IICD's Guiding Principles

To secure the quality and sustainability of our work IICD adheres to the following six guiding principles:

  Demand-responsiveness: ICT for development (ICT4D) activities must respond to local demands and offer opportunities for development that are workable in the local context to increase sustainability of the solutions applied. This means we work with partners that are demand-responsive and that have processes in place which are both participatory and representative.

 

  Local ownership: IICD’s programmes fit the government policy in each country where we work. These programmes are implemented by local organisations (activity owners). Local partners take full ownership of their development challenge and develop, implement and monitor their own ICT-based solutions to increase the sustainability of the ICT4D activity. IICD’s role is that of catalyser, broker and facilitator in the process. Our programmes are designed to have maximum local ownership from the start. Our M&E system allows us to check the implementation, not only to ensure planned activities are implemented within the budget and time frame, but also to measure our impact. Through field visits, we regularly check the process to evaluate the level of ownership and take corrective actions where needed and when possible.

 

  Capacity development: People can only make effective use of ICTs for development purposes when they have the right skills base. That is why a large part of our work is devoted to the capacity development of our partners and target groups. Capacity development is not limited to the development of individual ICT skills and competences, but also addresses the needs of the organisations.

 

  Learning by doing: At the heart of IICD’s work, and a strength we are widely recognized for, is the “learning by doing” philosophy. The actual execution and piloting of projects is carried out by IICD’s local partners. IICD’s role is to act at the skills transfer level. Additionally, project partners participate in monitoring and evaluation activities whereby they review their results and draw lessons from what they have achieved so far. This helps local partners and IICD to learn from their experiences and build up a solid knowledge base on how ICT is best applied. Learning by doing is part of the capacity building process that is used in IICD’s programmes.

 

  Partnerships, networks and multi-stakeholder involvement: The success of IICD’s work lies in creative partnerships such as knowledge alliances to help overcome challenges. Public, private and non-profit partners each have an added value to ensure sustainable development and should be involved from the very beginning of any programme. IICD aims to involve all stakeholders, both locally and internationally, to find solutions to development problems. Their combined strengths are critical to the overall sustainability of these solutions. In particular sustainability at country and sector levels cannot be successful without support from the government. While IICD programmes are designed to fit government policy, policy influencing activities will make it possible for national governments to actively support these programmes. Financial sustainability is also important and can only be reached through partnerships between local and international actors/donors. Within IICD’s programmes special attention is given to help our partners develop competences in policy influencing, knowledge sharing and funding acquisition for their activities. The local partners play a major role in the multi-stakeholder process, as active member of the network.

 

  Gender equity: Women’s needs receive special attention when analysing and solving development problems to ensure that the ICT solution contributes to gender equity. Using a gender sensitive approach is fundamental to improve the sustainability of any programme. For this reason IICD’s programmes give great attention to gender issues and local partners are sensitized to the issue they if not sufficiently aware of its importance.