User-driven solutions: innovation in IICD's work

Recently within IICD we have started to re-assess our role with regard to enabling innovation. Is it our task to introduce innovative technologies? Or should we retain our focus on enhancing processes by employing ICTs, whether they are innovative or not?

Rather than defining innovation in IICD's work at this time, we have been looking into IICD-supported projects and programmes to identify examples of innovative approaches, technologies or processes that can guide us and show how IICD can further assist with fostering locally relevant innovations.

VoIP for rural Ecuador

In Ecuador, connectivity networks were established to connect development organisations in rural areas to the internet. Such information and internet services were established with the support to MMCH and CAMARI, for example. Subsequently introducing Voice-over-I.P. (VoIP) solutions over these community wireless networks, enabled low-cost telephony in rural communities where no reliable telephony was available at all. Thus successfully introducing advanced technologies such as VoIP to address the existing communication challenges, and exploiting the technology's cost benefits to provide services that better suit the purchasing power of the rural community members, has complemented the organisations' development information with fair and equitable access to channels of communication.

Teleradiology via email

Another example that can be considered as fostering innovation is the tele-radiology project IKON in Mali. IICD helped SOMIM (Société Malienne d’Imagerie Médicale) to set up Internet connections between the Point GP hospital in Bamako and three hospitals in the rural areas of Timbuktu, Mopti and Sikasso to experiment with teleradiology. The teleradiology project provides a solution for the lack of trained radiologists in rural hospitals, by offering them the possibility to send or receive x-ray scans and diagnoses over the internet using email. The IKON experience has re-confirmed that it is vital that the innovation is need-driven rather than technology-driven when introducing a technology such as telemedicine in a developing country. Very advanced and sophisticated telemedicine equipment is not a prerequisite; rather elementary equipment is initially sufficient and easier to understand, use and maintain. It also gives local doctors and software developers more time to work together on developing more advanced platforms that are tailored to suit the specific needs of the Malian health sector, as was done with the development of OpenYaLIM by the Malian company IDC in order to respond to the needs of the IKON teleradiology project. Open YaLIM has been developed as an open source software project and is available to  facilitate the replication of the E-health initiatives developed in Mali, in Africa and elsewhere.

Teachers begin using animation software to develop content

In education programmes in Bolivia and Zambia, ICTs are being used to develop local educational content in ways that hadn't been done before. Identifying the gap between existing curriculum based text books which were limited in number and adaptability, and the vast amount of resources available on the internet which did not suit Zambian or Bolivian educational contexts, educational organisations came together to use ICTs to develop their own educational content. Teachers working with the ENEDCO project in Zambia for example, are adopting low entry level animation software tools to complement their own classroom presentations with self-developed animated content. In some cases, students are developing the animations as projects for class, and teachers in turn use the animations developed by students in their teaching. In Bolivia, content models developed by teachers themselves are being transformed into interactive games using higher-level Flash software. These games are then given back to the participating teachers and schools on CD-ROMs for use by the students and teachers, and are made available to other educational institutions in Bolivia. Both these examples are innovative in their user-centric approaches. Content is not developed by governmental Curriculum Departments, but instead is based on the users of the content being core players in the designing and development processes.  Teachers and students are therefore not only empowered by having more and more relevant educational content, but rather actively build their own capacity to use ICT tools to develop content.

eSociety

Aside from the above examples, initiatives are supported which in itself bring community stakeholders together in an innovative manner. In Northern Uganda, for example, the eSociety programme is using ICT tools and platforms to boost service delivery and community participation by improving collaboration between local government, the private sector and civil society. Simple support structures can address themes of mutual interest. Using a mixture of digital and analogue media, rural civil society and government can work together to formalise and facilitate this cooperation, which has been referred to as eSociety. eSociety promotes and develops transparency, improves the effectiveness of service delivery, and creates more open and interactive debate between civil society and government. It also helps to sidetrack the dangers of nepotism and can thus contribute to the strengthening of the democratic role of both the civil organisations and local government.

Knowledge networks

The above examples of programmes resulting from IICD's participatory and multi-stakeholder approach, the so-called Round Table Process, show that cross-disciplinary collaboration can result in innovative solutions to challenges. This Round Table Process, when first introduced in ICT-for-Development work in 1998 in itself was innovative.  With the support that IICD has since provided to establishing multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder knowledge networks nationally and internationally, we feel that this is where future innovations may lie. Rather than IICD shifting its focus towards introducing more innovative technologies, instead we see ourselves as maintaining our focus on addressing development sector challenges in a way that is driven by the needs of local users and communities. All of the IICD supported country programmes now have national  information sharing  networks, which have been forming smaller sub-networks that focus on particular sectors or themes. These groups have attracted project coordinators, project users, policymakers, technical companies and research institutions as its members, and thus provide unique pools of knowledge and expertise to develop innovative ideas for programmes and services likely to be of  immediate relevance to their common sector or theme of interest.

Methodologies for generating innovative ideas: the next level

IICD's work with Private Sector knowledge partners will likely further enhance its ability to assist organisations in developing countries to come to innovative and effective solutions. With the private sector companies’ expertise in methodologies that are used to generate innovative ideas and solutions for problem-solving, IICD hopes to be able to facilitate and co-create more innovative solution development with the local networks and stakeholder groups. IICD's strength over the last 10 years has been its Round Table methodology which was used to analyse sector needs and develop programme ideas in a multi-disciplinary and participatory manner.  Adapting and facilitating newer and relevant methodologies that will assist with further developing and leveraging appropriate ICT-enabled solutions to address development problems, driven by user-needs and powered by local networks of passionate individuals and organisations, is a focus that we envisage retaining and extending further.

Cross-fertilization of minds, that's were innovation takes place. And we hope to support it.