Strengthening Latin American NGOs in ICTs
strategic use.
Lessons Learned and
Recommendations, from Evaluating projects funded under the IDRC program
"Capacity Development for Internet Use in LAC"
By Yacine Khelladi yacine@yacine.net
27/11/01 © 2001-2002
Thanks to Katherine Reilly for proofreading my
Spanglish
During the last 2 years (1999-2001), the Canadian International
Development Research Centre (IDRC) “has
supported small capacity-building training and networking activities by
selected researchers and institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean”
through the Capacity Development in Internet use (CAPDEV) program. “The project was a response to the increasing accessibility of information and
communication technologies (ICTs) by previously marginalized sectors of
society…Priority was given to requests that involved collaborative networks,
grassroots participation, innovative experimentation with Internet resources
and uses, potential for future collaboration in regional networking (PAN)
projects, and links with other IDRC-supported activities”
1.1. Capacity building in ICT use must
not be viewed as just adding/acquiring new resources.
1.2. Capacity building is a long process,
from adoption to strategic use and appropriation;
1.4. Learn to Learn Lessons Learned and to systematize your experiences
1.6. Is small beautiful or big too big
for small grants?
1.8. Impact of ICT capacity building on gender
variables is not yet understood.
2. Recommendations
for the granting agency:9
2.1. Create mechanisms to accompany and
support the capacity development processes.
2.2. Develop methodological tools for
grantee self help
2.3. Develop better analysis/lecture
grids for project proposal prior to granting
2.4. Produce specific research on gender
and ICT capacity building
2.5. Enable real lessons sharing and
promote systematization
Annex 1 On
new Methodological elements since the last paper12
The author was contracted to asses the program and among other internal
issues, to evaluate:
(a) the impact of each project in terms
of: the beneficiary organization's ability to efficiently achieve general goals
and/or particular projects; the working efficiency of the beneficiary,
including involved professionals, researchers or development workers; and other
development activities at the national or regional level;
(b) the lessons learned in the process.
In general terms the assessment demonstrated the usefulness of the
program to strengthen, with a relatively low investment, a large number of
development organizations and networks, and to promote creativity and
innovative applications/solutions in the use of ICTs for social
development. Of course, not all grants have produced the same level of impact, but
some of the projects have been very significative , in terms of developing the
capacity of organizations and networks to reach their social objectives and
widen their range of impact
Most seeds have become flowers - organizations and networks that have
adopted Internet use and become more
efficient. Others have
become lovely trees - institutions, projects or programs that are being structurally transformed, with significant
prospects for impacts on specific social situations. Of course in many cases those processes will continue for
months or years, and have not yet product realized their full impact. Also new approaches
and applications have emerged as in the cases of educational research and local media networking, In a
particular case the grant played a vital role in saving an organization
struggling to continue its social mission in very difficult context
Some of these impacts go beyond the grant objectives, as when they were
inserted in broader processes or when they reinforced existing network
synergies. And also some impacts occurred were not expected, when at the margin
of the recipient institution, an endogenous processes have occurred,
reinforcing the capacity of groups other than the expected, or, creating new –
non planned- network dynamics (as in Oaxaca, Mexico).
The two and a half years long follow up shows up that many of these
very interesting social and institutional processes and projects would not have
taken place without access to the type of financial support provided by CAPDEV, and therefore, that
has therefore demonstrated its great usefulness.
As of gender impact within the institutions, even though most of the
projects were conducted by organizations which are aware of the importance of a
gender perspective (some even being women organizations, as in Brasil and
Chile), and, even though most made efforts to include women equally in their
training and planning, we consider that a
gender perspective was not effectively integrated into the
projects. There was a lack of
concerted efforts to produce gender sensitive training modules, specific
applications or methods to reduce gender inequality both internally and
externally, or to address private and public power relations. There is here an
entire field of research to be explored. In the following section on lessons
learned, some of the possible fields of questioning are proposed.
Participation or
civil society strengthening;
In general, all of the projects have helped the spreading innovative ICT use among civil society
organizations. But six of the projects have directly aimed at enhancing the
capacity of civil society and/or grassroots networks to participate in specific
social processes. Most of these
have truly amplified the reach of the organization’s concerns in their
societies, as in the cases of the Peruvian Ashaninka and Oaxaca (Mexico)
indigenous organizations network, Central American NGOs for post hurricane
Mitch reconstruction, or the Uruguayan community organizations network.
Nonetheless, in many cases, we found evidence that impacts could have been much more structurally significant and sustained –
impacts on the institution, network or application, on the ability of
organizations to affect social development, on civil society strengthening, on
reduction of gender inequality, etc.
As is described in the following section on lessons learned and
recommendations, there is a need for: more specific and permanent
methodological support in strategic planning; sustainability strategies; the
inclusion of gender sensitive methods and social vision in the design of
organizational ICT integration and the training modules; and a self evaluation
in the assessment of internal and external impacts.
To be relevant and effective, capacity
development has to be much more than just
training staff and acquiring new
resources or facilities (computers, software, connectivity).
For a meaningful impact, ICTs can and should
be integrated in organizational
activities, administration, activities (production) tasks and processes,
learning and training, and in particular, communications and information use
(access/diffusion, internal/external).
This can lead to a much improved use of available resources, through
networking and public exposure, allow new internal and external networks, much
more and direct learning and research, increase efficacy in delivering products
and services, boost internal communication - in a word, radically transform the
institution and its capacity to achieve its goals. [1]
The process of capacity building of ICTs in
development organizations for a social impact, is a long and time consuming process that needs too be better understood.
According to this assessment results, and
adopting categories systematized by Kemly Camacho a researcher of Fundación
Acceso (La Internet, un
gran desafío http://www.acceso.or.cr/publica/grandesafio.shtml), we can present
the process in three steps as described in the following table:
|
Steps |
Process
|
|
Adoption
(step A) Connecting and Firsts Steps. |
Getting connectivity, training, learning, setting user support,
hardware, software, organizing access to resources,
etc, |
|
Strategic
use (Step B) Results in more efficiency in projects, Begin of
structural impact |
Integrating the use of ICT in the organizations tasks, automation,
speed, systematization, etc.; adapting structures and processes. as in decision making, and working
procedures etc |
|
Appropriation (Step C) Structural Change Completed And New Organizational Paradigm |
Creating new knowledge, new processes, new products or services, etc. |
Effectively adopting the Internet (step A) can lead to a significant
change in efficiency in the institution (the impact could also be negative in
this sense) . However, structural
change within organizations, that will potentially multiply the impact of the
institution activities, occurs when step B is completed, when research,
learning, services, communications, administration, etc, have been transformed
through the integration of ICTs.
We can see from the CAPDEV projects that this
process may require more time than was expected - to assimilate, adjust,
integrate - and that resources must be allocated to sustain these processes.
The process is not necessarily linear, - step
A “training”, step B “integrating ICT use in tasks”. Activities can be developed together, and this type of
strategic consideration needs to be envisioned in order to ensure the impact of
capacity building efforts.
However, envisioning step C results without thinking through and
assembling steps A and/or B can lead to bad results. Results are much more
positive when current activities are first strengthened so that the tools can
be used to develop and apply new knowledge.
Also we learned that projects have to take
into account the organization’s or community’s timeframe, and build a process
with an adapted pace, that is certainly not as fast as the internet evolution,
and that may not necessarily correspond to project’s grant timelines.
The most impressive CAPDEV results were
obtained when the integration of ICTs corresponded with a process of review
that considered the organization’s situation, installed capacity, objectives
and strategies to reach its social objectives. Small seed grants for capacity development can contribute to
institutional transformation and generate greater social impact if the
institution first, or in parallel, clearly responds to questions such as: who
we are?, what do we have? what is our agenda? why do we work? what is our
actual and possible capacity? A
process of deep analysis is needed, which eventually revisits the institution’s mission, values, goals, and strategies;
and which reflects on how available and possible resources could be mobilized
to better attain those goals given ICTs use.
When this analysis and creative process is not realized, Internet capacity
development is unsustainable or very limited compared to its potential.
So, only the construction of an institutional strategic plan will
facilitate the correct envisioning and
planning of the ICT integration process, and allocate the required
resources (human, financial, etc) to achieving a sustainable process.
Even where the impetus for ICT integration
results from an external requirement (a project, a granting agency, external
assessment), only deep analysis and careful planning can adapt existing resources, maximize internal synergies
and scale advantages. And when external resources are scare, this
process will set priorities and identify
critical elements in the organization’s integration of ICTs.
Unfortunately the assessment found that
almost none of the CAPDEV projects realized this type of planning and are
therefore we found that they are now struggling to find external resources to
sustain their ICT integration processes.
Only one organization realized such a
process, and, with the help of a professional trained in strategic planning,
produced a clear vision and an institutional project for the integration of
ICTs. Hopefully this plan will be
implemented. The results of this particular project also suggested that this
process of strategic planning must develop a systemic and non-linear (holistic,
in terms of organizational transformation) form of thinking.
We also learned such complex processes, often
including institutional strategy, demand professional
and methodological support in the process of strategic planning for
ICT integration.
Understating the potential and the
particularities of the ICT integration process is a relatively new, but already
experimented, area of knowledge, we believe that there are many elements that
can be learned from compiling the lessons or evaluations produced by similar
processes or organizations. We know that there is a large amount of data available,
through Web sites, books, data bases, homologues, personal stories, etc.
Nonetheless we found that most of the CAPDEV
projects did not consider other similar experiences, stories or
research results. We then asked: why aren’t
organizations using the existing databases of learned lessons?
CAPDEV recipients responded as follows::
(a)
did not know were/how to search, as nobody directed them (or they did
not ask the right person)
(b)
did not realize the complexity of the process and
therefore did not feel the need of searching answers
(c)
felt that the lessons they found did not fit their
needs (for example too much theory, or cases of big/wealthy organizations)
On the other hand very few of the CAPDEV experiences have been systematized in a way that
other organizations, entering similar processes, can use to learn from and build upon.
Training in basic internet tools (software or
functions as email, navigation, etc) is much more efficient if there is:
·
an introduction or an awareness
building activity that addresses the social, developmental and
cultural aspects and impacts of the Internet,