Question 5: What are the challenges and priorities for telecentre networks in the next five years? And what role can telecentre.org Foundation play?

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Permalink Reply by Jimmy L. Calata on November 25, 2009 at 1:00am

iCafes and the Philippine CeC Roadmap Vision for 2010

Less than 7% of our people have their own personal computers (PCs), and even less have Internet access. This relatively low percentage is attributed to the low per capita Gross Domestic Product relative to the cost of PCs and Internet access. About 71% of Filipinos access the Internet using Internet Cafes (iCafes), and 65% of them belong to the 35 years old and below age bracket. Thus, shared access still remains as the most viable solution in developing a large pool of competitive knowledge workers and ICT-empowered citizenry through the Internet.

Being commercial enterprises, iCafes are mostly situated in key cities and urban areas, usually in crowded places like malls and university belts. With their perceived and admitted absence in underserved and unserved areas, iCafes are viewed by critics as contributing more, rather than a solution, to the problem of Social Exclusion.

On the contrary, the integration of the iCafe sector into the Philippine Community eCenters (CeCs) Development Program as a stakeholder, and the transformation of iCafes into CeCs (or iCafes++) augur well with our vision of having “a CeC in every municipality”. Let the iCafes proliferate in the urban areas, and we’ll take care of the underserved and unserved communities. With this public-private partnership (PPP) setup, our shared vision can be realized much easier and faster, and with lesser amount of government investment.

Big iCafes are trying to organize themselves with the aim of reversing the traditional and socially spiteful image that is being ascribed to them as “purely gaming centers that erode the well-being of our youth”. Some iCafes have started to veer away from this negative branding by integrating value-adding applications like education and skills enhancement, and placement. Their membership to the Philippine CeC Network (PhilCeCNet) could help them make a bigger stride towards their aspiration by way of the assistance and privileges that they could possibly derive from the network, including:
• Opportunity for their knowledge workers to participate in the activities of the PhilCeCNet, like the Knowledge Exchange Conferences, and training programs of the telecentre.org-Philippine CeC Academy (tPCA).
• Links with PhilCeCNet partners, e.g., content providers, funding institutions, etc.
• Voting right or a voice on the issues which are important to the CeCs and iCafes.

iCafes can be our effective partners in the implementation of capability programs, like the eSkwela and similar activities, that require a larger number of computer hardware which average CeCs cannot provide. Netopia, for instance, is willing to open its facilities and franchises across the country for such collaborative proposition. This PPP could result to a win-win situation in terms of enabling us to reach and serve more Filipinos, and at the same time help the iCafes generate more income by way of “discounted facility-sharing” during their slack or idle periods.

Indeed, the symbiosis between CeCs and iCafes as one strategy in realizing our shared vision needs to be explored, and the idea here should be more on forging a strong and lasting mutually beneficial partnership that will redound in the end to the benefit of our underserved and unserved communities.

(Note: This is part of the agenda tackled during the Philippine KEC5 Session on CeC Development and Management held in Manila last month.)

Permalink Reply by Sulah Ndaula on November 26, 2009 at 2:55am

Jimmy,

Thanks for putting figures and cases to my "broaden telecentre viewpoint", I love it very much. And for sure the narrow base can not push telecentres too far simply because by declaring the movement as that works exclusively in under or unserved communities is by itself announcing two things:

#1. It will be hard to sustain the movement - for many reasons
#2. It will create social disconnections between rural and urban poor - for instance, many a times when the rural poor migrate to towns they don't by majority become rich! They remain poor but with a need to connect to rural families for social support and transfer of the little they make in towns. It is these that cybercafes serve most. So by pinning cybercafes out of the movement we are creating disconnections, that negatively feedback into the sustainability of telecentres.

But one the other hand a movement that includes everybody becomes complete, health and self servicing. For example, in Ghana cybercafes have open hours for socially disconnected and computer illiterates - this all coming as an effort for the social movers.

In the broadened viewpoint, like Jimmy puts, it is our responsibility to create a true "WIN-WIN" relationship. And committed we shall create it.

Permalink Reply by Jimmy L. Calata on November 25, 2009 at 1:32am

iCafes and the Philippine CeC Roadmap Vision for 2010

Less than 7% of our people have their own personal computers (PCs), and even less have Internet access. This relatively low percentage is attributed to the low per capita Gross Domestic Product relative to the cost of PCs and Internet access. About 71% of Filipinos access the Internet using Internet Cafes (iCafes), and 65% of them belong to the 35 years old and below age bracket. Thus, shared access still remains as the most viable solution in developing a large pool of competitive knowledge workers and ICT-empowered citizenry through the Internet.

Being commercial enterprises, iCafes are mostly situated in key cities and urban areas, usually in crowded places like malls and university belts. With their perceived and admitted absence in underserved and unserved areas, iCafes are viewed by critics as contributing more, rather than a solution, to the problem of Social Exclusion.

On the contrary, the integration of the iCafe sector into the Philippine Community eCenters (CeCs) Development Program as a stakeholder, and the transformation of iCafes into CeCs (or iCafes++) augur well with our vision of having “a CeC in every municipality”. Let the iCafes proliferate in the urban areas, and we’ll take care of the underserved and unserved communities. With this public-private partnership (PPP) setup, our shared vision can be realized much easier and faster, and with lesser amount of government investment.

Big iCafes are trying to organize themselves with the aim of reversing the traditional and socially spiteful image that is being ascribed to them as “purely gaming centers that erode the well-being of our youth”. Some iCafes have started to veer away from this negative branding by integrating value-adding applications like education and skills enhancement, and placement. Their membership to the Philippine CeC Network (PhilCeCNet) could help them make a bigger stride towards their aspiration by way of the assistance and privileges that they could possibly derive from the network, including:
• Opportunity for their knowledge workers to participate in the activities of the PhilCeCNet, like the Knowledge Exchange Conferences, and training programs of the telecentre.org-Philippine CeC Academy (tPCA).
• Links with PhilCeCNet partners, e.g., content providers, funding institutions, etc.
• Voting right or a voice on the issues which are important to the CeCs and iCafes.

iCafes can be our effective partners in the implementation of capability programs, like the eSkwela and similar activities, that require a larger number of computer hardware which average CeCs cannot provide. Netopia, for instance, is willing to open its facilities and franchises across the country for such collaborative proposition. This PPP could result to a win-win situation in terms of enabling us to reach and serve more Filipinos, and at the same time help the iCafes generate more income by way of “discounted facility-sharing” during their slack or idle periods.

Indeed, the symbiosis between CeCs and iCafes as one strategy in realizing our shared vision needs to be explored, and the idea here should be more on forging a strong and lasting mutually beneficial partnership that will redound in the end to the benefit of our underserved and unserved communities.

(Note: This is part of the agenda tackled during the 5th Knowledge Exchange Conference's Session on CeC Development and Management held last month in Manila.)

Permalink Reply by Jimmy L. Calata on November 25, 2009 at 1:34am

Mobile Telephony in Rural Areas (Agriculture Sector)

Months ago, while traveling back to my rural province from a conference in Manila, I had the chance to talk to a middleman/wholesaler of agricultural products. The long travel gave us an opportunity to discuss much about her livelihood. She's engaged in a buy-and-sell business. She buys fruits and vegetables in bulk from my province and sells them to small merchants in another province, and likewise buys livestock from that province and sells them to merchants in my province. She’s happy with mobile telephony as she is able to have constant contact with her family while away from home doing business. But she was also sad because of the increasing reduction in her business opportunities and income.

With cellphones, she said, her contact farmers are now able to determine quickly which traders within and outside our province offer higher prices. Many farmers, she said, are now transacting business directly with merchants, practically eliminating the middlemen in the chain of commodity distribution. Traditionally, middlemen play a major role in the distribution chain starting from the producers or farmers and ending with the consumers. They generally earn more money in the process than the producers or farmers themselves.

There is also this practice that middlemen loan out money as well as agricultural inputs and equipment to the farmers, with the agreement that the produce of the latter will be sold exclusively to them. With mobile telephony, the farmers are now contacting financial institutions and their well-off relatives for their production capital and logistics. Also, the farmers' knowledge about product and quantity demand as well as periods of delivery to buyers help them avoid the situation of bringing back their produce to the mountains or selling them at very low prices as most of their commodities are perishable.

Another advantage that's been brought by mobile telephony to our farmers is the significant reduction in their frequent travels to our province's Agri-based information and technology service centers, like the State Universities and Colleges, and Farmers Information and Technology Service Centers . With their cellphones, they can now interact (text, voice and video) with our agricultural technologists and resolve issues and concerns instantaneously. Except, of course in such instances where they need to go to the Centers for more information and assistance, or where the technologists themselves need to go to the farms to have a first-hand assessment of the complained situations. The early resolution of our farmers' problems (plant diseases and infestations) brought about a certain level of "safety net" against production risks and losses.

Permalink Reply by Sulah Ndaula on November 23, 2009 at 6:27am

UgaBYTES Priorities in the strategic planning period 2010/12 included:

#1. Knowledge Management & Capacity Building: - The program intends to manage telecentre experiences and information exchange, build the capacities of people working in telecentres and consolidate the knowledge into a simple body of reference resources and tools.

#2. Telecentre Support Service: - The program intends to outsource and (or) maintain in-house telecentre performance improvement services like technical, marketing and financial auditing services and negotiate for streamed bulk purchase prices that are within telecentre ability to pay.

#3. Research & Development:- The program intends to innovate (or develop partnerships) and test out services that can answer the four major threats to telecentres – increasing appropriation, user numbers, financial inflow and grassroots impact by developing sector specific services. It also intends to trace and share deeper-searched impact stories and cases as well as capturing stat. related to public access venue types, numbers, areas of interventions and etc within Uganda.

#4. Administration & Finance:- The program intends to coordinate teams, facilitate and mentor internal processes, document experiences and impact and above all communicate achievement to stakeholders to further mutual celebrations of success and attract further support where needed. The key role of this component is to ensure that every part in the network is moving rightly and to widen up the partnerships that oil, lubricate and fuel the processes of the network.

These form the four prioritise of UgaBYTES as a network, currently.

Permalink Reply by Shipra Sharma on November 25, 2009 at 2:40am

At my country, India's level, I think the telecentre.org Foundation should also focus on the emerging telecentre networks under the Indian Government's Common Service Centre (CSC) programme. The dimensions of this programme have made it compelling for the government to select Service Centre Agencies (SCAs), i. e., organisations having experience in the telecentre and ICT field, for the proper implementation of the CSC programme. These SCAs have started improving their visibility at the national level telecentre forums, but their visibility in the international forums is not up to the mark. They are not very well represented at these forums. Mostly, they are overshadowed by the older and better known Indian telecentre networks and high officials from the government agencies coordinating this programme. They have some interesting lessons to share in network building and management.

Permalink Reply by Niranjan Meegammana on November 25, 2009 at 4:41am

Dear Shipra
In Sri Lanka majority (more than 90%) Telecenters belong to government guided Nenasala Network, involved by several private sector players and non-profits in the area of support , M & E and capacity building. There is very limited interaction with in stakeholders National Level. However thereare quite a good interaction and knowledge sharing at provincial level through Regional Impact Programme by ICTA. So I think provincial and/or district level TC organizations are better suit Sri Lanka, so that grass roots can be well represented. (40-100 TCs per province).

However due to distance in ground issues small networks of Nenasala operate with 10-30 km range. and such small networks involving 4-10 Nenasala also provide easy coordination, joint activities. Even at district and provincial level some Telecenters do not become visible, we need to get down further below to divisions level. However there are only 2-3 Telecenters in a division, so not adequate for a small network. Combining an area with 2-3 Divisions is a good idea to create micro leadership to develop future provincial and national leadership among grass roots.

Niranjan Meegammana
Shilpa Sayura Foundation
http://www.shilpasayura.org

Permalink Reply by Ananya S Guha on November 27, 2009 at 12:29pm

The challenges that telecentres face are sustainability, and spreading the message of what community life is. Also the concept of telecentres linking with one another, the idea of a global village network. Education, both basic, and higher education can be profitably taken up. Telecentre.org Foundation can help in creating such networks, spread the cause of education, and concomitant social development through an intermix of technologies. Community Radios too can play a vital role heRE.

Ananya S Guha

Permalink Reply by Miguel Raimilla on November 28, 2009 at 11:55am

Here my list:

1.- Telecentro 2.0 = Professional, Accountable, 100% Reliable, and Timely
*The telecenter networks should take serious, concrete steps towards having more professional operations. This implies giving attention to ALL the details of running a telecenter network. The current rate of technological advances, the increase and variety of content, and the needs of the general population, demand that telecenters have the capacity to adapt, anticipate, and respond to such changes in an effective manner. This implies that telecenter networks will have to find better and more effective means to insure their autonomy and future sustainability by incorporating social business models, being able to generate income, and diversifying services offered to the community.

2.- Incorporate IT tools for administration, management, and business reporting>
*Telecentre networks should move decidedly from case-by-case justification of their operations towards the creation of structured processes which generate real value. It’s not enough to say that we are doing a good job; we have to demonstrate it with measurable results and quantifiable facts. This also implies more openness on the part of the telecentre networks to be evaluated by third parties.

3.- Work collectively.
*Having full respect for the individual management of each telecentre, each network, or each national telecentre collective, the networks should keep improving their efforts to act as a group. The strategic alliances and work as a community among networks will be key in the future to the global network. This implies needed advances in the exchange of best practices between networks, greater homogenization of business processes, and more control over services and actions carried out per network. In this area, the Foundation will fulfill a fundamental role facilitating and promoting these cooperative efforts at all levels.

4.- Diversification of Services –Act as a distribution channel
*All within the network which are able to improve on the aforementioned points, will naturally be able to perform as an effective channel through which more and better services, of local community interest, will be carried out with added value. It is paramount that the telecentre networks, to the extent possible, be capable of offering better technology, efficiency, and services to their users.

Permalink Reply by Niranjan Meegammana on November 28, 2009 at 1:25pm

I think we have to plan for Telecenters with 2-3 computers run by volunteers or semi paid staff, Even the best telecenters not using IT tools for administration, management, and business reporting. One problem is brain drain, people we train leaves for better jobs, so we can't expect much professionalism unless we make telecenter field is worthy as a carrier.

One major problem for Telecenter to become a distribution channel is, such business processes require business registration, start up capital and marketing skills. Only 5% of TCs are providing mobile reloads, and temples like places have limitations of business (asking too much credit)
In entering e business TCs need to register them first,


Telecenters are run by individuals, there is lack of community involvement in administration. In Sri Lanka it's the owner who has sole authority on finances. Operators below run the services. It's unlikely that many will be highly professional to be accountable. I am not sure how we can change these culture defined by diverse networks.

I am in full agreement on building networks, which is the priority now. ICT4D 2.0 will use ICT as the platform and focus human development in global concerns. So Telecentre 2.0 role will be more than becoming sustainable, social change is in demand?

Niranjan Meegammana
Shilpa Sayura Foundation
http://www.shilpasayura.org

Permalink Reply by AHMED SUDAN on November 29, 2009 at 1:55pm

The on-line consultations are very important to plan for the future of Telecentre.org….we first thanks and appreciate for IDRC, ,,, Telecentre.org and its partners their great support for this community movement. … we should think on the sustainability of our Telecentre and how we move them from community Telecentre to knowledge (development) Telecentre and what is the possibility of investing in these Telecentres to make them self dependent and sustainable..
I think we learn a lot from this great network we share experience and best practices with many Telecentres which help us to construct more than ten community development projects and they are really amazing specially if we consider the fact that we start from zero when we attended the first tc-mena forum in Cairo on December 2006 keeping in mind ICT is not part of our culture and not a priority in Sudan but the great support of digital city of Eindhoven and telecentre.org , ugabytes.org and Drishtee and other partners make the dream become true. ... Really sharing is something different…
In the next decade we should concentrate on e-education with a multilingual curriculum and knowledge … we should use the e-education to fight against poverty in our Telecentre and we have to eliminate it in our countries. … we have to establish many national Telecentre academy … we should utilize the partnerships between members in saving time and money to construct telemedicine units,, e-agriculture projects, ,,, tackle the problem of climate change … keeping in minds the 8th millennium development goals of the united nation to facilitate the life of our community and make it more comfortable..
If we look at Telecentre.org portal the idea is excellent but it has been distorted by too many groups than we need this make many of members to reply… thanks… it is a good idea… forward emails but I admit there are many brilliant members and they have a great contribution… these things guided me to an idea we should have maximum 10 to 12 groups which should include the e-services (e-education.. e-health ….etc.).. Telecentre.org should have a focal person in each country and there should be a regional group and they meet monthly online with a facilitator to report and there should annual meeting and small meeting in the big conferences like WSIS, e-India, e-Asia …
We should work very hard on partnership (PPP) and get the government and private sector involved in this movement because they will help a lot…. Keep in mind the disadvantage community specially the disabled (people with special needs),, prisoners ,, poor orphans and students,, women because working with is very essential and it is a humanitarian issue…Training.. Capacity building..Technical support is important issues.
Finally we hope that Telecentre.org will be the network that connect the whole world

Thank you
Ahmed eisa
GDCO Sudan

Permalink Reply by Jimmy L. Calata on November 30, 2009 at 11:36pm

One of those priorities could be the global expansion of the telecentre movement extending down the grassroots level. In addition to the ongoing establishment of new telecentres, we might include the following too:

a. Local governments of communities (i.e., barrios, barangays or villages) could be encouraged to include in the repertoire of their public services the features of a telecentre. This is especially needed in poor and far-flung communities where commercial or social telecentres can hardly be sustained.

b. Community and peoples' organizations (e.g., cooperatives, clubs, farmers' associations) that are existing in those communities or villages which do have proven organizational and operational sustainability could be encouraged to do the same too.

c. The chief executives and staff of these community governments and private organizations (i.e., barangay captains, village chiefs, general managers, and admin/technical staff) could be empowered to perform the functions of telecentre knowledge workers on top of their regular mandated functions.

The local, regional and global telecentre networks should work on a communication or IEC plan that will stimulate wide support from community stakeholders along this lines, including the mechanics of transformation and capacity-building.

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