1. ICTs and Social Development
Session 6
“ICTs for Development” course
Aim – to understand how ICTs can help develop human capabilities and well-being
Objectives – participants will be able to:
- Explain social and human development as a development goal
- Categorise the relationship between ICTs and social development (health and education)
- Summarise evidence on the relationship between ICTs and social development (health and education)
- Outline the capabilities framework
- Summarise implications of the relation between ICTs and capabilities

2. UNDP Human Development Index
6.1. Social Development as a Development Goal
Idea of human development and UN Human Development Index
The HDI consists of four measures but three overall development goals.
ASK – what are those three overall development goals?
>Health, Education, Wealth
>Focus on health, education, ICTs
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3. Relation Between Health, Education and Economic Growth
Better Health
Better Education
ICTs ?
Relation of wealth, health, education is two-way
Relation of health/education and ICTs is two-way

4. Key Health System Actors
Health Policy- Maker
Health Manager
Doctor
Paramedic / Health Worker / Nurse
Citizen /
Patient
6.2. ICTs, Health and Development
Categories of e-health via actors:
- ordinary citizens via public health and patients
- healthcare professionals: more medicine-oriented professionals and more healthcare-oriented professionals;
- managers of healthcare facilities; and
- higher level policy-makers.

5. Key Health System ICT Applications
Health Policy-Maker
Health Manager
Doctor
Paramedic / Health Worker / Nurse
Citizen /
Patient
Medical/Health Knowledge
Public Health IS
Health System Information
Health Policy IS
Health Management IS
Health Operations IS
Health System/
Health Infrastructure Data
Medical/
Epidemiological Data
Diagnostic & Treatment Support Systems
Practitioner Knowledge Systems
Six types of system altogether
- Public Health Information Systems: carry health information to members of the public, seeking to change their health-related behaviour.
- Diagnostic and Treatment Support Systems: these are the core of the health system and thus to core of e-health applications, helping doctors to diagnose and all healthcare professionals to treat patients.
- Practitioner Knowledge Systems: online learning systems to develop the skills and knowledge of healthcare professionals.
- Health Operations Information Systems: for example ICTs supporting the supply chains to identify where drugs are running out and need to be re-supplied
- Health Management/Policy Information Systems: “traditional” management information systems that supply information for higher-level health facility, system or policy decision-making.

6. Simplified (DIKDAR) Information Value Chain
Health Data
Learning
Health Information
Health Knowledge
Health Decision
Health Action
Health Results
EXERCISE
Review two e-health cases in Chapter 6. Where in the information value chain does the available evidence about impact focus?
>Better data
>Better decisions
>One example only of action
>No health results
>Common pattern of data/info/knowledge improvement; some decision improvement; little action/health improvement
Look at the e-health challenges examples in Chapter 6. What is the common pattern?

7. Design-Reality Gaps Design Reality
Explain gaps between design and reality in e-health examples.

8. e-Health: Conflicting Institutional Logics
Values
Practices
Organisations
Individuals
Institutional Logic
Values
Practices
Organisations
Individuals
Institutional Logic
Scientific Medicine
Traditional Healing
Peru
Decentralisation
Centralisation
Tajikistan
Rational Transparency
Politicised Corruption
Brazil
Conflict between institutional logics in all cases:
Scientific vs. traditional
++Rational vs. politicised
++Decentralised vs. centralised
You can look out in ICT4D cases for these patterns of conflicting logics esp. the logic of designers vs. the logic of users

9. Key Education System Actors
Education Policy- Maker
Education Manager
Teacher / Lecturer
Student / Learner
6.3. ICTs, Education and Development
Main education system actors – students, teachers, managers, policy-makers

10. Key Education System ICT Applications
Education Policy-Maker
Education Manager
Teacher / Lecturer
Student /
Learner
Topic/Pedagogic Knowledge
Public Education IS
Education System Information
Education Policy IS
Education Management IS
Education Operations IS
Education System/ Education Infrastructure Data
Teaching/
Learning Performance Data
Teaching & Learning Support Systems
Practitioner Knowledge Systems
Main e-education applications:
- Public Education Information Systems: general systems to help educate ordinary people inc. MOOCs
- Teaching and Learning Support Systems: core of e-education, using ICTs to help students learn better.
- Practitioner Knowledge Systems: covers e-learning to help teachers become better teachers.
- Education Operations/Management/Policy Information Systems: as in health, these help improve operations and decision-making within the education system.

11. One Laptop Per Child EXERCISE
Has the OLPC project achieved what was intended? See evidence in Chapter 6
>No: it finds no or even negative impact on learning, but ...
>...there are economic and innovation benefits
ASK: why?
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12. ICTs Usage Levels and Learning
“results suggest that limited use of computers at school may be better than not using computers at all, [but] using them more intensively than the current OECD average tends to be associated with significantly poorer student performance” (OECD 2015:16)
Extent of use of ICTs
Extent of learning
ASK – this is evidence from a global study. What relation does it suggest between learning and the extent of use of ICTs?
>Inverse-U relation

13. e-Education Change and Impact
Meaning
Example
Impact
Transformation
New Learning Paradigm
ICT-Enabled Community of Practice
Educational empowerment
Redesign
Radical Change to Learning Processes
Teacher-Assisted, ICT-Enabled Group, Interactive Learning
Building wider capabilities
Improvement
Incremental Change to Learning Processes
Learning Games and Drills
Some skill improvements
Digitisation
Automation
Bringing Computers into Classroom
Little or negative learning impact
Motivation for Learning
Variation in impact depending on extent of change
- Just digitise produces little impact
- Improved/repeat process raises learning
- Changing mode of learning to active, group helps more
Changing to new learning paradigm best of all
++Motivation to learn matters most: amplification theory

14. Helping Achieve Development Goals or Not?
Entertainment
Gaming
Gambling
6.4. ICTs, Capabilities and Development
HDI and link to Sen
ASK: does watching videos, playing computer games, online gambling help achieve development goals?
>Most will think not and NGOs, governments try to block
But there is an alternative view …
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15. The Capabilities Framework
Opportunities: Contextual Capabilities
Realised Functionings
Unrealised Functionings
Individual/ Community/ Context Differences
Values
Freedoms
Development Outcomes
Political
Economic
Social
Security
Informational
Choice
Specific Capabilities
Basic idea of development as freedom: freedom in theory, freedom in practice
++Freedoms: “what the person is free to do and achieve in pursuit of whatever goals or values he or she regards as important” (Sen 1985:203)
++Capabilities: "the alternative combinations of functionings that are feasible for a person to achieve".
Realised functionings: "what a person is actually able to do".
++Individual and Situational Differences: culture, ability, context

16. Capabilities in PracticeX
Simple developmental view of bicycles – a good thing. But Sen/capabilities:
++Wider values that stop e.g. cultural role of women
++Individual differences that stop e.g. disability
++Other context reasons
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17. ICTs and Capabilities Digital commodities e.g. hardware, software
and their functionalities
e.g. digital data processing/
communication
Digital capabilities =
Vectors of
potential digital
functionings (affordances)
e.g. digital communication
Realised digitally-enabled
functionings
e.g. faster and easier access to better information
Differences and Opportunities
Values and
Choice
Means to Achieve
Freedom to Achieve
Achievement
e.g. personal, social and environmental conversion factors
e.g. personal preferences, needs, or social pressures
Two ICT implications:
Like info value chain, ICT just a means to achieve; need personal factors, wider factors, and choice to turn into digital achievements
Evaluate not “impact ICTs” but “extent ICTs help people achieve what they value”
So, return to earlier question: are video-watching, gaming, gambling things people value achieving?
And do these freedoms also contain unfreedoms?
DISCUSSION
Read Box 6.7 in Chapter 6 – what freedoms were achieved/constrained by external context?
>Issues of motivation
>Issues of censorship
Adapted from Zheng & Walsham 2008; itself adapted from Robeyns 2005