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Last Friday, the third monthly #ICT4D Twitter Chat brought together 30 of the field's thought leaders (follow them all) to focus on and discuss ways that ICT4D can and does work with local governments, especially in situations like the recent disaster in Haiti.

Four questions guided the conversation (full transcript) which once again was a fast, free-flowing exchange of ideas:

• Do you work with local governments or bypass them? Why?
• What are the keys to project success with local governments?
• How can you work with compromised governments, like Haiti?
• What lessons for ICT have been learned so far in the Haiti relief effort?

Keys to success with local governments

One of the critical success factors identified collectively by the group was the importance of having a strategic personal relationship with a "project champion" in either a local government or other community leadership role. Because ICT4D projects by their very nature are long-term investments in the future, this local connection brings a strategic perspective and focus, as well as providing an opportunity to ensure the work is based on real, expressed needs of people in the area being served -- not just those of donors and interest groups "back home".

An interesting discussion during the event turned on the question of assigning credit for successful ICT4D implementations. While the group believed in the importance to position the local government or community champion as the driving force behind such projects, it's also important not to lose your own individual or organizational identity. Making sure people remember who helped make a solution possible will prevent costly searches for expertise in the future.

ICT networks, flattened

Learning from ICT deployments in Haiti

Working in a time-critical disaster relief context, like has been happening in Haiti in the past few weeks, brings some unique issues. Participants generally believed that when peoples' lives are on the line, it's important to "do" first, and inform others later. Waiting to get approvals from a local government in shambles is often not the best course of action.

However, major functions of ICT4D-focused relief groups should be focused on quickly identifying local "hubs" of knowledge and communication in the community, and helping rebuild communication infrastructure for these governments as well as major NGO's. Without these critical links in place, a coordinated relief effort just is not possible, resulting in wasted resources and delays in response.

In a situation like Haiti, with at least 150,000 known dead at the time of writing this article, lack of interoperability and cooperation between groups has undoubtedly cost an untold number of lives. The ICT4D community can learn from this, however, and take steps to proactively coordinate resources (e.g., local disaster contingency plans by organizations based in the community, and open standards for ICT response systems). This coordination in advance will help make the response more timely and effective in the critical hours after a disaster strikes. It's our responsibility as ICT4D professionals to work toward that end today to save lives tomorrow.

Recommended NGO's in Haiti

Finally, we asked participants to suggest some of their favorite relief organizations using ICT in Haiti. Here's a list of those shared:

• Partners In Health
• SOIL
• Sahana Foundation
• Ushahidi
• Plan International
• Hands and Feet Project
• Doctors Without Borders

Michael Downey is a graduate student in human-computer interaction and ICT4D at Indiana University School of Informatics, and is a contributor to the University's Indiana Development Informatics Group (IDIG) and OpenMRS programs.

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Don't forget - today we're having the January ICT4D Twitter Chat - Working with Local Governments

Local governments - from regional to village level - can be both a help and a hindrance to information and communication technology deployments in the developing world. Yet projects usually cannot succeed without their buy-in.

In the January Twitter Chat, we'll explore four vital questions any ICT practitioner faces when designing and deploying technology-based projects at the local level:

1. Do you work with local governments or bypass them?
2. What are the keys to project success with local government?
3. How can you work with compromised governments, like Haiti?
4. Where are examples of positive local government buy-in?

We'll start at 12-noon Eastern Time ( noon worldwide ) with introductions, then move into the discussion, using the #ICT4D hashtag in Twitter.

Be sure to follow ICT_works, Michael Downey, and Chloe Feinberg to keep up with all the Twitter Chat action, and for those not on Twitter, you can watch the action via the handy embed below or this separate webpage:

Our hope is to learn from each other to change the failure factors that we can individually control, and recognize the ones we need collective action to remedy.

While many practitioners and pundits in the ICT4D community agree that the field has had more than its share of failure - with some even claiming an unbroken string of failures - little work has gone into understanding why these failures happened, and even less work sharing failure with others.

ICTworks attempted to change the nature of the community's discussion of failures last Friday with "Fail Day", the second edition of the now-monthly #ICT4D Twitter Chat.

By all measures, the event was a success, with nearly thirty participants -- including researchers, practitioners, and interested people from industry and government -- not to mention an even larger audience of observers. The event's guiding questions were simple: What are the major types of failure in the ICT4D field, why are we faced with these patterns, and what can be done to change the course?

Unsurprisingly, at the end of 90 minutes, there were arguably more new questions than answers. (A full transcript of the event is available.) However, a few important themes arose:

1. Improper or missing understanding of users.

Technologists, like all people, have a tendency to dream big. As a result, systems are often over-engineered in the minds of the designer, without taking the time to base the design on real data points from potential users (or even from other projects). Designed in a vacuum, these projects are nearly guaranteed to fail -- users in the developing world often end up finding very little in common with an application developer in the United States (for example).

The human-computer interaction field is partly to blame for this pattern, as we haven't done a good job providing low-cost, meaningful ways to better understand users in the global south. We certainly haven't promoted use of simple techniques such as use of personas, interviews, and surveys in the early phases of ICT4D projects. Some of us, including me, are working to change this, but it will not be an overnight process.

2. Failure to focus on real problems and needs.

A failure to understand real needs is somewhat related to misunderstanding of users. After all, the better technologists are at understanding users, the better they can understand their needs. At OpenMRS, we have a mantra that "care will lead the way". This means that every bit of functionality can be traced to actual, real-life needs of the clinics and health care professionals we serve.

Unfortunately, this type of understanding can only be achieved by spending time first-hand in the environment where an ICT4D solution will be used, or, if that's not possible, by involving people from that environment directly in the design process. Eliminating time spent on "imagined" problems not only makes the technology development process faster, it also increases the likelihood the product will be well-received.

3. Expectation gap between implementers and donors.

Building on the previous two points, the chat's participants made it clear that implementers don't always do a good job of educating donors and other stakeholders about the realities "on the ground". (Perhaps this is because these "doers" don't fully understand them, themselves!) This misunderstanding inevitably leads to faulty expectations not only of the project, but also the processes of designing and implementing. Technologists must become better at "speaking donor", and also must help the donors learn a little about how to "speak tech".

This communication gap has plagued the informatics world in the global north since its beginnings, so it's not surprising to see it at play in the global south in international development projects. However, I believe the remedy may be the same in both situations - increased cross-training of people with solid technical backgrounds in concepts like interpersonal communication, project management, monitoring and evaluation.

Summary

While failures -- particularly in ICT4D -- will never be eliminated, focusing on these factors earlier in projects can help reduce of the impact of these failures, and help us "fail early and often", iteratively improving project implementations instead of failing late in the game, wasting more donor funds and invaluable time.

What do you think? Do you agree with these ideas? Were some overlooked? Voice your opinion in the comments.

Other FailDay Chat Synopsis

• ICT4D: Past mistakes, future wisdom
• Agile Development and Retrospectives: Learning from failure?

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