According to a growing number of reports, conferences, academic papers and popular media sources, more and more people are living in an “information society.” Wikipedia, arguably an archetypal result of the information society, defines this term as “a society where the creation, distribution, diffusion, use, integration and manipulation of information is a significant economic, political and cultural activity.”

But what does an information society look like? Does it look, behave and respond the same way for everyone? Who is part of the information society and who is not? How does participation vary by gender, ability and literacy? How can information and communications technologies (ICTs) worsen existing inequities and further marginalize disadvantaged groups? As with any society, an information society is composed of individuals and groups occupying a shared territory – a virtual one, in this case – and is characterized by relationships, expectations, institutions and varying levels of influence and participation. This chapter examines two central questions that are closely linked: how can inequities of access to ICTs be redressed and how can access to ICTs potentially facilitate or inhibit social inclusion?

It would be foolish to assume that just using ICTs alone could redress inequities that persist within and among these groups. There are myriad factors and complex dependencies underlying if, how and to what extent social exclusion is experienced. Similarly, the ways in which social inclusion can be made possible through the use of ICTs are equally complex, interdependent and non-linear in nature.

Why is an authorized copy of a Hollywood film worth $15 in the United States offered for sale at the same price in a much poorer country like India? Factoring in purchasing power parity, is it really surprising that consumers refuse to pay the roughly $641 price tag and turn instead to piracy to satisfy their understandable demand for access to foreign culture? What is being done in developing countries, effectively or ineffectively, to enforce laws designed to deal with such dilemmas? Maybe more importantly, if enforcement efforts succeeded in stamping out piracy, what would happen to the jobs, income and gray market spinoffs generated in the informal sectors where this activity mostly takes place? Could these losses be offset by net social or economic gains through innovation or formalization in low-income countries that better comply with the legal standards set by the world's most developed nations?

And might this debate be different if we were talking about education instead of entertainment? For example, how do students in Senegal behave when confronted with conflicting information about acceptable practices for photocopying textbooks and other educational materials? How should they behave? They're explicitly asked to photocopy books instead of taking them home or tearing out the pages but, at the same time, by so doing, they learn that most copy shops around post-secondary campuses, not to mention their own libraries, operate illegally. Do students at the wealthiest South African universities or researchers at renowned institutions like the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt face similar challenges?

With the growing reach of mobile telephony, an inquiry into how information and communications technologies (ICTs) affect the livelihoods of the poor may seem unnecessary in the second decade of the twenty-first century. People all over the world, and especially in the developing world, are now “voting with their wallets” and paying to adopt mobile telecommunications technology in their business, personal and educational lives. When the “Information and Communications Technologies for Development” (ICT4D) program at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) was first introduced in 2000, mobile phones were far from being the “everywhere” technology they have since become. Like the Internet, mobile phones in the developing world were – and, in some cases, still are – prestige technologies available only at a premium price. What role could they possibly have in helping peasant farmers and micro-entrepreneurs make more money and develop more productive enterprises? This chapter continues the discussion in the earlier chapter on ICTs and poverty, but focuses more squarely on the role of ICTs as tools of productivity for farmers and small entrepreneurs.

Applied research within the ICT4D program at IDRC understood that social policy programs were a necessary, but not necessarily sufficient tool for lowering levels of poverty in a country over the long term. Other complementary approaches, such as building economic opportunities for the poor in targeted and focused ways, were equally important, especially in a developing country's poverty reduction strategies.

The International Development Research Centre's (IDRC's) “Information and Communications Technologies for Development” (ICT4D) program realized in the early days of its programming that a key part of catalyzing access to information and communications technologies (ICTs) involved attention to policy and regulatory environments. This was needed to understand the policy bottlenecks that hindered access to and use of ICTs. On its own, catalyzing access through demonstrating social and technical innovations is not enough to build an inclusive knowledge society and economy in the developing world. ICT policy and regulation play a key role in determining market and pricing conditions that influence the extent to which people can access ICTs. A key element of IDRC's ICT4D program was funding research on policy and regulatory frameworks, their effectiveness or lack thereof and policy interventions that would lead to increased access.

Two IDRC-funded projects show how social and technical innovations depend heavily on appropriate policies and regulation for increased access. Beginning in 2003, IDRC funded a project that explored the potential of low-cost WiFi technology to overcome the high cost of Internet connectivity in Africa. However, the project soon found that existing regulatory frameworks hindered the deployment of community wireless networks on the continent (Morris and Makan 2008, 3). In some countries, regulatory frameworks slowed the implementation of wireless technology. In others, like South Africa, community wireless networks were actually illegal. So, to use wireless technology as an effective and low-cost method to extend connectivity to underserved populations, changes to the telecommunications regulatory framework were needed in many countries.

The aim of this book is to document and synthesize a special time and space in the business of international development. During the first decade of the new millennium, a major effort was made to assist the developing world to adopt information and communications technologies (ICTs) in their approaches to social and economic development. Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) was a major actor in this endeavor.

As we enter the second decade of the twenty-first century, things have changed dramatically. The mobile phone has become a nearly ubiquitous device, especially in the developing world. With more than six billion mobile phone subscriber accounts in the world, Millennium Development Goal 8f – to increase access to telephone signals by 2015 – has already been met, nearly five years early. Twitter and Facebook are understood to have had major impacts in the transition toward democracy in many parts of the world. The Internet has become an even more important backbone to social development.

None of this happened by accident. Decisions about new telecommunications policies created the environment in which greater competition and accelerated new technology adoption lowered costs, fostered innovation and broadened access to ICTs.

In Africa, for example, a continent with a population smaller than India's but with 53 national governments, this took new knowledge and new institutional capacity in each distinct jurisdiction. In Asia, the most rural continent that is now experiencing accelerated urbanization, it meant the extension of telephony and Internet services far beyond metropolitan area markets and the adoption of new technologies to solve old problems of access in education, healthcare and local government.

The main goal of the International Development Research Centre's (IDRC's) “Information and Communications Technologies for Development” (ICT4D) program was to harness information and communications technologies (ICTs) for the benefit of all citizens of developing countries. Increased access to ICTs was recognized as a means to a greater end – building an inclusive knowledge society and economy in the developing world. Yet it was also recognized that a non-uniform spread of ICTs was contributing to a persisting and, in some cases, widening gap between the information “haves” in more developed countries and the information “have nots” in less developed regions of the world (Sciadas 2005).

IDRC's ICT4D program aimed to mitigate the persisting inequality in access to ICTs. It first addressed connectivity to ICTs, or the so-called “first order digital divide” (Riggins and Dewan 2005). Second, it tackled access from the standpoint of the ability to use ICTs and to contribute content, the so-called “second order digital divide” (Brotcorne et al. 2010; Hargittai 2002). (See Box 1.1.) This chapter describes the work of IDRC and its partners in overcoming the first order digital divide by way of social and technical innovation.

For the first order digital divide, the driving idea behind the program was to demonstrate how social and technical innovations could be adopted and adapted in the developing world so as to catalyze access and therefore bring about socioeconomic dividends for disadvantaged populations. Throughout its history, IDRC's ICT4D program sponsored an extensive range of research on numerous ways to increase access to ICTs in the less developed regions of the world.

Approaches to evaluation can be conceptualized in several ways. Alkin and Christie (2004) categorize evaluation theory into three branches of an “evaluation tree”: approaches that prioritize use, methods or valuing. Those who position themselves on the use branch orient evaluation toward decision making and practice change. Approaches on the methods branch tend to be most concerned with particular research methods guiding the evaluation. The valuing branch emphasizes who gets to judge the value and worth of the project, program or policy under review.

While all three approaches have value and are not mutually exclusive, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) orients itself toward the “use” branch. All IDRC's evaluation systems and processes are designed and implemented in ways to ensure evaluation studies have a clear use and respond to the needs of a particular user whether the user is management, program staff or a group of recipients forming a research network. With use as its anchor, IDRC then balances the other requirements of high-quality evaluation: feasibility, ethics and rigorous methods. As a result, IDRC does not advocate any particular evaluation content, model, method, approach, theory, design or even use. Rather, it advocates employing the methodologies most appropriate to achieving the desired use. In this way, IDRC's approach to evaluation mirrors its approach to research for development; research must be for development and not just about development (IDRC 2010).

Digital technologies today are indispensable tools used in almost every facet of our daily lives. Especially in the developing world, mobile phones have transformed the lives and livelihoods of average citizens. Yet, two decades ago, when there were more phone lines in Manhattan than in most of Sub-Saharan Africa, only a few visionary institutions could have imagined that computers, the Internet and mobiles would be so prominent in poverty-stricken environments. Information and communications technologies (ICTs) began to emerge as an issue in the field of development at a time when the concepts of sustainable development, biodiversity, economic growth and services for all dominated the landscape. These discourses did not consider the introduction of technology to address development issues, as technology was perceived as a luxury item rather than an indispensable building block for social and economic development. The rhetorical question, “Which is more important, hospital beds or computers?” was a common dismissive response to the suggestion that digital tools had a place in international development programming.

Despite this early skepticism, a few institutions and players in the world of development were prepared to argue that, like implementing basic needs infrastructure, access to ICTs was also needed. These early advocates for exploring the use of technology in the global south assumed that, by supporting and researching the ways in which ICTs could be used for development purposes, they would be able to overcome a range of developmental barriers such as access and performance in the education, health, political and community sectors of life.

Histories are written about people and events that are in the past. This book is not a history. Rather, it is a documentary or ethnography of a particular time in the business of foreign aid and of the ascendant role of Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in that time and space.

With the introduction of the first desktop computers in the mid-1980s, the postindustrial world was just awakening to the power and wonder of digital technologies. At the onset, the idea that digital technologies had something to do with social and economic development was a heretical notion. And it arose in unlikely locations in postindustrial North America and Europe – in places that were being bypassed by the first great wave of digital tools. In rural areas of Scandinavia, in the ghetto that was East Harlem, in the Australian outback and in rural outposts of Canada's poorest province, Newfoundland, the first attempts to “leapfrog” past an industrial revolution that had already left them as outsiders were beginning.

Ideas of how computers, email and networks might advance the interests of the marginalized and the poor in the developing world were also beginning to percolate. In Brazil, South Africa, the Philippines and other developing places, early pioneers and heretics were introducing the digital idea into more commonplace notions of how “development” might occur.

The International Development Research Centre's (IDRC's) “Information and Communications Technologies for Development” (ICT4D) program supports research on the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) in health systems – often referred to as electronic health or eHealth. Since the late 1990s, IDRC's eHealth research portfolio has been driven by priorities stated by researchers and practitioners from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Specifically, these studies respond to a clear and steady demand for applied research on how the use of ICTs could influence changes in behavior, service delivery, planning and policies at different points and at different levels of a health system. The scope of the studies extended beyond the financial bottom line to include ones that examine varied experiences of integrating eHealth in different health systems contexts. This chapter presents lessons and outcomes from IDRC-supported eHealth projects that helped strengthen the capacities of researchers and research networks, influence policies and practices and shape the body of literature on eHealth from a LMIC perspective.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines eHealth as the use of ICTs for health in order to accomplish a wide variety of tasks, such as treating patients, pursuing research, educating students, tracking diseases and monitoring public health. Although the term “eHealth” is increasingly recognized by many working in the field of health, this was not the case when IDRC's ICT4D program first started supporting projects in the early 1990s. These research projects – based in communities across Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) – examined a broad range of research questions about the expected and unexpected influences that ICTs have had on health services and health outcomes.

As we've seen in the previous chapter and the book as a whole, information and communications technologies (ICTs) continue to transform developing countries by increasing people's access to services as well as stimulating economic growth. For example, Chapter 5 illustrated how mobile phones have greatly expanded opportunities for those living at the “bottom of the pyramid” (BOP) in developing countries. The chapter also shows that the positive social impacts of ICTs seem particularly strong in poverty-stricken contexts. Furthermore, the societal transformations linked to the accelerating pace of technological change suggest that the changes we will see in emerging network societies in the global south over the next 10 years will have even greater impacts than those of the previous decade.

ICTs have transformed the landscape of developing countries and opened up new opportunities for advancing human development. The increasing presence of these technologies is shifting developing countries toward a more highly networked society, where social structures and activities evolve around networks through ICTs. Almost 6 billion people use mobile phones. This includes much of the world's poorest, including nearly ninety percent of the poorest populations of Brazil, India, China and South Africa. Nearly two billion people access the Internet, most of them living in developing or emerging economies. Popular and continually evolving applications, often in the form of social media, are driving demand. This historic increase in access to the Internet and mobile phones opens up a series of unique and potentially transformative development opportunities.

Education plays an important role in development. Basic education is at the core of national strategies aimed at enhancing human development, social and political empowerment and economic progress. The recognition of the value of education is clearly reflected in the second goal of the UN Millennium Development Goals, which aims to achieve universal primary education for children everywhere, boys and girls alike, by 2015. Achieving these goals is particularly important in this age of the global knowledge economy, where many socioeconomic groups in developing countries risk exclusion from the economic and social benefits that this new knowledge economy can potentially provide (Castells 1996).

A long-standing relationship exists between education and technology; some would suggest it began with the invention of the printing press. As new technologies emerged, educational providers have tried to integrate them into the learning process. The emergence of newer information and communications technologies (ICTs), like computers and mobile phones, has significantly widened the scope of how technologies can facilitate educational processes and there is a growing interest in using ICTs in developing countries' educational settings. Many believe that introducing ICTs into these contexts will have great impact given the systematic problems of access to quality education in the developing world. Yet evidence is lacking with regard to the actual impact of ICTs on the educational sector. Trucano, in a 2005 World Bank/infoDev study, found that the impact of ICT use on learning outcomes is unclear and open to much debate as reportedly very little useful data exist on several dimensions of ICT interventions in education.

Poverty reduction has been a key focus of development interventions and development research. Global levels of poverty have declined in the last decade, but there still remain many who cannot afford their basic food requirements for the day. Statistics illustrate that, in 2008, developing regions were home to nearly 1.4 billion people identified as being income poor (Chen and Ravallion 2008). Finding innovative ways to reduce poverty therefore continues to be a pressing goal. It is in light of this goal that IDRC's “Information and Communications Technologies for Development” (ICT4D) program sought to support research that investigated the role of information and communications technologies (ICTs) in reducing multi-dimensional poverty or addressing its root causes. In order to do so, IDRC partners focused much of their research on understanding the circumstances and conditions under which the poor accessed and used ICTs.

While studying this issue, a second focus emerged that was related to definitions and conceptualizations of poverty. A key aspect of poverty research has been to develop a realistic measure of poverty (where, if you are below a certain poverty threshold, you are considered poor). The rationale for a poverty line or threshold is that governments would then be able to have a statistical estimate of deprivation within their country. Using this guideline, governments could make decisions about the eligibility, costs and allocation of welfare resources to the families most in need (i.e., social protection programs such as child and social grants).

Since the 1990s, much attention and many resources have been spent on the application of information and communications technologies (ICTs) in the public sector – traditionally known as e-government – to improve the administration and services of government (Fountain 2001; Bhatnagar 2004). ICTs were seen as having the potential to achieve two benefits: the bureaucratic outcome of increased efficiency through digitizing administration processes and services; and the political outcomes of reduced corruption, enhanced transparency and greater civic engagement (Madon 2009). Furthermore, these benefits were regarded as key ingredients in helping to renew the public's waning trust in governments around the world (Bellamy and Taylor 1998, 63).

Canada's International Development Research Centre's (IDRC's) “Information and Communications Technologies for Development” (ICT4D) program began supporting research on e-government in the early 2000s within a global context of Western countries consolidating e-government applications – with particular progress made in digitizing government administration and the electronic provision of services. The international community was greatly interested in bringing the benefits of e-government to developing countries. This transfer of technology was a means to promote “good governance” (Ciborra and Navarra 2005; Misuraca 2007; Madon 2009), which was seen as a key ingredient in socioeconomic development (United Nations Development Programme 2002). Early optimism, however, gave way to the emerging reality that only a small portion of e-government implementations could be deemed a success (Heeks 2003). Research and capacity building activities were viewed as critical inputs to help enable e-government implementations in developing countries that would both be successful and ensure the benefits flowed to marginalized populations.