Getting better all the time

Paris, France – March 23 + 24, 2006

Half dreaming and half reflecting on my recent meetings at UNESCO, the refrain from a Beatles song pops into my head: I’ve got to admit it’s getting better, getting better all the time.

It was clear from the beginning that collaboration between telecentre.org and UNESCO’s community multimedia centre program could benefit telecentres. UNESCO is focusing on front line community media access. telecentre.org is working on back stopping, support and training issues. And, the two programs are often working in the same countries (e.g. Mozambique and Mali). Despite these synergies, early conversations with UNESCO were slow.

Things sped up dramatically this week during meetings with Ian Pringle, who is now guiding the CMC program on a consulting basis. Ian has spent the past four years doing hands on work with a variety of UNESCO telecentre programs in South Asia. In this work, he demonstrated a broad and creative approach – he and his colleagues focused on the ‘telecentre as local info production hub’ without being confined by the specifics of the CMC model. This shows in the early thinking on his new gig in Paris, which includes work with all UNESCO community access centre projects, and not just the CMC program.

I also met with UNESCO Communications Division Director Wijayananda Jayaweera, UNESCO program officer Ilda Mara and Microsoft MEA community affairs manager Heba Ramzy. Jaya set the tone, coming up with idea after idea that showed a keen interest in building collaboration. Heba also played a key role, showing us all the links between work that Microsoft and UNESCO are already doing together, and possible UNESCO / telecentre.org links (e.g. e-government).

Leaving our meeting, we all had a long list of concrete ideas on for early stage collaboration. A few of these ideas included:

• Closer collaboration on the development of wide reaching telecentre networks and training programs in Mali and Mozambique
• Cooperation around developing, improving and distributing curriculum for telecentres, including the Microsoft’s UP and the iTrainOnline Multimedia Toolkit.
• Offering existing UNESCO training materials like the ‘10 steps to telecentre sustainability’ guide as inputs for processes like the Mission 2007 training commons.
• Creating an inventory of existing ’services’ offered in telecentres, and then feeding this into a process of documenting services so others can replicate.

Of course, we left with more than just ideas. We also left the meeting with a sense of common cause and direction. I knew this when Jayaweera opened the recently published From the ground up book, pointing to the wikipedia definition of a telecentre and saying to his colleagues: “See, it includes community multimedia centres.” Indeed it does.

Local leadership

Budaörs, Hungary – March 21, 2006

The town of Budaörs, Hungary demonstrates the importance of local leadership and vision.
Once a dusty suburb 30 minutes outside Budapest, Budaörs has slowly grown into a high tech hub that is attracting head offices of Hungarian telecom and information technology companies. It is also becoming a leading example of how telecottages can serve as a platform for local governments to engage and support their citizens.

The telecottage that we visited in Budaörs offered all of the services you would expect: computer and Internet access; computer skills training; photocopying. All of these services were offered at a price, with basic Internet access about half the price of cybercafes. However, the municipality has implemented a policy that anyone on local social assistance will receive training and access services for free. They have also provided funding for specialized services aimed at disadvantaged citizens, especially the blind.

In addition to subsidized and special services, the Budaörs telecottage is the first in Hungary to house information society mentors. These are specially trained telecottage staff, with skills in both telecottage management and helping telecottage clients access electronic information and government services. They are a combination of librarian and citizen service agency for the information age.

All of this is a boon for the senior citizens of Budaörs, who are increasingly being left behind. This year e-tax filing becomes mandatory. Also, many local services are moving to electronic delivery. Free access combined with a mentor can help people who don’t feel comfortable with technology to navigate the system.

The transformation into an information technology hub and the creation of vibrant e-services for citizens have been driven by the mayor and the CEO of Budaörs. As I discovered when I met them on the second day of our event, both have personally committed themselves to using information technology to strengthen their community. Looking around their town, it shows.

Where to network: regional or national?

Budapest, Hungary – March 21, 2006

In every part of the world, the question of regional vs. national telecentre networks is a tough one. Can regional networks offer services that really benefit telecentres on the ground? Can national networks reach enough telecentres to deliver services cost effectively? If you need both, where is the line between them?

These questions are certainly key for both EUTA and telecentre.org as we look at how we might cooperate to serve European telecentres. One factor is the fact that the European Union has already created a culture of thinking and cooperating regionally. On the flip side, EU-wide networks in other fields often focus on policy issues, never making it to providing practical programs or services.

The good news is that EUTA has teamed up with Marianna Posfai from C4LI. C4LI has successfully run a network of 4000 land management professionals across 18 central and eastern European countries for a number of years. It is likely that she will be able to help EUTA come up with a model that strikes a balance between broad reach and on the ground impact.

European (telecentre) union

Budapest, Hungary – March 20 + 21, 2006

Gaspar Matyas had gathered one fine crowd of telecentre people – telecentre people from Spain, from Russia, and from everywhere in between. They had gathered in Budapest to hear what their peers in other European countries were up to, and they were raring to go.

Organized by the European Union of Telecottage Associations (EUTA), the meeting was participatory, engaging and, at times, electric. The morning sessions looked something like a speedgeek. With the room set up as a bazaar, people rotated through 18 very brief presentations about the telecentre situation in countries represented at the event. The afternoon provided a chance for existing and potential EUTA members to explore possibilities for common action. Each small conversation group contributed to a wall full of ‘lightbulbs’ that will feed into the EUTA strategic planning process.

The day revealed a number of to areas where European groups are leading way within the telecentre movement.

One example is Hungary’s work on telecentre manager certification. Their ‘information society mentor’ program will begin as a state sanctioned college program this September. Graduates will be considered a part of a ‘new profession’ that is committed to helping people make effective use of information and services available through telecentres. If it receives funding from the EU, EUTA roll out a basic online version of the IS mentor program for use across Europe.

Another interesting case is the CTIC telecentre network in Spain. CTIC operates a network of over 80 telecentres in the Austuria principality. In many ways, the network looks alot like Drishtee or TaraHaat in India. Telecentres receive technical and operational support, centrally delivered services and training from the network. This helps them provide a more consistent and valuable services locally. The difference is that both CTIC and the telecentres operate on regular core funding from the government of Austuria. It seems that many other regions across Spain use this same model (funding both telecentres and a backstopping support network).

As these examples illustrate, the state plays a significant role in creating and sustaining telecentres in Europe. However, this does not mean there is a lack of social enterprise or even all out business approaches. The new UNDP / Government of Bulgaria telecentre program has financial sustainability and demand driven services built in from the very beginning. And, the Teledom Association in Russia runs 25 rural telecentres on a purely business oriented basis (but with social benefits around skills development and economic opportunity).

Clearly, the telecentre movement is alive and well in Europe, especially in the East. There are significant opportunities for EUTA to improve the game of centres if it can grow its capacity and focus over the coming years.

A clear(er) way forward

Bern, Switzerland – March 6, 2006

Getting off the plane from Delhi and onto the train to Bern was a lovely shock. Switzerland had just been hit by heavy snow. The endless rail line trees were pure, white, dreamlike. It was a wonderful sight to clear my mind and prepare me for business planning discussions at SDC.

On Monday morning, the main topic of the day was ‘objectives and outcomes’. The conversation with Gerhard and Veronika provided some real breakthroughs in this area, helping to create a clearer picture of ‘what’ we want to achieve (as opposed to how to achieve it). As it stands right now, the core objectives for telecentre.org moving forward will be:

• Convening: build social capital, facilitate partnerships and sow the seeds of new networks by regularly convening telecentre leaders and champions.
• Network capacity: increase the ability of networks to provide high quality training, technical assistance and other services that improve telecentre sustainability by making investments in network capacity and planning.
• Knowledge sharing: help telecentres learn new skills, adopt innovative social enterprise models and deliver better community training services by facilitating knowledge and materials sharing across the telecentre movement.
• Services and content: improve the ability of telecentres to attract users, deliver valuable information and generate revenue by investing in services and content that can be easily offered at the local level.

The other big change that emerged before (meeting with Shaddy) and during the SDC meetings was the switch to an explicit focus on services and content. These items had previously been under an objective called ‘innovation’, which was quite vague. This has now been replaced by a dedicated services and content objective.

Still need to discuss all this with our team and other partners, but no question this is progress. Great to work with the SDC people on this.

Services and Saksham

Delhi, India – March 3, 2006

It’s always good to spend time with Drishtee CEO Satyan Mishra. He is full of energy and ideas: both of which are focused on finding ways to ensure rural kiosks can be both sustainable and beneficial to the villages they serve.

Shaddy and I met with Satyan to discuss the idea of service ‘unbundling’. How can we take the kinds of services Drishtee offers to its kiosks – language training, rural e-commerce, health care – and offer them to non-Drishtee centres? Circling around for almost an hour, the conclusion was: it’s possible, but complicated. It is not just a matter of designing and developing a service. The process for delivering, monitoring and supporting the services is also key, and is the bit is what’s ‘tied up’ inside of Drishtee. By the end of the meeting we agreed that the best way to learn about this unbundling process is to ‘just do it’, picking one service to unbundled as a trail and then document the hell out of our learning. We will do this with Drishtee, and possibly with TaraHaat and Nlogue, with the idea that the process will then inform the services R+D fund we’ve outlined in the upcoming business plan.

Tarun Malik and Ankhi Das from Microsoft also joined us at the meeting, which gave us a chance to learn about Saksham. Saksham is Microsoft’s India-wide effort to accelerate the process of ‘energizing the rural economy through ICT’. Built around the promise of a 50,000 kiosk contribution towards Mission 2007 targets, this initiative includes a focus on: kiosk financing; content and services; back end service providers and support; and business model innovation. Much of the Saksham language sound similar to the new telecentre.org business plan (‘enabling the rural ecosystem’ is the tag line). It will be interesting to see what sorts of synergies emerge from this.

Finding a common(s) path

Agra, India – February 28 – March 2, 2006

It was energizing to be back in the same circle again. The circle was composed of organizations spanning the full breadth of telecentre models in India – from completely community driven (MSSRF, NASSCOM, OWSA, Datamation) to staunchly entrepreneurial (GRASSO, Drishtee, WorldCorps, eChoupal). It also included key players in the roll out of government telecentre programs such as IL&FS and the Kerala State IT Mission. The reason for coming together: hashing out a concrete plan to create a common curriculum to train new knowledge centre and kiosk managers across India.

Dubbed the ‘training commons’, this initiative was initially dreamed up at a workshop in Chennai late last year. The project will build on existing telecentre manager training materials from India and around the world to create a ‘grassroots MBA’ style curriculum. It will also include the creation of a web site for curriculum sharing, an extensive joint piloting program to test the materials and, eventually, a certification component.

The Agra workshop provided the group with a chance move from vision to action plan (see 4 x 12 foot Gantt chart in picture below ). All of the organizations present committed to helping with bits of this plan: contributing content; writing new material; testing the curriculum. This process will start over the coming month.

One of the questions that came up consistently during the session was: do we need a generic shared curriculum (like a wikipedia for telecentre manager training) or a system for trading very specific, proprietary materials (like iTunes)? The answer is likely ‘both’. A wikipedia style common curriculum could provide a shared bookshelf upon which telecentre networks and programs could base their own training courses, much like the text books used as the foundation for an MBA syllabus. On top of this, an iTunes-like system would allow organizations with very specialized materials (which might be bundled up with telecentre services) to share them on whatever terms they choose. The team that forms around this project will need to dig into this issue early on.

Another challenge (and opportunity) will be figuring out how wide to cast the initial partner net for this project. Clearly, an initiative like this could benefit not only the original Mission 2007 partners who gathered in Chennai, but also the Government of India Community Service Centre program and other large scale rural computing initiatives. Also, there is a potential to hook this into the telecentre entrepreneurship training we are supporting in South Africa and efforts to work with UNESCO on improved CMC training programs. Likely, we’ll want to limit the project to India for the time being – but the potential for broader collaboration is huge.

Start simple

En route to Colombo, Sri Lanka – February 25 – 26, 2006

Sulah has the reference desk thing dialled. He has a clear vision for an online / on-the-phone / on-the-ground telecentre support service, and he knows that it has to start simple.

Ugabytes will be the first organization to roll out a telecentre reference desk service with support from the telecentre.org program. The plan is to offer a simple online service from the beginning: a way for telecentre operators in East Africa to get answers technical, management and business questions. However, Sulah has ambitions to evolve it from there, adding voice support with audio files posted to a web site as well as an online knowledge base over time.

Figuring out how to do this well, Sulah’s going to need some friends. The D.Net and Sarvodaya crew have an interest in the telecentre support network concept, and are interested in providing input into the design of the initial model. Likely, some of the people in the Sri Lanka road trip group will join Sulah for a small design workshop once Ugabytes has a prototype.

Two tales of telecentre sustainability

Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka – February 25, 2006

Financing and sustainability are always topics of conversation when you get telecentre people together. Two interesting tales to note in this regard from the last few days in Sri Lanka …

Story one: Sarvodaya’s Nuwara Eliya telecentre is generating a profit, which is in turn used to subsidize other activities in their district centre (the building where the telecentre is housed).  Income from telecentre services is between RS80 – 100,000 ($US800 – 1,000) per month, and expenses are around RS70,000 ($US700). Income is generated from photocopying, Internet use and, especially, training courses. Courses include basic office software, graphic design and web design. While the profit is modest, a case of a telecentre subsidizing other social services is a pretty rare thing – especially when there is a 20 seat donor funded computer training centre just up the road. This situation may change when ICTA stops subsidizing the VSat under the Nanasala program.

Story two: As a part of their rural knowledge centre program, D.Net has turned to a novel fundraising technique: they hold a fundraising event every year in New Jersey seeking donations for the telecentre cause. At this event, Bangladeshi’s living in the U.S get to meet members of the D.Net team and see videos showing how telecentres are working at the village level. They are also asked to donate towards the cost of purchasing computers and setting up a centre in a particular village (mostly, their own village). It’s almost like a twinning program. D.Net has been able to finance over 50 centres using this method as well as funding drives within Bangladesh. They are hoping to get to 1,000.

I’d like to dig deeper on both of these examples, to find out what’s behind them and whether there is something for others to learn here. Just blogging the rough picture here as a reminder to go back and investigate further.

Blossoming alliances

En route to Colombo, Sri Lanka – February 25 – 26, 2006

Winding through the tea estates east of Colombo, the van was filled with laughter, smiles and dreams. The crew: Sulah from Ugabytes; Raihan, Mahmud and Billah from D.Net; Harsha, Ravi and Priyanthi from Sarvodaya; and me. It felt like a road trip with old friends. Yet, four months ago, most of us had never met.

Back in Tunis, Harsha had the wisdom to see a common passion amongst this group: a holistic, grounded, creative approach to the meaning of the word ‘telecentre’. Not knowing quite what to expect, he invited D.Net and Ugabytes for a post-WSIS visit to Sarvodaya’s Nuwara Eliya telecentre project. He had an intuitive feeling that some useful partnerships would pop up. And they did.

Concretely, the group came out agreeing to work together two initiatives: developing a framework to share telecentre models (think: business school case study + instructional video) and collaborating on the design of the telecentre.org reference desk model (which Ugabytes is already taking a lead on). These are things that will not only benefit all three organizations, but also the broader telecentre movement. And, of course, they will be stronger by building in cross-regional collaboration from the start.

However, the real partnership opportunities ran deeper: there was a deep desire to look at how the others get things done, to grab bits of wisdom and to bring them back home. Ugabytes’ experience offering practical telecentre support on the ground. Sarvodaya’s approach to mobilizing information activists at the very grassroots. D.Net’s thoughtful experiments with getting information age content to the village level. More importantly, there was a sense that we’d just stepped onto a longer path of evolving our approaches to telecentre work together.

I left Colombo today believing that some very special seeds had been sown. And, as Mahmud said to me: we can all expect many blossoms.