ICT AND THE FRAMING OF DEVELOPMENT ISSUES

Many people say that there is a technological factor underlying the restructuring of some key development sectors. ICTs have changed the costs of transactions both within enterprises and between enterprises. We see business-to-business (B2B) transactions electronically mediated, as we also see business-to-customer (B2C) transactions increasingly done over the Internet. Companies reengineer to utilize technology more efficiently and effectively within core competencies. They outsource functions, downsize, and focus efforts on those core competencies. Labor markets, financial markets, and other economic institutions are also modified to utilize information and especially communications technology.

I have been wondering if there are parallels in institutions that are less visible economic to this transformation of economic systems.

Perhaps one is in the system for “framing” development issues. By this term, I mean identifying which issues are to be given priority and which not; identifying the alternatives to be considered for the issue; identifying the kinds of benefits and costs, risks and opportunities to be considered; empowering or disenfranchising stakeholders to participate in the discussion; linking or unlinking issues one from the other, etc.

In parallel with the development of the Internet we certainly see a growth in numbers and influence of civil society organizations, and Douglas and Wildavsky’s classic book “Risk and Culture” suggests that NGOs become a greater voice because of the way they utilize ICT. We would not have seen a publication like “Voices of the Poor” (much less online on the World Wide Web) without ICT. Certainly donor agencies have reengineered to better utilize the technology, and certainly the interfaces among donor agencies, government and civil society organizations have been transformed by ICT technology. All of these changes have changed the dynamics of framing of development issues.

Now I see the Development Gateway and the Country Gateways as offering a virtual venue for framing development issues in cyberspace. The portals are independent, generally run by civil society organizations. They have public sector, private sector, and civil society members in their governance and in their online communities. They are designed to serve communities of interest and practice within the larger development community. Perhaps they can serve this important purpose of framing developing issues in an open and transparent way, giving voice to many stakeholders, and offering venue for competing ideas that are both substantiated with information and analysis and archived for reference.

If so, the Development Portals being developed by the DG Foundation might well serve as a new social institution built in cyberspace, the plays an important role in development.