Sustainability of ICT initiatives

1. COMMUNITY SUSTAINABILITY
Happiness Mkumbo
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2. In these slides
• What is sustainability and why is it important?
• Ensuring community sustainability
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3. What is Sustainability?
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4. What is sustainability?
“The ability to be maintained at a certain rate or level”
“The ability of an organization or program to continue its
mission far into the future”
“”The likelihood that the benefits from a project will be
maintained for a reasonably long period of time”
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5. Sustainability of initiatives
General
• Community
• Financial
• Organizational
Other
• Business
• Environmental
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6. Sustainability of initiatives
General
• Community – how equipped a community is to continue the
initiative even after the founders leave
• Financial – how financial support for the initiative will be
handled in the long-term, after initial funding has expired
• Organizational – how the initiative itself will continue to
function
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7. Sustainability vs success
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8. Success and failure of ICT projects
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• Never
implemented
• Implemented but
immediately
abandoned after
launch
• Major goals not
achieved or
• Major undesirable
outcomes
• Most major goals
are achieved and
• No major
undesirable
outcomes

9. Success vs sustainability
• Success:
• Measures whether goals were met and how well they were met
• Sustainability
• Focuses on how long the benefits were/are retained for
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10. Success and failure of ICT projects vs.
their sustainability
• Being successful does not necessarily mean the project is
sustainable
• E.g. an initiative that achieves all goals whilst donor funding lasts
but not after was successful but unsustainable
• But being a failure definitely means the project is unsustainable

11. Why is sustainability important for
ICT4D initiatives?
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12. Why sustainability of ICT4D?
• More impact on people’s lives
• Addressing social issues e.g. health, education
• Promotes economic growth
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• An extra 10 mobile phones per 100 people in a typical
developing country leads to a 0.59% increase in GDP
growth (Waverman, 2005)
• 10% increase in broadband penetration contributed a
1.38% growth in GDP in developed countries and 1.21%
growth in developing countries (World Bank, 2010)

13. Why sustainability of ICT4D?
• Promotes sustainability of economic resources
• Industries need raw materials
• More income leads to more purchases (food, clothes etc.)
• Sustainable development is all about ensuring economic
development today does not deplete natural resources for
tomorrow
• An ICT-based economic growth decouples economic
development from resource usage.
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14. Unsustainable projects are expensive
• Financial costs
o Loss of money in the equipment, facilities, personnel etc.
• Opportunity costs
o Loss of time that could have been used on other projects
• Political costs
o Loss of credibility and image of the individuals and
organizations involved
• Beneficiary costs
o Loss of benefits that a successful project would have brought
• Future costs
o A failed/failing project may increase the barriers for future
projects because of lack of bad reputation (risk aversion)
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15. Should all projects be sustainable?
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16. Should all projects be sustainable?
Some projects are meant to only be active for a short
period i.e. permanent termination is expected and if it
happens at the right time, is a mark of project success.
For some projects, permanent termination is a failure. It is
these projects that should be sustainable.
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17. How can we ensure project
sustainability?
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18. Ensuring initiative sustainability
1. Ensure its success
2. Ensure
• Community embraces the initiative (community
sustainability)
• Means of financing the initiative over the long
term are planned (financial sustainability)
• Organisational structure is well thought out
(organisational sustainability)
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19. Ensuring community sustainability
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20. Community sustainability approaches
1. Community participation during the project
conceptualisation, design and implementation - according
to ITU
2. Support wide-spread innovation use
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21. Community participation
• Collaboration of community with decision-making team
regarding project initiation
• Several researchers have outlined different types of
participation e.g.
• Pretty 1995
• Scheyvens 2002
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22. Pretty’s topology of participation
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23. In general, community participation
can be:
• Direct or indirect
• Direct = stakeholders involved
• Indirect = representatives of stakeholders involved
• Active or passive
• Active = stakeholders’ inputs solicited
• Passive = stakeholders informed only
• Highly influential or not influential
• Highly influential = stakeholders’ inputs have impact on final
product/project
• Not influential = stakeholders’ inputs not included
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24. Identifying and managing stakeholders
A stakeholder in an ICT4D project is any group or individual
who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the
project’s objectives
Stakeholder theory can be used to identify stakeholders,
their interactions, challenges and potential solutions
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25. Stakeholders theory
Posited by Edward Freeman
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26. Stakeholders mapping
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27. Are all stakeholders equal?
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29. Engaging stakeholders
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30. Framework by Freeman
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31. Case studies: Application of
stakeholder theory in ICT4D
• Analysing telecentre projects
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/24090533_Using
_Stakeholder_Theory_to_Analyze_Telecenter_Projects
• Stakeholder theory and ICTs in Macha, Zambia
https://www.academia.edu/2779477/Stakeholder_Theory_a
nd_ICT_in_rural_Macha_Zambia
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32. Factors affecting participation
• Economy
• Human and public facilities available to participants
• Financial resources available
• The poorer the economy, the harder it may be to find people
with adequate skills (human), venues (facilities), communities
(remote, rural residents who engage in activities such as
farming)
• Cultural factors
• Community perceptions towards sponsors and project
partners may detract participation
• Not all groups may be equally available for interaction with
e.g. women, children
• Community organisation
• Capacity of the community to mobilise others out of interest
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33. Challenges with community
participation may be due to
1. Humans involved
• Those with knowledge and power not willing to help those
without to participate due to self-interests
• Power struggles between partners or stakeholders which
• Communities not seeing importance of initiative or
participating
2. Organisational challenges
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34. Community sustainability approaches
1. Community participation during the project
conceptualisation, design and implementation - according
to ITU
2. Support wide-spread innovation use
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35. Community embracing technology
• Different models explain technology adoption
• Technology acceptance model (TAM)
• Roger’s diffusion of innovations theory - explains how,
why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread
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36. Technology Acceptance Model
Explains how users come to accept and use a technology
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37. Extended Technology Acceptance
Model
External variables e.g. social influence also play a role
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38. Roger’s diffusion of innovations theory
Diffusion process is affected by 4 factors:
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39. Grouping of users
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40. Diffusion process
• Diffusion is a 5-step decision-making process which
occurs through a series of communication channels
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41. Role of technology in innovation
diffusion
• Potential adopters evaluate innovations based on:
• Perceived advantages
• Compatibility with the pre-existing system
• Learning curve
• Potential for reinvention (using the tool for initially
unintended purposes),
• Observed effects.
These qualities interact and are judged as a whole
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42. Diffusion process
1. Knowledge: First exposure, no information and of an
innovation, not inspired to find out more
2. Persuasion: Forming an attitude (interest has developed and
active seeking of information)
3. Decision: Whether to adopt or reject the innovation (pros vs.
cons)
4. Implementation: Use of the new innovation, usefulness
determined
5. Confirmation: Confirmation of the decision
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43. Confirmation stage
Four possible outcomes
• Continued adoption
• Later adoption
• Discontinuance
• Continued rejection
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44. Role of time in innovation diffusion
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• Rate of adoption = length of time for certain percentage of
population to adopt an innovation
• Early adopters have lower adoption threshold

45. Critical mass and sustainability
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• Critical mass = the number of people you need to adopt a
system in order for an ICT initiative to be self-sustaining
• Usually, the lower the rate of adoption, the later the critical
mass is reached

46. Incentives as a means for achieving
critical mass
• Early adopters tend to face many challenges
• E.g. early email adopters
• Did not have many people they could email (few people had
addresses)
• Therefore, needed to also use other communication media e.g.
phones
• Needed to persuade others to adopt the novel technology so that
they too could benefit from it
• Value of using a new technology (email vs. telephone) can only be
properly felt if critical mass is reached
• Incentives can be used to ensure early adopters continue to
advocate for the technology – incentives help people forgive
challenges
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47. Incentivizing adopters…
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• Used to offer free top-ups to new
customers
• Had a flat rate for calling all networks (not
more expensive to call other networks)
unlike other networks at the time
• Billing per second of use instead of per
minute as was standard at the time
• Fast, affordable connectivity
through mobile Wi-fi access points

48. Encouraging critical mass
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49. Why?
• People tend to place high values on things they own
• They assess what they gain vs. what they lose if they adopt
a new product to replace the one they own
• Even if a product is better, if the gains do not far outweigh
the losses, adoption will stall
• The higher a product change, the more features it has and
the more likely it is to have more gains
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50. Costs associated with behaviour
change
New products require consumers to change their behaviour
and this entails some costs such as:
• Activation costs e.g. activating a new sim card costs money
• Learning costs e.g. switching from Android to iPhone
requires re-learning of some concepts
• Obsolescence costs e.g. switching from cassette player to
CD player means your cassettes become useless
The higher the behaviour change required, the higher the
costs.
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51. Therefore
Easy sells
• Small product change e.g. iPhone 6 vs iPhone 6s
• Small behaviour change
• Easy for people to make the decision to try it
Sure failures
• Small product change – phone with similar specs
• Large behaviour change – new phone runs an OS the user
has never used
• Difficult for people to decide to try it
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52. Therefore
Smash hits
• Great benefits e.g. more relevant search results compared to
competitors
• Small behaviour change
• Very successful e.g. Google search engine
Long hauls
• Big product change and gains
• Large behaviour change
• Slow adoption but successful in the long term e.g. Linux, satellite
radio vs FM radio
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53. How diffusion can fail and how it can
thrive
• Failed diffusion can arise from:
• Lack of awareness among community
• Technology weaknesses
• Competition
• To thrive, adopters need to have knowledge but also to
interact with people similar to themselves (homophily,
heterophily)
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54. The role of social systems in
technology adoption
• Some people’s opinions carry heavy weight in influencing
technology adoption
• Proof:
• Companies use celebrities to promote their products
• Movie studios care about critics’ reviews
• Influential people are known as opinion leaders
• Determine a representative group of desired users and
“injecting” the innovation into that group to gain positive
feedback
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55. The role of communication channels in
technology adoption
• An innovation is a new product, process, or idea, it must
be communicated to potential adopters in order for them
to assess its attributes and decide whether to try out and
eventually adopt it
• Electronic mass media – sparks knowledge but not
enough information
• Print media is same as electronic
• Interpersonal relationships are important
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56. Summary
• Types of sustainability
• Community sustainability
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57. THE END
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