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The Promise of Technology and Power of Partnerships.. Kennedy Edwine Onyango, Community Initiatives and Social Support Organization (CISSO) Abstract
"The Promise of Technology and Power of Partnerships.."
Presented by; Mr. Kennedy Edwine Onyango Director-CISSO P.O. Box 337 Mbita, Kenya. E-mail: cisso@africamail.com
During the: The Fourth Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning (PCF4)
Technology is largely an enabler - but it's probably one of the few phases of technology where users directly and largely appear to determine the direction of technology. So whether it's connecting or others, or setting levels of increased privacy - technology enables what we want (or don't want) in our offline lives. Similarly - the notion of circles of trust. Or establishing organic relationships. That said - this is the first time we've gotten on this level of connectedness. We'll just have to wait and watch! This is the dawn of the connections power in human civilization. We are living, you and I, in the first seconds of a society reshaped by empowered individuals connected by digital networks, of lives shaped by unprecedented volumes of information and shifting notions of knowledge and trust. Institutions like media and governments are bending under the weight of change, of social and economic disruptions to the way people acquire and apply knowledge. New institutions and conventions are taking shape. Partnerships are springing up everywhere. But we are a decade into the visual Web. Digital knowledge sharing is NOT new, is NOT unexplored terrain in the new communications frontier. Perhaps we are in the Morse Code stage or the silent film era (one camera, no lights); pioneers have already experimented with Flash, with different combinations and permutations of interactivity, with components that hint at a richer, more satisfactory digital future. Forms and techniques of enhancing partnerships have historically taken time to evolve from the first experiments to stylistic and production conventions, and great artists have long sought to challenge such conventions. Even now, Hollywood production conventions are crumbling as digital editing and rendering create new processes and artistic possibilities for video-based media. Meanwhile, digital games have eclipsed movies as the bellwether of youth culture and experience. It's Connectedness, Not Technology, That's Transforming Society; Is the northern hemisphere more connected then the southern hemisphere? Is the so-called developed world more connected than the developing worlds?" Our understanding of connectedness, at least in this instance, is about technology saturation - in other words, how many people have Internet access. This is an important issue, but, I think, a too-narrow view of what connectedness means. I am everyday amazed by how I can surf the 'Net, come across an item of interest, and, with little difficulty, connect with the person responsible for it, no matter where that person is in the world. How many times have I sent out emails to people in the farthest reaches of the globe who have never heard of me but who respond within a few days? This sense of being one email away from 95 percent of the people around the world with Internet access (the other 5 percent being heads-of-state, celebrities or people who are too self-important to acknowledge me), of being able to communicate with any individual with an email account, of being able to reach out to many people separated by millions of miles with one email is, to me, connectedness. It is this is the kind of connectedness that is transforming media, politics, advocacy... everything. More concretely, by practicing the following steps, organisations working in ICT-enabled development can perfect and enhance their contributions to sustainable development.
Ownership A critical issue in the sustainability of ICT-enabled development activities is the notion of ownership. Local ownership means that a local development actor or actors takes responsibility for the conceptualisation, formulation and implementation of an activity, or parts of it. It implies that the vision, goals and objectives of the activity as well as its results and achievements (or failures) are fully internalised by the actor(s) concerned. It is not just the ICT component that needs to be owned. The wider development activity should also be owned by and respond to the needs of its other stakeholders. It is not enough that an ICT activity is owned by an ICT manager or specialist. It must also be owned by the organisation or initiative in which it is based. Demand Responsiveness A key element of ownership is `demand responsiveness.' This basically refers to the extent that the activity directly responds to the needs of various stakeholders and beneficiaries, and provides opportunities for these groups to themselves determine the priorities to be followed and the actions to be implemented. Greater demand responsiveness of an activity is likely to lead to greater ownership. Therefore, determining `whose' demands need to be addressed is critical for the sustainability of any activity. There are many, sometimes conflicting parties involved (donors, providers, organisations, NGOs, beneficiaries). Open and accessible processes and mechanisms to assess, respond to and update demands are critical to this process. Demand is inherently tied to socio-cultural and political processes and is therefore a dynamic process. Flexibility in programme design and execution is required to ensure its sustainability. Demands change, as expectations and awareness increase. There is a strong relationship between local socio-cultural, political and economic processes and the way in which a development activity evolves. Only by understanding these dynamics do we understand what allows a project to be(come) successful and sustainable. Mobilising Stakeholders Ownership can be enhanced by ensuring the active involvement of public, private and not-for-profit actors in the identification, formulation and implementation of activities. This stimulates awareness and acceptance of an activity and helps to provide a firm foundation within a community. A donor attempt to create a network is a frustrating undertaking when the purpose is not sufficiently demand-driven. Therefore if the need for a formal network is identified, contributing to what is already available, if the right players are involved, may be more successful and efficient, than building something new.
Multi-stakeholder participation often catalyses the distribution of information, resources and partnerships. Role identification, clear definition and communication of the project vision prior to kick-off facilitates stakeholders' ability to relate to the project at hand, and can facilitate mobilisation of the participants for the goal to be achieved. Local actors should lead such communication roles to ensure that the activity is being carried by the right actors. Thus, while community access centres may require national support, community ownership ensures that the individual centres are effective. Shared Ownership Different types of projects require different types of ownership, and as the ownership of a project or activity is embedded in the social context and is dynamic, the type of ownership assumed by each partner during different stages of the project needs to be re-defined accordingly. To the financier (the budget owner), we need to also acknowledge the important roles of committed content owners, project owners (intellectual property), programme owners (a vision or concept of a project), etc. In other words, ownership is often decentralised.
IN a pilot phase therefore, different groups of owners should be involved in defining roles. In this process, one should distinguish between owners and sponsors (sometimes also referred to as stakeholders - the local partner, and stockholders - the development agency). Generating ownership and awareness is a process that takes time and requires significant effort by the project owners and stakeholders. The various actors should be prepared to invest time on the issues at hand. For example, local politics can influence the outcome and the running of development activities. Both official and unofficial stakeholders may therefore need to take ownership. In networking, members need to feel ownership, otherwise there is little chance for it to become sustainable. Scalability Scaling or replicating suggests that an idea is ready for rollout and therefore that it can be sustained on a larger scale. The shift from a pilot project - which can generally be much more easily controlled - to a large- or full-scale programme affect ownership in various degrees: Up front awareness raising and political buy in during a piloting process can help in successfully scaling up an activity in a sustainable way; competition among different actors, power issues within an activity, or redefining the project to please a donor can have negative effects on sustainability. Lack of attention to future scaling options in the design phase is also a potential weakness.
The essence is that a project can operate at a low/semi-independent level, driven by an individual. However, once it has been scaled up to the organisational level, it immediately needs to attract other owners and sponsors and it has to compete to become accepted as a legitimate task for the organisation to spend its resources on and be responsible for. Scaling a project up involves power dynamics as well as, social, cultural, organisational and economic structures. In such processes, one can expect a shift from individual to organisational vision, resulting in a shift in ownership. Incremental upscaling may in some cases be more appropriate than massive implementation. Trying to replicate a pilot in a larger context doesn't necessarily succeed. However, if a pilot or implementation project fails, this need not lead to closure, but rather should be considered as a learning process, and perhaps a signal to re-engineer the process, or to redefine the concept. Sometimes downscaling can be more appropriate in terms of sustainability. When the decision on scalability is made, the questions of demand and ownership should be addressed. Scaling a successful pilot up may not be appropriate or desirable everywhere. Actions and conclusions should follow accordingly. Donors and Development Agencies Where funding is provided from external sources, the sustainability of an activity is closely associated with the migration path and transition from dependent project to (semi-) independence. Many projects fail when the donor funding stops, suggesting that the main owner was actually the donor. In such cases, it is most critical that `donors' do not act as `donors' but as joint partners with a stake in the success of the project. Their contribution is funding, expertise in the areas where it is limited or is lacking and perhaps political clout. A clear phasing out of donor inputs and a phasing in of local inputs is necessary. Local partners provide other inputs such as ownership and project management. This joint responsibility is needed at all phases of the project cycle. Sustainability can be enhanced by:
Political Issues Sustainability is also affected where political problems dominate the ownership issue. On a micro level, this can mean insufficient or conflicting ownership of processes (e.g. budget owners versus conceptual owners), lack of clarity on who is in charge, or an incomplete transfer of ownership along a hierarchy or organisational structure. At a macro level, shifts in government can have significant effects on the sustainability of an initiative. Political involvement in a premature phase may hamper progress and momentum through bureaucracy or the desire to turn a project into a political statement. Politicisation may cause antipathy to a project when a new policy maker takes over. On the other hand, ownership by policy makers can provide the clout required to implement an initiative sector-wide or to gather funds, which can contribute to the sustainability. Because of the multitude of social and political contexts, there is no single solution to this dilemma; however, awareness can minimise the effects. At both levels, these problems can be addressed by including, first of all, analysis of the organisational structure in the planning phase of the roles and structures; one can then allow time for networking and restructuring of ownership if these problems occur, thus avoiding conflicts down the line. Furthermore, when one includes a broad buy-in and involvement of owners, ensuring that there is a constant flow of communication between them, there is a broader foundation that can sometimes buffer adverse political effects. Generating awareness amongst a multitude of owners and pre-defining ICT policies, will allow an initiative to be less vulnerable when political shifts occur and, in a bottom-up approach, generate more clout when lobbying for support from policy-makers. Roles and Actions for Ownership In dealing with ownership, key issues concern the definition of `owners' versus `stakeholders' and filling in the corresponding roles and processes accordingly. This includes defining levels of ownership, collective or individual, acknowledging the need for different approaches for different people and different projects, and sharing in accountability and success. Sustainable project ownership involves dynamic dialogue, negotiation between all relevant parties (including official and unofficial government, such as local elders or unofficial authorities), management of risks and resolving tensions. Multiple owners imply multiple agendas/interests and the need to find ways to share and resolve these. All owners need to feel as much ownership as they want, and not all owners feel equally committed. Each member needs to feel that its concerns are being addressed if it is to take some ownership. There is a need to re-visit and re-define the ownership positions that different project owners have during the life cycle of a project. To enhance sustainability, it is important to consider the involvement of different stakeholders, including government, NGOs and private sector entities. Donors, in fact all actors, can also be owners, but only of what is agreed by all. All in all, it's the most critical and trickiest factor of sustainability. Ultimately, ownership is an integral part of a programme at every level from day one, as the commitment and involvement of the parties involved directly affect its sustainability. By recognising strong ownership as a fundamental building block and by spending sufficient time and resources on it - not only to sustain the project, organisation or network, but also by capacity building, an idea can germinate into something sustainable. By broadening the scope of ownership, the sustainability of the project is more likely to be achieved thanks to a wider bearing surface. Although networks are not necessarily the (only) way to achieve this, they provide an important, if not essential contribution to creating sustainable ownership. Gradual transitions are needed from a stage where the sustainability of an activity is mainly influenced by the funder(s), to a stage where the local stakeholders are themselves the critical factor in sustainability. Some concrete actions are:
Ownership
leader
manager
employees
clients
suppliers
financiers
interest groups
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