Growth and ICT

Although the growth in the telecenter ‘numbers’ came as bits and pieces from different projects, the evolution of their ‘role’ was organic in nature. It grew out of the needs of the communities and eventually leveled the differences in their origin.

By mid 2003, there were 73 telecenters in 12 districts of Orissa covering an area of about 44,716 square kilometers which contains large rural population. These telecenters are located in some of the perennially disaster affected/prone and poorest districts of Orissa. These are the areas that have traditionally lacked access to adequate information and lagged behind in terms of development.

Analyzing the telecenters in Orissa through the framework, it is apparent that the telecenters have evolved with respect to  Information and Services portfolio, Organizational Setup and Information Infrastructure systematically and survived the change in focus. Also, on the sustainability front, telecenters with regular access and usage have shown to be stronger on the revenue earnings enabling them to run day-to-day operations based on user charges.

Following are the highlights under specific parameters of the framework :

Information and Services portfolio:

In spite of original focus on specific areas, telecenters were quick to learn and therefore survived the transition with added information and services deliveries.  Partnerships with service providers played an important role in consolidating the portfolio.

Mainly offline content in local language in form of CDs (called knowledge hub) with scanned information from various government departments and other agencies helped establish telecenters as a reliable information source in the communities.

Subsequently, partnership with the Indira Gandhi National Open University enabled telecenters to administer certified computer literacy classes, similarly with Orissa Primary Education Programme Authority the telecenters offered IT aided education (using animated multimedia CDs done by Azim Premji Foundation) to the students of designated primary schools in nearby areas and with ‘Mission Shakti’, Department of Women and Child Development, Government of Orissa, it ran a programme to educate women members of Self Help Groups on basic computing on a payment basis.

All these have added to the relevancy factor and as a result, on the sustainability side of the telecenters.

Organizational Setup:

At the lowest level, each telecenter is managed (day-to-day functions) by a community IT volunteer – paid through the user charges – collected and managed by a management committee, constituted by a host organization in consultation with local government authorities and IT facilitator.

The community IT volunteer who is in charge of day-to-day activities in the telecenter is selected by the management committee and is preferably a basic IT educated unemployed youth of the same village.
 
Each IT facilitator is in charge of a number of telecenters. IT facilitator is also the member of the District IT Society and acts as a bridge between the District Collector (head of district level administration) and the rural community.

The District IT Society is an umbrella organization setup through this programme in programme districts, which tries to integrate all the IT related activities of the district including telecenters.

Role of UNDP-Orissa Hub in brokering the partnerships with various service providers is also a highlight. The Standard Operation Procedures (SOP) prepared by UNDP-Orissa Hub provided the guidance for day-to-day functioning of the telecenters. Its facilitation helped streamline the record keeping and reporting of the telecenters.

Information Infrastructure:

The selection of location for these setups was driven by the objectives of the original projects, and it did have an effect on the overall effectiveness of the telecenters. In few cases the locations were changed later to tap onto the available infrastructure of new location in order to enhance the deliverables of the telecenters.

Availability of telephone connection, internet access and power supply did have an effect on many services in the telecenters, specially the one which tried to lodge complaint to the district collectors through a website www.aamagaon.com. But more than anything else, it was not a hit because of lack of automation at government’s end, because once the complaints reached the collectors office, it is subjected to the same old route of the paper documents (in form of printouts) and delays.

The premises for the telecenters were provided by the host organizations and this has contributed in strong ownership by the communities.

In summary, as pioneering effort in setting and running of telecenters in Orissa, the initiative has extended the benefits of ICTs to the poorest of the poor and gained a lot in terms of learning. Analyzing the project from the perspective of the framework of Information and Services portfolio, Organizational Setup and Information Infrastructure, it offers guidance to the new initiatives planned on top of this.

The State of Orissa, situated on the eastern cost of India was hit by an unprecedented super cyclone on October 29th, 1999. The cyclone caused massive damage to houses, vegetation, livelihood and the environment.

The relief and rehabilitation work that ensued, involved several UN agencies along with government and non-governmental organizations.

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) – Orissa Hub, supported the Government focal points to coordinate with various agencies working during this period to appropriately target the resources flowing in by building and facilitating use of databases on disaster damages, needs and gap analysis through the United Nations Information Technology Services (UNITeS).

In the reconstruction phase these ’setups’ were handed over to the Block and Gram Panchayats – the lowest level of administrative units in the State – to function as Block Disaster Management Information Centres and Gram Panchayat Disaster Management Information Centres respectively. These where then thrown open to public to access rehabilitation and reconstruction related information in respective areas. This unique effort of the UNITeS was acknowledged with the program being chosen as one of the finalists of the Stockholm Challenge awards in the year 2001.

This was the beginning of telecenter movement in Orissa.

While Orissa was yet to recover from the shock of the unprecedented natural disaster, the State was face to face with yet another natural calamity of vast magnitude, that is, the floods of July 2001.

Following the floods in 2001, the UK’s Department for International Development’s Conflict and Humanitarian Affairs Department (DFID-CHAD) supported project, ‘restoration of agriculture based livelihoods’ was successfully implemented in 7 affected coastal districts. During the exit phase of this project, used computers were mobilized and provided to village farmers committees, implementing partners and to the district agriculture offices, in order to expand the scope of the Agriculture Service Centres to Agriculture Information Centres and networking them to the coordinating agencies and the line department.

This was again a unique case of extending the ICTs to the masses through organic growth of institutions.

Likewise, in partnership with different departments of the Government of Orissa, in total, 73 ICT kiosks/telecenters in 12 districts have been established which are currently being hosted by Women Self Help Groups/ Panchayats (Local Government)/ NGOs/ CBOs/ Youth Clubs. These centres are being managed by the Community IT Volunteers paid through user charges collected and managed by local hosts.  ICT Facilitators posted at district level supervise the Community IT Volunteers and provide a link between the communities and the various district line departments for content and services.

Consolidation of such a diverse set of ICT kiosks/telecenters was imminent given the constraints of ending original projects and expansion of scope. Subsequently these telecenters were brought under one brand umbrella of ‘Aamagaon Soochna Kendra (ASK)’ [My villages’ information center] for delivery of equitable information and services to rural masses.

ICT kiosk model developed has been adapted by the State government in setting up 4000 ICT kiosks across the State under self employment scheme.

With some sense of what could influence telecenters being used for their indented purposes – given its mix of generic ICT offerings – information, connectedness and devices, telecenters – in their many forms – can attempted to be understood by the ensuing framework.

This framework has three base components: (1) Information & Services portfolio, (2) Organizational Setup and (3) Information Infrastructure, which with their varied degrees of influence characterize telecenters.

Further – access, awareness and interface – (the critical elements in ‘making IT used’) in telecenters are also the derivatives of these above mentioned three components.

In many cases, in order to be commercially viable, telecenters have drawn from the experiences of profit oriented entities, where keeping revenues up and costs low becomes a priority too. Telecenters with Cyber Cafes models are good example of this kind. Therefore this factor also gets positioned along sides the base parameters and helps in understanding the holistic picture.

Information and Services portfolio:
The information and services needs of the communities are often under-captured, (in many instances because of incapacity in articulation). Nonetheless, availability of relevant and adequate information and services, has understood to be of great significance in getting the telecenters visited and used by members of the communities. Furthermore partnership with appropriate service providers further enhances the scope of deliveries at telecenters and its influence.

Organizational Setup:
The ways in which telecenters are managed – either as stand-alone setups or part of a network – organizational arrangements, plays an important role in characterizing the telecenters. Management structures, including ownership arrangements at different levels (especially when, the telecenters are functioning in a ‘hub and spoke’ model – having many telecenters linked with a hub center for support services) influences its usage patterns. Responsibilities at these different levels also varies, from running of day-do-day operations in a single unit to the tasks which are strategic and are applicable organization wide – such as building partnerships with service providers, developing standard operating procedures etc.

Information Infrastructure:
The available hard and soft infrastructure such as connectivity, electricity and community ownership in a specific location not only influences the decision of setting up of telecenters but also affects the range of information and services being delivered through these setups. Online and offline delivery modes of many information and services in telecentres are highly influenced by this parameter.

Telecenters are acknowledged as – the facilities that offer community members the ability to use ICTs in a publicly shared manner. However, the concept of telecenters in ICT for Development domain has remained a mystery. Mystery – because the concept has been evolving ever since its articulation and therefore the exact nature of its constructs have remained hard to pinpoint. So much so that because of its ambiguous characterization, the measurement of its impact, to a certain extent has also been misplaced and contributed to the original suspicion on ICT led development.

For instance, on sustainability front, some telecenters were subjected to the rigors of being economically viable – i.e. revenues earned through usage must meet or surpass cost of running the telecenters and some were treated as ‘public services’ like government run hospitals or schools, in which case the questions of monetary sustainability fall through. In such contrasting situations, analyzing successes and development impacts posed great challenges – and the need to have an innovative and comprehensive framework to accomplish that, was conspicuously felt.

It appears that the implementation of telecenters continued across developing countries without taking much into consideration the past experiences and cumulative learning in setting up and running of telecenters – which were widespread in the development field in early 1990s – resulting in mixed bag of successes and failures later.

Failures in meeting the development goals through telecenters also rests with the notion of addressing the issues of digital divide by just ‘having IT there’. Whereas the aspects of ‘access’, ‘awareness’, and ‘interface’, which underpins the concept of ‘getting IT used’ have demonstrated to be of critical importance in cases of successes in ICT for Development field in general and in telecenters in particular.

On the whole, there was an undeniable void of a solid conceptual framework to analyze various experiences in telecenter projects and then building on it.