 2008 from http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/regionalreports/asiathepacific/South_East_Asia_2005_en.pdf

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Acronyms

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Part A Regional overviews

ICT for development in Asia Pacific: Emerging themes in a diverse region

An overview of regulatory approaches to ICTs in Asia and thoughts on best practices for the future

Managing innovation in the network economy: Lessons for countries in the Asia Pacific region

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ICT for development in Asia Pacific: Emerging themes in a diverse region

Danny Butt and Partha Pratim Sarker

In late 2008, a series of financial shocks highlighted the risks emerging from a highly networked, information economy. Governments were forced to respond quickly as movements in one financial market overnight had unpredictable effects on investor confidence in the other side of the world the next day. While investment banks collapsed or were bailed out, governments were forced to underwrite individual deposits, and reluctantly admitted that there was little that could be done to decisively reverse their nation’s market fortunes or insulate them from the radical volatility of advanced economies. When advanced economies such as the United Kingdom have over 60 percent of their wealth in real estate (Hopkins 2008), sudden write-downs in value can occur as property markets fall.

It was a reminder, perhaps, that the question of development in the networked economy is far from straightforward, and the issue of wealth acquisition requires developing economies to ask: what kind of wealth? Many commentators assume that because information and communication technologies (ICTs) are equated with higher overall standards of living, then the deployment of these technologies and associated infrastructure will automatically result in higher levels of development. However, a historical view suggests that when disruptive technologies such as the Internet emerge, it is those with substantial capital who are best placed to reap the dividends (Noe and Parker 2005), and in a networked economy, this usually means those in advanced economies.

A focus on human rather than purely technological development is becoming evident from governments in the Asia Pacific region, with the aim of making the labour force globally competitive in the ICT and related industries. Localization is a key strategy in ensuring that productive workforces are retained and developed, as this workforce becomes the most strategic asset in responding to a rapidly shifting information economy.

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY ICTD?

The field of Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICTD) now includes a vast variety of projects with many different aims and objectives. When we look at the path traveled by the term ‘ICT’ in recent years, its expanded coverage should come as no surprise. ‘Information’ — or structured data — is now widely recognized as central to economic production. Even traditional business sectors such as agriculture are increasingly reliant on human information interventions such as the genetic modification of crops or classification systems for produce. Communication technologies are a key factor in these developments as they are the means by which information is stored and circulated. ICTs are the transportation networks of the information economy, and their exponential growth and diversification are well documented in recent reports (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia 2005).

‘Development’ itself is a term with many competing definitions. Most policymakers focus on macroeconomic growth as a key indicator of development; social entrepreneurs like Muhummad Yunus of the Grameen Bank emphasize access to credit and business development; and economists such as Amartya Sen (1999, p. 10) describe development in the holistic terms of personal freedom, noting that economic gains are not the only measure of effective development and that we must also examine the state’s role in helping to provide: ‘(1) political freedoms, (2) economic facilities, (3) social opportunities, (4) transparency guarantees and (5) protective security’. Recently, trends toward measuring and valuing development include a collective dimension outside the nation-state and the individual citizen, encompassing collective cultural development of indigenous groups (Coombe 2003) and the natural environments that support people’s lives. These various aspects of development are sometimes in conflict with each other, making the terrain of development, and ICTD, a complex political field.

Increasingly, development is linked to sustainability, as economic development has often involved the use of finite natural resources and short-term economic growth may result in fewer opportunities for development in the future. Elina Zicmane (2004, pp. 8–10) notes that the European Commission defines sustainable development as ‘development in which present generations find ways to satisfy their needs without compromising the chances of future generations to satisfy their needs’. She notes that a common analytical framework is the ‘4D’ interpretation, which looks at four dimensions of sustainable development: ecological, economic, social, and cultural. ‘Regardless of a separate definition of each dimension,’ she says, ‘all four of them are strongly linked and require a cross-cutting approach.’ (‘Sustainability’ is discussed further later in this chapter.)

So it would be a brave person who would propose a succinct overall definition of development. However, development aspirations become clearer when we move toward the actual impact of development activities on the ground: human development. The United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) give development this pragmatic lens, emphasizing the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger; universal primary education; gender equality; the reduction of child mortality; maternal health; combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; environmental sustainability; and a global partnership for development.

The role of ICTs in addressing the most pressing concerns of the least developed territories is far from clear. However, we believe that in looking closely at how various technological initiatives are taking shape on the ground, we can gain a better understanding of the opportunities and risks of ICTD activities. In this respect, the Asia Pacific region provides a rich testing ground with both important success stories and instructive failures.

In this overview chapter, we outline some key concepts that are useful for considering contemporary ICTD initiatives in the region, to assist the reader in analyzing and evaluating the other chapters in this edition of the Digital Review of Asia Pacific. We also discuss initiatives and themes gathered from the Digital Review authors’ meeting in Singapore in March 2008 where 50 experts from the region shared their views. Greater detail on policy initiatives can be found in the overview chapter on ICT regulatory approaches and detail on specific initiatives will be found in the chapters on individual economies.

ICTD: THE STATE OF THE ART

An important part of the Digital Review of Asia Pacific is to develop more specific and nuanced scenarios of ICTD. Therefore, we must critically address the expectations of ICTD. By ‘critically’ we do not mean ‘negatively’, but simply in a manner that questions assumptions that are not matched to lived experiences on the ground. In particular, as Richard Heeks (2007, p. 1) notes, ‘Very little work to date has drawn from the D of ICT4D — linking concepts in development studies to this research domain.’ Our aim here is to avoid the technocratic or economistic approaches often associated with ICTD discourse from an informatics background, and to keep the people-centred view of development at the centre of our analysis.

Anita Gurumurthy and Parminder Jeet Singh (2006, p. 18) trace the idea of ICTD back to the Digital Opportunities Initiative (DOI) report authored by the US-based consulting firm Accenture, the US-based non-profit Markle Foundation, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 2001. This report ‘developed some key concepts of what came to be known as ICT4D, and… form(s) the basic framework of ICT4D thinking even today’. The view of development that the DOI report projected was market-oriented and saw development mostly in terms of dominant economic growth paradigms that have come from the developed world.1 However, the concept of ICTD probably emerges most clearly from the first Global Knowledge conference held in Toronto in 1997 by the World Bank and the Canadian government. While international agencies such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) have been acting in this field since the ‘MacBride Report’ of 1980, ICTD galvanizes a new understanding about the links between communication and economic development that departs from a ‘cultural’ model.

As ICTD matures as a field, a number of reviews of ICTD literature that question some assumptions and embedded world-views are beginning to appear (see, for example, Ekdahl and Trojer 2002; Wilson 2002). A key issue is that the way that ICTs are conceived has a big impact on the efficiency of development projects, and the views of ICTs of policymakers and practitioners on the ground are often different.

In particular, three ‘articles of faith’ identified in ICTD must be questioned if we are to learn from the work of others and not simply promote what ethnographer Eric Michaels (1990, p. 20) described as ineffective but well-meaning advancement projects, ‘the discarded skeletons of which litter the countryside’. First, metaphors of catch-up, progress, and leapfrogging in the ICTD literature present development as a linear pathway. ICT is seen as a positive, or at least neutral, influence on progression along this pathway. Second, there are common demands for urgency and the need to act quickly on ICTD in order not to be excluded from fast-paced developments. This advocacy of urgency persists even though the ranking of national human development indicators listed in the UN Human Development Reports remain remarkably stable over time. Third, assumptions are made about what kinds of information are valuable for development through the creation of the category of ‘information-poor’ peoples who are compared to the knowledge-holders of the developed world rather than viewed in terms drawn from their own experience.

Taking a human development and human rights perspective, we counter that no nation is inherently underdeveloped socially, culturally, and environmentally. While ICTs often drive standardization and interoperability, we cannot assume that, for example, the speakers of over 800 languages spoken in Papua New Guinea ‘lack information’ when their languages are not represented online (Gordon 2005). They would not necessarily benefit from a single language. It makes more sense to say that text-oriented ICTs such as the Internet are currently incompatible with many large bodies of information, particularly those held in non-dominant language groups. Rather than the deficit model common in the modernization development discourse, a more responsive approach in ICTD will mean that the socio-cultural development of peoples in their cultural environment will be given serious consideration as an opportunity for thinking about the future possibilities of ICTs.

Sein and Harindranath (2004) note that many donors and project sponsors see ICT as purely a tool for technical use, but more sophisticated projects attend to what ICTs represent or mean for users and the way this fits into the larger context of their aspirations. They see a number of different use strategies for ICTs — as a commodity, as a support for development activities, or as a driver of economic transformation — that need to be evaluated differently (Sein and Harindranath 2004, p. 20). They note that the impact can range from simple substitution of one practice for an (hopefully more efficient) ICT-enabled one, to a growth in desirable phenomena occurring because of ICTs, through to the emergence of new structures due to ICTs. These are different orders of impact, and the risk and consequences grow as higher-order change is attempted. It goes without saying that wholesale economic transformation is unlikely to occur due to a single ICTD project. ICTs are not a single neutral technology, but a complex field of activity encompassing many different technologies and various types of information that existed prior to these technologies coming into being. As Gunnar Swanson (1994) suggests about design, ICTs are ‘syncretic and integrative’ — they combine existing information in ways that are new, yet also reflect prior modes of economic and social life. ICTs are not in a place that people move to from their pre-ICT world, but are a complex set of systems and protocols that link people together. ICTs are fundamentally relational.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1987), discussing ICT-enabled markets as presented in the US media, made this case very plainly more than two decades ago. She noted that while capital investors such as the Lehman Brothers are described as being able to, thanks to computers, earn ‘about USD 2 million for … 15 minutes of work’, this economic story writes itself upon another where ‘a woman in Sri Lanka has to work 2,287 minutes to buy a T-shirt’. For Spivak, the developed economy is not a more advanced version of an underdeveloped one: they are linked through the technologically-assisted movement of people, labour, and finance capital, and the respective interests of these economies may not only be different but sometimes antagonistic. One aim of this chapter is to make clearer the differential impacts of ICTs for economically developing communities.

Globalization and Migration

It is well known that ICTs not only increase the flow of materials, products, and information through communications networks, but also facilitate greater human mobility. This human movement creates challenges for regional economic development, as it is not always clear how the benefits of ICT will remain in a local area or even a nation when they enhance the flow of talented humans away from communities. In some ways, our conception of ICTD is bound in this tension around a future that is ‘global’, enticing people to become more mobile, and at the same time attempting to be an impetus for benefits in local communities. This tension leads to confused planning about the actual results of ICTD initiatives.

Jeb Brugmann (2002) notes that most cities remain victims to four ‘strategic flaws’ that reduce the capability for sustainable development and these are particularly noticeable when looking at ICTD compared to other development initiatives. First, we tend to focus on the future rather than on strengthening existing capability.

Second, we usually attempt to avoid, rather than to address, our conspicuous institutional and political issues. Third, we tend to forget that our strategic position is also a product of routine practices and incremental decisions rather than somewhere we ‘choose’ to be. And fourth, as a combination of the other three, we tend to treat the market as a measure of development rather than as a tool to enhance well-being.

These suggestions encourage us to look closer at the context of development, particularly in underdeveloped regions, and to unlock the potential for sustainable development in less revolutionary but more effective measures based on existing capacity and capability. In most regions, the rural poor are the most targeted in development programs, and addressing the social and economic issues they face will require interventions in the agricultural economy. The potential for ICT interventions is not so much to allow entry into a new economy, but to enable families to have access to health information and capital and to take better advantage of remittance economies (Richardson 2006, p. 8). As Richardson notes, the end goal of these ICT interventions is not improved agricultural production, but ‘poverty reduction in the context of improved livelihoods, recognising the clear importance of the rural family as the hub of agricultural production in areas of poverty, and within national economies’ (Richardson 2006, p. 9).

Ironically, by focusing on the rural family in underdeveloped areas, the degree to which local development involves global issues becomes clear. For example, remittance economies are crucial throughout the Asia Pacific region, and are radically underestimated by analyses that account only for official channels of economic trade. As Seddon et al. (2002) note, the majority of remittances are ‘informal or illegal’ and between 13 and 25 percent of Nepal’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is attributable to remittances from abroad. As the bulk of the work undertaken by families abroad is service work, the remittance economy relies to a large extent on ICT skills, whether such skills are used directly in employment or as a means of connecting to a wider economic infrastructure in a host community where a migrant worker will travel.

Remittances are a very specific way in which underdeveloped communities make use of global networks, and their often informal nature should not prevent ICTD initiatives from supporting these inward flows of resources. However, supporting such family-led redistribution of resources involves less work on high-level global economy issues such as free-trade agreements that support capital mobility, and more attention to difficult political questions such as labour force mobility within and between countries.

Evaluating Gender in ICTD

Gender constitutes an increasingly important dimension of evaluation in ICTD projects. Rural economic development relies on women, who make up two-thirds of the economic activity in agricultural areas. For this reason, an understanding of gender issues is essential for effective implementation of ICTD projects. The gap between the leadership role of women in rural areas and the gender gap in ICT leadership where women lag behind creates negative impacts within the communities that ICTD seeks to assist. The bias of ICTD toward technological, global discourse means that issues relating to families and their holistic development are sidelined, even though ICTs are often central to family life and readily used by women. This is an important opportunity for the ICTD community to address.

Initiatives such as the Association for Progressive Communication’s Gender Evaluation Methodology (GEM) highlight the importance of women’s experience as an analytic tool. They also identify strategies for intervention at the policy and project evaluation level. There are three questions the tool asks as a starting point for analyzing gender components (Ramilo and Cinco 2005, p. 82):

• Was there a discussion of gender issues in the project planning phase?

• What assumptions were made or research done on how ICTs can facilitate change for women and men?

• How were women or groups of women identified in the project?

These questions help clarify that gender cannot be an add-on for ICTD or relevant only to projects for women, but are central to achieving meaningful development outcomes. Indeed, it is sometimes in projects that say the least about women in particular where the questions can be most useful.

ICTD and Environmental Sustainability

It has already been noted that the issue of sustainability is being given increasing importance in ICTD. This is driven by an increasing awareness that the pace of change suggested by ICT innovation has not necessarily led to rapid improvements in the relative positions of rich and poor peoples with respect to equity and life experience (McNamara 2003). When ICTs revolutionize non-digital practices, how can we ensure that those benefits are maximized not just in the immediate present, but for generations to come? This perspective prompts us to consider the physical environments where people live and work in the information economy. These concerns become particularly pressing in an era of global warming, an unintended consequence of previous technological innovations that have been central to economic development (The Presidents of National Science Academies 2005). The potential of ICTs to reduce resource consumption — through the reduction of paper use and travel expenses and through efficiency gains — is well-known. However, the negative environmental effects do seem to be distributed to less developed countries where appropriate regulatory controls are not always in place to govern the disposal of obsolete computer products.

Grossman (2006) notes that the world generates somewhere between 20 and 50 million metric tons of ‘e-waste’ every year, and that the elements that illuminate liquid crystal display (LCD) screens in portable technologies can cause damage to the brain and other vital organs. These issues are not necessarily present when we are considering the ICTD potential of mobile phones for example. But when we note that over one billion phones are expected to be sold in 2009, and that only 5 percent of them are ever recycled, the scale of the issue becomes clear (Huang and Truong 2008).

These waste products enter other parts of the human ecosystem in ways we do not expect. For example, Weidenhamer and Clement (2007) found that some jewellery manufactured in China was highly leaded (ranging from 0.07 percent to 99.1 percent lead content), consistent with the use of recycled solder from electronics production. Such jewellery has already caused consumer deaths and, undoubtedly, there are negative effects on those working in the manufacture of these items. It should be noted that China is unique only in the scale of its manufacturing, and it has taken many legislative steps to ensure the responsible use of e-waste (People’s Republic of China — Ministry of Information 2006). However, it is clear that with e-waste being increasingly sent to developing countries in the region for disposal, the issue will require stronger enforcement of regulations and sensitivity to the downstream effects of electronic production. Ironically, although ICTs can reduce the use of resources such as paper, the largest gains in resource savings occur in already resource-rich regions, while unsafe byproducts are much more likely to be distributed in poorer regions.

INFRASTRUCTURE

So far, we have discussed the analytic lenses that are important in ICTD. At the level of infrastructure, connectivity has continued to dominate ICT discussion in the Asia Pacific region. Between 1999 and 2006, the number of Internet users in Asia and the Pacific increased five-fold, from two to 12 per 100 inhabitants. But this is still below the world average of 17 and far below the figures of 69 in North America and 43 in Europe (UN ESCAP 2007). Nevertheless, economies of scale and the increased number of Internet users pushed the demand in this sector from ‘no or limited connectivity’ to broadband and a level of ‘bandwidth redundancy’. However, in 2006, there were still only three broadband subscribers per 100 people in Asia and the Pacific, compared with 20 in North America and 16 in Europe (UN ESCAP 2007).

It is not only the throughput (usually measured in bits per second) of the Internet connection that is important. The latency of commonly used satellite-based bandwidth makes it unsuitable for many services such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). One solution for these countries has been to join consortia to install and use under-the-sea fibre optic cables. The first South East Asia–Middle East–Western Europe cable system (known as SEA–ME–WE) was introduced in 1985. Fibre optic cable was laid to establish SEA–ME–WE 2 connecting the three zones in 1994. SEA–ME–WE 3 introduced ‘Wave Division Multiplexing’ (WDM) technology in 1999, connecting 39 landing points in 33 countries from Germany to Australia. In November 2005, SEA–ME–WE 4 would carry 1.2 terabytes per second (Tbps) of bandwidth. This cable system has connected 16 landing points in 14 countries in the three continents (Undersea Cable 2006).2 Most of the companies that formed this consortium are government- or state-owned enterprises.

However, the submarine cable system does not seem to be adequate for the demand and it is susceptible to disruption of services. Thus, governments have been looking to the private sector to develop alternative or additional submarine cable systems. For example, Bharti Airtel, a private company in India, is joining five other companies in Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, and the US to build a high-bandwidth, undersea fibre optic cable linking Asia and the US, to go live in 2010. The Bangladesh government has also decided to allow a second submarine cable financed by the private sector to maintain uninterrupted overseas voice and data communications and to back up its existing undersea cable.

Google is involved as a service provider and non-telecom investor in all three additional under-the-sea fibre optic networks that connect the US with the Asia Pacific region, marking a significant shift in funding models for data. The Trans-Pacific Express Cable System is going to connect the US with China, the Republic of Korea, and Taiwan. The Asia–America Gateway Cable System, which is being planned to come on service in the first quarter of 2009, will connect the US and several South Asian countries. The third cable is being planned by Reliance FLAG with a speed of 2 × 1.28 Tbps. When operational, these three cables will change not only the present landscape of bandwidth capacity, but also the price regime of connectivity in the Asia Pacific region, leading to further multimedia- and connectivity-based services in the region. The unknown economic question is whether the region is a net consumer or producer of such services.

In parallel to these external connectivity opportunities, there is a push by national governments to add capacity, and share or build up backbone infrastructure. In some landlocked countries such as Nepal and Cambodia, government-owned telecom entities are laying out fibre optic backbone connecting to the nearest country that has access to under-the-sea cable. Afghanistan is building its national fibre optic backbone following the national ring-road infrastructure and is planning to connect this with under-the-sea cable through Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Pakistan.

Some governments are making it a licencing obligation for service providers to rollout to rural areas. For example, in Pakistan, the private sector has led the expansion of three new nationwide optical fibre systems. One private telecom entity in Sri Lanka already owns a nationwide fibre network that is supplemented by Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) technology for broadband to the door. The Indian government has directed the private incumbents to extend the network to rural areas (Samarajiva and Zainudeen 2008).

As the chapters on individual economies in this volume show, investment vehicles are being developed so that costs can be shared by various entities using the infrastructure. Australia has developed a hybrid plan where private companies would provide the infrastructure to the populous areas and government funding would make feasible the rollout of services to most regional, remote, and rural communities. The Bangladesh government has recently signed a deal with the Power Grid Company of Bangladesh Limited to provide backup fibre optic network to the existing one.

Different governments in the region are also making substantial political commitments to broadband expansion, which is making investment in backbone infrastructure more viable in areas that were not commercially viable earlier (Samarajiva and Zainudeen 2008). For example, the Indian government is expecting 20 million broadband connections by 2010 and plans to ensure broadband connectivity in every school, health centre, and Gram Panchayat (local government units). Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) users in Pakistan now number 100,000, and the target is to reach 1.6 million in 2009. The National Telecommunications Commission of Thailand has already granted 12 licences for operators to conduct commercial trials of broadband wireless access and allocated frequency for this. The Malaysian government’s Information, Communication, and Multimedia Services 886 Strategy (MyICMS 886) talks about eight new services to build up eight essential infrastructures that includes high-speed broadband. In the Republic of Korea, the IT839 strategy consists of the introduction of eight new services that it is hoped will prompt investment in the building of three essential networks. The synergies here are aimed at stimulating nine new sectors, including intelligent services and home networks. Notable is the link between enabling infrastructure and technology and the clear identification of the economic sectors to be stimulated, even if such outcomes are not always determined in advance (Shin 2007). Some of the roles governments can take in stimulating infrastructure are taken up further in the overview chapter on ICT policy.

At the logical layer of Internet infrastructure — between the hardware and end-user applications — changes are also occurring as many Asian countries are introducing next generation Internet protocol, Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), which allows greater flexibility in assigning addresses. IPv6 can support a bigger set of 3.4 × 1038 (340 undecillion) unique addresses while Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4), which is still widely used, was designed to provide about four billion unique Internet Protocol (IP) addresses only. China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Taiwan have been at the forefront of the first wave of IPv6 deployment, while the second wave has been led by Australia, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and others. One of the motivations for Asian countries to move to IPv6 was that Asian countries control only 9 percent of the allocated IPv4 addresses while they have half of the world’s population. However, even though the protocol has been ratified for some time, IPv4 remains widely used and the challenges in stimulating widespread uptake point to the unusual governance questions that arise in an Internet environment with decentralized authority, as there are no incentives for managers of core infrastructure to deploy the new protocol.

Mobile and Wireless

While fibre optic cable is still the dominant technology for back-haul within and between countries, the ‘last mile’ of connectivity is increasingly wireless. The Republic of Korea launched the world’s first Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) 2000 1x3G network in October 2000 and Japan launched the world’s first Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (W-CDMA) 3G (2 Mbps) network in October 2001. It is important to note that CDMA2000 and W-CDMA are types of third generation (3G) cellular network that refer to mobile communications with roaming capability, broad bandwidth, or high-speed communication (upwards of 2 mbps) and represent a shift from voice-centric services to multimedia-centric ones. China, on the other hand, has developed its own 3G technology standard — Time Division-synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TDSCDMA) — to reduce its dependency on western standards.

Although W-CDMA is the fastest growing technology in the richer economies of the Asia Pacific region (e.g. Hong Kong, Japan, the Republic of Korea), in other parts of Asia, such as in South Asia, CDMA2000 is experiencing substantial growth. India made an interesting example by not grouping 3G services with the older second-generation (2G) services and by offering its available radio frequencies not only for 3G services, but also for WiMAX services. A typical 3G or WiMAX mobile network can deliver very high-speed connectivity that can enable the network to run a variety of applications such as video telephony, video conferencing, mobile TV, interactive gaming, streaming video, music downloads, and mobile TV on a hand-held device.

In some other countries, like Indonesia, the government has taken the initiative to introduce local WiMAX service after the 3G service is rolled out by private operators. The government there is introducing 2.3 GHz local WiMAX using the Ministry of Post and Telecommunication network. But for many other countries, this WiMAX deployment is much more private sector-led. Taiwan, for example, has already issued licences to six operators to deploy WiMAX throughout the country by 2008. Global network performers such as Nortel and Intel have been deploying WiMAX service in South-East Asian countries. It is expected that by the end of 2009, Asia Pacific WiMAX subscribers will account for 45 percent of the total subscribers in the world. WiMAX services are rolling out very quickly in countries where 3G services are not yet available. For example, Tata has rolled out one of the largest WiMAX networks in the world at 3.3 MHz in 10 Indian cities, including Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Mumbai.

The 2007 UN ESCAP report suggests that at least three economies in the region (Macau SAR, Hong Kong SAR, and Singapore) have more than one mobile cellular telephone per person. The Maldives, along with China, India, and Macau SAR, registered the most notable increases in the absolute number of mobile phone subscribers in the last few years (see the relevant chapters in this volume).

Technological Developments (Including Convergence)

The development of bandwidth infrastructure described earlier enables new forms of connectivity and also responds to demand coming from new applications (particularly audio-visual content delivery). Technological convergence continues as device manufacturers, software suppliers, traditional telecommunications companies, mobile operators, content companies, social networking companies, and providers of new wireless infrastructure jostle for position in determining the content and services that are delivered through ICTs. This leaves ICTD practitioners in a difficult position as ICTs are reliant on standards and multinational companies attempt to become ‘default standards’, often leaving standards bodies and governments catching up in a reactive mode.

Vickram Krishna believes that ‘the recent development and commercial launches of ultra-compact low-energy consuming network-ready devices, such as the Asus EEE PC available at stunningly lower price points than previous “advances” in computing platforms, is seminal’ (Vota 2007). The same is true for the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) XO and the Intel Classmate PC that are integrating features such as durable rugged design, flash memory (rather than hard drives), rechargeable power systems, built-in multimedia and wireless devices, and the like. These devices are competing with each other to get access to poor underserved classrooms of children, although there are substantial debates about total cost of ownership and the long-term suitability of these solutions for the least developed countries (Vota 2007). A case study in India, for example, shows that the introduction of computers in schools has resulted in the misallocation of resources and neglect of infrastructural facilities, which should be a higher priority (UNDP 2004).

At the other end of the scale, the rise of feature-rich, application-centric multimedia handsets led by Apple’s iPhone model are rapidly changing the market. While many of these features are designed for more affluent users, they have the effect of setting the agenda for convergence and establishing models for associated service delivery that drive standards development. For example, the bundling of Google’s video streaming application YouTube and mapping applications helps cement these sites as default platforms for such services. YouTube, for example, launched an Indian site with local content partners on 7 May 2008; many other territory-specific versions of the platform are being developed. As the iPhone begins an unprecedented rollout to over 46 carriers in 42 countries through 2008 (Elmer-DeWitt 2008), its importance, like that of the iPod before it, will be not only in terms of the volume of sales it makes, but also the way it shapes the market for telecommunications and integrated digital content. Asia Pacific is the world’s largest market for smart mobile devices, accounting for 46 percent of worldwide shipments of 23.2 million in the first quarter of 2007 (Burns 2007).

Overall, the convergence of audio, video, and Internet content is rapidly reshaping the media experience in the region, and Internet networks and new ICT devices are central to the new content distribution platforms. Because national governments and content owners have little control over the development of standards used in integrated devices, there will be a number of challenging issues for content regulators and traditional content business models.

EDUCATION AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

This edition of the Digital Review has a number of chapters on ICT for education, and here we briefly touch on some of the larger trends. Given the awareness-raising and catalytic role of access to information for development, programs to eradicate illiteracy and support non-formal education through the increased use of ICTs such as radio, television, and the Internet are important. Furthermore, the development of the ICT sector in general depends on the preparedness and capacity of the critical mass who are the users, innovators, and developers of ICT applications in specific settings. Therefore, capacity and human development through ICT education remain a key policy focus for Asia Pacific countries.

In Brunei, for example, the Ministry of Education is involved in designing different programs related to ICT training and have introduced ‘e-learning systems’ in all higher academic institutions that standardize Web technologies for creative learning environments. The Government of the Republic of Korea actually launched a separate program called the ‘IT Education and Training Plan for 10 Million People’ in 2000 where they educated 13.8 million Koreans, including many employees of different government organizations. In 2004, they launched another program, called ‘Mid- to Long-Term Plan for Reducing the Digital Divide’, where a key objective has been to develop computer literacy and capacity by offering different training programs. The Thai government has supported the availability of cheap computers (USD 230 per computer with a monitor) in the country and its introduction in different education institutes.

These examples indicate that many governments in the region are committed to the ‘development of ICT’ by providing hardware, laying out infrastructure, and offering ICT training courses. This comes from a historical understanding of ICT as an independent field. But policies are being developed that respond to ICT as an enabling platform that crosses many fields. For example, the new Australian government’s ‘education revolution’ policy not only discusses ICT capacity development in all secondary schools, but also acknowledges that ‘computer technology is no longer just a key subject to learn, it is now the key to learning in almost every subject’. The policy also aims to provide broadband or equivalent connection and one computer for each child in all secondary schools in Australia.

Almost all countries in the Asia Pacific region have advanced programs in computer education, particularly at university or higher education levels, and it is interesting to see that some countries do not necessarily have such programs at the lower levels. Take the example of the Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, and Nepal. Maldives College started to offer degree programs in Information Technology (IT) in 2005 and Villa College has been offering courses in computing and IT since 2007. In Myanmar, the University of Computer Studies in Yangon and the University of Computer Studies in Mandalay have started to offer degrees in computer science. On the other hand, countries such as India have emerged as pioneers in IT education and have been franchising their IT education businesses in different Asian countries using brand names such as Aptech and NIIT. One of India’s most renowned IT institutes, the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Bangalore, has started to make its science and engineering courses freely available on YouTube (youtube.com/nptelhrd.com) on a trial basis (Rebello 2008). The project is part of the National Project on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), a joint venture between the seven IITs and the Indian Institute of Science funded by the Ministry of Human Resource Development.

MEDIA AND CONTENT DEVELOPMENT

User motivation to access content and services is the key to the survival of infrastructure or the adoption of a technology platform. Whereas in the past it may have been adequate to build infrastructure or promote last-mile technology solutions, policymakers increasingly recognize that issues such as software localization and production of digital content are critical to the development of sustainable demand for ICTs.

There are two prominent drivers of these processes. As more governments go online in line with their e-government policy, there is an increasing demand from the citizens to get content and related services in their local language. Users also have an increasing appetite for digital content and this has fuelled the growth of the three main online content markets: music, videos, and games.

In the 2003–2004 Digital Review of Asia Pacific, challenges in content development were identified in terms of tools, standards, human capacity, financial models, political culture, and legal frameworks. Although many of these challenges still exist, there have been many developments in the availability of some technical standards (such as Unicode) for many Asian languages and in the action plans of governments to include development or access to content as part of their policy framework. The PAN Localization Project, for example, has made considerable progress in developing the LINUX operating system in Nepali (Nepal) and in Dzongkha (Bhutan); optical character recognition and text-to-speech software in Sinhala (Sri Lanka), Bangla (Bangladesh) and Lao (Lao People’s Democratice Republic); and a wide range of supporting applications and utilities, such as lexicons and fonts, in languages such as Khmer in Cambodia, Pashto in Afghanistan, Tamil in Sri Lanka, and Urdu in Pakistan. The project is also supporting more localization standards/tools that are being developed in Mongolian (Mongolia), Tibetan (China), and Urdu (Pakistan). In many countries such as the Republic of Korea and Vietnam, the localization process is led by different private companies that enjoy support from the government. The Vietnamese language has been standardized to Unicode UTF 8 by the Vietkey Group in Vietnam. Some other native languages of Vietnam, like Thai, Cham, Jarai, Bah’nar, Êê, M’nông, Sê ng, and K’hor are also in the process of Unicode standardization.

In many cases, government initiatives are important in spurring localization, particularly for minority language groups that may not yet constitute a sizeable market for ICT products. The Indian government has set up the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) that has developed a localization framework for different Web applications, desktop-based applications, localized browser solutions, and the like. The Australian government has put policy emphasis on getting some endangered indigenous languages online as part of its digital content policy. The Afghan Computer Science Association has converted Microsoft Windows XP and Office 2003 into the Pashto language. And the Cambodian National Committee for the Standardization of Khmer Script in Computers (NCSKSC) has been instrumental in sensitizing the need for localization, introducing Khmer scripts in different government offices and offering ICT training programs in the Khmer language.

In Sri Lanka, all government websites are required to be multilingual (in Sinhala, Tamil, and English) and to use Unicode fonts. The Bangladesh government is working to enact the Right to Information Act that would enable more government information to be easily available on demand. India passed a Right to Information Act in May 2005. In Pakistan, an ordinance was promulgated in June 2002 ensuring people’s access to information. All these would mean that content services from the government side would be a focal point of citizen’s demand in the coming years.

Localization is often pioneered by local volunteers and self-help groups in distributed networks, often without a formal organizational structure. The Bangladesh Open Source Network is an informal network that has not only developed a Bengali interface or version of different applications (such as Ubuntu Linux, Mozilla Firefox) in the local language, but also promoted localization through training camps in different institutions and by facilitating Bengali content development at Wikipedia. As of January 2008, Bengali Wikipedia has over 16,000 entries, one of the highest in the non-English language versions of Wikipedia. Sinhala Unicode Communities is a volunteer network in Sri Lanka that has been involved in promoting the use of Unicode in Sinhala and was supported by several freelance bloggers who organized themselves into community journalism forums to promote local content.

As the cost of access is reduced, we see an increased number of users producing and distributing content through blogs or short/multimedia message service (SMS/MMS) to connect and empower people through campaigns and action. In countries where the press enjoys little freedom, posting and reading content anonymously on the Internet have become an important source of media coverage. In Iran the number of Persian blogs run by Iranians is estimated to be around 800,000 this year, a 30 percent increase since the last year. In China, the population of bloggers is growing rapidly.

Digital content makes for a booming music, video, games, and animation industry. A recent report of In-Stat’s Consumer Media and Content Service found that by 2011 in the Asia Pacific region online music revenues will reach USD 1.4 billion, video revenues will reach USD 2.7 billion, and the game industry will exceed USD 9.5 billion (Potter 2007). The question is how much of this revenue will remain in the economies in question and how much will travel to rights-holders outside the locality of sale. The importance of viable locally-owned content markets is reflected in the increasing emphasis on the creative industries in economic development strategies.

CONCLUSION

The pace of change in ICT continues to be intimidating for those seeking to make new innovations available for all. It seems that as soon as new bandwidth becomes available, new audiovisual services, which require ever more data, become the norm. The challenges for policymakers and for development practitioners are similar: how to make sense of it all and determine the best way to prepare stakeholders to benefit from these applications? When infrastructural issues develop so quickly, it is not simply a case of rolling out 2G, 2.5G, 3G, 4G, on the pathway toward development. Instead, the decision to implement the conditions for certain technologies always has an eye to the past (embedded capability and capacity to use new technologies) and the future (ability to build on the experience with learning that will be sustainable).

The Asia Pacific region is uniquely positioned with respect to ICTD. It is home to the largest manufacturing capability for ICTs, yet it is also home to over half the 1.6 billion people in the world who live without electricity (UNDP 2007). The region includes nations such as China that are undergoing rapid economic growth, and highly developed nations whose economies are adapting rapidly to the high-technology manufacturing capabilities emerging in other areas. It also includes nations facing severe development challenges and structural poverty that will not be easily solved. The region has been in the media spotlight due to recent natural disasters, as well as the technologies that are being deployed to mitigate their effects. And the Asia Pacific region contains most of the world’s languages and a growing infrastructure for cultural exports — a fact that ought to have some relevance for the focus on cultural development and creative industries such as digital content.

While it is difficult to generalize about the position of the Asia Pacific with respect to ICTD, the chapters in this edition of the Digital Review show that the different parts of the region have much to learn from each other, even as the region as a whole must respond to critical decisions that might be made in North America or Europe regarding device standards. In the technology sector, we are used to valuing the cutting-edge and innovative. But in the realm of development the promises of ICTs must be tested against their effects on human development in our specific locations in the Asia Pacific region. As ICTs continue to change the structure of economies and the processes of globalization, governments and communities will need to respond in ways that take into account the important and complex issues that go to the very heart of development.

NOTES

1. See DOI report at www.opt-init.org/framework/pages/contents.html

2. The 16 companies that form the consortium include Algeria Telecom (AT), Bharti Tele Ventures (India), Bangladesh Telecom (BTTB), Telecom Thailand (CAT), France Telecom, MCI, Pakistan Telecom (PTCL), Singapore Telecom (SingTel), Sri Lankan Telecom (SLT), Saudi Telecom (STC), Telecom Egypt, Telecom Italia Sparkle, Telecom Malaysia, Tunisia Telecom, VSNL (India), and Etisalat (UAE).

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An overview of regulatory approaches to ICTs in Asia and thoughts on best practices for the future

Rajesh Sreenivasan and Abhishek Singh

INTRODUCTION

This chapter has two objectives. First, it provides an overview of the themes evident in the regulatory approaches taken toward information and communication technology (ICT) policy in various Asian jurisdictions. In doing so, the chapter draws on the chapters on individual economies published in this edition of the Digital Review of Asia Pacific. Second, it conducts an in-depth analysis of policy approaches to four areas of growing importance in the digital realm.

In the first part of the chapter, we juxtapose the regulatory approaches in developed and developing Asian jurisdictions. In the second part, we take a more in-depth look at e-government services, the role of ICT policy in improving access to education, the growth of open source software in the region, and the growth of localized and indigenous digital content and its regulation. We focus on the best practices that regulators might consider adopting in regard to these four areas that we view as pillars of ICT policy in a number of jurisdictions in Asia.

THEMES IN REGULATORY APPROACHES TO ICT IN CERTAIN ASIAN JURISDICTIONS

In this section, we briefly examine the themes in regulatory approaches to ICT, particularly in regard to key institutions and organizations dealing with ICTs and key ICT policies, thrusts, and programs, in developed and developing jurisdictions in Asia. Developed jurisdictions, which include Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, have relatively mature ICT markets with definite plans (some already in execution phase) to put in place next generation infrastructure, multiple competitors in a market, and market demand for services and products healthy enough to encourage innovation. Developing jurisdictions include countries where ICT markets are growing rapidly due to economic prosperity and large populations capable of sustaining such growth, but where this has been a recent phenomenon (e.g. China and India), as well as countries whose economies and ICT take up is not expanding at a rapid pace due to their small population and market sizes, relative geographic locations, and/or economic size.

Key Institutions and Organizations Dealing with ICT in Asia1

Both developed and large developing markets have a higher number of key government institutions and organizations dealing with ICTs than the small developing markets. In Hong Kong, for instance, there is the Commerce and Economic Development Bureau, Office of the Government Chief Information Officer, Office of the Telecommunication Authority, Innovative Technology Commission, Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute, Broadcasting Authority, Hong Kong Internet Registration Corporation Limited, Hong Kong Science and Technology Park, and Hong Kong Cyberport Management Company Limited (which is wholly owned by the Government of Hong Kong). In Japan, there are a number of ICT sector initiatives under the Prime Minister’s Office, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, and Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Singapore has the Info-Communications Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), Media Development Authority of Singapore, Interactive Digital Media Office, Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts, Singapore Infocomm Technology Federation (SiTF), Economic Development Board, Attorney-General’s Chambers, and a number of universities and polytechnics actively engaged with the ICT sector.

The same appears to be true in a number of large developing ICT markets. For instance, China has, among others, the Ministry of Information Industry, the China Internet Network Information Center (a body under the Ministry of Information Industry), the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and within it the Computer Network Information Center, and the Secretariat of the Internet Policy and Resource Committee under the Internet Society of China. India has the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, within which operate the Department of Telecommunications and the Department for Information Technology, the National Knowledge Commission, the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, the Controller of Certifying Authorities, and the Cyber Regulatory Appellate Tribunal.

The picture changes when one looks at developing ICT markets that have smaller economies and are only recently becoming more integrated into the globalized demand and supply chain. For instance, in Afghanistan, there is only the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and the Afghanistan Telecom Regulatory Authority (ATRA). In Cambodia, ICT projects are overseen by the National Information and Communication Technology Agency and the Ministry of Commerce. In the Maldives, there is the Telecommunications Authority of Maldives and the National Centre for Information Technology.

Vietnam, however, is an interesting case in that it has taken a number of steps characteristic of a rapidly developing ICT market. In 2007 the Vietnamese government created the Ministry of Information and Communication by merging the Ministry of Post and Telematics with parts of the Ministry of Culture and Information. There is also ICT-related work being carried out in the other Ministries, such as the Ministry of Science and Technology. They have also recently passed legislation and guidelines aimed at providing a clearer regulatory regime for ICT:

ICT-related laws that took effect in 2006 include the Law on Electronic Transactions (by Decision No. 51/2005/QH11 of the National Assembly), the Law on Information Technology, the Law on IPR (by Decision No. 28/2005/L/CTN) that has a special section on software development, and the Decree on e-Commerce No. 57/2006/ND-CP. As such, it can be said that 2005–2006 was when a strong legal foundation for ICT development was laid in Vietnam. (Tran and Nguyen, this volume)

To concretize these laws and decrees, more specific regulations were enacted in 2007. The more notable among these are:

• The regulation regarding financial management of funds for public telecom services.

• Directive No. 04/2007 enhancing the protection of copyright on software.

• Decree No. 26/2007 on digital signatures.

• Decree No. 35/2007 on electronic transactions in banking.

• Directive No. 03/2007 enhancing information security over the Internet.

Why has Vietnam suddenly become proactive about putting in place regulation for its ICT market? The answer perhaps is that necessity is the mother of invention, but in this case, necessity is felt only when a government starts to see the tangible benefits of rapid economic growth, as Vietnam has witnessed in the past few years, with a lot of this growth attributed to inward bound foreign investment.2

But is increased interest from foreign investors the catalyst for putting in place clear and stable regulation and legislation in ICT sectors in developing countries? If so, why? Is it because a number of smaller developing countries rely on strong supply side equations in developed countries to drive their own internal engines of growth? Is it because their own population’s per capita is too low to expect an indigenous demand high enough to drive growth? These questions are beyond the ambit of this paper, but they might make for an interesting study in the ICT context.

Key ICT Policies, Thrusts, and Programs in Asia3

The observation one draws from looking at the thrust of ICT policies and programs in developed versus developing ICT markets is primarily that developed markets, along with China, appear to be grappling with issues related to expanding the size of the local ICT markets. There seems to be a particular emphasis on promoting inclusive ICT growth, with the aim of increased ICT use across all income strata and demographics. Meanwhile, in developing markets like Afghanistan, Cambodia, and Vietnam the thrust appears to be on the build up of infrastructure and competencies in ICT sectors where they feel they can be competitive in the global marketplace.

For example, Hong Kong has the Digital 21 strategy promoting wireless hotspots in government premises and free wireless broadband at public housing estates, the Hong Kong Qualifications Framework for increasing the sustainability of the ICT sector, the Sector Specific Programs policy, and the Digital Solidarity Fund. In Singapore, IDA has launched a fairly comprehensive set of initiatives aimed at improving the ICT readiness and competitiveness of small and mediumsized enterprises (SMEs), as well as programs to increase ICT penetration and awareness across all sectors, including programs like the Assistance on Commonly Used Software, SME Infocomm Resource Centre, Technology Innovation Program, and Local Enterprise Technical Assistance Scheme; the NEU PC Program, Silver Infocomm Junctions, and Infocomm Accessibility Centre; the National Grid Pilot Platform; the Infocomm Security Masterplan; and the Intelligent Nation 2015 Masterplan or iN2015. In Afghanistan, the key policy thrust over the past few years has been on building up infrastructure, as well as trying to attract business process outsourcing start-ups to locate in Afghanistan where the cost of personnel and infrastructure is relatively low compared to other jurisdictions.

In Singapore and Japan, there appears to be importance given to regulating dominant players. Japan has announced the commencement in 2010 of discussion about the regulation of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) as the dominant telecommunications player. IDA Singapore is implementing the Code of Practice for Competition in the Provision of Telecommunications Services 2005, particularly in regulating the position of Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) in the Singapore market. These suggest an implicit agreement by the regulators in these countries of the need to seriously consider the role of dominant players in building a telecommunications and technology sector that is competitive in an environment characterized by technology-driven paradigm shifts in business models. Increasing the competitiveness of the ICT market requires a willingness to experiment and take risks that a dominant entity with stable cash flows from its own internally determined investments and infrastructure might not be willing to make. In short, some dominant entities might have financial interests that are not aligned with acting in the best interests of increasing the competitiveness of the ICT market. Hence, there is the need to regulate such entities.

Many developing countries are not yet focusing on these kinds of issues, as they concentrate on building ICT infrastructure to ensure a suitable foundation presumably for subsequent development of their ICT markets to developed country standards. That said, it is refreshing to see Articles 21–24 of the Afghanistan’s Telecommunications Services Regulation Act dealing head on with the issue of competition. Crafted in the broad language of primary legislation, the articles nonetheless deal with the issues of anti-competitive conduct and abuse of a dominant position at a high level. They may require subsidiary guidelines to provide the Afghan ICT market with guidance on how the relevant authority (the ATRA) intends to interpret and apply these articles.

KEY ISSUES SHAPING THE REGULATORY APPROACH TO ICT MARKETS IN ASIA

This section of the chapter looks at the four key issues that we believe will play an instrumental role in shaping ICT regulatory approaches in several jurisdictions in Asia. The four issues are:

1. Citizen-focused e-government services;

2. ICT regulation and policy’s role in improving access to education;

3. Open source software’s continued growth in the region; and

4. The availability of localized digital content and its regulation.

Citizen-focused e-Government Services

‘E-Government’ services refers to the provision of government services, from taxation and licensing through to passport application and issuance, via electronic means. While the overall concept of e-government can often have a wider meaning,4 we use this limited view of e-government because it offers a minimum threshold of e-government or a common baseline goal for e-government services that any government should aspire to.

E-Government has come a long way in Asia, from basic computerization of government records to a stage where at least in developed ICT markets, the availability of e-government services is a given. Governments and regulators in these markets must now think about the next stage of evolution as technology and penetration rates expand the scope of possibilities and service delivery channels for e-government services.

As may be expected, the state of e-government services in different Asian jurisdictions depends in large part on the stage of development of the ICT market in those jurisdictions. Generally, the more developed the ICT market, the greater the capability of regulators. This is due to the added experience garnered from facing and resolving a greater range of issues in deeper and more developed ICT markets.5

Singapore and Japan provide an interesting contrast in terms of the content and timing of their approaches to e-government services. Singapore has had a long and reasonably fruitful experience with e-government. It has long passed the need for developing policies enabling the delivery of basic e-government services,6 and is now grappling with the issue of how to deliver e-government services as seamlessly as possible over multiple channels in a bandwidth-rich and increasingly bandwidth-irrelevant environment (in the case of bandwidth-intensive applications). This is evident from the kinds of policies the government is pursuing under iGov 2010, such as issuing unique establishment identifiers, rollout of services via the mobile phone channel, and build out of a common operating platform across all ministries and departments responsible for the provision of e-government services to ensure a seamless user experience and a unified backend.7

Japan began thinking about the large-scale deployment of e-government services around 1994 and seriously started implementing e-government programs around 2000, which seems surprisingly late for a ‘technology leader’. Given the high levels of technology infrastructure and penetration rates prevalent in Japan, it is not surprising that the primary focus of e-government policies is similar to that of governments and regulators in other ICT leading jurisdictions such as the Republic of Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan. Specifically, Japan is concerned with refining the user experience of e-government services as well as unifying the backend to enhance processing times and lower costs for the government.

The picture looks a little different, but reasonably encouraging, in China and India. China and India’s paths to ICT market development and e-government adoption have been somewhat counter-intuitive. In China ICT development and e-government adoption were a result of the Politburo’s belief in the virtues of effective computerization as a means of achieving progress. Early policies encouraging computerization and the adoption of information technology as a tool for more efficient governance ultimately paved the way for the growth of the ICT sector. In contrast, in India the ICT sector grew because the government never seriously regulated the sector, allowing the entrepreneurial spirit and elusive providence to work together without over-regulation driving a wedge between the two.

That said, both China and India have work to do to catch up with developed Asian jurisdictions in e-government. While both countries have made headway in the computerization of government backend, they have some way to go before a streamlined suite of government services will be available. To be fair, this has as much to do with the size and added complexity of larger jurisdictions as with political will and priority government agendas. Additionally, in China and India improving technology penetration and literacy rates in rural areas is arguably a higher priority than focusing resources on rolling out a flawlessly functioning suite of e-government services.

Something that both governments should try to get done sooner rather than later is to improve access to information and transparency in government decision-making through the use of ICT. There is arguably real scope for curbing corruption if there is political will to implement systems that enable the public to access information and trace government decisions to individual civil servants at all levels (Bhatnagar 2004). Political will is the key to making such a system work, from the minister ordering system implementation, to the civil servant who needs to submit data on decisions, to his or her superiors who must resist the temptation to doctor publicly accessible data entries where there appears to be incentive to do so and there is no means of tracing any actual tampering of data entries. India has made progress in this regard with the enactment of the Right to Information Act 2005 (IRTI Act). However, there remains under Section 8(1) of the IRTI Act significant discretion vested in the public authorities to refuse disclosure of certain information. While most of the grounds for refusal are valid (such as confidential information that may adversely impact national security or undermine sovereignty), certain provisions, such as Sub-sections 8(1)(d) and (e) — where the ‘competent authority [i.e. the relevant government department] is satisfied that larger public interest warrants the disclosure of such information’ — could be used to arbitrarily deny requests for information. Admittedly, there will always be discretion involved in the disclosure of information, as what information is revealed, at least in some cases, is a political choice.

Countries like Singapore and Japan on one hand, and China and India on the other hand, can learn from each other the virtues they have each developed in their respective geopolitical realities. The developed ICT markets of Japan, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan share the common factor of being relatively small countries with relatively small domestic markets (except for Japan). In contrast, China and India are very large markets and therefore more complex, with a far higher volume of data points, increased dispersion around the mean due to the existence of multiple economic sectors with different averages and income scales, and increased skewing at the lower end of the income scale. All these amount to a more unpredictable environment for planning e-government services across a range of diverging and increasingly competing sociopolitical objectives. Specifically, in China and India, large disparities in income means e-government service choices that benefit one segment versus another, and it becomes difficult to justify these choices to a segment for which they pose no significant tangible benefit. For example, consider the policy choice between allocating limited resources to the development of an e-government procurement portal for agricultural produce and the development of a portal designed to make it easier to apply for venture funding from a government-backed incubator. Which agency gets the requested funding? How is the choice justified?

Nevertheless, China and India can learn from developed ICT jurisdictions how to formulate implementable policy and how to develop the talent to decisively execute such policy. These two factors would arguably form part of any equation of success in an e-government services strategy. On the other hand, what the regulators in the developing markets of China and India can teach the developed ICT jurisdictions is how to formulate policy that needs to be coordinated across state and federal levels, and that impact far larger and more diverse populations and markets than a relatively small domestic market. This can help regulators in developed ICT jurisdictions to incubate and develop the domestic ICT talent seeking to build or improve its competitive position in global markets.

This section on e-government has been deliberately selective in looking at the state of e-government in developed ICT markets and the developing markets of China and India. It has not taken an in-depth look at the markets lying between these two points on the ICT development continuum, such as Indonesia and the Philippines, where e-government deployments have been on a lesser scale and where the full potential of such services has yet to be realized. We now turn to the issue of ICT regulation and the role of policy in improving access to education.

ICT Regulation and Improving Access to Education

That ICT can play a substantial enabling role in improved delivery of education is well accepted in Asia. In this section, we wish to highlight the idea that regulators concerned with access to education should be aware that ICT policy must act in coordination with other policies that address the basic social, cultural, and economic issues associated with improving access to education. For example, a policy focused on increasing computerization in schools by itself would arguably have far less impact than if it were coordinated with a policy to make computers and technology more affordable. One can go further and argue that an effective way to tackle the issue of affordable access would be to take a strong stance encouraging competition at all levels in the information technology supply chain, regardless of the nationality of any participant with significant market power. Such an approach would perhaps lower prices more effectively than a plan to subsidize technology purchases for lower income households. Similarly, and more directly linked to the issue of computerization of schools, is whether there exists a clear policy on ICT competencies for teachers as well as for continuing teacher professional development in technology integration.

The other obvious advantage ICT policy offers is the possibility of increasing access to education through distance learning. Coupled with a drive to increase access to computing technology in rural and less urbanized areas, this could broaden access to education for all. (See the chapters on ‘Education for All in the Digital Age’ and on ‘Distance Education in Asia Pacific’ in this volume.)

However, there are still a number of questions about whether and to what extent ICT use in education is beneficial without due consideration of its actual impact on student learning and curriculum goals. One pertinent critique from a 2005 study of ICT in education policy in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries has been that education planners and technology advocates think of the technology first and then investigate the educational applications of the technology later. A case in point: tablet Personal Computers (PCs) can be beneficial in educational settings, but their Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) screens are not as easy to read as paper.8 This raises the more abstract but nonetheless important policy question of how computers would be integrated into curricula at all education levels (primary, secondary, and tertiary) and how teaching practices would have to be modified or adapted. The same study also notes that there is little compelling or unequivocal data to back up the belief that ‘ICTs can empower teachers and learners, promote change, and foster the development of 21st century skills’ (Trucano 2005).

We do not believe that this implies that any policy seeking to promote the use of ICTs to improve access to and the quality of education is doomed to failure. On the contrary, we believe that this critique strengthens the case for regulators to take a more coordinated and holistic approach to devising ICT in education policy and regulation. Such an approach would address several questions. First, what are we seeking to achieve? Second, what factors need to be in place in order for technology use to benefit users and students (e.g. improving ICT penetration rates in rural areas)? Third, what can be implemented with minimal administrative delay and to the greatest effect?

Also, given the critical role of education in any country especially in the age of knowledge workers, it would be prudent for the regulators to devise appropriate metrics to measure the effectiveness of any ICT policy aimed at improving access to education, and to arrange for such data to be regularly collected in order to determine what works and what does not.

The Growth of Open Source in Asia

The Open Source movement has developed a steadily growing mass of fans in Asia, especially in India and China. Run a simple Google search on ‘open source India’ or ‘open source China’ and proof of this observation comes in the wealth of material available on the phenomenal growth of Open Source in these countries.

That Open Source has found a large following of believers in Asia is not surprising. Many countries in the region do not have the kinds of per capita incomes and living standards enjoyed in the West. Many governments prefer to save money on licencing fees when they can, particularly as there is affordable and in many cases free, robust, and good quality software that can essentially perform the same tasks that Windows-based systems can.

With the increasing user-friendliness of the more popular Linux distributions, their adoption rates in Asia are likely to grow. The kind of functionality certain Linux distributions have, the quality of the current crop of Linux kernels, and the programming that goes into the distribution are quite remarkable. The PCLinux Operating System (OS), for example, offers among others out-of-box compatibility with Microsoft Word files and Adobe PDFs. The openoffice.org software bundled with the distribution has an in-built capability to convert .doc files to .pdf, as well as the ability to run specific graphical enhancements akin to those available in Windows Vista. Even more remarkable is the fact that the graphical enhancements run perfectly well using an Open Source set of rendering drivers on a machine with a measly 256 MB of Random Access Memory (RAM) and a generic Intel graphics chipset with less than 128 MB of memory, a configuration significantly lower than what is recommended for running Windows Vista.

In software and operating systems that run mission critical servers and data farms, Open Source has likewise been making steady inroads. The server market in Asia is perhaps the best source of revenue for entities like Novell with its Suse Linux Enterprise Server product, and Red Hat with its Linux distributions for servers.

We believe that, especially in China and India, the move toward greater use of Open Source software in government was prompted at least in part by World Trade Organization commitments regarding non-use of pirated software. Open Source poses no real issue with regard to licencing fees and intellectual property restrictions — this despite Microsoft putting itself in an advantageous position in China through a massively coordinated campaign of lobbying and targeted Microsoft development and training actions culminating in President Hu Jintao endorsing Bill Gates as a friend of China and the Chinese people.

In India, the view is equally positive about the future of Open Source. About the only thing holding India back from an explosive growth of the indigenous market for Open Source programs is the lack of coordination among groups of coders and programmers across the sub-continent, and it is only a matter of time before this issue is progressively resolved. This brings us to the following question: Does the growing adoption of Open Source warrant a regulatory response in Asia?

At the moment, we believe that an appropriate policy response ought to be policy and/or regulation focused on:

1. Enhancing the adoption of Open Source systems in developing markets in Asia, as increased adoption of Open Source standards (so long as Intel and Advanced Micro Devices — AMD — keep making chipsets that work with the code) can lower the overall costs of systems used for increasing ICT penetration rates in rural and non-central urban areas;

2. Using Open Source to provide an ideal and affordable platform for the development of local content; and

3. Competition regulation to ensure that entities with significant market power and market share in the software markets in a jurisdiction and their distribution networks in the region will not enter into or promote potentially anti-competitive tying arrangements.

Encouraging the Growth of Localized and Indigenous Digital Content

This section provides an overview of the issues facing developing Asian nations seeking to encourage the migration, availability, and accessibility of local content on the Internet, and suggests policy and regulatory approaches that can accelerate or catalyse this process.

The campaign for more online content could have the following objectives:

1. To increase awareness of the content by making it easily accessible to a larger audience;

2. To strengthen local identities;

3. To reaffirm local identities particularly in the context of a people’s diaspora; and

4. To provide local content creators with an increased revenue source via licencing.

Another interesting motivator is that more local content may increase the penetration rate of ICT in developing nations. That is, people may well decide to access the Web more regularly if they know that the content they have grown up with and strongly identify with, and which is symbolic of their own culture, is available online.

However, increasing local content online faces several challenges. One of these is the ubiquity of English and the resultant gaps in the technology powering the Web. The Internet is no stranger to the laws of supply and demand, and it is those laws that have thus far dictated the major language of the Web — English. Much of the early development and evolution of the Internet took place in the United States, an English-speaking jurisdiction. Moreover, the demand for paid as well as unpaid Web content has been predominantly from an English-speaking audience. In addition, throughout the 1970s to the mid-1980s, the vast demand for information technology hardware and software was from North America and Europe (Japan being the only exception in Asia), which resulted in the vast majority of hardware, firmware, and software being designed with the English speaker and writer in mind.

However, lately the situation has been changing for the better, and while English remains the primary language of the Web, multi-language support has been built into applications powering the Web, content development applications, and browsers (both Internet Explorer and Open Source browsers like Firefox and Opera). These changes have come about again as a consequence of rational economic behaviour. As the multilingual world comes online, the technology they use to communicate, create, collaborate, and interact with must similarly become multilingual. After all they comprise a far larger market than the United States and other English-speaking populations.

Changes at the application and browser levels have come about due to the Unicode Consortium’s development and adoption of the Unicode character set, which is capable of assigning unique numbers to up to one million separate characters for a given language or symbol set. Its adoption has resulted in popular Internet browsers having font support for most major world languages. This has also led to the building of hardware that makes it easier to encode in a local language. For instance, a keyboard with the Bhutanese and Tibetan Dzongkha script is now available. The keyboard mapping is based on the Unicode Dzongkha values.

Meanwhile, on the software development front, Microsoft has been publishing and educating developers on building ‘world ready’ applications that will run in the Windows operating system. Microsoft in fact advocates that ‘world ready’ applications running in Windows should be fully Unicode-enabled.

Are these steps enough? Arguably not, since at the end of the day, software and Web developers in developed nations are usually English speakers themselves. Consequently, it is only natural that their tendency would be to focus on developing a user interface that, while translatable into numerous languages, may not necessarily be appropriate to another language or sensitive to other cultural mores and norms.

Therein lies an opportunity for regulators in developing Asian nations to address a need. Arguably, there is an untapped demand for culture, language, and geography-centric user interfaces for various applications. These can layer on top of existing applications and complement the Unicode support that allows the application’s original layout and user-viewed instructions to be displayed in a local language. The role of regulators and policymakers is to create an enabling environment for local entities to engage in these processes through a viable business model.

Another challenge that regulators in developing Asian countries need to address is the relatively low Web usage and penetration. A quick review of Internet penetration statistics in developing Asian countries like Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, India, Laos, Mongolia, and Pakistan reveal that Web penetration in developing Asia lags well behind that in North America and Europe. According to International Telecommunications Union statistics, penetration rates in developing Asian nations can be almost non-existent (e.g. 0.2 percent in Bangladesh), very low (e.g. 3.5 percent in India), and low (e.g. 10 percent in China). Contrast this with penetration rates in developed nations like the European Union (51.9 percent), the Republic of Korea (66.1 percent), and the United States (69.4 percent).

As discussed earlier, increasing the ability of people to communicate online more easily in local languages, and giving them the tools with which to put local content online and create it online, may in fact lead to increased Web penetration. But such a policy ought to be implemented alongside policies that aim to encourage the build up of broadband infrastructure and the growth of Internet service providers via innovative licensing and cost sharing methods.

Indeed, there is scope for innovative regulatory strategies to accelerate the process by which local content can get online or be created online. Here we discuss a two-pronged approach that regulators and policymakers can customize and adopt to encourage the growth of local content online. The essence of this approach is that any set of policies aimed at achieving the increased migration of local content online must address the issue of building demand for local content and making it easier for such content to be supplied. The regulatory skill would lie first in deciding the right policies to address each side of the equation, and second in concertedly and effectively implementing such policies.

Demand side policies aim to increase the exposure of the local content. This can be done by increasing awareness of the content, and by making it more easily accessible. The appropriate licencing model plays a key role here. In addition, there is the issue of making local content viewable in other languages. This in turn increases the potential market audience for such content. The other facet of demand is increasing local demand via policies encouraging progressive and sustainable deployment of broadband and high-capacity bandwidth infrastructure. Public-private partnerships and innovative financing models in this context are well worth exploring.

Supply side policies cover policies like building localized user interfaces to layer onto applications (discussed earlier). In addition, there could be policies to encourage ventures that can digitize existing content easily, preferably in a form that is digitally modifiable (think MSWord and not Portable Document Format — PDF). This might be by offering subsidies or better tax rates to businesses engaged in the creation or digitization of local content (i.e. favoured tax rates on revenues from digitizing and creating local content). Additionally, consider encouraging research and development in Open Source applications. Open Source software is gaining increased acceptance, and there is a close to zero entry cost barrier (in terms of development licences) for developers who wish to develop software for Open Source platforms. For that matter, if a locally developed application is good enough, there are a number of cross-over programs that can allow it to run on multiple operating systems (although usability remains an issue). Examples of such cross-over programs are Wine and Cross-Over by Codeweavers.

The licencing model to be adopted is very important because it influences both the demand and supply of content. A balance should be struck between incentivizing increased production and development of original local content (via the promise of adequate economic return) and encouraging demand through a licencing model that is, and is perceived to be, fair to users.

Much content today is protected by rather restrictive copyright protection where even fair use often requires permission from content owners. Add to that the digital rights management (DRM) software that arguably extends protection to content beyond the intended scope of copyright and content starts to look more ring-fenced than was perhaps intended by traditional intellectual property rights regimes that allowed for fair use. Unless demand for content far outstrips supply, this may indeed drive people away from such content. Worse, it may lead people to circumvent DRM schemes and simply try and get content for free. Once others get content for free, those who actually want to use it commercially may also decide to go the free route.

Instead of the traditional copyright and DRM models, policymakers in the developing Asian nations can consider adopting suitably modified versions of the Creative Commons (CC) licencing model. This model differs from the traditional licencing models in the following significant ways:

1. It is free for anyone to use and customize to suit their needs.

2. It allows for a greater degree of flexibility in terms of what can be offered to those who wish to use the content noncommercially and those who wish to use it commercially.

3. It takes what seems to be a more pragmatic approach that is more cognizant of the nature of online use of content.

4. It allows for a content–owner–friendly approach to customization of licences if required.

5. It tends to encourage an ‘open to full view and review’ approach to content, with revenue derivation encouraged only for cases of commercial use. In this sense it discourages non-porous DRM.

The main Creative Commons licences9 are as follows:

1. Attribution Non-commercial No Derivative: The work can be copied and shared as long as the author is identified. Permission is required before any derivative work based on this work is created or any commercial use is made of the work.

2. Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike: The work can be copied, remixed, tweaked, and built upon non-commercially. All new work based on the original must also carry the same licence. Permission is required for commercial use.

3. Attribution Non-commercial: This has the same terms as Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike except that derivative works need not be licensed on the same terms as the original work itself.

4. Attribution No Derivatives: Redistribution of the work is allowed for commercial and non-commercial purposes so long as the work is passed on whole and unchanged with due attribution to the content author.

5. Attribution Share Alike: This allows remixing, tweaking, and building upon work for commercial and non-commercial purposes. Attribution is required and new works must carry an identical licence, which means that derivative works would also allow commercial use.

6. Attribution: The only condition is attribution. Any commercial or non-commercial use is allowed.

There are also specialized licences for specific types of content and content owners, as summarized by the following excerpt:

Sampling Licences allow for snippets (not whole work) to be remixed into new works, even commercially. Our Public Domain Dedication lets you free works from copyright completely, and our Founders Copyright lets you do the same, but after 14 or 28 years. Musicians looking to share their work with fans might want to look at the Music Sharing licence. The Developing Nations licence lets you offer less restrictive terms to countries that aren’t considered high income by the World Bank, and finally, for those licensing software, we offer the GNU GPL and GNU LGPL licences. (Creative Commons)

These models can be tweaked to suit the specific circumstances of a developing Asian nation. For instance, works can be offered on Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike plus Developing Nations licence terms, with the Developing Nations terms being offered to commercial users in developing and developed nations so as to reach a larger audience and increase the chances for collaborative derivative works.

One might also consider another strategy as follows: once local content online achieves a healthy level of mainstream acceptance, developing Asian nations may consider coordinating their licencing approaches and collectively offering less restrictive licence terms for local content to developed nation users, in exchange for less restrictive terms for access to content from developed nations.

In global knowledge trade today, licence fees are essentially tariffs and licence terms are the conditions of trade. In essence then, this is nothing more than trade block theory applied to knowledge goods and concrete intellectual property.

In sum, we argue that in the era of knowledge goods and knowledge trade, content is the product and the controllers of content are king. In such a world, it is wholly pertinent for developing Asian nations to consider devising strategies and policies to encourage the proliferation of their own local content online as the Internet is the world’s unrivalled distribution network for content. Innovative tools exist for the development of local content online. The art lies in determining what will work for a particular nation in terms of improved demand and supply for local content online, and to then constructively and effectively implement those policies at the national and international level.

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, we sought to provide a snapshot of the regulatory approaches being taken in the ICT sector in various jurisdictions in Asia. We focused on the following areas to draw out observations and comparisons between regulatory approaches in developing and developed ICT markets in Asia:

• Key institutions and organizations dealing with ICT

• Key ICT policies, thrusts, and programs

• Citizen-focused e-government services

• ICT policy and improving access to education

• Growth of Open Source software

• Growth of localized digital content and its regulation

Across developed ICT markets, regulators and policymakers are focusing on developing a more inclusive approach to enable larger segments of the population to use ICTs and benefit from them. Indeed, for holistic development of an ICT sector, especially the kind of development that will enable developing ICT markets to compete in an environment marked by rapid technological changes, policies, and regulations that address the demand side of the ICT equation are necessary.

Developing ICT markets in Asia seem to realize this as well, although understandably, the focus in such markets is on state-sponsored build-up of physical ICT infrastructure and the development of indigenous ICT services sectors that have lower personnel and operating costs, while also trying to encourage ICT adoption among the populace.

Whether and to what extent these regulatory approaches lead to the beneficial evolution of ICT markets in Asia remain to be seen. But the recognition of the need for policies that holistically address the demand and supply sides of the ICT equation for the healthy development of competitive ICT markets in Asian jurisdictions is certainly encouraging.

NOTES

1. Unless otherwise indicated, information on key organizations and institutions dealing with ICTs in the jurisdictions mentioned in this section of the chapter is taken from the chapters on individual economies in this edition of the Digital Review of Asia Pacific.

2. See, for instance, TMC News (2007) at http://asia.tmcnet.com/news/2007/11/27/3123957.htm

3. Unless otherwise indicated, information on key ICT policies, thrusts, and programs in the jurisdictions mentioned in this section of the chapter is taken from the chapters on individual economies in this edition of the Digital Review of Asia Pacific.

4. For instance, Bhatnagar (2004, p. 19) defines e-government as ‘the use of ICT to promote more efficient and cost-effective government, facilitate more convenient government services, allow greater public access to information, and make government more accountable to citizens’.

5. Unfortunately, we are limited to expressing this hypothesis based on our observations and experiences in Asia, since we are not aware of any studies to test this.

6. As is evident, for instance, by examining the range of government services available via Singapore primary e-government portal, www.gov.sg, and browsing through the services available under the ‘Citizens & Residents’, ‘Business’, and ‘Non-Residents’ tabs at the site.

7. See, for example, Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (2007b) at www.igov.gov.sg/NR/rdonlyres/C8F242DE-6C0D-4D40-A7A7-D94B7D2F6A09/19110/SOE_factsheet_Oct2007.pdf

8. e-Ink technology, which currently provides the closest approximation to paper, is still in its infancy in terms of worthwhile commercial applications.

9. Full descriptions of these licences, including ‘plain English’ and legal texts of the licences, are available at http://creativecommons.org/licence/and http://creativecommons.org/about/licences/meet-the-licences

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Managing innovation in the network economy: Lessons for countries in the Asia Pacific region

Mahendhiran Nair and Tengku Mohd Azzman Shariffadeen

INTRODUCTION

The information or knowledge revolution has been under intense scrutiny and debate for several decades now. The spectacular rise of the Internet and the Web is the major reason for this wide interest. And yet, while information and knowledge are as important as the Internet if not more so, they often take a back seat in the debate. Their abstract and diffuse nature has made them less amenable to quantitative analysis, rendering the information and knowledge discourse largely descriptive, anecdotal, and qualitative. Orbicom was one of the pioneering organizations to make the connection between the digital and knowledge revolutions and to do it in a quantitative manner (Sciadas 2005). In its ‘monitoring the digital divide’ initiative, it formulated a fresh way of measuring the digital divide based on the infostate of a country, which results from the combination of its infodensity and its infouse.

In a similar spirit, this chapter presents a quantitative method of assessing the innovative capacity of countries. It is proposed as a framework enabling a more detailed analysis of what makes a country innovative, which in turn would make possible the setting of goals that would serve as guideposts on a country’s journey toward greater innovativeness, productivity, and competitiveness. Such an analytic approach would help policymakers and government leaders manage the process of knowledge-based development to enhance the quality of life and well-being of a country’s citizens.

In the last three decades, the Asia Pacific region has been one of the most dynamic in terms of socio-economic development. Many of the countries in the region were underdeveloped when they achieved independence in the 1940s–1960s. World War II decimated many of these economies, with conditions worsening further as a result of post-war regional conflicts. However, despite a bleak past, many of these countries were able to transform their economies into leading producers of automobiles, electronics, and other consumer durables. These transformations were made possible first by the adoption of industrialization, and lately, by the adoption of new technologies, including information and communication technologies (ICTs).

Still, although there has been significant socio-economic development in the region, many countries remain ‘underdeveloped’. Some studies have shown that the widening ICT gap is a significant contributor to the increasing wealth gap between developed and other countries in the Asia Pacific region (cf. Nair et al. 2005; Sciadas 2005). The role of ICT in enhancing competitiveness and sustainable development has been widely debated in the literature. Studies by Gurbaxani et al. (1998), De Gregorio (2002), and Criscuolo and Waldron (2003) show that ICT has increased the productivity, efficiency, and market reach of firms all over the world. On the other hand, Lau and Tokutsu (1992), Kraemer and Dedrick (1993), and Kim (2003) argue that investment in ICT infrastructure alone is not sufficient for economies to achieve sustainable development, and that a skilled workforce is an important precondition for nations to benefit from ICT investments. This is supported by the infostate conceptual framework, where infodensity refers to the ICT capital and ICT labour stocks that complement infouse, which refers to the usage flows of ICT. In other words, a causal relationship between investments in human capital and infrastructure development on one hand, and the information and knowledge flows engendered by them on the other, produces higher levels of economic performance.

Realizing the potential of ICT in enhancing economic prosperity, Asia Pacific countries have increased investment in ICT over the past decade. The World Information Technology and Services Alliance (WITSA) predicts that the Asia Pacific region will outstrip other regions in ICT spending, with a compounded annual growth in ICT spending of 11.1 percent from 2005 to 2009 (WITSA 2006). However, it remains unclear whether ICT investment has helped countries in the region close the innovation gap with more evolved economies. While there is evidence that ICT does contribute significantly to socioeconomic development, there is uncertainty about how this comes about and how it may be improved.

This chapter aims to empirically examine the linkage between ICT development and innovative capacity in Asia Pacific countries. More specifically, it looks at the gaps in ICT and innovative capacity between developed and other countries in the Asia Pacific region, and outlines measures to close the digital and innovation divides between countries. The chapter is organized as follows: a brief review of the network economy is provided, followed by an explanation of the proposed theoretical framework and empirical method to measure the national innovation ecosystem (NIE). The empirical results are then presented and discussed, followed by strategies for enhancing the NIE in the Asia Pacific region. The final section proposes a way forward.

REVISITING THE NETWORK ECONOMY

The network economy is also sometimes referred to as the information economy, virtual economy, digital economy, or electronic economy. The wide variety of ‘network effects’ manifesting the digitization of information contributes to socio-economic development via two channels. First, the digital medium has resulted in the emergence of new sectors related to software, hardware, systems, and ICT-related services. For some countries, these new economic sectors provide opportunities for higher value added products, and thereby, a more competitive and productive economy. Second, the interactive digital environment has opened up new dimensions for communication, commerce, trade, knowledge gathering, and technology transfer. This aspect of the network economy can be enjoyed by all countries, regardless of whether they aspire to develop an ICT economic sector. The only condition is that they learn to effectively apply ICT to all important economic sectors across the board. Since this enabling function of ICT is of great interest to most countries, we provide several developmental examples.

The digital medium facilitates communication and faster exchange of information between suppliers and consumers of goods and services. Multiple sourcing from the global markets allows firms to reduce their cost and diversify their market risks. Consumers are also able to use ‘shopbots’ (also known as ‘shop robots’) to quickly search for information on products and services at a relatively low cost. The new multimedia and computing technologies likewise allow firms to track and study changing global market trends, which in turn enables them to produce a wider range of products that meet the needs of diverse markets. For example, the LEGO Group (http://www.lego.com) uses the digital medium to identify changing market demand by providing various incentives for its customers to provide feedback on improving product designs. By such means network-savvy firms like the LEGO Group are able to pursue economies of scope.

In the network economy, the production of goods and services transcends the limitations of traditional factors of production, namely, land, labour, and capital. In the traditional economy, nations with large endowments of land, labour, and capital were in a better position to lead the innovation and competitiveness race. However, in the network economy, national competitiveness is a function of the level of connectivity to the global economy. Nations with a small land mass are able to move from ‘place’ (land), which is limited, to ‘space’ (cyberspace), which is unlimited. The relaxation of physical constraints has helped small nations to catch up with more developed countries.

In the digital space, there is also greater cooperation among buyers. This is changing how goods and services are produced and traded in global markets. For example, new technology like Skype (http://www.skype.com) pools unused and spare computing power to allow people to make free calls over the Internet. The cost of communication is significantly reduced — reportedly by as much as 90 percent (Hof 2005) — through the sharing of a resource (unused computer space). The increased cooperation among consumers facilitated by the ICT revolution has led to positive network externalities. The Web provides a platform for consumers to meet, share information, and exchange knowledge (e.g. ratings) about goods and services. Thus, ‘cooperative consumer activism’ spurred by the network revolution can determine the successful expansion of a firm’s market reach. These firms provide a significant boost to the competitiveness and global presence of their host country.

The digital medium also plays a key role in fostering greater cooperation among firms, related organizations, and consumers. In the network economy, organizations are better able to tap into the ‘collective intelligence’ of consumers, suppliers, and other stakeholders. Instead of having a few researchers working to develop a new innovation, firms can take advantage of the ‘network brain’ that is made up of millions of people working on similar projects. For example, Procter & Gamble (P&G) with a research budget of USD 1.7 billion uses a network of 80,000 independent researchers from 173 countries to collectively solve research problems (Hof 2005). P&G’s investment in the network brain has increased product development from outside the organization 20–35 percent (Hof 2005). There are thousands of enterprises like P&G that use network technologies to locate solutions and innovations outside their firms. Thus, the ICT revolution has enabled ‘open innovation’ on a grand scale.

Several empirical studies show that firms that have invested in ICT infrastructure and human capital development have benefited in terms of increased productivity and efficiency. For example, Baily (2002) found that greater use of ICT increased multi-factor productivity in the service sector in the United States (US) in the 1990s. Kumar (2002) concluded that investments in ICT and education contributed to economic growth in the US from 1964 to 2000. Becchetti et al. (2003) showed that ICT investments had a positive impact on the productivity and efficiency of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Italy from 1995 to 1997. They also showed that telecommunications investment increased the development of new products and processes, while software investment increased the demand for skilled workers and improved labour productivity. A more recent study by Timmer and van Ark (2005) indicated that ICT contributed to the growth of labour productivity in the European Union (EU) and the US through ICT-capital deepening and total factor productivity growth due to the production of ICT goods. The study found that these two channels are responsible for labour productivity in the US surpassing labour productivity in the EU from 1995 to 2001.

In sum, the digital revolution has powered greater interdependence and interconnection between markets, economic agents, and nations. The so-called ‘network effects’ of the digital revolution have produced a critical mass of ICT users, with each user able to benefit from the shared information and knowledge made available by other users connected to the system. The enhanced convergence of new technologies and the development of highly integrated systems are blurring the boundaries between the different economic sectors and the roles of economic agents. Nations and enterprises that have learned to play by the ‘new rules’ of the network economy are in a better position to enhance innovative capacity and achieve sustainable socio-economic development.

In the next section, we apply this qualitative understanding of the dynamics of the network economy to derive an analytic framework for measuring innovative capacity that can be used for quantitative analysis.

MEASURING INNOVATIVE CAPACITY IN THE NETWORK ECONOMY

Joseph Schumpeter popularized the term ‘creative destruction’ for innovative capitalist products and methods that will continually displace old ones. Schumpeter (1934, 1942) gave numerous examples to illustrate the point, from factories wiping out blacksmith shops to automobiles replacing buggies and horses. In more recent times, the concept of creative destruction captures the underlying structural changes taking place in the knowledge-based economy whereby traditional corporations are being replaced by virtual teams and network-based organizations. Smaller nations and firms are demonstrating that they are equally capable of tapping into global markets to gain competitive advantage.

Here we present an analytic framework for examining the underlying structure of the network economy. We discuss the enabling environment that contributes to the innovative capacity of nations, and describe an empirical method to measure the ‘building blocks’ of the NIE and their contribution to the innovative capacity of nations. The empirical analysis also benchmarks NIE developments in Asia Pacific and other regions.

Framing the Innovation Challenge: Moving from Description to Measurement

In the industrial economy based on the manufacture of physical goods, larger economies such as Japan, Germany, the UK, and the US were the dominant players. However, with the rise of the network economy, smaller nations such as Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Singapore, and Taiwan have shown their ability to rapidly enhance their competitiveness, and in some sectors of the economy, these smaller economies have surpassed the traditional economic superpowers. Much of their success is attributed to investment in ‘creative capital’ and the development of a resilient NIE that continuously adapts to global technological changes.

Several studies show that innovation is an important source of socio-economic development. Romer (1986, 1990) has argued that technology coupled with human capital development and research and development (R&D) are important sources of economic growth. Lucas (1988) has shown that economic disparities between countries are a function of varying levels of stock of human capital to undertake innovative activities, with developed economies being more competitive in attracting the best knowledge workers from other countries, especially from underdeveloped economies. The ‘brain drain’ from underdeveloped economies undermines their innovative capacity and hinders sustained socio-economic development in these countries.

A number of economists have been critical of the traditional economic models that attempt to explain the different innovation levels of countries. They argue that such models fail to capture the enabling institutional framework for sustaining innovation. Among the pioneering works that attempt to capture the role of institutions in innovation are those by Nelson and Winter (1977) and Nelson (1981). Building on their ideas is the concept of national system of innovation, the key studies of which include those by Freeman (1987), Dosi et al. (1988), Lundvall (1992), Nelson (1993), and Edquist (1997).

In the national system of innovation literature, two schools of thought have emerged. The first school is led by Nelson (1993), who argued that the national system of innovation is centred on the institutions that coordinate and enable innovation in a country, including institutions that are responsible for rules and regulations. Nelson (1993, p. 4) defines the national system of innovation as a ‘set of institutions whose interactions determine the innovative performance of a nation’s firms’. The second school is led by Lundvall (1992), whose primary argument is focused on ‘learning-by-doing’ and ‘learning-by-using’. Lundvall (1992, p. 2) describes the national system of innovation as ‘constituted by elements and relationships which interact in the production, diffusion and use of new, and economically useful, knowledge’. Lundvall’s work contributed to the concept of the ‘knowledge economy’ (Godin 2006).

More recent studies have attempted to measure underlying factors that impact upon the innovative capacity of a country, which is defined by Furman et al. (2002, p. 900) as ‘the ability of a country — as both political and economic entity — to produce and commercialize a flow of new-to-the-world technologies over the long term’. They argue that national innovative capacity is a function of three factors, namely (i) innovation infrastructure; (ii) the industrial cluster environment; and (iii) the linkage between (i) and (ii). Innovation infrastructure is defined as key investments and policies that support innovation. These include investment in human capital development, financial support for science and technology development, and policies and regulations that promote research and commercialization. The ‘cluster-specific environment’, the second factor, is defined as the geographical locations of interconnected firms based on the Porter Diamond Model (Porter 1990) where the competitiveness of the clusters is dependent on the following drivers: the intensity of rivalry in the local market, demand conditions, the presence of local supporting industries, and the availability of high quality factor inputs.

Although Furman, Porter, and Stern’s model (2002) captures the key drivers of national innovative capacity, it is not without limitations. One of these is that the three pillars of innovation are too broad, and thus are unable to capture the impact of technological infrastructure (especially ICT) on other key drivers such as human capital, regulations, institutions, and interactions between the key stakeholders in the system.

To overcome this limitation, Nair (2007) has proposed a model that measures the impact of ICT on the quantity and quality of human capital, strategic linkages, good governance, incentive systems, and institutions — all key pillars of the NIE. Nair (2007) argues that a nation’s innovation capacity is dependent on the level of development of the NIE, which in the network economy is characterized by two important building blocks called the foundation and driver conditions.

The foundation condition captures the infrastructure that connects people to the global economy. Connectivity to the global economy contributes to economic development through two important channels. First, infrastructure spending, especially in ICT, can lead to economic growth through the production of ICT products and services. Second, ICT infrastructure investment has several spillover benefits to society, among these the creation of virtual communities leading to new generation products and services; increased global reach of enterprises; and ability to attract multiple sources of production inputs at a relatively low cost. These spillover benefits allow firms to simultaneously pursue economies of scale and economies of scope, both of which are important for achieving competitive and comparative advantage. It is arguable that these spillover effects are more important to most countries as they lead to higher levels of productivity and competitiveness in all economic sectors, and are not limited to the ICT sector alone.

The foundation condition is a necessary condition for sustained socio-economic development in the network economy. But it is not sufficient to stimulate innovation and economic development. A second set of conditions, called the driver condition, works in combination with the foundation condition to create an enabling environment to stimulate economic growth. The driver condition encompasses five factors that are vital for nations to move up the innovation value chain:

• Intellectual capital development, including the ability to increase the supply of a skilled workforce and sustain them in the economy.

• Interaction between stakeholders in the economy, especially between research institutions and enterprises, and between enterprises.

• Integrity and good governance (including adherence to best practices and global standards and benchmarks).

• Incentives to stimulate creativity and innovation, including fiscal and non-fiscal incentive policies that will encourage foreign enterprises to bring in high-technology investment and new know-how and encourage local enterprises to adopt new technologies and engage in R&D activities.

• Institutions for the effective operation of the network economy, including legal and regulatory institutions.

Figure 3.1 shows how the foundation condition and the driver condition together impact innovative capacity. A highly innovative country is able to create more value, and thus becomes more productive and competitive, which leads to greater opportunities for wealth creation and a higher standard of living. Greater wealth produces surplus income that may be reinvested to further improve the foundation and driver conditions, thereby closing the feedback loop. A well-managed innovative economy then becomes a mutually supporting system that produces sustained and accelerated growth.

The foundation condition contributes to innovative capacity in two distinct ways. First, it directly enhances the reach of all economic agents in the economy, which is an important feature of the network economy as discussed earlier. Second, the foundation condition operates in tandem with the driver condition to magnify the impact of the driver condition on innovative capacity.

The wide range of factors that influence innovative capacity as reported in the literature shows that the underlying structure of the economy is highly complex, characterized by interaction between and among many key institutions and stakeholders in the system. The inter-relationships between these institutions and stakeholders are the primary drivers and catalysts of the production, diffusion, and use of knowledge in the new economy. Key building blocks of the NIE were identified through detailed literature review, and these have been incorporated into the new innovation system framework presented here.

The proposed framework provides a holistic model of a complex system that makes it possible to analyze innovative capacity empirically and quantitatively. In the following section, we empirically examine the impact of the foundation and driver conditions on the innovative capacity of developed

Figure 3.1
The ‘building blocks’ of the new economy

(Source: Nair 2007)

and developing countries in Asia Pacific and other regions. In particular, the empirical models will assess whether a highly developed foundation condition is an important requirement for enhancing the impact of the driver condition on the innovative capacity of countries, both developed and developing.

Measuring the Impact of the Foundation and Driver Conditions on Innovative Capacity

Five empirical models are presented to measure the impact of foundation and driver conditions on innovation in Asia Pacific countries and in countries located elsewhere. Details of the models are provided in Appendix 3.1A to avoid technical complexity in the main presentation.

Model 1 seeks to answer the following questions:

• What is the impact of foundation and driver conditions on the innovative capacity of countries?

• Do the foundation and driver conditions complement each other, and if so, how?

In other words, the model should enable us to say whether the framework formulated is a useful measure of innovative capacity to begin with. It also allows us to show whether the foundation condition is an important ‘precondition’ for enhancing the contribution of the driver condition on innovative capacity.

The next four models compare the innovative capacity of selected developed and developing countries. Four groups of countries are considered:

1. Developed countries in Asia Pacific

2. Developing countries in Asia Pacific

3. Developed countries in other regions

4. Developing countries in other regions.

Model 2 seeks to answer the following questions:

• Is innovative capacity different in the four groupings of countries?

• How significant are these differences?

A comparison of innovative capacity among the four groups of countries will show the relative positions of each, as well as the significant differences between these country groupings, if any.

Model 3 seeks to answer the following questions:

• Is the contribution of the foundation condition to innovative capacity in the four groupings of countries different?

• How significant are the differences?

Model 4 seeks to answer the following questions:

• Is the contribution of the driver condition to innovative capacity different in the four groupings of countries?

• How significant is the difference?

Model 5 seeks to answer the following questions:

• Are the complementary effects of the foundation and driver conditions different in the four groupings of countries?

• How significant are the differences?

Data for the countries included in this study (listed in Table 3B.2, Appendix 3.1B) were obtained from the Global Competitiveness Report for three sample periods: 2001–2002, 2002–2003, and 2004–2005. A detailed discussion of the variables used in the study and the data sources is given in Table 3B.1 (Appendix 3.1B). Internet penetration rates were used as a proxy for the foundation condition. The driver condition was taken as the average of the variables measuring intellectual capital, interaction, integrity, incentives, and institutions. All of the variables used were converted to base 100 so that they can be formed as a composite index.

EMPIRICAL RESULTS

In this section, we discuss the empirical results obtained from the application of the five models. Figure 3.2 is the scatter plot for the foundation and driver conditions for 104 countries for the period 2004–2005. It shows that there is a positive correlation between foundation and driver conditions. This suggests that for these 104 countries there is a strong relationship between foundation and driver conditions.

Figure 3.3 is the scatter plot for the foundation condition against innovative capacity. The plot shows that as the foundation condition improves, the innovation capacity of countries increases.

Figure 3.4 is the scatter plot for the driver condition against innovative capacity. It shows that as nations improve their driver condition, their innovative capacity also improves. From Figure 3.3 to Figure 3.4, we observe that the driver condition has a greater explanatory power for innovation than the foundation condition. Both plots confirm that the foundation and driver conditions greatly influence innovative capacity and thus provide an effective means of measuring the NIE.

The estimated results for Models 1 to 5 are reported in Table 3B.3 (in Appendix 3.1B). Pair-wise comparisons between the coefficients in the models are reported in Table 3B.4. The key findings for the different models are thus summarized.

Figure 3.2
Scatter plot of the foundation and driver condition

Figure 3.3
Scatter plot of the foundation condition and innovative capacity

Figure 3.4
Scatter plot of driver condition and innovative capacity

The estimated results for Model 1 suggest the following:

• The foundation condition alone is not sufficient to raise the innovative capacity of nations.

• The driver condition is necessary to raise the innovative capacity of nations.

• Connectivity to the global economy via the Internet (the foundation condition) enhances the impact of the driver condition on the innovative capacity of nations, which demonstrates that the foundation condition is indeed a precondition for improving innovative capacity.

The empirical results for Model 2 were similar to those for Model 1. In particular, they support the following observations:

• The innovative capacity of developed countries in the Asia Pacific region is similar to that of developed countries in other regions.

• The innovative capacity of developed countries in the other regions is significantly higher than that of developing countries.

• The innovative capacity of developing countries in the Asia Pacific region is significantly higher than that of developing countries from other regions.

The empirical results for Model 3 suggest the following:

• The impact of the foundation condition on innovative capacity in developed countries in Asia Pacific and other regions is similar.

• The impact of the foundation condition on innovative capacity in developed countries is higher than that in developing countries.

• The impact of the foundation condition on innovative capacity in developing countries in the Asia Pacific region is similar to that in developing countries in the other regions.

The empirical results for Model 4 suggest the following:

• The impact of the driver condition on innovative capacity in developed countries in the Asia Pacific region is lower than that in developed countries in the other regions.

• The impact of the driver condition on innovation in developed and developing countries in the Asia Pacific region is similar.

• The impact of the driver condition on innovative capacity in developing countries in the Asia Pacific region is higher than that in developing countries in other regions.

The empirical results for Model 5 indicate the following:

• The impact of the foundation condition on enhancing the contribution of the driver condition to innovation in developed countries is higher than that in developing countries.

• The impact of the foundation condition on enhancing the contribution of the driver condition to innovation is similar in developed countries in both the Asia Pacific region and other regions.

In summary, the empirical analysis consistently shows that the contribution of the foundation and driver conditions to innovative capacity is higher in developed countries than in developing countries. This is to be expected, as innovation capacity tends to increase rapidly when institutions are in place to stimulate greater interaction and flow of information among all stakeholders in the economy. Further, the level of contribution of the foundation and driver conditions to innovative capacity in developed countries in the Asia Pacific region is similar to that in developed countries in other regions. Likewise, the contribution of the foundation and driver conditions to innovative capacity in developing countries in the Asia Pacific region is similar to that in developing countries in other regions.

The empirical analysis also suggests that a highly developed foundation condition is an important precondition for enhancing the contribution of the driver condition to innovation. It is not surprising that the developed countries are ahead of developing countries in the development of the foundation condition. This enables them to extract greater value from the driver condition, which is also higher, and ultimately become more innovative.

LESSONS FOR ASIA PACIFIC COUNTRIES AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS

The empirical results obtained using the new analytic framework suggests that the innovative capacity of countries in the Asia Pacific region varies according to the level of development of the NIE (i.e. the foundation and driver conditions). Most developed countries in the region have highly developed foundation and driver conditions, comparable to that found in other developed countries. Thus, they are as innovative and competitive as their counterparts in other regions. Further, the different levels of innovative capacity and competitiveness achieved by developed and developing countries in the Asia Pacific region can also be attributed to the varying levels of development of the building blocks of the NIE.

This analysis suggests that lower levels of development of the NIE in developing countries in the Asia Pacific region may be attributed to weak foundation and driver conditions. A weak foundation condition is due to the following:

• ICT services cost more and are of poorer quality in developing countries than in developed countries due to the highly concentrated market structure in developing countries.

• There is a lack of coordination in planning and in the implementation of ICT infrastructure development plans.

On the other hand, a weak driver condition is due to the following:

• The pool of skilled workers, especially technology-savvy workers, is smaller in developing countries due to a relatively weak education system and a serious ‘brain drain’ problem.

• Interactions among key stakeholders, such as government, the private sector, educational institutions, and social networks, are uncoordinated and patchy due to weak communication channels.

• The lack of transparent processes and systems, which leads to corrupt practices.

• Fiscal (grants, subsidies, scientific and technological infrastructure funding) and non-fiscal incentives (tax systems) to support R&D, patenting, and commercialization are not in place or not effectively implemented.

• There is no adequate legal and legislative architecture to support the development of a network-based and knowledge-intensive society. This includes lack of legislation or enforcement of intellectual property rights protection and shareholder protection, and lack of laws against corrupt practices and crimes related to the network economy.

Each of these is enough to cause serious problems for developing countries. But in combination their potential negative impact is far worse. Our empirical analysis based on the framework proposed shows that interaction between factors is a characteristic feature of the network economy. Thus, the framework could help clarify issues and challenges for policymakers seeking to manage their respective NIEs more effectively.

A weak foundation condition (ICT infrastructure) will not only limit the opportunities for people to acquire affordable and quality education and learning, but also hinder strategic linkages between all stakeholders in the economy (especially between government, industry, and enterprises); restrict the ability of firms to access cheaper resources (production materials, technology, human capital, and financing) from global markets; and reduce the opportunities to improve institutions and governance systems. To break away from the vicious cycle of a weak NIE and poor socio-economic development, developing countries in the region should simultaneously improve their foundation and driver conditions.

We now turn our attention to strategies to enhance the effectiveness of the NIE in the region.

An important feature of the NIE is the foundation condition that facilitates connectivity to the global economy. Developing countries in the Asia Pacific region should formulate a clear and coherent plan for developing their ICT infrastructure. The plan should address the digital divide within the countries and identify cost-effective measures to connect people to the global economy. This includes using ‘last-mile’ and satellite technologies. Such a plan should also raise awareness of effective use of ICT population. Tax incentives should be offered to encourage greater ownership of computers in homes and by SMEs (see ‘Internet Connectivity in the Republic of Korea’).

To increase the innovative capacity of countries in the region, equal emphasis should be given to raising the quality of the driver conditions. This entails increasing investments in education, especially in ICT in addition to science and technology. Schools in both rural and urban areas should be equipped with ICT, and school curricula should include the use of ICT in teaching and learning. Teachers should be trained in creative learner-centred ICT-supported pedagogies and encouraged to develop content in the local languages. Moreover, curriculum planning and development should involve industry to ensure that curricula are relevant for the formation of a competitive economy. To strengthen the teaching-learning-research nexus, the private sector should be encouraged to invest in human capital development and R&D programs (e.g. doctoral courses). The human capacity-building efforts of schools may be complemented by ICT training programs for the general public offered through publicly funded ICT telecentres (see ‘Creative Learning Environment and the Content Industry in Finland’).

The level of cooperation between government, universities, and enterprises is dependent on the level of transparency and effectiveness of the public sector in providing efficient and unbiased services. Effective implementation of ICT systems, such as in e-government, can improve access to information; the ability to bypass various levels of intermediaries, thus cutting transaction costs; and the participation of key stakeholders in public policy discussions. Former President of India, Abdul Kalam, aptly describes the key attributes of an e-government system that can instil greater respect for the public sector as ‘transparent smart e-governance with seamless access, secure and authentic flow of information crossing the interdepartmental barrier and providing a fair and unbiased service to the citizens’ (Kalam 2003). Greater transparency and good governance is urgently needed to ensure that the Asia Pacific region remains an attractive location for investors. Governments in the region should hasten the implementation of e-government and e-governance initiatives, and benchmark these initiatives to global best practices.

At the same time, an appropriate legal and regulatory framework for the protection of users of the digital medium, especially from high-priced but poor quality service arising from a monopolistic or oligopolistic market structure, should be in place.

Moreover, national policies to enhance innovation need to be better coordinated, for example, through the establishment of a coordinating council at the highest level of government, with membership coming from the public and private sectors as well as from civil society. This has been successfully implemented in some countries in the Asia Pacific and other regions.

Finally, developed countries could play an important role in helping developing countries to create a sustainable NIE and e-commerce environment. This is so not only because developing countries are confronted by competing demands for limited resources and thus find it difficult to provide basic ICT infrastructure and services, but also, and more importantly, because the global community stands to reap huge benefits from greater connectivity and interaction between all countries and their citizens.

THE WAY FORWARD

This chapter has sought to move beyond description to an empirical measurement and analysis of the innovative capacity of countries based on foundation and driver conditions. Decision-makers in the public and private sectors could apply this framework to gauge its value in addressing the challenges of the network economy.

The empirical analysis shows that developed countries in the Asia Pacific region are as innovative as other developed countries. This is largely due to the rapid diffusion of ICT coupled with a high investment in human capital development; institutional reforms; competitive incentives systems; adherence to global standards; and strong linkages between enterprises, government, and educational institutions.

While several countries in the Asia Pacific have a well developed NIE, many other countries in the region have a weak or practically non-existent NIE. A combination of weak foundation

and driver conditions in these countries gives rise to economies that are dependent on resource-based sectors for socio-economic development. Due to the low utilization of technology, many of these sectors are not globally competitive. For such countries, the analytic framework proposed in this chapter should indicate critical areas for improvement, especially those that will produce the greatest dividends.

Weak foundation and driver conditions will not only hinder innovation, but also limit these countries’ adaptability to major structural changes occurring in the global economy. To break away from the vicious cycle of socio-economic instability, developing countries in the Asia Pacific region must accelerate the development of the foundation and driver conditions and ensure that their ‘blueprints’ for innovation-based development are resilient to global technological and socio-economic tsunamis. Some strategies to strengthen the NIE of countries in the region have been presented. They may be able to stimulate further discussion toward the formulation of more specific policy options, directions, and recommendations.

This study is not without its limitations. One of these is the availability of quality data for developing countries, especially in the Asia Pacific region. Greater attention should be given to improving data collection mechanisms in this region and elsewhere. Up-to-date and accurate information, along with a longer span of the data series, will provide a more robust analysis about the relationships between each of the building-blocks of the NIE (infrastructure, intellectual capital, interaction, integrity, incentives, and institutions) and the innovative capacity of countries in the region. The short- and long-term dynamics between the building-blocks and innovative capacity can be modeled using more robust statistical methods such as panel data econometrics techniques.

Apart from improved data, we encourage more research in this area to enable the construction of more robust frameworks for measuring the innovation capacity of countries. This in turn would provide policymakers and planners with a sound empirical basis for managing their respective economies to achieve greater innovation, productivity, and competitiveness.

APPENDIX

Appendix 3.1A
Technical notes for the empirical models

The impact of foundation and driver condition on the innovative capacity of countries was estimated using the following model:

Model 1:

yi = β0 + β1fi + β2di + β3(fi × di) + θ1T03 + θ2T05 + εi

where yi is the innovative capacity of country i. The foundation and driver conditions for country i are denoted as fi and di respectively. The time dummy variables for the period 2002–2003 and 2004–2005 are given as T03 and T05, respectively. The residuals are denoted as εi, and are assumed to be normally distributed with mean 0 and variance σ2. The other models estimated are discussed below.

Model 2:

yi = β0 + β1fi + β2di + β3(fi × di) + ψ1DA1i + ψ2DA2i + ψ3DOi + θ1T03 + θ2T05 + εi

Model 3:

yi = β0 + β1fi + β2di + β3(fi × di) + δ1(fi × DA1i) + δ2(fi × DA2i) + δ3(fi × DOi) + θ1T03 + θ2T05 + εi

Model 4:

yi = β0 + β1fi + β2di + β3(fi × di) + λ1(di × DA1i) + λ2(di × DA2i) + λ3(di × DOi) + θ1T03 + θ2T05 + εi

Model 5:

yi = β0 + β1fi + β2di + β3(fi × di) + ξ1(fi × di × DA1i) + ξ2(fi × di × DA2i) + ξ3(fi × di × DOi) + θ1T03 + θ2T05 + εi

where DA1i, DA2i, and DOi are the dummy variables denoting developed Asia Pacific countries, developing Asia Pacific countries, and other developed countries, respectively. The β’s, θ’s, ψ’s, δ’s, λ’s, and ξ’s are the parameters of interest, and the signs of these estimated parameters will indicate if the explanatory variables have positive or negative impact on y.

Since the dependent variable was bounded between 0 and 100, the Double-Limit-Tobit (DLT) method (with heterosekdasticity corrected residuals) was used to capture the relationship between foundation-driver conditions and innovative capacity of countries in Models 1 to 5. The DLT was used in this study because the response variable is bounded in the interval [0, 100]. Details of the DLT model can be found in Greene (2003).

Pair-wise comparison between the coefficients for four country groupings in the models was conducted using the Likelihood Ratio Test (LRT) Statistic, where the distribution for the test statistic follows a chi-square distribution with 1 degree of freedom.

Appendix 3.1B

Table 3B.1
Data definition and sources

Note: The data for internet users for the year 2005 were obtained from Porter et al. (2007). The remaining data were obtained from Porter et al. (2002, 2003, and 2004). All the variables were converted to base 100. The sample size used for this study was 75, 80, and 104, respectively for the three periods.

Table 3B.2
The list of countries

Note: The developed countries were defined based on the IMF classification. Since there were insufficient data for countries in the least developed classification (based on IMF classification) for the Asia Pacific region, the IMF classifications for ‘emerging countries’ and ‘under-developed countries’ were grouped into one country classification called the ‘developing country’ classification.

Table 3B.3
The empirical results

Note: The symbols *, **, and *** denote statistical significance at the 1%, 5%, and 10% significance levels, respectively.

Table 3B.4
Pair-wise comparison between country groupings

Note: The symbols *, **, and *** denote statistical significance at the 1%, 5%, and 10% significance levels, respectively.

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Part B Regional issues in ICT in education

Education for All in the digital age

Distance education in Asia Pacific

ICTs in non-formal education in Asia Pacific

Capacity-building for ICT integration in education

Public-private partnerships in ICT for education

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Education for All in the digital age

Tan Sri Dato’ Gajaraj Dhanarajan

The faces of marginalised people are legion. They are the faces of African children wasting away from diarrhea that could be prevented if only their desperate mothers knew how to put together a simple saline solution. They are the faces of struggling farmers in South Asia whose primitive agricultural methods have not changed for generations … of oppressed minority groups around the world still denied the right to vote. (UNESCO 1997)

We still live in a world of great inequality. Much of humanity continues to be denied access to an equal share of the planet’s wealth, to justice, and to a decent living. The disparity between those who have and those who do not in terms of food, healthcare, education, and social security continues to be appalling. The inequalities are not just between rich and poor nations but also within nations and communities.

The elimination of these inequalities is a global aspiration expressed through the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The first of the eight goals is the eradication of poverty and three others have to do with improving health (i.e. reducing child mortality; improving maternal health; and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases). The seventh goal is ensuring environmental sustainability, and the eighth is developing a global partnership for development. The second and third goals are related to education: achieving universal primary education and promoting gender equality and empowering women specifically through the elimination of gender disparity at all levels of education.

The emphasis on education for development is not surprising. Education has been, and continues to be, the most powerful agent of change. Thus, there is global recognition of education as a basic human right and social responsibility. This underpins the World Declaration on Education for All that ‘every person — child, youth, and adult — should be able to benefit from educational opportunities designed to meet their basic learning needs’ (UNESCO 1990a).

In April 2000, some 180 government representatives, donor agencies, and international experts met at the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal to assess the progress made by the Education for All initiative that began in 1990. They realized that after 10 years, the world was nowhere near achieving the targets set in Jomtien. Thus, in Dakar, there was a reaffirmation of the global commitment to provide every child with primary basic education of good quality by the year 2015 and during this period to also bring about the equal participation of girls in primary and secondary education, expand early childhood care and education, promote learning and life skills for young people and adults, and improve the quality and relevance of the curriculum and the learning environment. These new targets for the education sector complement those set in other global agendas for development.

Besides target setting, the Dakar Framework for Action also recognized the need to help many nations develop their own action plans to achieve the targets and mobilize resources from all available sources within and outside of national jurisdictions. A further call reiterated the role of civil society in education and the importance of having providers of education commit to defining, designing, maintaining, and sustaining quality in its delivery. All these are tall orders, considering that when the World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien was convened:

• There were more than 960 million adults who were illiterate and two-thirds of them were women and girls;

• More than 100 million children, mostly girls, did not have access to primary schooling;

• More than 100 million children and countless millions of adults were failing to complete their basic education programs, while millions more satisfied school attendance requirements but did not acquire essential knowledge and skills; and

• More than a third of the world’s adult population (some two billion individuals) had no access to printed knowledge, new skills and technologies that could improve the quality of their lives and help them to shape social and cultural development.

The region’s share in this challenge is considerable. There have been significant achievements in the education sectors in many of the countries in the Asia Pacific. In the close to two decades since Jomtien, participation in primary education has increased; there are more girl children in school; and retention rates are improving, as well as gender equality in the teaching profession and access to post-primary, post-secondary, and professional education. But these achievements still fall short of global ambitions. While the task of getting a larger proportion of our children and young people into schools, colleges, and universities is by itself a daunting one, what is even more challenging is providing learning opportunities for the many millions of adults in the region. Eradicating illiteracy, improving skills, enhancing knowledge bases, creating windows for learning, and ensuring continuous learning are all fundamental to fulfilling the MDGs. And these must be made possible not only for the fortunate few who live in urban communities and who have access to the communications infrastructure and classrooms. The following must also be given education opportunities to enable them to participate in the creation of the knowledge society:

• Those who are functionally illiterate: Apart from about 900 million illiterates globally, there are almost half as many adults who cannot cope with the demands of daily life on the basis of their prior literacy levels.

• The physically challenged: Annually, in Asia alone, about 15 million people become disabled as a result of war, diseases, accidents, and malnutrition. Their major hope of self-improvement is to pick up skills for self-improvement.

• The long-term unemployed: Long-term unemployment is a debilitating pathology; training people in such situations pose special challenges to delivery and pedagogy.

• Out of school youth, especially boys: This group is highly vulnerable to socially disruptive behaviours. A combination of apprenticeship, employment and self-education is needed to help them to contribute to a productive economy.

• Women and girls: In many parts of Asia and the Pacific, women and girls still find themselves marginalized from participating in education and training. Ways have to be found to circumvent the social, cultural, and economic impediments to their education.

• Refugees, recent immigrants and non-nationals: Today, roughly 125 million people live outside their countries of origin. This flow of people for political, social, or economic reasons is not expected to slow down. They and their families need educational programs that will develop their language, social, and job skills.

Governments are also beginning to recognize that planning for ‘competitive advantage’ will require a labour force that has literacy and numeracy skills beyond three to six years of primary schooling (which is the current situation in most industrialized and newly industrializing countries, and worse in developing countries). Globally, some two billion people in today’s workforce will continue to be there well into the first quarter of the next century. They will need retooling and continuous skills upgrading.

The huge demand for initial, continuing and lifelong education has placed education systems ‘at a crisis point’ (Daniel 1996). The need to expand access, ensure quality, and respond to a diversity of learning needs at a time of diminishing resources presents difficult choices for governments. In confronting these choices, nations, and institutions in the Asia Pacific need to reexamine traditions of schooling, teaching, and learning. And they need to carefully consider the potential of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to meet the demands for universal quality education at all levels.

Even before the arrival of the new ICTs, education institutions such as the Correspondence School of New Zealand, National Open School of India, Open Universities of Sri Lanka and Hong Kong, Alama Iqbal Open University of Pakistan, and Indira Gandhi National Open University of India were providing mass, flexible, and affordable education to remote learners using the older analogue technologies of print, audio and video, and the broadcast vehicles of radio and television. The experiences and successes of these institutions are a testimony to the effectiveness of technologies in taking learning to individuals and large communities simultaneously.

More than two decades ago, Bates (1984) noted that ‘developments in technology are bringing advantages to distance teaching and removing some of the disadvantages … through promises of lower costs, greater student control, more interaction and feedback as well as a wider range of teaching functions and a higher quality of learning’. These remarkable transformations are taking place today not only within the operating environment of distance education but also in all digitally supported education provision in most parts of the Asia Pacific. Digital technologies are replacing analogue and electromechanical solutions, providing greater functionality at lower costs, and enabling efficient networking and utilization. While the educational community has been somewhat slower in adopting these tools than the business community, the pace has started to pick up over the last 10 years, giving rise to improvements in administrative efficiency, better student record management systems, improved course development protocols, a higher level of learner support, and resource-rich learning environments.

As recently as a decade ago, the choice of technologies for delivering education was somewhat limited, partly because they were expensive, analogue stand-alone technologies with limited versatility, and requiring many skilled technicians to create and deliver the product. But today we have a different picture. The limitation to technology application in education is no longer the versatility, convenience, cost, and potential of the technology, but the limitation of our imagination in the way they can be applied. Through integration, convergence, miniaturization, and intelligence, the technologies have become ‘friendly’. The question is no longer whether technologies are useful in the teaching and learning environment but which technologies are best suited for a particular purpose.

Digitization has made it possible to design, develop, deliver, manage, and assess the learning process in many new ways. This is because the new digital technologies are not single technologies but combinations of hardware and software, media, and delivery systems. They are rapidly evolving and converging as seen in personal computers, laptops, notebooks and personal digital assistants; digital cameras; local area networking; the Internet and the World Wide Web; Compact Disc-Read Only Memory (CD-ROM) and digital video discs (DVDs); mobile learning, podcasting, and video sharing tools; and productivity software such as word processors, spreadsheets, simulations, email, digital libraries, computer-mediated conferencing, video conferencing, and virtual reality. The new digital technologies also have a capacity to integrate with the older analogue technologies, making it possible to retrieve information stored in older technologies and to develop synergies between the old and the new.

The new technologies differ significantly from the older technologies in their integration of multimedia, convergence, interactivity, flexibility of use, and connectivity. Until recently, however, their application for development, including education, in the Asia Pacific region has been narrow rather than broad. Fibre optic-based systems, which are a key part of the new information infrastructure in many locations, have not penetrated the peri-urban and rural hinterlands. But coupled with satellite technologies and working in tandem with other wireless systems, they can provide a window of opportunity for education systems to reach far beyond what until a few years ago could only be imagined.

The use of satellite technologies in delivering education, health services, and telecommunication is well documented. An important part of the ongoing economic, social and technological revolution that has come about with the advent of the Internet age are the opportunities provided by the newest forms of satellite communications technology and applications, such as the World Wide Web, multimedia knowledge products, video-conferencing, and video-lecturing options, as well as enormous amounts of data transmissions. These innovations are helping institutions to reach the unreachable. And they are making possible a paradigm shift in the way educators view teaching and learning.

For one, the new ICTs are stimulating a resurgence of interest in diversifying methods of education delivery. Almost on a daily basis, a Web-based course becomes available from one university or another. ‘Smart Schools’ are springing up in the richer parts of Asia and ‘virtual learning’, ‘online learning’, and other newer forms of educational delivery are becoming part of the educational jargon of the new century. These new developments both reflect and give rise to a growing realization among education providers that in order to successfully implement flexible, easily accessible education reaching the masses, they have to reassess their methods, means, structures, and resources.

In relying more extensively on ICTs in educational provision, education administrators and policymakers will need to attend to eight factors:

• Policy framework: There is a need for a clearly articulated national education policy that recognizes and places on an equal footing the various modes of education, including open and distance learning and alternative learning. Such a policy should include provisions for a system of accreditation, adequate funding, quality assurance mechanisms, and support for learners, including bridging programs for those without prior learning experience. In Asia Pacific, countries like India, Malaysia, and the Republic of Korea stand out for their farsightedness in having such a policy framework and implementing it at all levels of the education system, including vocational and teachers training, post-primary education, continuing professional education, and undergraduate and postgraduate education.

• Unequivocal institutional commitment: This is especially relevant to conventional institutions that take on off-campus education as an added provision, but fail to provide the resources needed to ensure its sustainability. An absence of institutional commitment leads to all kinds of bad practice from poor quality course materials to the absence of learner support and a total neglect of the students outside the campus. The promises made to deliver quality education and the expectations raised for all learners must be kept.

• Investment in staff training: The range of skills required to function in a multimedia environment is both demanding and daunting. Organizing and running technology-supported distributed learning programs require staff skilled in a variety of tasks. But institutions, enthusiastic about investing in new systems, applications and connections, are often totally unrealistic when it comes to investing in training. It is vital to provide both academic and non-academic staff rigorous training.

• Preventing commercialization: The commercial nature of educational ventures, especially from current vendors, is beginning to cause considerable concern among many who wish to see a growth in technology-assisted educational provision. While private enterprise can and does provide valuable education services, the insensitive brand waving and marketing of education as yet another commodity by some will hurt the cause of innovation if profit appears to be its only motivation. As education becomes increasingly ‘borderless’ and transnational, it is imperative for governments to put regulatory mechanisms in place to ensure that the public has access to quality education and is protected from exploitation by bucket-shop providers and Web cowboys.

• A clear purpose for applying new technologies: Technology by itself cannot perform miracles. What is needed is imaginative and creative applications rooted in ground realities and sound training. Apart from the need to develop human capability to use the new technologies, the lack of resources for building the necessary physical infrastructure in a sustainable manner should prompt many governments in the region to take a cautious and well-considered approach to adopting technological solutions.

• Minding the shift in costs from institutions to individual learners: New approaches to delivering education on the backbone of cyber pipes are gradually shifting the cost of learning from institutions to learners. Connectivity costs, line charges, and hardware and software costs are being borne by learners few of whom have the level of disposable income to pay for these in addition to tuition and other institutional fees. If providers of education are not mindful, yet another barrier to education can emerge especially for the very communities that these innovations are meant to serve.

• Leadership to manage change: Innovations in delivering education require sound management and leadership. Education leaders need to be academically respected, politically connected, astute, charismatic speakers and interlocutors, and clever strategists and tacticians. They not only must manage change, they will also be required to initiate it. As the environment for education changes, there will be mounting pressure on institutions to respond to this change. Leaders with a capacity to manage the rapid rate of change must be found and empowered.

• Continuous vigilance to ensure access, equity, and equality of opportunities: At the heart of educational innovation-must be the desire to reach out and reach all. This should be the guiding vision and mission of educators who are committed to the global aspiration of development for all. Similarly, serious attempts have to be made to ensure that equality of opportunity is made possible for all and that those who complete a non-traditional program (e.g. a distance education program) should be allowed to compete effectively for jobs. For this ‘parity of esteem’ to be achieved, a ‘parity of quality’ must be ensured.

In The Death of Distance, Frances Cairncross (1998) postulated a set of trends in the new communications environment that would influence the way we live, work, and play. While the dot-com boom and bust experience of the late 1990s required a review of these postulations, many still have relevance in the context of educational services. One of these is that the size of an organization does not matter, as small or specialized organizations and even individuals can create and transmit knowledge products to many users (at the users’ call) using the power of technology. The other trends that have relevance to the increased use of new technologies in the educational sector are as follows:

• The death of distance: The cost of communication will not be determined by distance even in the most regulated environments. Reaching out to students through the electronic highway will be determined more by the willingness of educational providers to utilize the newer technologies than by considerations of cost, as demonstrated by the application of satellite and Web technologies in India and the South Pacific.

• The cost of appliances: Such costs will continue to drop even as their computing capacities increase.

• Location does not matter: Providers of educational services can be located anywhere on earth and still reach learners wherever they may be as long as there is a basic communication infrastructure. For example, students in India have access to courses in North America without having to be in North America. Similarly, courses in educational institutions in India can and should travel across the globe.

• Content customization: Learning can be a multi-channel or a mono-channel experience. The final authority on customization will be the target learning outcomes for the subject and the learning preference of the learner.

• People as the ultimate scarce resource: The really difficult challenge for institutions will be to recruit people with the necessary skills to perform the tasks required, as well as to train and retrain those already in service to work in the new environment.

• Emergence of a global language: The emergence of English as a dominant second language of science, technology, business, and international relations, as well as education and training, will mean the availability of globally usable knowledge products. There will be an increase in the choice of educational and training courses.

• Communities of culture: The opportunity to make available content in languages other than English will become feasible. Declining costs and ease of use of the communication tools will make possible the creation and preservation of cultural products and traditions.

As we look ahead to the future of technology-supported learning in the Asia Pacific region, the challenge will not be the availability, cost, maintenance, and versatility of technologies. Rather, the challenge will be about the capabilities, capacities, imagination, and aspirations of our institutions of learning and pedagogues to use technologies to their full potential.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bates, A.W. (1984). The role of technology in distance education. London: Croom Helm.

Cairncross, F. (1998). The death of distance: How the communication revolution will change our lives. MA, USA: Harvard Business School Press.

Commonwealth of Learning. (2000). Reflections on ten years of the commonwealth of learning. Vancouver, Canada: Commonwealth of Learning.

Daniel, J. (1996). Mega universities and knowledge media: Technology strategies for higher education. London, England: Kogan Page.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). (1990a). The world declaration on Education for All. Jomtien, Thailand.

———. (1990b). The international consultative forum on Education for All, 1990–2000: A report to the EFA forum’s steering committee. Paris, France.

———. (1997). Adult education in a polarizing world: Education for All. Paris, France.

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Distance education in Asia Pacific

Jon Baggaley, Tian Belawati, and Naveed Malik

INTRODUCTION

The establishment of the National Extension Institute in the United Kingdom (UK) in 1963 recognized the principle of open education or open learning — that education should be made available to all with minimal restrictions (Perraton 2007). Distance education (DE) technologies have evolved rapidly since then to serve this principle. The open education model stresses the need for flexibility to eliminate barriers to education, such as age, geographic location, time constraints, and economic situation. Open and distance learning1 (ODL) combines the principles of open and flexible learning with DE methodology and uses information and communication technologies (ICTs) to achieve educational goals that conventional face-to-face methods cannot fulfil because of these barriers.

The same ICTs are used in DE across the Asia Pacific region as in the non-formal and basic education programs reviewed in other chapters in this edition of the Digital Review of Asia Pacific. The only functional difference is the formality of the information/communication process — that is, whether or not the messages conveyed lead to formal accreditation for a degree or diploma for example. The current chapter emphasizes the provision of formal, accredited ICT-based higher education, and excludes vocational education, corporate training, and the like. The chapter considers a range of pressing issues affecting Asian DE institutions, such as the lack of access to the Internet obstructing institutional attempts to pursue ‘e-learning’ course delivery. The chapter also discusses the findings of current needs assessment and user and accessibility surveys conducted by the PAN Asia Networking Distance and Open Resource Access (PANdora) network (2005–2008) funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). Special attention is given to developments in mobile phone usage for education and training in Asia Pacific. Finally, the need for a distinctively Asian approach to DE pedagogy is considered.

THE NEED FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION IN ASIA PACIFIC

Asia’s population has risen dramatically in the last 15 years to over 3.7 billion (InternetWorldStats 2008), with major increases in South Asia offsetting decreases in Southeast Asia. This has created critical education and training problems in many Asian countries. Conventional education systems in developing nations do not typically have the capacity to provide secondary, tertiary, and lifelong education to the whole population. The Millennium Development Goals (UN 2008) stress the role to be played by ICT and DE methods in overcoming this limitation both in formal and non-formal education.

ICTs have been used for the past 50 years to increase the efficiency of both face-to-face classroom training and distance-based delivery. The usual reasons for adopting DE methods are (Malik et al. 2005):

1. To widen access to higher education for the masses;

2. To provide continuing formal and non-formal education;

3. To train increasing numbers of students in areas that are target zones for socio-economic developmen; and

4. To upgrade the qualifications of primary and secondary school teachers.

The number of DE institutions and their student enrolment is increasing annually, indicating a growing acceptance of this mode of education. Of an estimated 44 ‘mega-universities’ (Daniel 1996) worldwide with at least 100,000 students (Wikipedia 2008a), 13 are single mode (DE) open universities and all practice DE in one form or another. Ten of the mega-universities are in Asia, including three in India alone, with a combined student population of approximately 2.1 million. The 10 largest mega-universities include Asian open universities. It may be argued that the China Central Radio and TV University (CCRTVU), with approximately two million students, should be included in this list, although technically the CCRTVU is a combination of separate institutions. It is estimated that 70 Asian institutions currently offer DE programmes to over six million students (Jung 2007).

The University of the South Pacific (USP), one of the earliest DE providers in the region, has offered degree programs to its 12 member countries since 1968. It currently uses a wide range of print materials, audio-conferencing, and Web-based methods. USP’s Wide Area Network (USPNet) incorporates a 5 MHz Internet Protocol (IP) satellite technology to integrate the University’s DE and administrative functions. Massey University in New Zealand, another early DE adopter, offers a wide range of Web-based programs, and numerous Australian institutions have become world leaders in DE provision, as shown in the activities and publications of the Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia (ODLAA). Worldwide, there is a trend of conventional, face-to-face universities beginning to offer DE programs, thereby converting themselves into dual-mode institutions.

The recognition of DE and ODL as a means of human resource development in Asia is indicated by the establishment of professional organizations, such as the Asian Association of Open Universities (AAOU) in 1987 and the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization Regional Open Learning Center (SEAMOLEC)2 in 1997. However, DE is still in its infancy in newly transitioned economies like Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, and Vietnam. It has enormous social potential in Asia Pacific, and research and development is now needed for DE to fulfil its goals.

ICT USAGE IN ASIA PACIFIC DISTANCE EDUCATION

The openness and efficiency of DE and training has been enhanced by ICT developments since the late 1990s. E-Learning methods, which use the Internet to deliver educational content and enable interaction between teachers and students (Belawati 2003), have allowed ODL to become interactive and personalized while increasing its geographic and socio-demographic penetration. Many non-ODL institutions have adopted e-learning and become dual-mode systems, delivering their courses by DE methods as well as in the classroom. The rapid development of e-learning since 2000 has been greatly assisted by the emergence of open source software (OSS), which makes learning management systems (LMS) widely available and often without cost. With OSS, ODL systems can be created and maintained with relatively low investment.

DE institutions use a comprehensive range of DE technology models. Taylor (2000) describes these in terms of five evolutionary stages, each solving to one degree or another, the problems of geographic distance (place), other commitments (time), and preferred speed of learning (pace) that many students face. The models are: (i) the correspondence model; (ii) the multimedia model; (iii) the telelearning model; (iv) the flexible learning model; and (v) the intelligent flexible learning model.

This analysis is useful as a general introduction to the range of ICTs available in DE. But it is primarily based on an analysis of the western educational situation, and no technology should be assumed to be appropriate in a particular region without testing. In Australia, Europe, and North America, most ICTs are more universally accessible and more reliable than in Asia Pacific. Panda (2005), for example, has reported that online programs at Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) in India have only been successful in reaching ‘the digitally rich who have access to the Internet or can manage to visit learning and teaching centres regularly’. Furthermore, the high costs of such technologies for students and institutions alike do not appear to be diminishing and will henceforward require ‘major increases in expenditure’ (Perraton 2007). In addition to accessibility and cost problems, there are capability, technical support, regulatory, and political barriers (Latchem et al. 2008). These may take years to resolve in the least developed countries.

For this reason, mega-universities such as the Open University of Indonesia (Universitas Terbuka: UT) have prudently maintained traditional media alongside online methods (see ‘The Open University of Indonesia [Universitas Terbuka]’). Young Asia Pacific universities such as the Virtual University of Pakistan (VU) also deliver their courses by broadcast television while maintaining traditional delivery systems (see ‘The Virtual University of Pakistan [VU]’). Print materials remain the dominant delivery technology in DE institutions, not only in Asia Pacific but worldwide, while high-end technologies such as satellite TV provide supplementary support for the educational process.

In the newly transitioned Asia Pacific economies, ICT can play a vital role in the provision of vocational education.

Hutchinson (2005) provides a detailed evaluation of the first trial of e-learning in Cambodia, conducted at the International Institute of Cambodia University of Technology. The study indicates that e-learning can increase students’ confidence in online training. The students said they gained new knowledge and skills from learning in the Khmer script, and appreciated being able to obtain educational services without having to travel to the University in Phnom Penh. The courses also increased their eligibility for jobs: 56 percent of them gained a new job or were promoted in their current organization after completing the online course. In general, the e-learning trial was considered a successful pilot validating the potential of e-learning in Cambodia and the enthusiasm of students for it. But the trial was not without problems. Factors receiving the lowest ratings in Hutchinson’s study related to the lack of institutional support for the online process, and the continuing negative perception of DE on the part of politicians and the general public. The results suggest that this perception derives from the association of ‘good education’ with the student’s ability to ask a question and the teacher’s ability to give an immediate answer, and with the ability to see the participants’ expressions and gestures.

Lack of infrastructure, course materials, and technical support have also been noted in other evaluative studies of online education in Asia Pacific (Baggaley and Belawati 2007; Latchem et al. 2008). However, negative conclusions of this type do not seem to be deterring Asia Pacific educators from attempting to implement online DE. The danger is that rushing to implement online DE methods before addressing issues of inaccessibility and ineffectiveness may damage the credibility of DE. Prior to their adoption in new geographic areas and cultures, new online media needs to be carefully evaluated. Some of the necessary measures are rapid adoption of appropriate technologies (e.g. high-compression audio-conferencing) and intensive training and awareness programs informing teachers and the public about the new technologies and practices that make e-learning an increasingly reliable and valid option.

A promising set of conclusions is emerging from the work of the PANdora network, a major collaboration among 13 Asian nations in the development of policy and practice for ICT usage in DE and training contexts funded by IDRC (see Appendix 5.1A). Doung et al. (2008) have reported a study of DE attitudes and technologies in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, with a sample size of 130 teachers, students, and government workers, and with a particular emphasis on gender issues. Their results indicate differences in the use of ICTs between the males (71 percent) and females (29 percent) in the sample. For the men and women

alike, many DE technologies (e.g. online discussions and text-chats/instant messaging, Internet telephone, and audio/videoconferencing) are inaccessible. But in the case of the more familiar technologies such as texting via cellphones, the women report more frequent usage than the men. The women’s attitudes to ICT and DE are also more positive than those of the men, who are more inclined to doubt that DE can ever equal face-to-face education and that politicians and the public will ever accept it. One may speculate that women are more supportive of DE technologies owing to their more positive attitude to study and self-improvement, which in turn may derive from traditional social roles making education more unattainable for women (Chang 2006; Loh-Ludher 2007).

Another PANdora project has investigated gender issues in educational ICT usage in Bhutan, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka (Samaranayake et al. 2008). The study compared male and female students’ attitudes to computers in work and study settings, as well as their work habits and learning styles. Numerous differences are reported between responses given in the three countries and between response of the men and women in each country. So many gender-country interaction effects are observed (e.g. men and women in Sri Lanka showing different gender biases than those observed in Bhutan) that further analysis is needed to confirm these gender-based trends. In general, the study supports the conclusions reported by Champagne and Walter (2000) about the great diversity and differences among Asian learners as a whole, and the lack of clear evidence of a uniquely ‘Asian’ learning style (see ‘A Distinctly Asia Pacific Pedagogy?’).

In general, the PANdora network’s research findings confirm the conclusions reported by Hutchinson (2005) and others, and indicate a major need for organizational upgrading and training to advance DE in the region. Other countries in which similar results have been found include India, Indonesia, Laos, Mongolia, the Philippines, and Thailand. To deal with the need for training and information programs about DE in the region, the PANdora project (www.pandora-asia.org) has released an extensive series of DE publications and guidelines.

CURRENT PRIORITIES IN DISTANCE EDUCATION IN ASIA PACIFIC

A major conclusion of evaluation studies of DE in Asia Pacific has to with the need to upgrade the infrastructure for Internet-based education to enable educational institutions to take full advantage of it. It is ironic that the most fundamental problem of Internet-based DE in Asia Pacific — the widespread lack of Internet access — has received relatively little discussion. Hardhono et al. (2007) have attributed the neglect of this basic issue to a tendency on the part of some Asian institutions to adopt online methods ‘as a major symbol of their modernisation’, rather than basing the decision on the results of research and evaluation of e-learning accessibility.

Samaranayake et al. (2007) have shown that while most students in South Asia use computers, very few have Internet access. In Sri Lanka, 79 percent use offline computers in their educational institutions, and among those who have access to the Internet, 42 percent have online access at home, and 35 percent use Internet kiosks. In Pakistan, these proportions are lower in all categories, with 42 percent of students using institutional offline computers and 30 percent or less using facilities like email, Web-based training materials, and text-chat/instant messaging. In Bhutan, the figures are lower still: following an e-learning trial, 83 percent of the student users reported that they had difficulty using the online method due to poor Internet connections, insufficient time, the complexity of the method, and/or the need to travel far to get Internet access. e-Learning is proving more successful in India than elsewhere in the region, although primarily in the corporate sector where access is more readily available.

In an attempt to quantify the issue of Web inaccessibility, the 13-country PANdora network has conducted a study measuring the time taken to access webpages between major Asian cities. The finding: ‘In most of the survey conditions, browser loading times were noted up to four times slower than commonly prescribed as acceptable. Failure of pages to load at all was frequent …’ (Baggaley et al. 2007). The study also analyzed the routes taken by Web hits (i.e. attempts to access material from Web servers) at Asian institutions. All Web hits go through intermediate Web servers before reaching their target, and the more intermediate ‘hops’ involved, the bigger the chance that the access attempt will fail. The study showed that whereas hits by students in Canada on Canadian Web servers may go through half a dozen hops, Web hits by Asia Pacific users commonly go through 20 or more hops and fail to reach their destinations altogether. In addition, the study found that Asian Web hits are commonly routed through countries such as Russia and the United States, for want of more direct local routes. In Cambodia, attempts to access material on a Web server in the next building are typically routed through Vietnam, adding to the time taken and the chance that the Web hit will fail. Improved local Web routes are needed to address this problem.

The substantial extra workload created for the teachers when online methods are considered for adoption also need careful attention. In traditional educational institutions, the use of pre-produced material does not require continuous preparation by the instructors during the academic semester. When online methods are used, the instructor is required to attend to the teaching-learning process constantly, or at least as regularly as in face-to-face instruction.

Meanwhile, most South Asian students have access to other media, such as radio and television, which continue to be used as major educational media by the Asia Pacific mega-universities. In adopting modern technologies in the educational process, Asia Pacific distance educators ought not to abandon traditional media, especially since these technologies are more widely accessible than the Internet and Web in all parts of the world.

One country, Vietnam, is proving successful in the development of e-learning owing in part to its detailed ICT and DE policies (Doung et al. 2007). These include specific policies about DE and the ICT applications supporting it (e.g. use of Open Source software), and a high priority given to vocational training and the education of remote communities.

In countries like Indonesia (Universitas Terbuka), Mongolia (Infocon Ltd), and the Philippines (University of the Philippines Open University and the Molave Foundation), the focus of e-learning innovations is the cellphone, which is the most accessible of all modern media in the region. Software is being developed to enable students to use their cellphones to request information from the University, and to allow educators to use cellphones in ‘pushing’ information to students.

Librero et al. (2007) discuss four types of educational cellphone usage in the Philippines:

1. The cellphone and its short message service/texting (SMS) feature are used as the primary medium for interactive learning.

2. Texting is used to inform students of schedule changes, deadlines, examination regulations, grades, new courses, and library resources.

3. Student groups and organizations use the cellphone to publicize social activities, job fairs, book discounts, etc., and for voting in student elections.

4. University administrators use cellphones to coordinate the admissions process, to conduct marketing campaigns, and to announce grants, surveys and policies, and emergency information (e.g. bad weather, suspension of classes).

Ramos and Trinona (2007) have reported a positive response from the students and the public in Mongolia and the Philippines to the idea of developing cellphone techniques for educational purposes. Students can access learning materials on CDs and DVD, while using automated cellphone methods to interact with their teachers and University administrators on assignment grading for example.

In addition, teams in Mongolia and the Philippines are working with researchers at the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, to develop software and LMS modules permitting audio- and video-conferencing over low-speed Internet connections, and a PANdora collaboration between Sri Lanka and Pakistan is developing online software for interactive student assessment (e-assessment) based on Asia Pacific needs (Baggaley and Belawati 2007).

In Cambodia, Indonesia, and Thailand, Hardhono et al. (2007) have developed an online repository of ‘learning objects’ (LOs) to enable course developers in the three countries to share course materials. The value of this approach in Asia Pacific has yet to be proven. Numerous attempts to create learning object repositories of this kind have been made internationally, with mixed results. On one hand, it is useful for DE institutions to develop digital course materials that can be shared online, and the Hardhono et al. (2007) project is based on the laudable goal of reducing costs by sharing culturally appropriate and compatible objects between different Asian countries. On the other hand, the costs of producing and updating digital materials may prove prohibitive in the Asia Pacific context, and it is by no means certain whether teachers will be willing to share the teaching materials they develop or to use those developed by other teachers. They may also be suspicious of attempts by large international organizations (e.g. publishing groups, commercial Web portals) to impose educational materials on them. Automated approaches to DE have been disparaged as ‘digital diploma mills’ (Noble 1998), and as a cafeteria-style of education serving private sector interests at the cost of educational excellence (Moll and Robertson 1998). The ‘oligopological’ control of information by a relative few reinforces such criticisms.

Many of the problems currently jeopardizing DE initiatives in the region can be addressed by adjusting institutional funding and management practices to make them more specifically attuned to DE and ICT needs. In conventional institutions based on face-to-face teaching and learning, funding needs vary according to student numbers and the demand for sufficient teachers and classroom facilities. For institutions where education relies on the use of ICTs, funding is less sensitive to student numbers and more influenced by the types of technology used. For example, synchronous support technologies such as audio/video-conferencing require more funding than asynchronous methods. A comprehensive set of examples of how DE administration is practised in several ODL institutions in Asia (i.e. at the China Central Radio and TV University system, Korea National Open University, Sukhothai Thammathirat Open Unversity, Universitas Terbuka, Virtual University of Pakistan, and Wawasan Open University) is given by Belawati and Baggaley (2008).

A DISTINCTLY ASIA PACIFIC PEDAGOGY?

Dramatic advances in ICT development in Asia Pacific have opened numerous opportunities for DE in the region. But until the hurdles of accessibility have been overcome, the benefits of online learning applications, including Web 2.0 technologies,3 in specific parts of Asia Pacific will need to be assessed. Careful management and budgeting may partially overcome the problems, allowing educators to develop mixed-media approaches to DE that can effectively address the region’s critical educational challenges. But it is essential that educational institutions do not rush to judgement about the pros and cons of DE technologies before they have been carefully evaluated.

The evaluation process should also consider whether students in Asia and the Pacific need a distinct DE pedagogy. Since many of the new ICT-based pedagogies in Asian DE have originated in the west, it is debatable whether they are appropriate to Asian learning styles. Strother (2003), for example, suggests that in an interactive audio-conference:

An Asian learner may have a difficult time overcoming his or her traditional role as respectful listener. An Asian learner who has never worked with computer-aided instruction may find it difficult to cope with learning the system while having to master the content delivered through the system.

On the other hand, Champagne and Walter (2000) have observed numerous learning styles in different Asian contexts. Following teaching experiences in various Asian nations, they came to recognize ‘the vast diversity and differences among Asian learners and perspectives, to the extent that we no longer find “Asian” to be a particularly useful concept’. The current writers have come to the same conclusion following their extensive exposure to DE practices and attitudes in the 13 Asian countries involved in the PANdora project.

In general, the PANdora surveys of attitudes to DE accessibility and acceptability have shown a preference by students throughout the region for a more interactive style of education than they are typically given (Baggaley and Belawati 2007). These conclusions have been verified by students in Bhutan, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka (Samaranayake et al. 2007), and in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam (Doung et al. 2007). It would seem that students the world over learn best from an active, engaging pedagogy. And it may well be that Asia Pacific teachers tend not to provide their students with new, interactive methods owing to their greater comfort level with the older didactic styles. Whether fundamental philosophical beliefs account for the prevalence of one-way didactic styles in Asia Pacific, or are merely used as an excuse for them, remains a matter for investigation. The resolution of such questions will be fundamental to the increasing social role of distance education in the region.

NOTES

1. The terms ‘education’ and ‘learning’ are used interchangeably in the international DE and ODL literature.

2. SEAMOLEC operates for the benefit of nations including Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

3. Web 2.0 is a term describing changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology toward enhanced creativity, secure information sharing and collaboration. Web 2.0 applications include social networking sites, video sharing sites, wikis, and blogs (Wikipedia 2008b).

APPENDIX

Appendix 5.1A
The PANdora Asian DE network

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ICTs in non-formal education in Asia Pacific

Anita Dighe, Hameed A. Hakeem, and Sheldon Shaeffer

BACKGROUND

Although education is a basic human right, there are millions of individuals who have not been provided an opportunity for schooling and other means to become literate. It is for this reason that non-formal education (NFE) programs for out-of-school youth and adults have been promoted in most countries of the world. In many countries, NFE forms an integral part of the official programs of basic education, often with independent organizational arrangements as well as a program budget and portfolio of activities.

Over the last two decades, rapid economic, social, and technological changes have taken place globally. Economists acknowledge that, increasingly, knowledge and technology are playing a significant role in what is termed as the ‘knowledge economy’. A linked development, sometimes called the ‘information society’, is taking place due to the advent and spread of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in varying degrees, through all the countries of the world. But while educational applications of technology would be made available to school-based programs, there is a strong possibility that due to scarce resources, the poorest and the marginalized groups will remain excluded in this kind of provisioning. Thus, there is a real danger that with the growing importance of ICTs in knowledge-based societies, groups with little or no literacy will fall further behind those who are literate, and the existing literacy gap will grow even wider. Undoubtedly, this would exacerbate the problem of the digital divide.

NFE has a critical role to play in reaching marginalized groups, and ICTs are a tool in the effective performance of this role. The present chapter critically examines the progress made and the lessons learnt in the use of ICTs in non-formal education in the Asia Pacific region.

A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON NON-FORMAL EDUCATION

NFE has always been loosely defined, and in developing countries, it has come to represent a large variety of programs spanning a wide range of age groups, target populations, and content areas. The concept of NFE needs to be unpacked to better understand the various nuances associated with the term in differing contexts and in changing times.

The original version of NFE emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Coombs (1968) and Coombs and Ahmed (1974) defined NFE as an alternative form of education for adults and children that occurred outside of the traditional classroom environment. The need for NFE arose in the context of the widespread disillusionment with formal schooling in the 1970s (Illich 1973). NFE was then seen as a panacea for the ills of education in developed and developing countries (Freire 1972), and aid agencies made substantial investments in NFE from the late 1960s to the 1980s.

The 1990s witnessed a growing ambivalence toward NFE programs as they became associated with second rate educational programs catering to the needs of poor and marginalized groups. Because accreditation frameworks were weak or non-existent in most countries, NFE students suffered a disadvantage vis-àvis those from the formal education stream in either not being certified or in not getting absorbed in the job market.

More recently, NFE has undergone a resurgence in developing countries because of the realization that formal schooling, in its present form, has limited reach. Furthermore, it is now recognized that the educational needs of young people and adults are varied and should be addressed through suitable programs. In developed countries, NFE has assumed importance in the context of lifelong learning, which sees learning as taking place not only in schools and colleges, but throughout the lifespan, in many different locations and times and in formal, non-formal, and informal modes.

With the growing interest in NFE, it is necessary to understand what constitutes NFE and how it relates to formal and informal education, particularly in light of the diversity of formal education at present. For example, is open and distance learning part of formal or non-formal education? Are private commercial educational programs that lead to various kinds certification part of the formal system? What about e-learning? The boundaries between formal and non-formal education are becoming increasingly blurred. Even within non-formal education, there is a wide continuum of educational programs. At one end is the flexible schooling model that now exists in a number of countries, while at the other end are the highly participatory educational programs that are designed to suit the learning needs of each particular learning group.

Earlier approaches regarded formal, non-formal, and informal education as distinct categories. In contrast, Rogers (2004) proposes that they be viewed as part of a continuum, with fine gradations between them and blurred boundaries. According to Rogers, the key distinction between these three categories of education would lie in the individualization of learning. While formal education would be highly de-contextualized, standardized, and generalized, informal learning would be highly contextualized1 and non-formal learning would be a hybrid that would include informal learning as well as formal learning.

Most countries in the Asia Pacific region have actively promoted NFE programs for out-of-school youth and adults. Many of these programs were well under way even before the Education for All (EFA) Conference held in Jomtien, Thailand, in 1990. In fact, by then most countries in the region had already established separate organizational arrangements for promoting NFE as an effective channel of basic education. Apart from national NFE programs initiated by governments, the last decade has also witnessed the emergence of non-governmental initiatives in NFE.

The current emphasis on creating ‘knowledge-based’ societies has made ‘learning’ throughout life more important, which in turn requires an education system to have greater flexibility to enable learners to enter and leave the system at different points. Thus, accreditation and equivalency and other synergies between the formal and the non-formal learning sectors have become essential. Moreover, a wide range of education providers, including universities, NGOs, government agencies, and the private sector, needs to be involved, particularly because learners, who have diverse learning styles, would need different kinds of skills from formal, non-formal, informal, and distance and open learning institutions.

A joint research project undertaken by member institutions of the Asia Pacific Programme of Education for All (APPEAL) Resource and Training Consortium (ARTC) to document and disseminate innovative approaches to NFE and lifelong learning in the region classifies NFE innovations in the region under three broad categories (UNESCO 2002):

• Functional literacy and adult education for poverty alleviation, as illustrated by case studies from Bangladesh and China. The Bangladesh case study with contributions from 16 NGOs gives considerable attention to linking literacy with economic activities. On the other hand, the study from China highlights that inter-sectoral coordination is critical for lifelong learning and also for linking education with poverty alleviation.

• Non-formal education for sustainable development, as in case studies from India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand. The Indian study focuses on the importance of linking NFE programs to demand from the local community and developing locally relevant curricula. In the Indonesian and Philippines case studies, it is the equivalency of the NFE program with the formal educational system that forms the basis for sustainable development, viewed as lifelong learning linked to economic improvement. The case study from Thailand demonstrates an effective approach to sustainable development through building the capacity of the rural population for community-based action in marketing.

• NFE as lifelong learning, as in case studies from Australia, Malaysia, and South Korea. The Australian case study highlights an innovative education program that enabled farmers in Queensland to assess their current situation and improve their confidence in their own ability to make strategic choices, resulting in a better quality of life, more profitable farming, and improvements in the management of land and other natural resources. The Malaysian case study focuses on the effectiveness of a lifelong learning project for capacity-building among rural youth and adults through a massive computer literacy training program. The South Korean case study describes the Credit Banking System (CBS), an open education system that recognizes diverse learning experiences not only in school but also out of school. Thus, when a student accumulates the requisite CBS-approved credits, she or he can obtain an associate or bachelor’s degree. Thus, CBS provides citizens with greater access to various educational opportunities and fosters lifelong learning.

On the whole, the case studies demonstrate that NFE is gaining ground in many countries in the Asia Pacific region. NFE programs are expanding even in countries with a high level of basic education coverage and these programs are making the formal system more flexible. In fact, in most countries, NFE programs are evolving into a potential mechanism for meeting the emerging educational needs of people more effectively than the formal system of education.

ICT IN NON-FORMAL EDUCATION IN ASIA PACIFIC

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Education for All Global Monitoring Report for 2008, there are 774 million illiterate adults globally. Almost all of them live in developing countries, particularly in South and West Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Arab States where the literacy rates are about 60 percent. Women account for 64 percent of adults who cannot read and write with understanding. The problem of illiteracy among women is particularly grave in the South Asian region. Most of the illiterate women are poor, live in rural areas, are older in age, and belong to linguistic, ethnic, and religious minorities.

Achieving education for all and eradicating illiteracy by 2015 are among the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that the global community has set for itself. The education-related MDGs build on the EFA initiative agreed in Jomtien, Thailand in 1990 and reaffirmed at the second EFA meeting in Dakar, Senegal in 2000. In addition, the United Nations launched the UN Literacy Decade (2003–2012), which adopts the Literacy Initiative for Empowerment (LIFE) global strategic framework for assisting the 35 countries in which 85 percent of the world’s non-literate population lives.

Because of the established relationship between illiteracy and poverty, achieving the goals of the UN Literacy Decade is central to the realization of the MDGs. The International Action Plan for implementing the UN Literacy Decade states that ‘literacy for all is at the heart of basic education for all and creating literate environments and societies is essential for … eradicating poverty, reducing child mortality, curbing population growth, achieving gender equality and ensuring sustainable development, peace and democracy’ (UNESCO 2002).

The Action Plan calls for a renewed vision of literacy that goes beyond the limited view that has hitherto been dominant: ‘It has become necessary for all people to learn new literacies and develop the ability to locate, evaluate and effectively use information in multiple manners’ (UNESCO 2002, p. 4). In particular, people need to learn skills that are essential in what is now called the ‘knowledge economy’ and ‘information society’ where knowledge and technology, including ICTs, are increasingly playing a significant role and causing social transformation to take place at a rapid pace. Personal participation in knowledge-and technology-driven societies begins with literacy (Wagner and Kozma 2005), but requires continuing education and training throughout the lifespan. NFE programs, with their needs-based approach and flexibility, have an important responsibility to ensure that illiterate adults and out-of-school youth and children, as well as other marginalized and disadvantaged groups, are provided opportunities to access ICTs and to utilize them meaningfully to further their socio-economic growth and development.

In 2002, APPEAL launched the ICT-NFE project with financial support from the Japanese Funds-in-Trust to explore the use of ICTs in the delivery of education and skills training to help improve quality of life, alleviate poverty, and achieve community development through community learning centres (CLCs) and other community-based mechanisms. The project piloted the use of ICTs to foster the participation of disadvantaged communities in literacy, basic education, and continuing education activities in Indonesia, Lao PDR, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Uzbekistan.

The ARTC study that was undertaken in 2002 (UNESCO 2002) and the APPEAL study (UNESCO 2005) highlight the following lessons learned regarding the success of NFE programs as well as the potential benefits of integrating ICTs in NFE programs.

The success of NFE programs has been found to depend on the following factors:

1. A broader definition and scope of NFE: Non-formal learning should no longer be viewed in a narrow way but as part of lifelong learning.

2. Community involvement: The involvement of local communities in the planning and management of NFE programs is vital to ensure that the programs are relevant to their needs and to develop a sense of ownership.

3. Local demand: A demand-driven paradigm for initiating NFE programs not only ensures effective use of the resources but also reinforces accountability among participants.

4. Continued government support: Since NFE programs generally meet the educational needs of marginalized groups, they are invariably dependent on support from the government or from donor agencies.

5. Linking literacy with economic activities: It is essential for NFE programs to go beyond literacy programs and offer functional education that can promote economic development and improve the quality of life of individuals and the community.

6. Addressing the issue of poverty alleviation: Since NFE programs target poorer sections of the society, they need to address the issue of poverty alleviation. Well-designed NFE programs have the potential to alleviate problems arising out of poverty.

7. Multi-sectoral participation: While most educational programs tend to be confined to the educational bureaucracy, NFE programs that attempt to link education with the economic and social aspects of people’s lives need the collaboration of professionals and administrators from the relevant agencies and organizations in the government and non-government sectors.

Integrating ICTs in NFE programs can help meet these requisites for success thus:

• ICT can be used to develop livelihood skills and thus contribute to poverty alleviation: Livelihood skills training is a common activity in CLCs. The use of ICTs as a tool in such training is an engaging way for learners to develop these livelihood skills (UNESCO 2005).

• ICT is a tool for capacity-building: More specifically, ICT can be used as an effective and affordable tool in the professional development of NFE teachers. This is important because although qualified and trained teachers are the key to quality learning and increased learner motivation, in many countries professional expertise, particularly for the provision of non-formal literacy education, is limited and thinly distributed, and training in teaching and learning in NFE contexts consists of one-off programs and lack follow-up and sustainability.

NFE programs can also help develop the digital skills that are now required in public service at the central, provincial, district, and community levels.

• ICT can facilitate documentation and information sharing: ICT can facilitate the print, visual, and video documentation that is needed for the dissemination of information about successful NFE projects. When undertaken by the members of the community, this documentation can help foster a sense of community pride and ownership and ensure continuing support and enthusiastic participation. And while ICTs can promote information sharing between communities, they can also be effectively used to mobilize policy dialogue on the use of ICT for community empowerment.

• ICT can be used to facilitate the process of networking among organizations engaged in the design and delivery of NFE programs: It is essential for the government and other organizations to coordinate their NFE activities to maximize available resources and expertise, including ICT equipment.

• ICT tools can improve the overall effectiveness of monitoring and evaluation: Monitoring and evaluation should be built into the entire planning and management of NFE programs.

• ICT can be used in promoting literacy for community empowerment: Dighe and Reddi (2006) present case studies from India highlighting the effective use of technology to empower rural women in particular. One case study is of the Deccan Development Society (DDS), which has trained poor dalit (the Indian social classification for the poorest and the ‘untouchables’ in the caste system) women in the Medak district of Andhra Pradesh, India, to use video technologies to represent their lives and redefine their status. In Machnoor village, DDS has set up a community radio station with a 100-watt FM transmitter and a 30-kilometre radius reach where, with the support of UNESCO, a small team of dalit women has recorded 300 hours of programming on issues relating to women’s empowerment, agricultural needs of semi-arid regions, public health and hygiene, indigenous knowledge systems, biodiversity, and food security. They have also recorded local songs and drama. In Ahmedabad, India, Self-employed Women’s Association (SEWA) has been using video as a tool for women’s empowerment since the mid-1980s. Video is used as a medium to share information with the women members of SEWA and also as a tool for training and teaching new skills and for reaching policymakers.

Currently there are three types of learning spaces where ICTs are used to enhance NFE: telecentres, Community Multimedia Centres (CMCs) and CLCs.

A telecentre is a public space where community members can access telephones, computers, the Internet, and other digital technologies that can help them gather information and communicate with others. The simplest kind of telecentre is a booth in which the owner of a cellphone sells user-time. This has worked well in countries like Bangladesh where the Grameen Bank has been lending money to rural women to buy cellphones since 1997. A telecentre has a limited educational function but it is empowering to those who are enabled to access information easily. In the case of Grameen Bank, it has also helped in alleviating poverty by augmenting the income of the village women in Bangladesh.

CMCs are non-profit telecentres that aim to promote community empowerment and address the problem of the digital divide. Also known as a community e-centre (CeC), a CMC combines community telecentre facilities (computers with Internet and email, phone, fax, and photocopying services) with a community radio run by local people in the local language. The radio, which is low-cost and easy to operate, not only informs, educates and entertains, but also empowers the community by giving a strong public voice to the voiceless and encouraging greater accountability in public affairs. CMCs provide a gateway to active membership in knowledge societies by enabling everyone to gain access to information and communication tools that they can use to improve the quality of their lives.

UNESCO (2007) defines a CLC as ‘a local place of learning outside the formal education system … usually set up and managed by local people for local people’. CLCs, which may be located in urban and rural areas, ‘are home-grown institutions that … provide education programs that address the specific needs and desires of the populations they serve’. Their aim ‘is to help individuals empower themselves and promote community development through lifelong education for all people in the community, including adults, youth, and children of all ages. A CLC does not necessarily require new infrastructure, but can operate from an existing health center, temple, mosque, primary school or other suitable venue’.

Of all APPEAL-supported regional projects none has generated greater enthusiasm among APEC member states than the CLC project. Initiated in the late 1990s, it has attracted over 20 countries in the region to try out community-based models for learning at the local level. Several countries that have piloted the development of CLCs with the support of APPEAL have now developed models that are being replicated with the support of communities, governments, and other partners.

FACTORS FOR SUCCESS OF ICT-SUPPORTED NON-FORMAL EDUCATION

Simply using ICTs in NFE programs does not make for effective NFE programs. For the potential benefits of ICT integration in NFE to be realized, several factors need to be considered.

The first of these is the need for a coherent policy for integrating ICT in NFE. A meta-survey of ICT integration in 44 countries in the Asia Pacific region conducted by UNESCO Bangkok in 2003–2004 (Farrell and Wachholz 2004) showed countries at different stages with regard to policies pertaining to the integration of ICT in the education system. While all of the countries surveyed had stated that the development of ICT capacity was important to national development, few had grappled with the policy questions related to ICT applications in education, especially in NFE. Few policymakers demonstrated a commitment to ensuring that ICT would be adopted at a mass level.

A policy framework is essential as it provides a vision of desired outcomes and outlines a roadmap for how these outcomes are to be achieved. In such a framework, the vision of NFE would have to be broad-based and all-encompassing and within the overall framework of lifelong learning. Accreditation frameworks for the integration of NFE and formal education would have to be worked out, particularly because at present in many countries these frameworks are either weak or non-existent and NFE is marginalized. Also, a gender equity perspective would have to inform policy formulation to ensure that women as well as men have equal access to ICT and ICT-supported education programs, and gender concerns are addressed at all stages or phases of such programs.

A second factor for success of ICT-supported NFE is providing technology infrastructure and ensuring access. ICT-based non-formal literacy programs have often suffered from inadequate infrastructure and technical support. This was highlighted in a study on the use of ICT in education in seven of the E-9 countries (Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt, India, Mexico, Pakistan, and the People’s Republic of China) undertaken by UNESCO (UNESCO 2006). The study recommended that the Literacy Decade should be considered as an opportune time for policymakers to set up the required infrastructure — for example, phone lines, reliable electricity supply, and connectivity.

While CLCs are regarded as a viable strategy for giving rural communities access to ICT, there is a need for innovative and cost-effective ways of broadening access to prevent the exclusion of marginalized communities. Women’s access to ICT is a major problem in some communities. ICT should be located in local institutions that poor women feel they can access without difficulty or restriction (Dighe and Reddi 2006).

Landlines and desktop computers are available in multipurpose community access centres (e.g. telecentres, schools), but there are difficulties in making them available in poor communities. Ongoing development of low-cost technologies is a key to provide ICT for the poor. Currently, Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) promises to provide low-cost broadband ‘last mile’ connectivity in densely populated areas and wireless mobile text messaging is spreading in a range of countries and commercial and public service uses. Research, development, and piloting of low-cost technologies amenable to poor communities would need ongoing support, particularly from social and commercial entrepreneurs.

A third factor in the success of ICT-supported NFE programs is to make them people-driven rather than technology-driven. Case studies undertaken in different countries of the region demonstrate this. Often, however, there is a tendency to invest in technology without making a parallel investment in people. According to Reddi (2004), ‘the bulk of the investment in any project generally goes toward overhead costs and few resources are left for project activities. A parallel investment in people, in good quality social research and community mobilization and involvement, rarely takes place.’

A process of de-mystification of technology has to take place so that poor people can begin to understand how technology functions and the possibilities it has to offer. This process cannot be rushed and people’s pace of learning has to be respected. This has particular relevance for women as they would first need to get over the perception that technology is for men and not for them. It would be necessary for women to feel comfortable with technology, for they are likely to be hesitant in adopting new technology unless they can begin to use technology to respond to their needs.

The impact of ICT also depends on attitudes, expectations, organizational climate, and management styles. It is possible that intermediary organizations implementing ICT projects are hierarchical and bureaucratic in their style of functioning. Any hands-on experience in the use of technology can become a major hurdle in such organizations, and overcoming resistance and negative attitudes is a challenge that has to be overcome. The bottom line is that the focus of ICT-supported NFE programs has to be on people, on organizations and processes, and not just on technology.

Effective planning and program design is the fourth factor in the success of ICT-supported NFE. There is a need to take stock of existing infrastructure and to plan for hardware and software possibilities, taking into account connectivity, affordability, and capability. Equally important is the need to understand the existing information systems of the poor before ICT is introduced. There is a need to understand how ICT and culture intersect, because cultural factors can be a hindrance to ICT adoption in rural areas. This is particularly true for women. Green (2004) therefore advocates that great care be taken to ensure gender-sensitive program design.

Community participation in planning and designing ICT-supported interventions is vital. Experiences in many countries of the region have shown that ICT projects are more useful and sustainable when communities support and commit to them. However, it is important to recognize that communities are not homogenous and they are often divided along class, gender, and sectarian lines. It is necessary to ensure sustained and ongoing consultations with members of the community, particularly the poor members and women among them, to enable them to help make crucial decisions with regard to physical location, timing, and the use of ICT. The poor benefit from ICT when they know and control the technology and related know-how. Rather than simply giving the poor access to information, project designers and implementers should listen to the ‘voice’ of the poor in various decision-making processes.

Capacity-building and training comprise the fifth success factor in ICT-enhanced NFE. There is a need to train NFE functionaries, program administrators, and support staff. Moreover, it is necessary to provide skills training programs of various kinds to ensure that the poor use ICT effectively. Malaysia’s experience has shown the importance of organizing training in basic computer use so that the rural communities are not left behind in the nation’s ICT development process. Such training programs need to be organized on an ongoing basis to ensure operational use of ICT as well as their maintenance and upkeep by the members of the community. This would help instil a sense of ownership among the community.

Women would require gender-sensitive training and ongoing support. Women trainers have been found to be effective in training other women because aside from passing along skills, women trainers also serve as role models.

In addition, the potential of ICT for enhancing and supporting professional development of non-formal education, literacy and development personnel, planners, administrators, and educators should be explored.

A sixth factor for success in ICT-supported NFE is the development of content that is relevant to the learners. ICT can play an important role in stimulating interest and engaging learners, and it can be a useful tool in developing learning materials that are culturally and linguistically appropriate. One such literacy course offered by a CMC in the Madurai district of Tamil Nadu, India enables learners to create their own personalized content using digital cameras, computers, presentation software, and CD-ROMs. The successful experiences of many countries using technologies like television, radio, and video have shown that even ‘low tech’ devices can be very useful in creating a literacy conducive environment (UNESCO 2006), with women, for example, using these technologies in creative combinations with traditional media such as folk songs, dance, and theatre for self-expression and communication.

A seventh factor for successful ICT-supported NFE is planning for sustainability. Because their operating costs tend to be high, most ICT projects tend to close down as soon as the project funds are used up. It is therefore essential to address the problem of sustainability at the planning stage itself. The ‘user pays’ model is the default strategy for generating income for operations and maintenance. However, this business model tends to marginalize the poor, particularly the women among them, because they cannot afford to pay the user fees. Partnerships among stakeholders that will draw on the strengths and assets of various groups and ensure the coordination of efforts of various institutions, ministries, and organizations could address this problem.

Ensuring multi-stakeholder partnerships is the eighth factor for success in ICT-enhanced NFE programs. In such partnerships, the principal role of the government would be to facilitate the creation and equitable diffusion of infrastructure and the adaptation and scaling up of successful pilot projects. In addition, the public sector should provide the lead through strong policy interventions and substantial public investment (Gurumurthy and Singh 2005). The private sector could play an important role in supporting development of content and applications in the local languages. NGOs could partner with the government to ensure the participation of various disadvantaged groups, and to facilitate capacity-building.

The ninth factor for successful implementation of ICT-supported NFE programs is continuous monitoring and evaluation. The literature on ICT-supported development in general tends to be anecdotal and descriptive and there is a paucity of data from well-designed evaluation and research studies. While this is changing, it bears emphasizing that there is a need to undertake honest stock-taking of what worked and what did not work and for what reasons. Formative evaluation is necessary to identify the problems or stumbling blocks so that timely corrections can be taken to ensure that the objectives of the ICT project are met. Considering the multi-dimensionality of non-formal education, an interdisciplinary research approach would be useful to understand the complexities of ICT for NFE projects. Ethnographic action research (Tachhi et al. 2003) has been found to be useful in understanding the information needs of the poor in specific contexts.

THE CHALLENGES AHEAD

In concluding the meta-survey of ICT integration in education in the Asia Pacific region, Farrell and Wachholz (2004) aver that although the majority of countries in the region are still in the early stages of adopting ICT tools in educational systems, the situation is changing rapidly. A shift is taking place from donor-supported, NGO-led, small-scale, pilot projects to systemic integration informed by national government policies and multi-stakeholder-led implementation processes. However, what is disconcerting is that these changes are taking place in the school sector only and the spin-offs in the non-formal sector are not as evident.

The costs associated with setting up ICT infrastructure are forcing many governments to make difficult choices. For most national governments, the priority is primary education. Ironically, the pressure to achieve EFA goals could be forcing a number of national governments to sideline the education of out-of-school youth and non-literate adults. Similarly, the pressure to produce the necessary human capital for a ‘knowledge-based’ economy is resulting in greater investments being made in formal higher education systems.

While governments worldwide have signed up to the UN goal of a 50 percent reduction in illiteracy by 2015, actual investments in the programs that will deliver these goals are abysmally small. Torres (2002) laments that there is a mismatch between rhetoric and practice even among the international agencies as the ‘expanded’ and ‘renewed’ visions proposed in all of the major recent international declarations and commitments — in basic education (EFA 1990), adult education and learning (CONFINTEA V 1997), and literacy (UN Literacy Decade 2002) — tend to remain on paper and are contradicted by the same international agencies that promoted them and that provide technical and financial assistance to the South.

But since a significant proportion of the population in developing countries is out of school and without the literacy skills that will enable them to contribute to economic and social development, governments ignore the non-formal education sector only at their own peril. To develop a cohesive society, increase national competitiveness, and achieve sustainable growth and development, governments need to put in place NFE programs that focus on developing social capital among marginalized communities (Lizardi 2002). Non-formal educational programs for youth and adults should become one of the global priorities of our time.

For this to happen, the formation of alliances among stake-holders across all sectors is vital. The Global Campaign for Education, a coalition of NGOs and trade unions working in over 100 countries for the right to free, good quality education for all, is attempting to play an advocacy role. The hope is that multi-sectoral partnerships and alliances will create a groundswell that can influence national governments and international agencies to honour their commitments, and ignite a global movement that will make quality education truly a right for all.

NOTE

1. Rogers (2004) places much greater value on informal learning which for him is not always unintentional (as previously understood), but which is a natural activity that is continuous and highly individualized and contextualized. It is mainly through informal learning, rather than formal or non-formal learning, that a whole range of perceptions, attitudes, and skills are developed.

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Capacity-building for ICT integration in education

Wai-Kong Ng, Fengchun Miao, and Molly Lee

INTRODUCTION