Can the new generation of information and communication technologies (ICTs) enhance community empowerment and democratisation? This report looks at the challenges and opportunities for vulnerable and marginalised communities presented by the latest wave of ICT innovations. Assessing ICT projects in Kenya, Haiti, Peru, Georgia and Egypt, it notes the challenges of sustaining participation and of governing new information commons in under-resourced and politically contested spaces.
The last decade has witnessed an important shift in the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for development. Open source information platforms like Ushahidi, which use crowdsourcing (outsourcing tasks to the public), as well as open mapping and data initiatives like OpenStreetMap, are enabling citizens in developing countries to generate and disseminate information critical for their lives and livelihoods.
These tools create new structures of participation that have the potential to change the relationship between producers and consumers of information, putting communities in the driving seat. In some cases, they have contributed to the creation of a new information commons, a shared set of information resources. However, there are complications and risks emerging from information sharing. The open mapping project in Kenya, Map Kibera, revealed:
- Difficulties in balancing short-term, individual benefits with the longer-term contribution to broad social agendas.
- Tensions over the requirement to share information freely. The capacity to ask for and publish information about the community depends on relations of trust and authority and involves responsibilities on the part of those managing the information.
- Lapses in information provision, transparency and accountability. The wider social benefits that would enable Kiberans to use the new information commons to claim their rights and improve their living conditions were slow to materialise.
- Emerging tensions between the values and practices of open source technology actors and those of development practitioners.
- Access barriers preventing the community from becoming familiar with the new information commons.
- Considerable strain on participants and project founders: the project required stakeholders to assume responsibilities and develop skills that were not evident from the start.
In order to build on the initial work of such community empowerment programmes, the following issues should be considered:
- Partnerships between local organisations, technologists and actors with expertise in the use of information technology in a development context are critically important.
- Risks of exploitation of project participants through their increased exposure over the internet should be understood, as should the provocation of official sanction through the visibility of informal community resources and hidden dynamics.
- There are ethical implications of using citizens as sources of information. Measures must be taken to ensure privacy, get informed consent, and to understand expectations created by citizen reporters and the morality of information collection processes.
- It is important to understand the complexity of the architectures of participation supported by these platforms and to consider them in relation to the decision-making processes they aim to support.
