Workspaces:1. Information artefacts
From IKMEmergent
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1. Information artefacts
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Intoduction
Welcome to this workspace which aims to explore the use of information artefacts in the development sector. ‘Information artefacts’ sounds rather a grand term but we have yet to come up with a better one. We are referring to all the forms, ICT based or not, in which information is expressed, received, stored, handled, searched for and found.
We think this is an area of study which is important for development practice for four reasons:
There is a problem The use of information artefacts within most development organisations verges on the dysfunctional. Much relevant academic research is not noticed; consultancy reports gather dust, only their summaries having been read; historic records of thought and action are lost in the system; electronic information is filed haphazardly in content management systems, shared drives or even on laptops with little thought to its long term use. Organisations which want to ‘listen to the poor’ often have few means of doing so – certainly in the languages or forms in which the poor might want to express themselves. IKM studies have suggested that information which results from the use of participative methodologies by development organisations is seldom documented, accessed and used by the organisation in any context other than the immediate one in which it was produced. Computer based management information systems, with their requirements for exact data, can also inhibit effective communication between organisations and their beneficiaries. Cumulatively, the poor handling of information affects the efficiency and effectiveness of development work. Inappropriate artefacts add to information overload on time pressured staff. What can be done better?
There are opportunities for innovation New technologies offer new possibilities for gathering, handling and using information. They offer new ways of analysing and communicating information. They can make it easier for people, including the populations intended to benefit from development interventions, to express themselves and for such expression to be disseminated. New opportunities for oral, visual and spatial expression are created. What are the developmental possibilities of these opportunities? How can they be realised? How can development organisations, often structured around the controlled disbursement of funds, use these tools to improve their own understanding and communication of the issues they exist to address? Can they learn how to listen and respond to the voices of those who they aim to support, however those voices are expressed?
There are practical choices which have to be made Every development organisation has had to re-organise the way it works in response to the opportunities and expectations created by the computerised information systems and the internet. Often these responses have been reactive, technically led and non-strategic. Similarly, organisations are currently faced with the very different communications patterns stimulated by Web2. In the coming years they will need to plan for and respond to the opportunities and threats offered by the semantic web. These are current or foreseeable choices: the time to research and reflect on their implications is now.
There are strategic implications of what is or is not done which need to be understood and debated. Artefacts are not simple tools. They place economic and technical demands on their users and, from the village well to the factory to the internet, often stimulate new forms of social organisation and interaction around them. Current informational developments reflect the dialectics of change in technical, cultural, social and economic domains. However much particular tools may be presented in terms of ‘inevitable technical progress’, we are in fact offered a wide choice of direction with none being inevitable. The choices ‘we’ make affect the momentum or lack of it of each of the various potential futures. This applies to ‘us’ as active human beings. It applies even more strongly to ‘us’ as decision makers in a multi-billion dollar area of global activity such as the development sector, with its large ICT and communications and research budgets. Core strategic questions relating to informational developments for organisations operating in the development sector include
- Is the purpose of your information strategy to strengthen the comparative advantages of your organisation in relation to other ‘competing’ development organisations or to be a factor for development in its own right? For example, collaborative approaches can, for example by the use of open source software, enable investment in information systems in one organisation to be available as an adaptable resource for reuse in others. Likewise information content can be structured so that people have to come via your website to find and use it or be made directly available to the wider development information environment in ways which most suit the end user.
- Are we simply led by whatever informational developments gain market share or commercial momentum in the global North? Or should the development sector be alert to informational developments and innovation wherever it takes place as part of (what should be) its mission to respect and build on multiple knowledges and cultural diversity?
These are the issues being explored by IKM Labs, [working group 2] of IKM. In particular the programme as a whole is determined that, in however small a way, its practice contributes to the wider good. Thus we will be developing a number of new features as we develop this web site, based on the open source Mediawiki, and are committed to sharing them with others. The programme is also engaged in a number of activities with developers and users of information artefacts in various parts of the South with the intention of learning from and publicising their practice. This workspace is the place where we will record our ideas and our work about information artefacts as they evolve. We do not want this to be an exclusive process and we make no claim to be the only people looking at these issues, although we are equally aware that there are not that many. We very much hope that the development of this space will enable us to make links with and solicit contributions and references from others working in this field or working with new information artefacts in other fields.
We are still thinking through how to develop this space and learning how to use our ‘wiki’. We are not planning a traditional ‘wiki’ where content can be edited and changed by any registered user. We are more looking for a collection of contributions, including where appropriate contrary opinions on the same subject, around an agenda and structure which will be developed collaboratively. There is space for less formal participation, via the discussion pages. At the moment a discussion page is generated by every new page, which we think has the potential to create confusion. We therefore suggest, at least to start with, that any discussion about this workspace takes place on the discussion page linked to this introductory page. Please feel free to create an account for yourself – see link on top right hand corner of the screen – and join in. If you think you have something more substantial or structured to offer, or would like us to link to other material of which you are aware, please contact me: Mike@ikmemergent.net. My name is Mike Powell. I am the ‘editor’ of this workspace but I very much hope not to be the only author.
Potential avenues of exploration
At the moment the possibilities for new information artefacts seem endless. However there can be quite a gap between what gets created and what actually gets adopted for widespread use. This of course is true of innovation in society in general but the process is perhaps even more difficult if the innovation is aimed at a specific set of skills. Within the development sector there has been no shortage of tool kits developed to assist with all sorts of organisational processes, such as project management, evaluation or knowledge management. Their take up and use however is generally patchy. Likewise there have been a number of initiatives where software developers, primarily users of FLOSS (Free, Libre or Open Source Software) have tried to offer their skills, sometimes at no cost, to the cause of development without the intended collaborations ever reaching their potential.
This experience should warn us, as we start these next explorations, that paying attention just to the artefact or tool is not enough. Just as important is the process of its development and by which it is adapted and used. It does not need to be a process in which an expert designer creates ‘a solution’. It may be more sustainable to build participative processes in which end-users reflect on their current practice and, perhaps in interaction with external agents with specialist skills, try to imagine improvements. IKM Labs is running a number of ‘Interaction Labs’ with various groups of development actors with specific informational needs to explore future possibilities and the processes by which they might be realised. We would be very interested to learn about the experience – good or bad - of others in trying to build collaborations between developers and users in the development sector.
Meanwhile in the workspace we need to look critically at each potential artefact. In particular we need to consider what aspect of reality in day to day development practice is the might the artefact improve and how could it do this? We also need to think critically about the cultural baggage which may be attached to any particular artefact. For example we have had some lively debate within the programme about Web 2. Compared with previous common tools, it clearly offers many more people access to easy to use tools with which to express themselves and communicate with others. On the other hand, it can be argued that, leaving aside issues of access to ICT, high volume instantaneous interaction it represents is not part of the cultural norms for many of the communities of the poor which the development sector is supposed to be empowering. Perhaps the development sector should prioritise investment in tools which are closer to people’s preferred patterns of communication – local language oral software for example – or which would make it easier for large and powerful organisations in the sector to listen to the opinions of the people on whose behalf they aim to act.
Over the coming months we will try both to explore the issues which lie behind choosing which atefacts to use in a development context and also to see what is being done and what new ideas are emerging. We will do the latter in part by looking at what IKM is doing but, more importantly, through building as comprehensive review as possible of experience elsewhere. We expect to develop material in each of the following areas
- Appropriate text formats
- Digital story telling
- Local content creation
- Means of expressing and listening to local voices
- Navigation
- Orality
- Planning tools
- Presentations
- Search
- Spatial thinking
- Visualisation
We hope the end result will be a unique resource of descriptions, debate, contacts and links which will be of value to anyone working in the development sector who is thinking of innovating in their use of artefacts. We hope also it can become a place of contact for those of us working in these areas. As stated in the introductory page, external contributions, regular or one-off are very welcome. Pleas contact Mike@ikmemergent.net
We are currently (Summer 2010) exploring the implications of the emerging semantic web, particularly linked data and visualisation, for how development related information can be connected, analysed and presented. This exploration involves both practical and policy issues and considers not just what may be done with new technologies but the implications of how it is done for other development processes – access to information, openness, inclusitivity etc. We are interested im making links with others pioneering this technology within the development sector and in jointly organising a workshop to look at how this sort of material is currently being used and what broader issues of development process such use may raise. We intend to jointly create a background paper for this workshop, the second version of which is available here
Issues
Expressing information
- Orality and ICT: New opportunities
- Visualisation: a route to quicker communication?
- Cultural assumptions in Web2
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