ICT Enabled Development: Using ICT Strategically to Support Plan’s Work

Based on inputs from Plan staff in Ghana, Mali, Mozambique, Senegal, and Uganda, this report is part of an ongoing process, led and supported by Plan Finland and Plan USA (United States), to support country offices in Africa to apply information and communication technologies (ICTs) more strategically and effectively to development goals. Information was collected through workshops to facilitate a process of reflection on the potential of ICTs to enhance programme work and to impact on poverty. Also, background research and interviews with national and regional Plan ICT staff contributed information to this document.

The first section explains the concept of ICT-enabled development. A checklist beginning on page 8 provides 10 key areas to think about when planning for ICT-enabled development to ensure that ICT use is both linked to real development needs and priorities and appropriate to the group being addressed. The remainder of the report draws on examples and explores some of the organisational issues specific to Plan projects involved in making strategic use of ICT, including country-specific briefing notes.

The checklist includes:

• Analysing content
  
• Defining the need
  
• Choosing a strategy: "ICT for development takes in direct work (ICT access is the project goal), internal (the use of ICT by development organizations and staff) and strategic (the application of ICT tools and applications to enhance development projects and processes). Each will have different challenges, and need different types of technical and training support."
  
• Undertaking a participatory communications assessment
  
• Choosing the technology
  
• Adjusting the content
• Building and using capacity
  
• Monitoring progress
  
• Keeping it going
  
• Learning from each other

The stages described in the document include:

• Stage 1: Understanding the context for ICT work - including a broad context analysis of the ICT context external to the organisation and the capacity and existing ICT work done internally so that through partnering and using local capacity, ICT can be a) sustainable when supporting local processes and needs and b) integrated into existing social structures and services.
  
• Stage 2: Finding a match between priorities and possibilities - including rooting the system in local needs and priorities and finding good uses for tools and applications that includes local innovation.
  
• Stage 3: Planning and implementing concrete initiatives - including carrying out participatory assessments, in part to assess the capacity to use information, to evaluate the usability of information and its benefits, and to choose appropriate technology for the context. Linking to other development processes means establishing institutional indicators and reporting systems that are meaningful outside the project, including monitoring useful learning and insights into how effective and appropriate the use of ICT has been and using the learning from other projects to overcome obstacles.
  
• Stage 4: Building a culture of systematic, sustained, and strategic ICT use - including fitting ICT to existing problems and opportunities in the project planning phase and building familiarisation as well as capacity and opportunities for idea exchange. The role of IT staff members might include a bridging role to the country office programming team so that programme staff and ICT staff can familiarise themselves with each others’ work. Recommendations for bridging the gap include
  1. "ICT(4D) staff should be given inductions and field trips for each of the main programme units and themes.
  2. A regular ICT4D communication, such as an email newsletter or regular lunchtime talk, would be useful to capture the latest innovative practices, pilots and applications to inspire and inform programme staff and spark new ideas or solutions.
     
  3. Regular training on ICT applications and innovations, as well as question and answer sessions and sites, should be made available to more people in the organization, and to partner organizations, to build more capacity and keep abreast of the latest developments in ICT4D in the country. This would enable them to initiate and design ICT-enabled development programmes and projects.
     
  4. The workshop methodology developed for this work could be used to raise awareness and spark ideas among a larger range of staff, including field staff and advocacy, sponsorship and fundraising staff.
     
  5. Small funds for experimental work should be available for collaborative and experimental work linking ICT with different programme units."