Benefit cost analysis of public access ICT

November 12, 2010

As part of the Global Impact Study, we are interested in analyzing the benefits and costs of public access to information and communication technology. The Global Impact Study is developing survey and hedonic pricing methods for describing the benefits and costs of public access to information and communication technology in seven countries.

Benefit Cost Analysis (BCA) by Tyler Davis

November 3, 2010

I’m attending a TASCHA Talk, presented by Tyler Davis, an ESPA PhD student who is doing some BCA as part of the Global Impact Study. Lots of “economist” assumptions here. I must admit that I’m a little biased against BCA for a few reasons (which may be disproven after I know a little more about […]

More on open development

October 18, 2010

I realize from delving more into this that several of us have come to the same conclusion. I’m repeating myself but here goes: It’s not about building a big repository. Stop that. It’s about aggregating, not centralizing. Making it easy to find, aggregate, and mash up.

Global Impact Study: Montpellier workshop report

October 13, 2010

I’m finally sharing this workshop report. It’s a personal account for those who were not able to attend. I’ve tried to give a sense of the flavor of the meeting and the range of topics and issues that came up. This is a large and complex project, presenting many challenges — from the methodological to the administrative. I did my best not to air dirty laundry, but also not to sanitize what I heard.

Create an open access repository

October 8, 2010

Joe and I are overhauling the Technology & Social Change Group website. I took a step back this week to think about what’s most important for this first version, and how we’re going to transfer over our existing content. I’ve dubbed TASCHA website 1.0 the “does-not-suck version” in order to keep us focused on the basics, pull together all of our content, and push discussions about feature requests to the point in time where we have something up that works and something concrete to react to.

Collaborative Knowledge Sharing study presents at Singapore conference

October 7, 2010

This past summer, Mike Best, the Principal Investigator of the Collaborative Knowledge Sharing in-depth study, presented a paper at the 19th annual Asia Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) conference in Singapore. The paper, written on preliminary findings from Mike’s in-depth study, Connecting in Real Space: How People Share Knowledge and Technologies in Cybercafés, was very well-received and prompted vigorous discussion with conference attendees, earning “best paper of the session” accolades.

Survey rollout begins

September 29, 2010

Research teams in Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, and the Philippines have recently begun implementation of the user and venue surveys. A total of approximately 1000 public users and 250 operators of public access ICTs will be surveyed across approximately 250 randomly selected public access locations throughout each country.

Non-instrumental Use study begins pilot testing in Brazil

September 23, 2010

The research team for the Non-Instrumental Use study began pilot testing of survey instruments in Brazil on September 16. Throughout the trip so far, the researchers have had the opportunity to explore different public access venues and identify possible challenges they may encounter in the study’s implementation.

The socio-economic impact of public access venues on families left behind by overseas Filipino workers

September 21, 2010

Public access venues provide an arena for people to connect with their friends and family. Given that more than 9% of the population in the Philippines (over 8 million Filipinos) are working abroad, this in-depth study will explore how public access venues in the Philippines are used by families left behind by Filipinos working overseas.

Open research, open data, open development

September 16, 2010

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, gathering resources, printing out stuff to read. Waiting for the right time to pull it all together into a tidy package. Well forget it. Instead I’m going to dribble it out bit by bit.