SUSTAINABILITY

I have been corresponding with Michel Menou about the sustainability of telecenters, and chatting with Tod Bruning about sustainability of small ICT projects in Africa. We three seem to agree that the concept is often and greatly misused.

I suppose that the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 marked some kind of milestone in the popularization of the term, as did the WSSD last year. The emphasis in those contexts was of course, environmental sustainability – a course of social and economic development that did not cause too much environmental degradation.

“Sustainability” in the ICT for Development context seems to be more often used in the context of financial sustainability – some infrastructure or application that generates enough income to be operated over time, or indeed often narrowly defined as to be self supporting from such income. Of course, public goods are just those that must be subsidized because the social benefits are greater than the cost of production, while the income generated from the sale of the goods is less than their cost of production. It is unfortunate (but interesting) to see people criticize organizations that produce public goods because they are not self-supporting without subsidies.

Of course there are lots of other kinds of sustainability – economic, administrative, social, bureaucratic, etc. And of course a lot of these concepts are misused. Lets look at some situations in which the concept “sustainability” is applies, and often misapplied. I think that some of the difficulty is when “stability” derived from one kind of “project” is applied to quite a different kind of “project”.

Large projects: I have been involved in some large efforts that were tagged as projects: a $120 million USAID S&T project in the early 1980s; a $300 million phase of a multiyear World Bank S&T project and a $150 million follow-on World Bank S&T project in the late 1990s. These “projects” were all predicated on analysis based on the idea that they would institutionalize better innovation systems in their host countries. In such a context, there is every reason for concern on the sustainability of the institutional reforms. However, to transfer “sustainability” concepts from such an application to small projects seems to me, counterproductive.

“Implementation projects”, such as a project to build a Internet backbone, are engineering efforts. Once you build a bridge, you don't keep building new bridges in the same place. One does not reasonably ask if such a project is sustainable. Of course, one would expect the Internet backbone to last for a long time, and carry traffic, and one would hope that the infrastructure was sustainable in other senses. The need to sustain the capacity to carry out such a project depends on the circumstances. (Indeed, unfortunately, too often, donors do not institutionalize needed engineering capacity in developing nations when they could do so with little additional cost to the construction project.)

“Pilot projects” are, by definition, intended to test innovations, and see if they work. Therefore one would expect to see sunset clauses in Pilot projects – that they should be inherently time limited. In a given time, the innovation will either work or not work. Seeking to criticize such a project because it is not sustainable, seems to me to be simply foolish.

“Demonstration projects” are intended to demonstrate something that is already known to work, but to do so to a new audience. A demonstration project inherently involves costs of dissemination of information. Again, I would assume most such projects should have sunset clauses, that they be terminated when they have conveyed their message, or when they have demonstrated lack of interest in that message. They should also not be sustained.

“Best practice projects” are intended to identify good ways to do something. Again, one would assume that once best practice is understood, such projects should either be discontinued or transformed into demonstration projects. Again, the applicability of sustainability criteria is questionable.

Michel suggests that “application project” might be added to the list – a project that
builds upon the outcome of the pilot, etc. and is supposed to have a design that takes due account of lessons learned and therefore to be successful. Good point!

Let me digress for a moment. In the U.S. people frequently start up technology businesses, often leaving universities or large companies to do so. Most last for a few years, and then go out of business. Sometimes they just fail, their physical assets are sold off, and their staff find other jobs. Sometimes they merge with or are acquired by other firms. The system appears to be an important part of the American system of innovation, and more productive in fast moving technology areas than one in which technology development is centralized. Indeed the “creative destruction” implemented by the “evolutionary economic” systems is important to the success of the system. Trying to sustain the small enterprises after they have completed their function is likely to be economically inefficient.

In the recording industry in the U.S. in the 1950’s the advent of television and the changing nature of radio resulted in economic conditions that favored innovation in musical content. The large record companies, that had internalized production (of the moon-June songs popular in the 1940s) began to depend on independent producers, often who had specialized in niche markets – and so Motown developed. Again, needing rapid innovation, the industry went to a rapidly churning set of small enterprises. (The large record companies continued to dominate the production and marketing of records.)

I think in some areas of ICT4D we may be seeing a similar situation. There is a great need for innovation. If we let 1000 flowers bloom, and have a lot of small projects, we will generate some good ideas quickly. But the point I would make is that small, innovative efforts are a good way to face high-risk, high-return situations. As one expects to see a lot of churning among small high technology firms in a successful innovation system, one might expect to see lots of churning among small ICT4D projects in a successful development program. As it is counterproductive to encourage too long a life in high technology firms, so may it be to encourage sustainability in these ICT4D projects.

In the case of small, high-tech firms, even when a firm fails, the physical infrastructure is recycled, the staff usually go to other jobs, taking with them what they have learned. Patents and technologies are transferred. And indeed, when the failure is from a weak technology, society learns something of that weakness. The social cost of the failure is less than that of the investors. So to with the majority of ICT4D projects.

As I described in an earlier posting, if one looks at the process of dissemination of ICT infrastructure and applications in developing nations, “projects” are a very small part of the picture. One might find NGOs projects important for small marginalized groups, but the main action will probably be in large organizations. When we really know what to do, we go ahead and do it!

There is one other aspect of “projectization”. If you want to do a big job, it is often psychologically helpful to divide it into a number of smaller “projects”. I once read that in painting the Golden State Bridge, the job is never finished. When the paint crew finishes the bridge, they simply start all over again at the other end. One assumes that the painters draw lines on the bridge, indicating that which they should complete in the next day, or in the next week. So too, one might projectize the development of the ICT infrastructure in a developing nation. In this context, one might reasonably ask whether the level of effort shown in the first few “projects” could be sustained to the completion of the work.

Concepts of “sustainability” clearly have contributed to the practice of social and economic development. However, as I have tried to indicate, they are not universally applicable. I am not advocating that bad projects be funded and implemented. More simply, I am advocating that some thought be given to the nature of projects, that room be made for high-risk, high-return projects when conditions favor rapid innovation, and that such projects not be held to high standards of sustainability, replicability, and scalability.

Here are a couple of online papers that complement these comments:

The Information for Development Program: Encouraging the Use of ICTs in Developing Countries
In this 2001 paper I sought to examine the degree to which the projects funded by infoDev were likely to be influential as pilots, demonstrations, or by other means. (PDF format, 15 pages)


Constraints to scaling up health interventions: A conceptual framework and empirical analysis
Abstract: While many constraints facing the health sector can be relaxed through the injection of new health sector resources, a lack of money is not the only problem facing the health sector in low and middle income countries. Poor countries differ according to the type and level of constraints they face. We argue that it is important to understand the full range of constraints that influence the use and provision of health services in specific settings when making strategic choices about how to scale-up key interventions to improve the health of poor people. This paper presents a conceptual framework for understanding constraints which is based on the level at which a constraint operates, the nature of the constraint, and its amenability to buy-out in the short term. Cross-sectional data is used to identify proxy measures of these constraints in order to categorise countries according to the type and level of constraint they face. An overall index of constraints is created, which includes variables reflecting demand, health system strength, and environmental characteristics including both governance and geography. Measures of government commitment to the health sector, and the distribution of key health sector inputs are explored but excluded from the index. A typology of countries according to the constraints they face can feed into the estimates of the cost of scaling up interventions, the choices of how to delivery priority interventions, and, potentially, of which countries should be the focus of early efforts.” By K. Hanson, K. Ranson, V. Oliveira-Cruz,
A. Mills, May 2001. (PDF, 106 pages.) This is one of a series of papers on the topic availaibe on the Commission for Macroeconomics and Health website.