Narrowing The Digital Divide Notes On A Global Netcorps by Ian Smillie - October 1999

A Global Netcorps?

Two Options
There are strong arguments in favour of creating some sort of 'Global NetCorps' - to reduce overlap, confusion and wheel reinvention, to reduce the burden on potential recipients, to provide greater partnership and participation among all stakeholders, and to ensure that an important, emergent technology is made available in the most developmentally sound way possible. There are two general courses of action possible.

Option 1: 1000 Points of Light
One is a minimalist approach: to publicize the idea, and to share experiences and lessons by posting reports on the Internet, and encouraging others to undertake their own versions of the initiative. Because the need is great and the human resources are available, tailoring existing volunteer-sending organizations to the new challenge will not be difficult. NetCorps lookalikes will develop very quickly without much encouragement.

The 'thousand points of light' analogy, however - used by President George Bush ten years ago to describe the work of voluntary organizations - illustrates their weakness as well as their strength. They are likened to points of illumination in a world of darkness, but they can be small lights, flickering, isolated, unconnected to one another, vulnerable to the elements, fiercely jealous of their own identity and territory, and focusing as often on themselves as on those whom they seek to serve.

The potential for the genuine partnerships that a global NetCorps could create between North and South, as well as between countries and institutions in the South, could be squandered if the NetCorps idea is limited to a rush on the part of Northen agencies to get into the latest 'new thing'.

Option 2: A 'Virtual' Global NetCorps None of the existing ICT-related networks appear at present to have the mandate to manage more than parts of what might be included in a Global NetCorps. It is possible, however, that the various tasks envisaged could be stitched together in a virtual manner through already existing organizations or, if necessary, housed in a new one. A virtual network - either distributed or centrally-based - would address some of the opportunities for sharing information and creating common on-line services.

It is worth remembering, however, that as presently conceived, NetCorps is unlike existing Internet-based services. It is not mainly about networks and information. It is mainly about people and organizations, and how they provide or gain access to information and technology. In an exploding world of virtual information sites and development-related cyberbabble, NetCorps stands out as a tangible, physical enterprise - people getting on planes and going to difficult assignments to learn, to share, and to help with advice and with the knowledge that comes from experience as well as information. It may be that the idea of a Global NetCorps deserves and requires something more tangible than another website.

A Third Option: More than Just Another Website An alternative would be to create a membership body with a central secretariat which could handle both the virtual and the physical requirements of a global network to be based on more than keyboards and monitors. Such a secretariat could be located independently, or within a participating organization. The term 'central secretariat' will undoubtedly arouse fears of yet another centralized bureaucracy. The term is used here to describe a coordinating function that could be as ambitious or as limited as is useful to members. While some of it would inevitably be centred in one location, much of it could be shared out as described in Option 2, above.

Option 3 could include the following functions and services, inter alia:

Information The much-deprecated reinvention of wheels is endemic within the development community. Governments, multilateral agencies and NGOs alike are pathologically susceptible to fads, and they are notoriously reluctant to learn from one another. One of the biggest development failings is the failure to learn from failure. ICTs offer great potential and hope for development, but they are already absorbing huge amounts of seemingly uncritical attention and funding. The NetCorps concept is a simple idea, one that is bound to catch on even more quickly in the next two years than the past four. It is such a good idea that many are asking 'Why didn't someone think of it earlier?' Although similar, it is not the same as other types of personnel placement. Sending agencies and volunteers alike have the potential for creativity and impact, but because of the potential for costly failure, they also have a responsibility to think and act in the most developmentally professional way possible.

Information sharing on what works and what does not work will be important to making effective placements in the short and longer term. Shared monitoring and evaluation - rare in among development agencies - could reduce wheel reinvention and the repetition of failure. A well-edited website dedicated to sharing information on NetCorps initiatives could be very useful. It might also host a site where personnel on assignment overseas and their host institutions could contribute.

Coordination There are already many ICT-related initiatives with similar aims and objectives. Some offer interns while others offer a variety of on-line services. There are almost 100 ICT-related programs in Africa alone. The potential for confusion, overlap and waste in a complex and expensive field is becoming enormous. As NetCorps-type operations develop independently of one another, there is bound be further duplication and overlap. 'Coordination', a much overworked word and a much-underdeveloped way of working, has a great deal to offer the potential beneficiaries of ICT:

the development of common standards for assessing the technical capabilities of applicants for positions overseas;

the creation of, and/or linkages to, on-line news services with well edited news and views relating to ICTs and development, as well as practical issues relating to NetCorps placements;

the creation of a virtual 24 hour backstopping and troubleshooting service for volunteers in the field and for registered partner organizations;

the creation of specialized Southern country-based websites that can assist organizations, firms and government departments to understand technological options, problems and potential within the context of their own locale (e.g. a 'Tanzania NetCorps site' maintained by and for Tanzanians on Tanzanian-specific ICT issues.) This would be of use to both providers and potential recipients of ICT support in making requests and objectives as realistic as possible.

Online Recruitment
Various mechanisms already exist for the online recruitment of interns and volunteers (e.g. OneWorld Volunteers and the National Graduate Register, described above). These undoubtedly vary in approach and quality. From the point of view of a requesting organization, there are several drawbacks to the current NetCorps Canada International approach. First, a request must fit within the aims and objectives of the volunteer-sending organization that is approached. Requests may be made to several agencies in the hope that one may accept it. Having agreed to recruit for a position, however, does not mean that an agency can or will fill the position. A central, on-line clearing house for requests would avoid some of these problems, giving the requesting agency a much better chance of having its position filled.*

Obvious but not insurmountable problems would inevitably arise. An excellent candidate from Sweden, say, might be available for a position, but perhaps none of the participating sending agencies would have a mandate to hire Swedes. This argues for a central fund of some sort to cater for high priority requests that cannot be supported from another source. Requests could be cleared centrally in support of the requesting organizations, rather than tailor-made to the needs of the senders. Although this is a reversal of the way aid agencies normally work, it could give greater meaning to the concept of participation and partnership.

South-South Placements Current NetCorps initiatives focus mainly on the provision of service and support from industrialized countries to the South. There is, however, a rapidly growing cadre of young people in most countries of the South with excellent knowledge and expertise in ICTs. The placement of a Ghanaian volunteer in Sierra Leone would be less expensive and might be far more appropriate in some cases than the placement of a European or North American. Building relationships and technical collaboration between developing countries is as important in this field as building North-South relationships.

Of the current members in the Canadian coalition, none has a South-South mandate. NetCorps Americas has a South-South mandate in one region. UNV, connected to NetCorps through WUSC, also has such a mandate, but its participation in the Canadian initiative restricts it to the placement of Canadians in the South. There is nothing to prevent UNV from adding South-South NetCorps-type placements to its regular programming, and perhaps this will happen. It would be constructive, however, if the option of broader participation of other agencies in South-South placements could be considered.

It might also be useful to think about the ICT needs and interests of developing countries more broadly. There is no reason why India or Brazil or any other country might not wish to start a NetCorps of its own for precisely the same objectives as those expressed in the Canadian scheme - to respond to young people's need for work experience and career development, to enhance national ICT capacities; to help promote a connected India (or Brazil or Thailand or Nigeria) to the world.' This could be done bilaterally or through a more coordinated 'global NetCorps', but it could not be done within the current Canadian coalition or by UNV.

South-North Placements In some ways, the technology gap is almost as wide within industrialized countries as it is between the North and the South, hence the dozens of ICT-related organizations working with NGOs, rural and native communities and citizens' associations in Europe and North America. Canada World Youth is predicated on youth exchange, and has shown that useful and effective ICT-related programs can be developed in Canada for young people from the South as well as vice versa.

Looking at the commercial aspect, it is likely that a German company interested in showcasing its technology in, say, Thailand, would gain far more mileage by hosting five interns from Thailand in Germany than they would by supporting five German volunteers in Thailand. A Global NetCorps would probably be able to coordinate and facilitate such a service better than national efforts.

A Role for the Private Sector Interest has been expressed by the Canadian private sector in NetCorps Canada International. Given the short experience and the program's limited public exposure so far, it is difficult to determine either the scope or the potential depth of private sector interest in the future. One Industry Canada objective is to profile Canadian leadership in development-related ICTs and to 'promote a connected Canada to the world'. Volunteers might very well promote Canadian goods and services while abroad, and returned volunteers with good cross-cultural skills and experience would obviously be an asset to Canadian firms working internationally. For the average Canadian business, however, these connections may be too indirect to warrant more than a limited 'donation' of cash or equipment.

There are other ways of looking at it, however. Many companies investing in today's Internet protocol market see the need for a dramatically different sort of workforce in the next few years. They will be looking for young people with hands-on experience in difficult, real-time, nuts-and-bolts situations. If they see their customer base changing, they will undoubtedly also be looking for workers with cross-cultural skills and perspective, and with experiences of other countries. The biggest current problem for these companies (and for NetCorps) is the high competition for 'hot young talent' and widespread corporate reluctance to defer hiring any longer than is necessary.

If there is serious private sector interest in fostering and hiring talented individuals with hands-on experience and good cross-cultural experience, one possibility for greater corporate involvement might be to make internships available to individuals that a firm is in the process of hiring. A sponsored NetCorps internship could be made a pre-condition by a participating firm to permanent hiring. The cost to the company would not be great and the longer-term benefits would be obvious. Care would have to be taken to ensure that potential candidates meet the personal and professional criteria of the sending agency, and that the availability of funding not influence overall selection criteria.

A second possibility might be to offer NetCorps internship to people already working in firms that are interested in giving employees practical, hands-on international experience. Firms participating in such initiatives might also be prepared to offer some of the technical backstopping described above. It might be useful to develop a pilot project of this sort with one or two sending agencies and a small number of interested companies to test the idea.*

In expanding such ideas, note should be taken of the tensions that exist around private sector involvement in developing countries. Many NGOs, including NGOs that might participate in, or benefit from a Global NetCorps, are likely to be ambivalent about private sector involvement. Whether or not this ambivalence is justified, it will be important to ensure that participation in NetCorps is driven by development considerations rather than by donors, the volunteer supply side or private sector interests.

Connecting More Stakeholders Most of the discussion about NetCorps and about volunteer-sending more generally is from the viewpoint of the sending agencies. It is about how the senders might become better connected, more efficient, more effective. Virtually all of the web-based networks and ICT-related initiatives for development have been developed from the point of view of the provider, the donor, those with current access to the technology.

Where NetCorps is concerned, some of the discussion has changed key slightly in that it is now possible (although there is not yet a widespread mechanism) for interns and volunteers to communicate easily with each other, independently of their sponsoring agency. This might offer an opportunity for better insights into attitudes, issues and problems, and would - if broadly established - inevitably lead to a more participatory type of planning and management.

NetCorps also offers a rare opportunity for comment and input from host organizations, which could lead to greater transparency, better monitoring and evaluation and a considerably more participatory approach to planning and management. While there is nothing in this idea that requires a global NetCorps mechanism, a single shared information and feedback system would make more sense than ten or twenty, and would considerably reduce the burden on Southern organizations.

Architectural Issues
Questions arise about the architecture of a Global NetCorps and whether there are already networks or organizations with similar mandates and potential.

Existing Networks and On-Line Volunteering There is a fast-growing and bewildering array of 'knowledge networks' for development, aimed at linking and brokering research, policy, training, and 'knowledge'*. All aim at better coordination, better collaboration, better learning among a variety of constituents. Bellanet, housed within IDRC, promotes information sharing and collaboration among bilateral and multilateral development agencies. The Netherlands-based International Institute for Communications and Development assists 'key players in developing countries to obtain access to ICT markets'. The Global Development Network aims to 'support and link research and policy institutes involved in the field of development'.

The recently launched NetAid Foundation is a development information network housed within UNDP and underwritten in large part by Cisco Systems. NetAid aims to serve 'as a global exchange point to link people to successful agents and agencies of change... NetAid works to:

facilitate community building, direct communications and coordination among the millions of people dedicated to these aims;

act as a one-stop resource for people interested in making a commitment to change;

build new on-line tools to promote exchange of ideas and success stories;

help our developing country partners get access to an learn to utilize new technologies;

issue periodic calls to action on items or urgency and focus attention on what works.'

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has a strong development component and coordinates various ICT-related networks.

Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA) is a 40-year old American volunteer-based inquiry service that responds to requests for technical information from developing countries. In the 1980s it became involved in demonstrating and installing 'packet radio' technologies in several countries - protocols permitting the communication of two or more computers with each other through a network of two-way radios. More recently it has promoted development communication through low orbit satellite technology.

Perhaps the most comprehensive network is the Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP), whose secretariat is based at the World Bank. The 56-member GKP includes governments (e.g. Canada, UK, US, Finland, Malaysia); bilateral and multilateral development agencies (e.g. Sida, UNICEF, UNDP, World Bank); ICT-related companies and parastatals (Cisco Systems, Nortel, Sun Microsystems, CBC); and NGOs (e.g. Aga Khan Development Network, Third World Network). Several of the networks and organizations mentioned in this report are also members (e.g. Bellanet, OneWorld Online, Association for Progressive Communications).

The GKP grew out of the 'Global Knowledge 97' conference in Toronto, and is based on the premise that:

access to, and effective use of, knowledge and information are increasingly important factors in sustainable economic and social development for individuals, communities and nations;

the information revolution can be a positive force for empowering the world's poor;

effective action to ensure the inclusion of the poorest individuals, communities and nations in the global information economy requires increased partnership and mutual learning among public, private and not-for-profit organizations.

To this end the GKP has held conferences and workshops and has shared information among its members and more widely on its areas of interest. Its second global knowledge conference - 'GKII' - will be held in Kuala Lumpur in March 2000 on the themes of access, empowerment and governance. ICTs are a leitmotif for each theme.

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