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

Session 4 : Governance

Ms Jacqueline Dubow (World Bank infoDev Programme) provided an overview of the World Bank’s infoDev Programme.

The Information for Development Programme (infoDev) began in September 1995 with the objective of addressing the obstacles facing developing countries in an increasingly information-driven world economy. A global program managed by the World Bank, infoDev provides grants to a wide spectrum of organizations - supporting efforts that use technology to improve education and health; reduce poverty and mitigate the exclusion of low-income countries and social groups from the benefits of information and expertise; promote the protection of natural resources; help create market-friendly environments; and increase the efficiency; accountability and transparency of governments.

The infoDev program focuses on four ways to achieve these goals :

Consensus-building and awareness-raising activities

Telecommunications reform

Information infrastructure strategies

Pilot or demonstration projects

infoDev Portfolio

The infoDev portfolio represents a broad mix of subject areas and approaches consistent with the evolutionary nature of ICT development, particularly in developing countries. infoDev launched or had continuing endeavours in all of its major objective areas during the year. These included the following areas :

- Improving Education and Health

- Reducing poverty and exclusion of low-income countries or social groups

- Promoting protection of the environment and natural resources

- Increasing the efficiency accountability and transparency of governments

Work Program

Although the work program covers a wide range of applications, this versatile mix of projects represents a concerned attempt at using ICT to improve the life and well-being of citizens of the developing world. The span of the work program recognizes that no single solution can achieve this goal, and no single bottleneck prevents achieving it. Rather, the program implicitly acknowledges that progress must be made through the innovative applications of ICT in developing countries across four main categories. These are the development of the information infrastructure. ICT policy reform, stronger applications of ICT to the problem of developing world and improvement in the human resource capacity for ICT.

Conference Scholarship Fund (iCSF)

The second round of the iCSF was dedicated to conferences with a specific focus on international communications accounting rates reform. This initiative has been designed to foster consensus building in this critical area in close cooperation with the efforts being carried out by the International Telecommunications Union. Scholarships were awarded to allow participation in these fora.

Mr David Spiteri Gingell (Central Information Management Unit, Office of the Prime Minister) provided an overview of the development of IT management in Malta. He explained that Malta started late in information management. In 1986, the new government brought with it a vision to drive Malta into the European Union. Malta embarked on a public service programme based on institution-building and the use of information management to engender change. To promote this process, the Management Systems Unit (MSU) was set up as a limited liability company. An Information Systems Strategic Plan was drawn up in 1990 by MSU’s Information Systems Division which introduced the concept of change management with IT. In 1996, the new Labour Government internalized MSU’s change management division into the government structure and the technology element of MSU was left as a limited liability company. A Central Information Management Unit was recently set up within the Office of the Prime Minister as of 1 March 1999.

The Information Strategic Plan lead to the introduction of over 4,000 PC’s in the public sector which with an estimated 12,000 knowledge workers, means an average of 3 workers per PC. PC’s were also introduced in schools and information management was brought into the curriculum. The importance of shared information lead to the setting up of a common database for public domain data which has currently 700 users in 30 departments connected to it. A government shared network infrastructure, the MAGNET, has also been set up, offering a profusion of applications related to health, the police, tax, GIS, works planning system and local applications. The development of IT in the public service has been purely technology-driven and this has resulted in Malta having the IT tools, but not the know-how to manage these tools effectively. This has lead to an under-utilized culture of information technology and not information management. In instances processes were automated and not engineered. The focus of the whole public service initiative was on backroom process and not front-end service delivery. Other problems are related to the absence of legislative and regulatory frameworks, the duplication of manual and automation processes, and the low level of datasharing. CIMU will be focusing on information-sharing, developing the standards and regulatory framework, value for money audit returns on those investments and consolidating and maximizing existing information systems. There has to be an improved information delivery service to the community. The MAGNET is to be developed as the single super information highway for the public sector and there are also plans to commercialize the MAGNET and link it to cable modem transmission. IT accessibility to the public is to be provided through local councils and libraries. The key priorities include the introduction of the Electronic Signatures Act, Smart Cards; electronic commerce and trading, quality service charter initiative and the establishment of sectoral networks.

The lessons to be learnt from the Malta experience are that technology is not important, it is the people that are important. The strategy is important because it provides the map which leads you forward. The map must be holistic, covering all aspects, including human resources, informatics etc. Secondly, it is important to retain ownership and control of project management, as outsourcing project management leads to major difficulties in steering the project in the right direction. Thus it is important to develop national competencies in information analysis and project management. Thirdly, it is important to communicate with the individual departments at every stage of the change management process, to ensure their support. The Malta strategy provides a very good model for small islands and UNESCO will be including it in their study, to produce general guidelines for formulating national ICT policy.

Dr Cynthia Alexander (Acadia University) focused on the aboriginal people of Canada as islands. She raised some fundamental questions on how this technology can be used by marginalised societies, if indeed they are in a position to use it. IT constitutes a new power resource. She highlighted the fact that there’s more to defining efficiency in IT management in the public sector, than purely in terms of administration, there is also efficiency of service and policy. In terms of service, efficiency relates to the effective use of ICT to enhance the delivery of public goods and services. In terms of policy, efficiency is related to the extent that the public sector is accountable to the citizenry.. This raises another key issue : Who are the stakeholders in the design and efficiency of ICT policy ? It is important to make participatory democracy a really meaningful term and not just another buzzword.. This presents a major challenge as populism is leading to multiple and conflicting demands on the public sector. Government has to set political priorities and democratic principles as well as developing the vision of what is it that it’s trying to achieve.

The challenge also lies in education and developing new ways of interactive learning. Acadia University entered into partnership with IBM to lease the technology and make it available to its students across the whole range of disciplines. In the traditional classroom, the teacher is in control as he/she determines the content and the medium of what is being taught and therefore the level of learning. ICT change this as they allow a rethinking of the tools that we think with. At Acadia University, the innovative concept of creating lateral maps to explain complex concepts and how they interrelate, has been developed. The idea is to use this concept and this innovative method of learning to animate students, to engage them in what they are learning. Teaching collaborative learning, like teaching ethics, is a major challenge

Dr Alexander stressed that it is important to understand that development gaps exist not just in developing countries but also within developed countries. In Canada and the US, there is a natural predisposition to make decisions fast and this has its consequences. Of the marginalised groups in Canada, parallels may be drawn between the situation of the aborigines and women. In Canada as in other countries, one notes the exclusion of women from the computer sciences, Those designing the software are predominantly white males. Recent research was indicating that when cultures gained alphabecy, they became patriarchal. A key question is to what extent would self-determination affect their understanding. Aborigines and women are similar because both groups use the right brain and a result they have both been mis-represented in the media and misunderstood and undervalued by society. It is important to consider how this situation may be reversed through the use of new media. Key initiatives have already been launched in Canada in this respect to promote the situation of aborigines, including Aboriginal Business Canada which aims at supporting the development of indigenous aboriginal products. Canada On-line is aimed at promoting a better informed citizenry for a stronger community and a more competitive citizenry for a better economy. Initial results of these initiatives suggest that the strategies may be working as aboriginal youth are entering secondary schools at a higher rate. A Youth Employment Strategy was also set up whereby young people were to digitize important examples of their culture.

Mr David Fullman (Norwich City Council) gave an overview of the project which had been set up in Norwich to promote community power to extend democracy and decision-making. It was realized that governance was becoming remote from the community and the emphasis was on geographic communities. There was also a need to re-organize the way that the Local Council worked, in terms of how it processed information and delivered services. A feasibility study was set up and the different communities were involved in the study, the aim being to help them understand their place in the overall structure and to allow them to present a common face to the City Council if they wished. The project attracted 9.25 million pounds. The Project will be making information available on the Internet via information kiosks and one-stop shops to be set up throughout the city. A semi-independent institute on technology and European affairs is also to be set up to implement the project.

A number of issues were raised in the discussion, in particular a key concern with the intellectual property environment and indigenous knowledge and how the current IPR framework has to be adapted to the specific protection needs of indigenous knowledge. It is also important to pay attention to an even more crucial issue, namely the efforts underway to change the Internet from a free participating network and the introduction of charges for using the Internet. Just as the use of the Internet is being promulgated among communities, there are serious indications that these opportunities will be made inaccessible to those who cannot afford them. There needs to be strong advocacy to avoid this happening.

It was proposed that a study into ways of improving the use of E-commerce by micro-businesses in small islands should be carried out to identify best practice. Innovative ways of promoting small islands and states on the Internet, including specialized products like repeat tourism, could be explored.