ICTworks

My name is Neelley Hicks and I am the Director of ICT4D Initiatives at the communications agency of The United Methodist Church. I had the dubious distinction of winning Fail Faire DC 2012 for my stories of the Church’s past failures in using technology for development. I was glad to be part of this discussion because while making mistakes is almost inevitable, learning from them is not.

But what if you want a one-stop-shop for best practice in the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) for development projects? Where do you go?

When I asked myself this question, I was surprised to find that while there are lots of excellent blog posts, journal articles, white papers, and guides on various aspects of ICT4D, there was no one centralized source for dedicated to a discussion of this topic.

To gather some of these ideas together, and to invite a community discussion, this month we launched the blog series Best Practice in ICT4D: A Conversation.  We’ve published interviews with a variety of thought leaders in the ICT4D field, including technologists, donors and implementers, and there’s more to come.

Some of my favorite take-aways from these interviews include:

• In his 10 Tips for Successful ICT4D Interventions, Ken Banks suggests: ‘Build for what people have in their hands.’
• In her interview on The Role of Mobile in Development, Priya Jaisinghani, Director of Mobile Solutions at USAID warns that aid groups lacking systems in place to monitor impact “risk being left in the wake.”
• In her Five Steps Toward Designing Context Appropriate ICT4D Solutions, Kristin Peterson, CEO of Inveneo reminds us: “It’s important to look at the community’s needs independent of what tech can do.”
• In her video interview Using SMS to Strengthen Community Communications in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, United Methodist Conference Communicator Betty Musau explains how technology is increasing both bottom-up and top-down communications. “This is really new, and it happens when there’s network coverage,” she says.

Join the conversation by posting your questions, comments and reactions on the blog, or on Twitter using #ICT4DBP. I look forward to hearing from you!