Ways Technology Impacts Those in Need and Those Who Meet Needs

Presented at the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), this 9-page paper, with complementary PowerPoint presentation, explores the strategy of connecting the economically poor with information relevant to their livelihoods - through technology. According to author Edward Granger-Happ, "[m]uch of the capacity building to-date has been internal to charitable organizations — bringing knowledge and information-based work up to current standards. The focus initially has been on infrastructure building, providing the basic foundations required for technology applications to be effective..." Granger-Happ calls this approach into question, citing the fact that the world population continues to grow at a rate of 1.3% per year and world poverty at a rate of 4.5% per year - yet this is happening despite a 7.3% growth in donor giving. A shift to "beneficiary-facing" technology applications could open up strategy opportunities in the fight against poverty, Granger-Happ argues here.

Drawing on the experiences of the international non-governmental organisation (INGO) with which he is aligned (Save the Children, or SC), Granger-Happ proceeds to examine 4 orders of beneficiary-facing technology impact, as follows:

1. Applications used directly by beneficiaries. For example, SC's literacy training programme in United States (US) rural education programmes draws on the Accelerated Reader application on personal computers (PCs) to enable children to take practice reading exercises and tests. The programme is growing at a rate of 95% per year in terms of children reached, and 5% more children are reading at grade level each year.
2. Applications that improve programme delivery to beneficiaries. Examples include Supply Chain Management (SCM) applications, Program-Project Management applications, and Measurement and Evaluation (M&E) data collection and reporting applications. For instance, SC's food distribution tracking system in Bangladesh moved from paper reporting (a long administrative process) to laptop use (but laptop batteries died after 2 hours of use) to personal data assistants (PDAs). This translated into a 39% savings in data entry time, which "could mean the difference between life and death for women and children who walked kilometers to the food distribution center and who are waiting in line in 90 degree and 90% humidity weather for food rations."
3. Third-order applications, which deliver the revenue that helps build the first 2. Examples include Donor Management Systems (DMS), Grant management Systems (GMS), and web-based donation applications such as GetActive. "Being able to raise more donations, and do so for less cost per dollar, means that more money gets to our children's programs."
4. The infrastructure that underlies all 3 of the above. This includes desktop PCs, office application suites, email, the internet, servers, and communications. "Collaboration groups, like NetHope, which SC helped found, are focused on delivering connections to the most challenged areas of the world in which INGOs work....While cause-and-effect conclusions cannot be drawn, it is interesting to note the correlation of regional bandwidth and poverty levels..."

Granger-Happ concludes that "[h]ow nonprofits can move their technology investments up this pyramid will determine how strategic their technology use and impact will be."

Editor's note: The majority of the paper summarised above was incorporated into a published article in The Communications of the Association for Information Systems, which recommends the following citation: Avital, Michel; Lyytinen, Kalle J.; King, John L.; Gordon, Michael D.; Granger-Happ, Edward; Mason, Richard O.; and Watson, Richard T. (2006) "Leveraging Information Technology to Support Agents of World Benefit," The Communications of the Association for Information Systems: Vol. 19, Article 25. An abstract is freely available here; the full article may be accessed by Association for Information Systems (AIS) members only.