The Organisational Context for Successful ICT4D Practitioners

How can their organisational context best support those who implement ICT4D projects?

People – designers, builders, operators, champions – are critical to the successful implementation of ICT4D projects.  The digital development organisations that employ these practitioners already know that.  But what they know far less about is how to create a supportive organisational context that will improve ICT4D practitioner performance and, hence, ICT4D project success rates.

I have therefore been undertaking field research in East Africa designed to tease out components of supportive context, based on interviews in five organisations which were a mix of NGOs and social enterprises.  To date, I have identified six “habits of highly-effective digital development organisations”:

1. Reinforcing Mission Congruence

The most-effective contexts were those in which ICT4D practitioners were given a clear sense of how their work fitted with the organisation’s wider mission, which typically related to social impact.  As well as giving practitioners the bigger picture of their contribution, this also helped create a unity of purpose with shared goals of making a difference.

2. Strong Non-Monetary Rewards

Money is tight in most digital development organisations but they can successfully motivate their practitioners with non-monetary rewards.  Flexibility on working hours and opportunities for work-life balance came up repeatedly in this category, alongside recognition from peers of one’s contribution.

3. Involvement in Monetary Reward-Setting

A role for non-monetary rewards does not mean money is unimportant – it is!  But just as important as the amount was the process by which pay was calculated.  Supportive contexts were those where pay was transparently calculated and openly discussed, and hence where ICT4D practitioners felt involved in the process of decision-making.

4. Support for Career Progression

To make their best contribution to ICT4D projects, practitioners needed to feel that they were making progress in their careers.  Though often backed by direct mentoring, organisational support here varied by career stage.  Early-career practitioners had a strong perceived need for skills development: not narrow task-specific skills but a broad and hybrid mix of technical and non-technical capabilities.  This worked best where their organisation offered them a mix of different roles but also ensured access to high-quality digital tools and infrastructure.  Mid-career professionals also wanted growth opportunities but they focused less on technical skills and more on being given the autonomy and responsibility to develop leadership capabilities.

5. Meeting Personal Goals

ICT4D practitioners give their best to their projects and their organisation when they have a perception of reciprocation; particularly in terms of being helped to achieve their personal goals.  Goals of social impact and skills-building for career progression were mentioned already, but supportive contexts could provide other things – networks of stakeholder relations to build social capital for the future, and facilitation of personal development projects.

6. Socio-Emotional Support

ICT4D often has a technical bias but practitioners worked best in cultures attuned to the human side of work, and in which they felt their whole selves were recognised.  These were organisations that were more like “families” than “well-oiled machines”; in which peers and managers cared about wellbeing and would take time to listen and engage with personal problems; and in which socialisation and hence a sense of belonging were actively encouraged.

These findings may themselves have some specificity to East African digital development organisations.  Each organisation may thus need to identify the dimensions of organisational support that will work with its particular ICT4D practitioners.  Nonetheless, these six habits should be a useful starting point for all organisations.

If you would like further details about the six habits, or my ongoing work using these to develop interventions for digital development organisations, then feel free to contact me: epiphania.kimaro[@]manchester.ac.uk

Photo credit: Gladness Mayenga

Bricolage and the Sustainability of ICT4D Solutions

In  ICT4D, bricolage refers to context-sensitive ways of implementing and sustaining ICT4D solutions [1].  Different from approaches where strategic goals, ways to achieve them, as well as success and failure metrics are defined in advance, bricolage is mostly characterised by improvisation and continuous learning from failures in environments with many uncertainties [2].  People who play key roles in shaping and driving the bricolage process are hereafter referred to as bricoleurs.

Drawing from a particularly successful long-term ICT4D project in Tanzania, for which the author of this post has been part of a team for about 10 years, this article discusses a three-stage process that local bricoleurs have gone through in sustaining the project in the face of scarce resources and diverse interests of stakeholders.  Extended empirical and theoretical insights about the role of bricolage in shaping and sustaining the project were reported in the work of Fruijtier and Senyoni [3], and this post will essentially provide some sound bites from the paper.

Bricolage in ICT4D Projects: Stages

1.    Opportunity Based: During this stage, a project opportunity is identified, its activities are mainly driven by external players, and the local bricoleur gets involved in project activities based on availability and need, as determined by main players. In the case of the Health Information Systems Program (HISP) team at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania (hereafter referred to HISP UDSM), this stage was characterised by the advent of a pilot project for implementing the District Health Information Software (DHIS) in Kibaha and Bagamoyo districts in the Pwani region.  This was around 2002-2010 and the main focus of the project during this period was to demonstrate the capabilities of the then-new DHIS system in handling routine aggregate health data, and to make a case for the endorsement and national rollout of the system by the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Tanzania. The University of Oslo (UiO) (main developers of the DHIS system) mainly influenced the direction of project activities during this period, and the HISP UDSM team supported the pilot districts in activities such as training, user support and data analysis, as was determined by the main team at UiO. 

PhD and MSc scholarships were also established as a result of collaboration between the UiO and HISP UDSM in order to, among other things, strengthen local capacity for supporting project activities in Tanzania. It was the ability to serendipitously survive funding uncertainties and diverse interests of stakeholders, and the partnership with MoH in persuading a variety of stakeholders to pursue the common cause (strengthening HMIS (Health Management Information System) data reporting) that prepared the UDSM team for the would be next phases of the project where it (HISP UDSM) turned out to play a key role that fostered project success.

2.    Locally Owned: During this stage, bricoleurs cultivate the growth of what is already achieved while advancing their knowledge and understanding of practices in the project domain. In the case of the HISP UDSM team, this was the period from 2010-2015 which was characterised by close involvement with MoH in providing technical support during revision of HMIS data collection tools and definition of indicators prior to the national rollout of DHIS, and playing the central training role during the national rollout which was done in December 2013. After the national rollout, HISP UDSM got closely involved in supporting hundreds of users across the country, as well as bringing data for other programs and partners on board. Apart from this close involvement, care was taken to involve MoH and its various departments on every step of the way, to foster ownership and long term sustainability of the project.

3.    Locally Driven: At this stage, bricoleurs assume main control of events in the project. They can proactively anticipate challenges, and provide them with apt solutions. In the case of the HISP UDSM team, this is a period from 2015 onwards. It is characterised by, among other things, new projects and requirements from various stakeholders. Following the successful DHIS national rollout in 2013, the HISP UDSM team was also requested by other ministries in Tanzania to implement similar solutions for them. In response to this, so far, HISP UDSM has customised DHIS to serve the data reporting and analysis requirements of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Water in Tanzania. Arrangements are underway to do the same for other ministries and government departments. As well, as they continue using DHIS, various MoH partners keep on requesting new and rather generic functionalities which are not yet implemented by the main DHIS developer base, which is globally led by UiO.  To respond to this, in 2015, the HISP UDSM team devised an innovation strategy which has seen the implementation of generic solutions, in terms of new DHIS functionalities and mobile apps, that have turned out to be useful to other DHIS users across the globe [3]. 

Conclusion

Two key take-aways for other ICT4D projects:

1. The sustainability likelihood of an ICT4D project increases with an increase in the ability of the bricoleur to create the environment that fosters the prosperity of bricolage. Importantly, to be innovative in unpredictable project envoronments, bricoleurs need to build both social and technological alliances.
2. Because of the special emphasis on learning, universities can be conducive environments for bricolage to thrive.

References

1.    Ali, Maryam, and Savita Bailur. “The challenge of “sustainability” in ICT4D—Is bricolage the answer.” Proceedings of the 9th international conference on social implications of computers in developing countries. 2007.

2.    Ciborra, Claudio U. “From thinking to tinkering: The grassroots of strategic information systems.” Bricolage, Care and Information. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2009. 206-220.

3.    Fruijtier, Elisabeth, and Wilfred Senyoni. “The Role of Local Bricoleurs in Sustaining Changing ICT4D Solutions.” International Development Informatics Association Conference. Springer, Cham, 2018.

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Why is it Important to Know about the Origins of ICT4D Champions?

At the most recent gathering of information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) scholars in the North of England I asked how important and significant it is to research the origins of champions and leaders in international development. Understanding the origins of key development actors appeared to be a pressing matter to me when researching ICT4D champions[i] in South Africa: it seemed unlikely that one could proactively identify, deploy, develop and support such individuals without understanding their genesis. However, I felt uncertain about the extent research colleagues share this sense of significance. ICT4D North (of England) provided a great opportunity to ask colleagues for their opinions about this issue.

Those attending my 10 minute talk were requested to consider how significant they think understanding the factors contributing to someone becoming an ICT4D champion are and to indicate their assessment on a scale of 1 to 10 before I shared my arguments.

I continued to reason that understanding the origins of ICT4D champion is very significant based on the following three perspectives:

A conceptual perspective on the nature of development

Champions and leaders are included within development conceptualisations around agency – the capacity of individual actors to act on behalf of themselves or others towards increased well-being and development.

Consider the recent Information Technology for Development journal special issue, ‘Conceptualizing Development in ICT4D’: all seven contributions – one way or the other – included an emphasis on agency in their framing of development. Authors of three papers in the special issue were present at ICT4D North, so this observation was illuminated from those sources:

1) Jimenez and Zheng examined the relationship between innovation and development and argued for the importance of the individual’s agency therein, hence a human-development perspective;

2) Poveda and Roberts argued for the importance of agency to challenge structural root causes of unjust social norms, hence a social justice perspective on development through critical-agency;

3) Ismail et al. framed development from an institutional perspective and, amongst other things, showed the importance of spokespersons – lead agents – for the marginalised in impact sourcing initiatives.

As such, understanding the various roles of actors – including leaders such as champions and others – and the factors that shape their agency, cannot be omitted from a development research agenda, because it is so central to our understanding of the concept ‘development’.

A perspective on international development project performance

International aid and development initiatives are most often delivered by means of projects. Unfortunately these projects have an uneven success track record. Tangible, broad-based evidence is elusive but to illustrate, the World Bank Independent Evaluation Group project performance ratings[ii] indicated a failure rate of 50% until 2000 and 39% to 2010.

ICT4D projects perform no better, with less than 20% of initiatives considered successful and as many as a third being outright failures[iii]. Interestingly, from a cross-cutting analysis of critical success factors for information systems projects[iv] it was found that the top three most prevalent drivers of success were people factors – issues such as facilitation of participation, sponsorship and competence building; these are all leadership-related aspects.

How significant are leaders and leadership in mainstream development discourses? To get a clearer sense of this I examined World Development – the largest and most impactful development studies journal[v]. On average, only one article that empirically examines leaders and leadership in development was published annually over the last 20 years. This seems disproportionate to the acknowledged importance of key individuals in development practice and is inadequate to progressively build knowledge in this area. Understanding the role and nature of leading actors – such as champions and other leaders – is critically important in order to succeed with development projects, yet inadequately addressed through development research, including a better grasp of their roots.

A champion-specific perspective

The literature on the origins of champions is somewhat of an enigma. We analysed a core set of systematically selected research papers about champions of information systems innovations[vi] to gain insight into current perspectives. This analysis revealed four prevailing concepts of champion origins from which two axes can be derived:

• Born vs. made: some authors argue that becoming a champion is the result of an innate predisposition. While context and external interventions may impact the likelihood that this predisposition is expressed in champion behaviour, it does not alter that predisposition. The key task for organisations, therefore, is identification of those who have a champion’s profile. Others argue that (almost) anyone can become a champion through appropriate development and training: these, rather than profiling exercises, thus become the focus of organisational intervention.
• Emergent vs. appointed: some authors see champions as naturally emerging within any project or situation of innovation. These individuals take an interest in a particular cause and then begin to champion it. Organisations may affect this via general contextual interventions, but they would not get directly involved at the level of the individual. Others argue that one needs to plan the presence of champions: individuals must be identified, sometimes explicitly assigned the role of champion, before championing can begin.

My empirical research of ICT4D champions establishes that the factors leading to someone becoming a champion extend beyond these. Origins are affected by a mix of contingency factors – environmental factors, social networks, personal characteristics, organisational factors, skills and education, and personal experiences – that influence them over a longitudinal time period, during which a trigger – an opportunity, experience, or a new technology – catalyses a person into actively championing a specific cause, innovation or ICT4D initiative. So, the inadequacy of our current understanding provides the impetus to further explore the role and nature of key agents – leaders such as champions and others – in ICT4D projects, including a better grasp of their genesis.

In sum, I argue, from these three perspectives, that our current understanding of leading actors – such as ICT4D champions – is inadequate. Considering these issues around agency in development, it is contended that current champions in ICT4D are incidental, because we have insufficient understanding of the origins of champions. Better understanding of the origins of champions is significant because it is the necessary first step to proactively identify, develop, deploy and support such individuals in our initiatives. Ultimately this could lead to more successful development in practice.

ICT4D North participants were then asked to revisit their initial assessment after I shared my arguments, thereby examining the persuasiveness of my narratives. Here are some of the responses:

Here are lessons I’ve learned from their feedback:

• The conceptual links between agency, leaders and champions should be further developed and clarified.
• The notion of ‘origins of a champion’ invokes a connotation of ‘place of origin’ as opposed to a more holistic interest in all the factors that play a role in a champion’s formation[i].
• It was encouraging to see an upwards trajectory in participants’ perceptions about the significance of the topic after considering my arguments. This should be strengthened in future work by attending to the lessons learned here.

Huge thanks to all participants who attended the ICT4D North (of England) second annual workshop hosted by the University of Sheffield!

[i] For an introduction to what we have learned so far about ICT4D champion origins see: Renken, J. C. & Heeks, R. B. (2017). A Conceptual Framework of ICT4D Champion Origins. 14th International Conference on Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries (IFIP WG 9.4). Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

[i] For a definition of ICT4D champions see: Renken, J. C. & Heeks, R. B. (2013). Conceptualising ICT4D Project Champions. The 6^th International Conference on Information and Communications Technologies and Development. Cape Town, South Africa.

[ii] World Bank Independent Evaluation Group. (2015). IEG World Bank project performance ratings. Washington, DC: The World Bank

[iii] Heeks, R. (2003). Most E-government-for-Development Projects Fail : How can Risks be Reduced? Manchester: Institute for Development Policy and Management.

[iv] Broader in scope than ICT4D projects by including developed country data, see: Irvine, R. & Hall, H. (2015). Factors, Frameworks and Theory: A Review of the Information Systems Literature on Success Factors in Project Management. Information Research, 20(3), 1-46.

[v] Based on: McKenzie, D. (2017). ‘The State of Development Journals 2017: Quality, Acceptance Rates, and Review Times’, Development Impact, 21 February 2017, Available at: https://blogs.worldbank.org/impactevaluations/state-development-journals-2017-quality-acceptance-rates-and-review-times

[vi] Renken, J. C. & Heeks, R. B. (2014). Champions of Information System Innovations: Thematic Analysis and Future Research Agenda. UK Academy for Information Systems (UKAIS) International Conference. Oxford, UK.

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