In June, two organisations
focussed on using ICT (Information and Communications Technology) in the water
and sanitation sector joined forces in Cape Town. SeeSaw, a social enterprise that
customises ICT to support sanitation and water providers and iComms, a University of Cape Town research unit
(Information for Community Oriented Municipal Services) co-hosted a two day
event to look at how ICT tools are changing the way that public services
function in developing countries.
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| (from SeeSaw’s website.) |
There are growing expectations
that harnessing ICT intelligently can bring about radical improvements in the
way that health, education and other sectors function, particularly in
developing countries. SeeSaw and iComms wanted to look at this in more detail –
and to build on the open sharing of experience to provide general principles to
those planning to harness ICT for public service delivery. Their overarching
goal is to help practitioners cut through much of the complexity and hype
surrounding ICT usage and give them a robust set of guidelines with which to
plan and negotiate partnerships and projects on the ground.
The event brought together 30+
practitioners – with water sector professionals from across Southern Africa
joined by their colleagues from the health sector – a sector that has been
quick to innovate, try different approaches and learn lessons. A full write-up
of the event can be found here in
the Water Information Network of South Africa’s October Newsletter. (See www.win-sa.org).
Key messages
1) Putting in place an effective
ICT system can make a visible impact on the ground. It can pay for itself quite
quickly in terms of efficiency gains and even costs saved. Yet a fair amount of
thought must go into designing the system to fit the local context – just
transplanting a system that has worked in one place to a new environment is
generally a recipe for trouble.
2) An important spin-off result
of looking at how to use ICT is that the effort taken to design a responsive
system forces stakeholders to reflect more closely on the existing structures,
process and current information flows. This can have significant benefits even
if no system is later built.
3) A recommendation is to spend
due time and effort in understanding the system, asking direct stakeholders
what information they currently get, what information they need and then seeing
how and whether ICT systems can be used to gather data that can generate
additional, better or faster information and get it to where it is needed (in a
way that suits the working patterns of those individuals).
4) For impact at any significant
scale it is crucial that ICT systems, whether in healthcare or water and
sanitation, integrate with existing government systems. There is a great risk
of fragmentation – too many organisations piloting new ICT systems put in place
technologies or processes that cannot easily be absorbed into existing
government systems (or worse still, undermine these).
5) A lot of initiatives,
particularly in the healthcare system, have tried to harness ICT to get people
to do what is good for them. And only that. For instance, cellphones used to
gather field information can be restricted so that they can only do one thing
and no longer function as a phone. Airtime and data bundles used for
transmitting information can be isolated to only contribute to ‘the project’.
The disadvantage is that this turns the device into something used only for
work, something alien and otherwise ‘not useful’. Alternatives do exist though
and can be productive. If frontline workers being asked to use phones and new
ICT tools are permitted – sometimes on a limited basis – to use them for their
own purposes (browsing the internet, accessing facebook, receiving SMS) then
they are more likely to engage with the project, look after the equipment, etc.
A balance is surely needed, but a quid pro quo arrangement can be a sensible
approach. This was characterised as “give them pizza with their broccoli”!
6) ICT tools can be incredibly
powerful at improving the flow of data and, from there, the flow of
information. But what if the flow of information is not the real problem? There
are many issues that undermine healthcare or water and sanitation systems – and
a lot of them have little to do with information. Cultural conflicts, different
worldviews, individual rivalries, dysfunctional facilities – all of these can
be the ‘sand in the gearbox’. Don’t assume that a new ICT system is going to
solve all problems – after all, these are tools, not a panacea to what are
typically complex and entrenched challenges.
Next Steps
SeeSaw and iComms are now
exploring how to take forward research into how to improve information flows
and how incentives shape the behaviour of different stakeholders within any ICT
system designed for the water and sanitation sector. A similar event is also
planned for East Africa in early 2013.
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This is a guest post from David Schaub-Jones who works with SeeSaw, a social venture that focuses on how technology can strengthen sanitation and water providers in developing countries.
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