New book highlights public access ICT venues across cultures

May 27, 2015

A component of the Global Impact Study was the The Amy Mahan Research Fellowship Program, led by Universitat Pompeu Fabra, which aimed to deepen the capacity of emerging scholars with the goal of increasing the quality and quantity of research on public access to ICT produced in developing countries. The findings from this work have been compiled into a new book publication, Public access ICT across cultures: Diversifying participation in the network society. The book, edited by Francisco Proenza, is co-published by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and MIT Press and is available online in PDF freely through a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY 4.0) license.

What is the role of public access in the post-2015 development agenda?

July 23, 2014

TASCHA’s research is supporting the active engagement of its partners, Association of Progressive Communications (APC) and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), in the post-2015 agenda development process. Together with APC and IFLA, we have prepared a briefing paper, “Public access: Supporting digital inclusion for all – Maximising the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for inclusive social and economic development.” Two different versions of the paper were presented in Geneva at The Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD), Seventeenth Session, May 12-16, 2014 and the WSIS+10 High-Level Event, June 9-13, 2014

New infographic: Why does public access to technology matter for development?

May 21, 2014

TASCHA is excited to release a new infographic based on findings from the Global Impact Study of Public Access ICTs! Many thanks go to the team at JumpStart Georgia for helping us design what we think is a pretty cool visualization of why public access is so important and why it matters to development. Please feel free to share, promote, and use widely.

Upcoming event: If mobile phones killed the telecentre, what is next for public internet access?

May 6, 2014

TASCHA is excited to announce that we’ll be participating in an upcoming event on public access ICTs, hosted by the Center for Collaborative Technologies at IREX in partnership with Kurante. Below is a description of the event (originally posted on ICTworks by Wayan Vota); space is limited, so if you’d like to join us in DC for this event, please RSVP now.

Digging deeper into the phenomenon of public access

April 30, 2014

TASCHA’s Global Impact Study of Public Access ICTs wrapped up last year with the publication of the final research report, Connecting people for development: Why public access ICTs matter. In addition to the final report, we have also released research reports and summaries of the Global Impact Study’s in-depth studies, which were designed to answer more specific questions about the public access phenomenon, such as whether we even need public access ICTs anymore since everyone has a mobile phone (spoiler alert: yes, we do!).