Preparatory Tasks for Country Research Teams: Pre-Seattle

The Research Working Group (RWG) met on April 2-3 to begin the research design process. In our discussions we confirmed that the tasks for the Country Research Teams outlined in the memo of March 25 will be very helpful for arriving at final research approach for Phase 1. The notes below are intended to help clarify and prioritize (simplify) these tasks, and to offer opportunities for discussing them further prior to April 30 when we convene in Seattle.

First, in all cases, our hope is to get a rough idea of the issues so that we can work together and build a research design that takes best account of the local contexts. In other words, please do not spend any time trying to develop a comprehensive understanding of these issues (which would be part of the study itself). Any progress you make on these tasks will be greatly helpful.

#1 Public access mapping:

As noted, we hope to get an overall understanding of the public access landscape. What are the major types of public access points (libraries, cybercafés, telecentres)? What is the scale? Who funds them?  What are their missions?  Who goes to them? What are some of the major activities that people do in these centers? Are there other distinguishing characteristics that you would like to tell us about?

#2 Story gathering / visual representation

To the extent possible, please visit a couple of representative centers from within the different categories you’ve described in the mapping. When you are there we would like for you to do two things. First, take some pictures, or even short video, of the center and people. In Seattle we will have time for each of the countries to present what public access looks and feels like so any visual representation will give everyone a textured understanding of the public access environment. [Ricardo can further explain how we plan to use this input when we meet.]

Second, collect some stories from both the operators and users. In order to begin to understand possible impacts (positive and negative) please ask them to describe:

• The best possible outcome case of people using the center
• The average/typical case of how people use the center
• The worse case

[Ricardo can further explain how we plan to sue this input when we meet.]

#3 Data availability

We are interested in knowing what types of data exists within your country.  In particular:

1)      Government or other official statistics, such as: income, employment statistics, education, health indicators, remittances and migration patterns, etc.). Also, at what level (household, regional, community) does the data exist?  This data will be useful as we develop our impact indicators to measure to what extent public access ICT makes a difference in these areas.  If there is any official data on public access points (business registries, etc.), please identify these as well.

2)      Initiative/program level data, such as: number of venues, user numbers and demographics, user logs, and any other data that might be collected by a particular public access initiative or center. Highlight any opportunities for our research study to partner with existing initiatives. For example, in Chile the national library program has a user database that we may be able to access. Also, we could potentially put a survey on the computers. One of the ideas proposed by the Research Working Group is to conduct a retrospective study in which we interview people who used public access 3-5 years ago and see to what extent this has made a difference in terms of their livelihoods today. Therefore, knowing if previous data exists will be helpful to determine whether such a study is feasible.

#4 Understanding context

This item was not part of the March 25 memo, but to the extent you can provide a rough sketch of the following it will be helpful as well for our meetings in Seattle.

1)       Stakeholder analysis: who are the main individuals and organizations involved in the public access movement (users, operators, librarians, teachers, local officials, private sector, teachers, nurses and doctors, policy makers, regulators)?

2)       Communication and network environment: what are the existing networks of trust (opinion leaders, people and organizations that share information) and media preferences (radio, mobile phones, inter-personal, etc.)? 

Pre-Seattle Guidance

We believe it will be helpful to have a conference call with each of you to further clarify these tasks and answer any questions you may have. Rebecca Sears will be contacting you early next week to arrange these. Ricardo Ramirez (RWG member) will also participate in these calls.