Success and Failures of Community Information Centers

1
Success and Failures of Community Information
Centers

• The Need for Local/Global Networking
• Motoo Kusakabe
• Vice President
• The World Bank

2
Four Success Factors for CICs

• Organizations to link to Community
• Locally Relevant Contents/Services
• Affordable Technologies
• Financial/Operational Sustainability

3
Types of Organizations to Support CICs

• Public Sector Organizations
• NGOs
• Producers Organizations
• Farmers, Self-employed Women, etc.
• Civic Organizations
• Schools, Libraries
• Private Sector
• Village Phone Shops
• Cyber Café
• Franchised Information Kiosks

4
Organizational Success Factors

• Community Participation, Ownership
• Strategic Partnerships are critical
• Community-Organizations, Diaspora, Dev. Agencies,
  Private sector
• Role of Leaders/Champions
• Government Policy, Strategies

5
Private Sector - Better Results

• Vodacom telephone shops
• 1635 Entrepreneurs, 20,000 employment
• Cyber cafes create simple viable models
• In Thailand, private sector model out-perform
  public ones
• In India, franchised kiosks provide potentially
  viable models

6
Civic Telecenters - viable models

• Uganda school-based telecenter pilots, by World
  Link
• University-based telecenters pilots in West
  Africa by Univ. of Massachusetts
• Thailand, informal education-base telecenter
  produce the best results

7
Producers Organizations

• SEWA (Self-employed Womens Association) use ICT
  for job creation and disaster preparedness
  training
• In India, Milk Producers Association uses ICT to
  enhance productivity.

8
Locally Relevant Contents

• Building local contents are the major constraints
• Technical, cultural, policy constraints
• Development cost may be prohibitive due to lack
  of critical mass
• Localization should address the needs of the
  illiterate, poor community

9
Creating Local Contents

• Participatory local content creation
• Content creators, aggregators, South-South
  content sharing
• Global Knowledge Contents Sharing
• Culturally sensitive localization by local
  institutions

10
Affordable Technologies

• Satellites and wireless provides affordable
  options
• VITA provides LEO Satellite connection at 500 a
  year
• World Space Foundation provides satellite radio,
  data download
• Web-Sat provide affordable high speed two way
  satellite connection. Basic Human Needs use this
  for Afghan school-based telecenters

11
Explore Low-Tech Solutions

• To reach poor and illiterate people, traditional
  media is also important
• Radio, FAX, email, print
• Face-to-face meetings
• Role of social entrepreneurs and local
  institutions is vital

12
Financial / Operational Sustainability

• Many Failures
• Top-down approach
• Too technology oriented
• Lack of local contribution
• Some sustainable models
• Thailands experiments
• Telephone Shops / Cyber Cafes
• Private sector / Civil Org. models

13
Defining Sustainability

• Public Goods nature of local connectivity
• Innovative ways to finance CICs
• Output-Based Aid
• Minimum Subsidy private sector tendering

14
Next Steps

• Collecting case studies systematically
• Identifying financially operationally sustainable
  models
• Creating a network of Local / International
  institutions to share knowledge contents