The Electronic Journal on Information Systems in Developing Countries, http://www.ejisdc.org
Social Implications of Information and Communication Technology in Developing Countries: Lessons from Asian Success Stories
Subhash Bhatnagar
CMC Professor of Information Technology, Indian Institute of Management
Ahmedabad 380015, India
Abstract
The Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) and the World Bank had organised a workshop titled: Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for Rural Development to bring together case studies of various applications of ICT that have been demonstrated to make a difference in the delivery of services or products in rural areas. The cases presented illustrate both the opportunities and challenges in the diffusion of ICT within India and for other developing countries. ICT applications can be classified as those that provided decision support to public administrators for improving planning and monitoring of developmental programs, those that improved services to citizens and brought in transparency, and those that empowered citizens through access to information and knowledge. This paper presents successful examples of each type of application of and discusses one application in detail to draws lessons for what needs to be done to promote ICT for rural development.
Information Technology led Developme nt: Challenges Before Developing Countries In the wake of liberalisation, countries like India have made economic management their prime agenda. Even though the new focus of attention is economic activity, building of social infrastructure and poverty alleviation will continue to be important areas for poor countries. IT is often identified as the key to the re-invention of the Government. It is believed that developments in IT such as Electronic Document Management, EDI, Group Ware for computer supported group work, internet and intranet can lead to innovative administrative information systems which can enhance policy formulation, promote participation, improve service quality, make planning more effective and become a means of empowering citizens (Traunmuller and Lenk, 1996). Access to data bases across government departments, and analysis can make a difference in the quality of policies that are initiated and implemented for promoting economic development (Bhatnagar and Patel, 1988). Decision support systems can be developed to plan the provisions of basic services such as education, drinking water, roads and telephones in rural and urban areas
About fifteen years back Government of India undertook DISNIC a major programme through the National Informatics Centre to provide IT support to 440 districts. Computerisation of land records was also initiated. in some districts. In a separate programme called CRISP, the rural development ministry and NIC collaborated to develop software for planning and monitoring of IRDP (Ministry of Agriculture 1987). The impact of CRISP and DISNIC on administration has been marginal because the task of changing the administrative culture is enormous. Although IT can be a tool for decentralised planning, integration across departments and reduction in work load, it cannot be the sole instrument of change.
Although the earlier efforts did not yield commensurate results, with the advent of networking and the ubiquitous internet, once again there is hope that IT could be used to accelerate the development process. Information and communication technologies are indeed
generating new possibilities to attack problems of rural poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation. Old ways of doing business in terms of delivering important services to citizens are being challenged and sometimes abolished in both industrialised and developing countries. But the question of the value of IT for rural development is accompanied by this dilemma for decision makers and multilateral funding institutions: should the very limited resources for rural development be applied to developing IT capacities, or are they best used for other high priorities such as schools, hospitals and dispensaries? Clearly, there is a grave concern about the possibility of wasted, poorly utilised, or otherwise unspent resources in IT applications for rural development. The initiative for promoting the use of IT has now passed on from the central Government to State government lead initiatives. Many state governments in India are preparing grandiose plans to induct IT in the state administration to provide better service to its citizens. Prominent amongst them is the experiment of the government in Andhra Pradesh which has been able to attract international funding to support its vision of IT- lead development
Types of information and communication technology applications
Information and communication technology applications can be broadly categorized into the following types:
• decision support to public administrators, • improving services to citizens, and
• empowering citizens to access information and knowledge.
Each of these types of applications may have different objectives, require different types of technologies to build, and therefore have different sets of critical success factors.
Decision support to public administrators
Decision support systems for public administrators focus on improving planning and monitoring development programmes. Examples of such systems are the use of GIS to plan the location of rural facilities or to identify disaster prone areas. Similarly, provision of PCs in the district rural development agencies was primarily intended to improve the monitoring of the integrated rural developmental programme. A case study of health workers presented in the IIMA workshop described how hand held computers were given to Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANM) to maintain the data on all couples and their families to which health and family welfare services were being provided. The ANMs could update the data as and when services were provided through icon based interaction. The experiment illustrated how ICT could enable field workers to better plan their activities and for their supervisors to more effectively monitor their performance. Decision Support Systems are likely to be successful if the request to build them originate from public administrators interested in improving the administration of development programmes. However, if such tools are provided in a centrally sponsored scheme to administrators unwilling to change their style of administration, that is, who are unwilling to use information and its analysis for decision making, it is unlikely the decision support system will be used. When development programmes are not operationally dependent on such systems, their use becomes purely discretionary.
Improving services to citizens
The second type of applications focus on automating the process of delivering services to citizens, and in the process, bringing in transparency. Examples of such systems are the use of ICT for collecting a variety of payments that citizens need to make to government agencies. The use of ICT can shorten queue and waiting times at collection counters, improve accuracy in billing and accounts receivable, and provide immediate proof of payments to citizens. One of AP’s major IT projects, the Computer-aided Administration of Registration Department (CARD) has introduced transparency in the system of property valuation; has reduced the back office work of clerical staff by scanning sale deed documents for storage rather than copying them in long hand; and has obviated the need for agents by simplifying the registration process. A standard layout has been introduced in 200 offices which have been computerised. Strong leadership provided by the commissioner who understood the difficulties faced in implementing a large project requiring extensive reengineering of a conventional system within a conservative and traditional government department, contributed significantly to the success. Later we discuss the need for “training” and “project management”, areas which were well tackled in this project. The case study is likely to exemplifies the kind of impact that can accrue to the department in terms of increased revenue collections, if service delivery is improved. Computerization of land records which has been undertaken in many districts is another example of applications in this category. Similarly, issuance of important documents to citizens can also be done through computerized systems.
Empowering citizens to access information and knowledge.
Access to information about markets is crucial for rural producers of all varieties of goods and services because these must be exported to other regions. Often middle men who bring consumers and producers together, are able to seek disproportionate rent because they have access to ruling prices in different markets. Use of ICT can provide up-to-date information on markets to producers, thus increasing their bargaining power. The recently launched Warana Wired Village Project covering 70 villages around the river Warana in Maharashtra being implemented by the National Informatics Centre is an example of this kind of application. The existing co-operative structure has been used in concert with state of the art infrastructure (notably high speed VSATs) to allow Internet access to existing co-operative societies. The project aims to provide agricultural, medical, and education information to villagers by establishing networked “facilitation booths” in the villages. It is too early to measure benefits from the project.
In spite of a plethora of developmental programs, citizens are often unaware of free and priced services institutions are expected to offer them. They are also not aware of the expenditure that different agencies are expected to incur in their village/region and therefore have no way of auditing the performance of development departments. Recently, in a backward region, illiterate villagers demanded information from senior government functionaries in the district regarding allocation of resources for local schemes. They agitated to receive Xerox copies of such allocations and forced the administration to share this information with the public. ICT can be used to deliver such information through kiosks located in rural areas, some experiments of which are described in this book.
Rural communities can also be helped through access to knowledge that will improve productivity in their work, health practices, and enable them to learn about their environment. A large number of innovations in farm practices, tool design, and use of indigenous medication do not
diffuse beyond local boundaries because of the isolation of rural communities. Much indigenous knowledge passed down from generation is also becoming extinct because of a lack of presentation efforts. ICT and Web technologies could make such information/knowledge visible to large cross sections of rural communities. An organized effort at diffusing such knowledge through ICT—the Honey Bee network—was presented at the IIMA workshop. The Honey Bee network creates a multimedia presentation on many rural innovations with photographs of innovators and the innovation and an audio presentation in the voice of the innovator. There is also a textual description disseminated through a multi-language newsletter. A multimedia database is being compiled to which access could be provided through far flung nodes. Such dissemination diffuses the innovations to wider areas and helps other innovators to come forward to make their innovations public. Issues of protection of intellect; property have still to be satisfactorily resolved. The project demonstrated how ICT can help empower knowledge rich but economically poor people by enabling grassroots innovators to overcome language, literacy and localism barriers. The project provided pointers to the kind of content that will need to be built up for information kiosks in rural areas to be perceived as useful.
Another way of empowering rural people is by mounting training programs to build skills that are in short supply can generate rural employment opportunities. Basic training in ICT can provide employment in electronic repair centres and information handling services. ICT can also be used to train field workers located in rural areas through innovative designs of distance learning programs. ICT needs to be further deployed to train physically and socially disadvantaged groups.
Case Study of IT Application in Milk Collection Societies
The successful use of IT in the co-operative sector in milk collection societies in rural India (Chakravarty, 1999) is described in some detail because there are many lessons that can be drawn from this experiment. Milk production has been important for India as milk is one of the main source of proteins and calcium for a largely vegetarian population. In recent years the milk production in India has increased substantially - because of the efforts of the co-operative movements initiated by the NDDB. Milk is collected by co-co-operative societies located in the hinterland. Some of the societies have their own chilling units. From others milk is transported daily by tankers to large milk processing plants. In these plants milk is converted into several products. The marketing of these products is often the responsibility of a separate co-operative organisation. The NDDB has played the role of providing consultancy and project management skills for the Dairy movement in India.
Efficient collection of milk and remunerative prices to the producers have been a prime reason for the growth of milk production in India. Both of these to some degree have been influenced by the innovative use of IT at the milk collection centre.
Milk is collected at the co-operative milk collection centres which are located within 5-10 kilometres of the villages supplying the milk. Number of milk farmers selling milk to these centres varies from 100 to 1000 and the daily collection varies from 1000 litres to 10,000 litres. Farmers bring their milk in a variety of containers and cans. Each farmer is given a plastic card as an identification. The farmer arrives at the counter and drops the card into a box which reads it electronically and transmits the identification number to the PC. Then the milk is emptied out in a steel trough kept over a weigh bridge. Instantly the weight of the milk is displayed to the farmers as well as communicated it to a PC. The trough is connected by a pipe to a can in which milk is transported to the dairy. In places where there is a chilling plant the trough is connected to a pump which sends the milk to the chiller. One operator is required to manage the filling of cans. Another operator sitting by the side of the
trough takes a 5 ml. sample of milk and holds it up to a tube of a fat testing machine. A hand lever in the machine has to be moved three times for the milk sample to be tested for its fat content. The whole operation takes a few seconds. The fat content is displayed to the farmer and is communicated to the PC.
The PC calculates the amount due to the farmer on the basis of a rate chart where the milk price varies depending on the fat content. The total value of the milk is printed out on a printer and given to the farmer who can collect the price from the adjoining window. The payment to the farmer is automatically rounded to the closest rupee and the balance change due to the farmer is stored so that it can be added to the farmers pay-out for the next day. In many centres the whole transaction takes 20 seconds.
The entire system costs around $ 2000 and is currently supplied by at least two private companies. Nearly 600 such systems are in operation in Kheda district in Gujarat. A few are also in operation in other centres where dairy is a big business.
Direct Benefits to the Farmers: The farmers are benefited because their payment is
now based on an accurate measurement of fat content and weight. In the earlier system the fat content was calculated a few hours after the milk was received because the process of measurement was cumbersome. This lead to malpractice and under-payment to the farmers. Also the payment to the farmers was made every ten days because of the inability of the collection centres to calculate the payment immediately. The IT system enables prompt, accurate and immediate payment. Besides the queues at the milk collection centres are short even though the number of people selling their milk are quite large. Considering the fact that the 600 milk collection centres receive milk from 60 thousand farmers daily, even a ten minutes saving for each farmer every day amounts to a total saving of 30 thousand man days in a month.
Benefits to the Co-operative Societies: For the society the use of IT produces many
other benefits. The number of people that need to be employed has come down. Daily accounts are available immediately at the milk collection centre. The computer is able to calculate the profit of the society on the basis of data received from the dairy regarding the payment made by the dairy to the milk society for the previous day’s collection. These accounts can be kept over months to maintain an up-to-date balance sheet and profit and loss account. The software can incorporate the revenue from daily milk sales to the local villagers and expenditure incurred by the society.
The automatic printing process of daily payment slips also provides a means of communicating with the farmers. For example, a data base is maintained in the computer for each farmer indicating the number of milch cattle and other details. If a cattle requires inoculation on a specific day (information provided by a veterinary service data base) this fact can be printed out on the farmer’s payment slip as a reminder.
A large amount of detailed data history on milk production by individual farmers is now available in the data base in the milk collection centre. Such data can be utilised for forecasting of milk collection, incorporating seasonally. Seasonal variations in fat content of milk can be analysed by farmers and by collection centres. Such analysis can be useful for the dairy, veterinary services, cattle feed companies and the milk collection societies. Thus the IT application has benefited all the concerned stakeholders.
Benefits of Public-Private Partnership: It is interesting how this application, initially
impetus to this activity was provided when two entrepreneurs started offering the integrated system to milk societies. They marketed their systems aggressively, sometimes offering to install the system free of cost initially until the customers were satisfied. They used these free installation to demonstrate to neighbouring societies the utility of the automated milk collection centres. Intensive training in operating this system was provided to two or three office bearers of the milk collection societies. Maintenance of the IT systems was provided by motorcycle borne service engineers who could quickly attend to the faults.
Systems have had to be devised to proof the PCs against virus. There is a temptation to use the PCs for playing games. Procedures for backing up data have been defined but are not always followed. The software was written in Fox-Pro and is entirely menu driven. The operators in the collection centres are quite comfortable with the basic functions of printing out the payment advice. Clearly, the IT application is successful as it provides positive gains for all the stakeholders involved in the process. This includes the private entrepreneurs who have now notched up a turnover of 10 million rupees around this product. Widespread use of the system in 700 locations is a triumph of public-private partnership.
The idea of automating the testing and payment system at the milk societies was conceived at the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) which as an apex organisation providing consultancy and financial services to the co-operative sector in India. The fat testing machine was developed in a state owned R&D electronics laboratory. The proof of concept was tested by NDDB and the first few implementations were done by them. It was however left to a few private enterprises to do the hard work to develop the market. If the use has to be taken to 30,000 milk collection societies all over India, many more private agencies have to be involved. There has to be a champion within the co-ordinating agency, who will facilitate the entry of other enterprises, tie up finances where they are required and bring in aid agencies if necessary to spread the application.
Using Appropriate Technology: Another learning from the case study is the process of
assessment of technology. In DCs, there is heavy reliance on importing IT products/solutions. As a result ideas developed in the West are forced upon a local context in DC's. Very often, even marginal efforts to adapt any elements in these products to the local culture are not made. For example, the early efforts in automating milk collection were directed at installing a fully automatic fat content measurement machine that was widely used in Europe. An Indian company manufactured the machine in India under license and sold it for $ 8000. The machine was found to be prohibitively expensive and did not work well in the dusty environment of rural India. Subsequently a semi-automatic machine was developed indigenously at 20% of the cost which has proved to be very popular.
Assessing the needs must come before buying ready-made technology solution available elsewhere. In India technology enthusiasts have tried to use `expert systems' in rural dispensaries and CAL in rural classrooms. These applications have not taken roots because the enthusiasts have not understood that the basic problem in health service delivery in rural areas is one of devoting a reasonable amount of time per patient for carrying out the diagnosis. Perhaps, electronic testing devices for blood test, etc. which are designed to work in local conditions could be far more useful. The example of the ubiquitous STD Public Call Office which has revolutionised telecommunications in rural and urban India shows what a simple, need-based technology can do (Pitroda, 1995).
Organisational mechanisms and adequate project management
It is important to proceed slowly in computerizing at the field level. The most difficult proposition in large scale computerization is the scaling up from successful pilot sites at a few field sites to a large number of sites spread over a wide geographic area. In the case of DISNIC, during scaling up the objectives were enhanced further to include networking of all districts. This converted the focus of the project from what should have been a managerial task of diffusing computer applications at the districts to a predominantly technological task of building an inexpensive computer network.
Most of the ICT applications being implemented now present the same dilemma. Wide area networking and communication infrastructure needs to be built before decision support systems or improvement in services to citizens can be implemented. Various organizational models are being tried out to manage these tasks. In Andhra Pradesh the two tasks are performed by separate organizations with a state level coordination mechanism.
Often the effort involved in managing a large project that is to be rolled out to several field units is underestimated. The skills available to manage such projects are in short supply. A variety of competencies have to be built in the teams handling implementation. These include: technology assessment, administrative process redesign, systems analysis and design, project management, and management of change. Frequent transfers of the senior officers in government also disrupt the execution of large projects.
Governments are able to get away with poor project management because there is no audit of the impact of the applications that have been developed. The media notices the inauguration of these technical programmes. When the time comes to reap the benefits from such applications, governments have already moved on to other new ideas. The whole purpose of the exercise is sometimes forgotten. The opportunity to fine tune a system so that the benefits get derived does not surface.
Sustained training
Information technology cannot be forced down the throats of unwilling administrators. These public officers need to be motivated to improve the effectiveness of rural development programmes. Once they are so motivated they will find the technology to be an invaluable tool. IT can support the planning and monitoring effort by making detailed analysis possible. It can create an openness in the administrative system by providing access to information to stakeholders. However, administrators need to be convinced about such benefits through first hand experience, demonstrations, and training. Since the purpose of field level computerisation is to improve management, it requires sustained training efforts and technical inputs. Training needs to be oriented towards use of information by workers, supervisors, and managers for strengthening planning and monitoring activities. Field-level officers generally lack training in the use of information. In fact, most field-level managers are seldom trained in management/administration. They have usually had technical jobs before becoming middle level supervisors.
Conclusions
Increasing the effectiveness of rural development programmes is a complex task. The administration has to be energized to face up to the challenge and implement development programmes with honesty and vigour. The rural poor need to be educated and organized to make demands on the administrative system. In all these areas information technology can play only a supportive role. In
design and implementation of applications, field officials must get a sense of involvement and sense of ownership
In discussing the likely impact of ICT on development a caveat is in order. Some significant successes in transforming of rural communities have had nothing to do with ICT. This movement has enlisted urban professional volunteers to give one or two days of their time to work amongst rural people. The movement focused on slow change through repeated contact with rural population focusing on self-help and awakening. Volunteers reach out to rural people asking them to join the movement. Participants are to follow a few basic practices which are essentially focused on self-help, cooperation amongst communities and contribution of a part of ones time to communities. It is not possible to sketch this in detail but literature is now available on this movement recording transformation of whole communities through this movement over a periods of 5 to 10 years. Men have been weaned away from alcoholism. Cleanliness has been brought in villages and productivity increase in agriculture have resulted. Significant increase in the level of well being have been felt in the basic transformation attitude that it is indeed possible to transform one’s life.
Clearly improved literacy, particularly of females, can have a lasting impact on rural poverty. However, another kind of education which focuses on self-help, understanding one’s own political rights, and more open access to information, can lead to transparencies in resource allocation and reduced corruption. This kind of education does not necessarily come from the traditional schooling system. It cannot be provided by an inefficient and corrupt bureaucracy. (NGOs movement such as Swadhyay can play a significant role.) A major stumbling block is the poor quality of governance and lack of participation by the poor in governance. The only way this can be improved is through a greater sharing of information and better communication amongst the concerned stakeholders.
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