Workshop on ICT Strategies for Islands and Small States
(Malta, 17-19 March)

Session One : The Evolving Scenario

Prof Bernard Woods (Consultant) focused in his presentation on new approaches and funding mechanisms which can make ICT accessible and affordable to poor people and small businesses and communities and offer innovative solutions for drawing private sector funds and resources to meet these needs. In small islands and states, it is easier to bring key decision-makers together because of the physical concentration of people. Commonwealth organizations are also in a better position than UN agencies which are restricted by their mandates, to operate outside government structures and traditional approaches (boxes), and can mobilize Commonwealth country experience and expertise in new programmes in this field.

Governments have an important role to play in funding social uses of the new utilities and thus ensuring that the private sector will come in and in ensuring quality and equity. This involves the development of innovative public-private sector partnerships. It is important that we adopt new approaches and abandon the narrow thinking restricted to traditional sectors (boxes) and develop new policy frameworks. This involves a conceptual rather than a technical advance and offers a new human-centred approach to ICT.

This must involve a multi-purpose /multi-user approach to the technology instead of the independent and unsustainable sectoral approaches to-date. The capability of the technology to identify users individually and to meter use of digital material provides a basis for making all uses of the technology revenue generating. Differential charging of use by business, governments, advertising and entertainment (or for the tourist industry) can subsidize use by the poor. An emphasis on decentralized processing and storage of locally relevant software, and payment for use of both hardware and software, permits a new form of utility (a Community Digital Utility (CDU)) through which access to that software, to information sources and to the Internet become possible for everyone. Governments, aid agencies, Foundations and others, plus re-allocated revenue, can fund usage by the poor for specific purposes and thus, effectively, make them a market for ICT services, through widespread access to the technology’s seven major fields : learning, diagnosis, management and government, physical planning, finance, entertainment and communication. Through the technology, we can approach and fund use of the technology in all these fields - in contrast to the fragmented and limited approaches in all of them by each sector independently. A business, rather than welfare, approach to uses of the technology for social purposes introduces new solutions and new market opportunities for IT and related industries and the private financial community.

Prof Briguglio (Director, Institute for Islands and Small States) gave an overview of the activities of the group of islands and small states (SIDS) which constitute an important pressure group within the UN, particularly on environmental matters. This year, the group will be focusing more on trade-related issues and ICT will have an important role to play in this context, by allowing them to pool their diplomatic efforts, through electronic networking. This will facilitate their communications with each other and their home capitals, allowing a faster response time to key issues, affecting their trade and economic security, under discussion within WTO . SIDS have the advantage of greater flexibility in adapting to change. In order to improve their competitiveness, SIDS need information and ICT to find niche markets. They also depend on regional cooperation which requires fast communications based on IT. SIDS are, in general, rapidly increasing their Internet connections. SIDS are very much exposed to the process of globalisation currently underway because of their very open economies, but they have not reacted passively, voicing their concerns in many fora. that they do not want to be marginalised. ICT have a major role to play in this respect and most SIDS have a better record comparatively than larger states in terms of investing in ICT. It is important to promote complementarity between small islands, whereby the weakness of one state is offset by the strength of the other. Comparative advantage does not necessarily have to be a natural asset but may be developed, as in the case of tourism in Malta.

Prof Margaret Grieco (University of North London) highlighted the fact that with new technology, all social relations are undergoing change. She focused on specific aspects of ICT, including :

ICT can connect small states, small units and small islands into a substantial political and market force for affordable E-commerce technical development.

ICT can enable the direct participation of the electorate in strategy formulation and policy feed-back

ICT can deliver public services at lower costs than conventional arrangements

ICT can enable the internal exchange of service within communities thus lowering public service costs.

Italy has developed useful community net packages which can be utilized with benefit by small islands, small states and small governmental units.

Other aspects include :

Distance learning which ensures that all actors are participants in the development of the knowledge base. It facilitates interaction by non-experts.

Electronic adjacency - it is possible to speak just as easily to remote parts of the world as one’s neighbour

Remoteness is as related to depressed areas with a low income, as it is to geographical separation, e.g. Bormla in Malta and these areas constitute islands hemmed in by various barriers.

The asynchronous aspect of ICT allows the bypassing of gate-keepers and faster and improved decision-taking.

Mass democracy - ICT allow greater public transparency in the use of resources.

Intelligent community technologies - every node must be its own hub, by collecting the information it needs and the resources it can capture. Malta could develop such community-oriented information on the Internet to attract tourism and also to help the Maltese to make the most of the tourists. Ghana e.g. is selling goods, including its craft goods, electronically. Canada was able to develop these technologies effectively, because its sparsely populated areas are poorly connected and therefore ICT provided a good system of communications to service community needs. This entailed the removal of brokerage and the payment of as direct communications between citizens were made available. This is a good example of the popular use of IT by communities.

Development agencies should put less effort into delivery of expertise as in identifying community and user needs. Women, e.g. are never explicitly targetted for determining their needs. Most development projects are regarded as failures because the users have not been consulted. It is important that ICT are used to help people to connect with each other and to help each other. The provision of cyber-services will be very important in view of governments’ restricted budgets, as they reduce costs, e.g. the electronic tagging of prisoners.. Africa is very likely to emerge as a major power in this sector, particularly through the use of solar power. ICT provide different types of opportunities for the poor, e.g. oculacy, allows those who are illiterate to read through a technology based on visual images and icons. The Cybertracker in the Kalahari, who is linked via satellite or solar power, can digitally capture different types of animal species, for different applications, tourism, environment, disease prevention. The amount of off-the-shelf technology is sufficient, it is its application which needs to be developed.

The World Bank should carry out a needs assessment of target groups to identify incentives. The client-centred approach should be replaced by a client-centric approach which targets specific clients and applies new techniques to social development. It is important to develop protocols to measure which local groups have been consulted in setting up a specific project. Development agencies need to set up interactive sites which allow them to obtain feedback from locals regarding the projects developed. Such interactive sites could be accessed through telecentres thus ensuring that all local voices are heard on whether projects have been successful or not. This allows development agencies the possibility of re-examining their assumptions before proceeding.

It is important that in developing education, the government also provides the right jobs and that teleworking opportunities are created together with tele-education, to avoid brain drain.

Telecentres and the services they offer, should be developed on the basis of a needs analysis and a bottom-up approach. It is important that they are subject to a market-driven approach which is dominated by private interests and a top-down approach where demands take precedence over needs. It is important to distinguish between two different groups, one that is needs-oriented and community-focused and the other which is focused on demands and strategies and has control over the funding. These different interests can be harmonized through the setting up of public-private sector partnerships, where users and providers come together, otherwise the approach is not sustainable.

There are a number of fundamental facts about the deployment of ICT :

The deployment of ICT should be user-driven -a fundamental problem with ICT is that its deployment does not take account of the needs of those using it. There are national peculiarities which need to be taken into account. Italy, e.g. has developed intelligent community-oriented systems related to transport and the aged.

Intelligent technologies allow informed debates and scenarios and a way round the gate-keeping to avoid corruption. Anti-corruption measures can be built into the technology.