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Technology Access Community Centres (TACCs)
Evaluation Mission Report United Nations Volunteers EGY/99/V01 June- July 2001
Vikas Nath KnowNet Initiative, www.knownet.org The views expressed in this report are those of the consultant and
not of any organisation of which he may be a part.
UNV entered into the project in July 1999 to provide support to the TACCs in Zagazig and Tenth of Ramadan City. The key rationale for UNV to get involved in the TACCs project was the availability of a ready-made platform in an area in which it wanted to intervene for some time and which provides an excellent opportunity to pilot innovative roles for the UNVs. The recent activities within UNV geared towards ICT namely NetAid and UNITeS, and the UN Millennium report reinstating the role of ICT in UNV operations provided an excellent basis for the involvement of UNV in TACCs. With the involvement of the UNV, the entire TACCs project got separated into two components - the UNDP component and the UNV component. The UNDP component largely centred around providing communities with access to the technologies and establishing the physical set-up and management structures, whereas the UNV component was to focus on building local capacity in the use of ICT and supporting empowerment of communities through access to increased knowledge. Separate staff (UNDP staff and UNV staff) and management systems were set up to operationalise these components. The managerial approach within UNV component of the TACCs project is three-tiered. There exists an upper, middle and operational management with independent and overlapping roles and authority. A significant finding was the largely consensual approach of upper and middle-level management in putting the UNV component of the TACCs project into practice in terms of fulfilment of baseline and process requirements. (see Section 3.3) The focus of top management was more on fulfilment of baseline requirements whereas that of the middle management level was towards fulfilment of process requirements. Due to the difference in physical distance that separated each managerial level from the field operations, problems relating to co-ordination were evident. Being a pilot project, the communication and consultation needs among all the managerial levels are usually higher as there is little precedence on the nature of decisions to be made and the right authority for making the decisions. The communication channels between the various partner agencies in TACCs are fluid and merge at the middle management level. At the top level there exists only a weak lateral linkage between UNV Bonn and UNDP-IT, New York in terms of periodic stocktaking of the project and issuing joint directives. This weak lateral linkage complemented by the small financial investment of UNV in the project implies that there is a considerable UNDP influence especially at the operational level. At the middle management level, the UNV team was not found to truly integrated with the UNDP Cairo system in their everyday functions. This makes a critical difference to the project in terms of integration of activities of UNDP and UNV. It implies that the concerns and achievements of the UNV component of TACC component are not easily recognised within the system and there is no formal platform for discussing strategic issues, raising joint concerns, and streamlining conflicting approaches. At the operational level, the Programme Manager (TACC) has a critical role to play in providing direction and a conducive environment for the functioning of the National United Nations Volunteers (NUNVs). Nevertheless, the TACC (Zagazig) witnessed a change in the Programme Manager and the position lay unoccupied for four months during the building up stages of the project. This impacted the continuity of the project as well as the motivational level of the volunteers. The communication channels between operational and middle management were found to be open. The volunteers report to the PM (TACC) for administrative purposes and interact with the PO (UNV) for programmatic directions. The links between PM (TACC), PO (UNV) and the NUNVs however need to be institutionalised to promote a common internal and external understanding of their roles and to ensure that they synergise with the external communication channels. The model pioneered by UNV for handling ICT projects through the use of National and International UNVs is exemplary. The involvement of local volunteers in all the activities of the project is transforming the NUNVs into information brokers who are acting as an interface between the local community and the outside world. This role of information brokering is little recognised in the overall project but is crucial as it ensures that the local community interacts with a human interface rather than with technology itself which may be difficult for people who are illiterate and are not sensitised to the use of technology. The role of UNV information brokers was found to be of immense importance in the agriculture, education and health sector. The international UNVs have a strategic role to play in augmenting centralised knowledge products of the UNV and using them for spread effect in different places/projects. For example, the recent transfer of learning about TACCs from Egypt to Jordan through the international UNVs speaks highly of the value of this hybrid model in replication and providing catalytic starts to other telecentres. The TACC project has an involvement of a high number of partners at all levels. This has both positive and negative implications for the UNV, as all the partnerships are not necessarily active and synergetic. Too many partners in the project also seem to have an impact on the ownership of the project. While some of the partners have a backburner role, the others play a very decisive role in the day-to-day management and future plans of the TACCs, especially with the growing recognition of its significance. As a part of its community outreach strategy, the UNV intervened in five thematic sectors- agriculture, civil society organisations (CSOs), education, health, and small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The interventions produced varied results. Under the agriculture intervention, the NUNVs provided substantial support to agriculture students and professors of local agricultural engineering college by sensitising them to the Internet and helping them explore information available on the Internet to enrich their local research activities. Links were made with the local agricultural university for transfer of information on several crops and to further the extension work being done by the UNV. Under the CSOs intervention, training on Internet connectivity, website designing and ICT-based knowledge networking are given to NGOs and voluntary organisations. The activity is directed towards empowering other CSOs in the area to become more effective in their operations and promoting their existing developmental functions through the use of ICT. This intervention has the potential of empowering and strengthening the existing civil society fabric and opening it up for interaction with the outside world. The UNV intervention in education was directed towards taking advantage
of innovative computer-based solutions for learning in both formal and
informal contexts. Some of the tasks undertaken were developing comprehensive
list of educational resources in Sharkeya, compiling a list of online
libraries and educational institutions, and increasing the dialogue
between educators and students on issues which concern them. The UNVs
also tried to promote distance learning initiatives in the area but
were unsuccessful due to Internet connectivity problems. Under the SME intervention, the key tasks undertaken were sensitisation of SMEs, collection of primary information, and creation of localised content on the internet to catalyse greater usage of internet among small and medium enterprises to market their products and conduct business dealings. A few SMEs have started to get responses to the products advertised by them on the Internet from different countries. The lack of business strategies and systems on how to deal with queries received on the Internet means that such responses have not translated into business dealings.
UNVs have developed over 1500 web pages in Arabic on several thematic issues and subjects: agriculture, CSO, health, education and local governmental information. Creation of these web pages is the start of the process of widening the availability of the locally relevant information. In terms of usage rate, these web pages are hardly accessed by the local community. There are several reasons behind this ranging from little community awareness to problems of accessing Internet, absence of convergent mechanisms and lack of threshold level of users for a particular kind of web-content. Efforts need to be made to strongly link the Internet with other communication channels to improve and make easy the delivery of locally relevant information. Further, faster ways of translating bulk web content from English to Arabic may be adopted through the use of transliteration and translation software The most crucial impact of involvement of UNVs has been a shift in positioning of the project from technology access community centre to a development centre. The change is fundamental as it transforms the generic approach of bringing development using information technology to synergising technology with existing developmental functions aimed at improving the quality of life. There are four distinct segments of the TACC that emerge with the involvement of the UNV. One is that of providing communities "access" to the Internet. The second is training communities in usage of the Internet. The third is "documenting contextual knowledge and making it available on the public domain". And the fourth is the directed role of synergising information and technology with the overall development of the community. The telecenters have transformed to training centres for civil society groups, the private sector, low-income groups and individuals. They function to familiarize people with information technology (IT) and using it for various development applications. Present and future applications encompass long-distance education, telemedicine, electronic commerce, and assistance to small-businesses, new mechanisms for popular participation, environmental management and women and youth empowerment.
There exists a marked difference in the user group of TACC and the private cyber centres. Two important classes of people that have wider representation in the TACC are women and the slow adopters. Slow adopters, as against early adopters, need time to get sensitised and experiment with the technology before starting to use it. Further, the TACC also caters to the population having a lower financial capacity to pay as they are cheaper compared to the other centres. The presence of women UNVs in the TACC team has made a significant difference in fostering usage of telecentres by the female community. Women often come from quite a distance to access the TACC and they find the environment within TACC and the support provided by the UNVs to be very helpful in performing their work. The key constraints for women in using the TACC that emerged were the distance of the TACC centre from their households and, more recently, the shift to user-charges for accessing the Internet. The UNV-TACCs component recognises that children are important agents to sensitise the adult community towards the use of ICT. Some of the community outreach activities, such as visits to schools and orphanages, is directed towards greater involvement of children. Children have also been the focus in some of the thematic interventions of UNVs in the area of education, agriculture and health. Nevertheless, the lack of sustained promotional efforts by UNVs implies that many children are still unaware about the existence of the TACC.
The TACCs project has led to sprouting of several private telecentres in the area. The scope of UNVs intervention has so far not expanded into actively integrating these emerging cyber centres to deliver a spectrum of developmental services or to use these centres for furthering its own objectives. The role of UNVs has been critical in strengthening the backward linkages
of ICT, which is a difficult aspect and is not readily undertaken by
the private sector. The forward linkages of ICT could largely be strengthened
through demonstrations up to a threshold after which the process perpetuates
on its own and finds increased participation of the private sector.
Further, the backward linkage services are more of a public goods nature
which are difficult to price and are largely process -oriented. The
absence of UNVs in the entire project would neglect the backward penetration
role of ICT and may therefore end up bypassing the marginalized. Impact on Local and Wider Governance The community outreach work of UNV is well recognised by the governor of Sharekya and he believes that the UNV-TACCs model needs to be replicated at a much larger scale throughout the Governorate by ensuring presence of computers in each of the villages. This reflects a significant success of the UNV in impacting the vision of the local government and in ensuring that the future replication of the telecentres would have community outreach as an important component. Breaking the largely technical mindset and approach relating to telecentres is certainly a measurable success of UNV both at the local and wider governance levels. Another important impact of UNV at wider governance levels could be explained in terms of qualitative versus quantitative expansion of telecentres. The earlier stand of the government/ Ministry of Information Technology was of providing one-year start-up grants for procuring hardware and software for setting up of telecentres. However, the government now wants to be more selective in grant-making and is looking for fostering social champions who could focus more on the extension approach of ICT rather than a simple commercial approach. In Dr. Sherif Hesham's (Ministry of Telecommunications) view, the UNV has heralded this ICT extension approach of the telecentres. The most significant change that could be attributed to the impact of the UNV is that the government has adopted the language spoken by the UNV when it comes to the utility and expansion models of the telecentres. The UNV approach however lacks an expressed strategy for impacting the government partners and creating synergy with similar governmental projects in which UNVs could play a significant role. UNV maintains a low intensity of linkage and communication with the various governmental partners of the project. Therefore, institutionalising of UNVs approach within several governmental agencies may not happen automatically. Looking from the conventional perspective of volunteerism - services rendered voluntarily, the involvement of UNVs in TACCs project is not fully voluntary as they provide their services at a partial cost. Adopting a human-resources requirement outlook, a broader picture of the voluntarism concept emerges. The field of ICT applications in development (in rural settings) is still a nascent one and the tasks involved are often those with little or no precedence. The involvement of UNVs has a distinct advantage as the element of voluntarism ingrained in the project staff makes them more suited to perform these tasks. The national-level volunteers are spirited to work for betterment of their local community and often engage in activities that go beyond their job description. For example, multi-tasking is common among the volunteers and they easily accept and adapt to the changing roles based on the project learnings. Involvement of a professional staff or a consultant will not give this extent of flexibility in operations. Further, the national volunteers due to their spirited nature are more easily accepted and trusted by the local community.
The aim of UNV to undertake ICT based community outreach is no easy task as it has two crucial factors working against it. One is the high level of illiteracy that drastically limits self-perpetuation of the technology. It means that high levels of UNV investments in terms of sustained extension efforts would be required to sensitise people towards the use of the technology. The second is the under-developed rural telecommunications sector, which hinders UNV in ensuring basic functioning of the telecentres for sectoral applications. It also makes the task of expanding UNV operations in rural areas difficult. The involvement of UNV in the TACCs project came at a very late stage when many stages of the project had already been initiated. This gave little space to UNV to define its role and specific functions. UNV had to fit itself into an available role rather than defining a niche role based on its comparative advantages in community outreach and volunteering experiences. The selection of volunteers left much to be desired in terms of developing an appropriate selection criteria and mechanism. An ideal UNV should have two main qualities: ability to effectively engage with the community and capability to function as a knowledge worker. The volunteers must be able to assimilate the project vision and independently innovate to achieve the project vision. The recruitment of volunteers was conducted in quite an ad-hoc manner and in the absence of an orientation programme, the volunteers were unaware of their roles and contributions to be made within the project. Lack of role clarity and expectations from the UNV were found to be of common concern among all the UNVs. The project being of a pilot nature, the absence of mid-project training programmes for the volunteers constrained their outputs and level of engagement with the community. Other problems identified during the evaluation were location of the TACC and spread out nature of villages in the region. Charging of user fee also wields a significant impact on the UNV component as there is a high elasticity between the diversity of TACC usage by different population segments and the cost of access. There exists a conflicting loop where UNVs do community outreach to bring in users who otherwise would not be aware, confident or motivated to use the TACC. Expecting user fee from such users leads to a dissonance. Because of the intangible nature of the work of UN volunteers, their role is little understood and hence little recognised. The late entry of UNV into the project further restricted the recognition it was able to build up within and outside the project. In future, the UNV may well have to clearly delineate its role right at the beginning of the project and create spaces for its own operations. The focus of UNV in such projects should be on making them socially sustainable through their acceptance and adoption within the society as a significant developmental intervention before making a part of them financially self-sustaining. The public goods nature of some of the services provided by the TACCs would be difficult to charge, and any attempt to do so, would significantly shift the project efforts and outputs to that segment of the population having the capacity to pay. The UNV segment of activities in the area of education, health, agriculture and CSOs should continue to be in the form of public services to complement state services in those sectors. UNDP has future plans for strengthening the UN Inter-Agency collaborations on telecentre projects on thematic roles. The experiences and competence of UNVs in the extension approach could be utilised by several agencies through deployment of UNVs in their projects. In such a case, it would be a good marketing strategy for UNVs to adopt a pro-active role and market its services in those areas in which it has core competence. The current approach followed by UNV to provide sectoral specialists within the TACCs project plays a crucial role in promoting applications of ICT for developmental functions. The approach however does not yield optimal benefits for UNV in terms of its independent expansion as a specialised force to fulfil a certain objective. Its positioning has been more in the domain of bringing value-addition to an existing project rather than as an emerging force to service an identified niche area. UNV needs to strategically analyse whether to serve in existing spaces of an ICT project or to aggressively market the role of its volunteers in bringing into practise certain ICT based developmental applications. UNV needs to shift from being an ICT force that focuses on individual or sectoral "ICT for development" outcomes to the one that initiates processes leading to ICT for development. Institutionalising several of its functions such as providing training to doctors, teachers and CSOs with State and other development agencies becomes of critical importance. This would bring a distinct shift in operations of UNV from a single force to a force with multiplier effect through the impact it would have on the functioning of the schools, hospitals and local government units. This would also lead to greater social sustainability of its developmental interventions. There is a need to make efforts to link up with the private cyber centres sprouting in the rural areas and empower them to deliver a small spectrum of developmental services or functions. Fostering such social entrepreneur models may well open up a new role for the UNVs and at the same time tremendously leverage the existing efforts of the UNV-TACCs centres in catalysing human development through the use of ICT. Concerted efforts also need to be made at the onset of the project for the involvement of the local media and keeping them involved all through-out the project to strengthen and complement the impact of each. There are several models relating to ICT for Development such as the broadcasting model, critical-flow model, comparative model, contextual model, email-networking model, and interactive model. The variables in these models are levels of technology, significance of information and target groups. Not all these models are applicable in rural communities with high levels of illiteracy, low-levels of interconnectivity and significant information-failure. In such cases, the UNV should limit its activities to establishing models that are not technology-intensive, that cater to basic information needs, and recognise and enrich local knowledge. UNV will have to keep reinventing its role with the changing macro-environment. It would need to draw a strategy to define the role of volunteers in the pro-active information domain where it is not the users who approach information but information of significance in the public domain will finds its way to the concerned user.
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