Projects

Theme 1
Theoretical Project
1. Open and/or Apolitical? A critical re‐examination of Open Information Systems
By Janaki Srinivasan / Bidisha Chaudhuri (International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore)

This project proposes a theoretical framework to analyse the phenomenon of learning among users of open information systems (OIS) in which learning is taken to be indicative of positive social transformation. In order to understand how learning takes place in the context of OIS use through the interaction of structures and agency, we draw on practice-based situated theories of learning and critical information studies. Such theories prompt us to adopt a broader processual view of learning as an everyday practice that shapes individual identity which can be then leveraged to negotiate varied life situations beyond the immediate learning of how to use an OIS. Based on this understanding of learning, we develop a framework that will critically examine different levels of learning occurring within a matrix of communities of practice (CoPs) specifically in the context of OIS use. The broader objective of this framework is to unravel the different opportunities of learning (as development) that OIS provide which were hitherto unavailable to its users.

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Empirical Project
2. Exploring the role of “learning as development” in open information systems – a case study from West Bengal, India
By Purnabha Dasgupta / Linus Kendall (Development Research Communication and Services Centre)

Our project is a case study of an open information system providing weather recommendations and crop advisory to support climate change adaptation for marginal and small-holder farmers in the Purulia and Bankura districts of West Bengal, India. Specifically, we are interested in the impact of open content and open processes within the system with regards to learning. Following the framework developed by Srinivasan and Chaudhuri we aim to explore the ways in which the system enables different forms of learning through different modes of interaction – face-to-face, digital/ICT-enabled, synchronous, asynchronous, mediated and direct. Using practice based theories of learning as a basis, we will look at the role of the system in relation to existing or potentially new communities of practice. We will aim to uncover whether the openness of the system is enabling learning going beyond the use of the system itself – impacting identity, agency, power and institutions among actors involved. Methodologically, we will use an ethnographic, mixed-method approach involving observation, semi-structured interviews with users of the system’s different modalities. Through this project, our contribution will be an improved understanding of how learning and development interacts within the context of open information systems.

Theme 2
Theoretical Project
3. Resources, Learning and Inclusion in Open Development
By Marion Walton (University of Cape Town) / Andy Dearden (Sheffield Hallam University) / Melissa Densmore (University of Cape Town)

Engaging with open development (OD) necessitates learning in which people appropriate and adopt new technologies and socio-technical practices. This typically involves informal learning (i.e. outside of formal education), and will differ between reading relationships (as a user of OD resources) and writing relationships (for full ownership or authorship of OD). If potential participants are unable to connect with existing learning networks, OD initiatives will have limited impact. Communities that aim to be ‘open’ may exclude people by virtue of race, language, literacies, gender, sexuality, phone/computer ownership, access to Internet or other aspects of identity. This project will explore the situated material conditions and informal learning practices that surround processes of inclusion in (and exclusion from) OD initiatives. The project will develop more detailed ethnographic and socio-material accounts of the informal learning processes and outcomes in such encounters. It will foreground the ways that global inequities of infrastructure, default identities and the cultural practices often associated with openness can “format” participation in subtle but significant ways.

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Empirical Project
4. How do farmers’ digital literacy levels, socioeconomic status, literacy, gender and land ownership status, influence their ability to benefit from open data?
By Chiranthi Rajapakse / Piyumi Gamage (LIRNEasia)

This research explores the factors and informal learning practices that influence inclusion in, and exclusion from, an open data initiative to engage farmers in the effective use of crop advisory agricultural information in Sri Lanka. Walton, Dearden and Densmore (2016) argue that the design of gateways will have an effect on the degree of inclusion within open development initiatives. Mobiles are regularly assumed to be accessible vehicles of open development, but in reality there are many informal learning processes, individual attributes and community dynamics that affect uptake. These aspects can also determine the extent and form by which marginalised people contribute as passive or active users. Our project investigates these claims within an open development initiative that provides crop advisory information to farmers. Qualitative research methods will be used to assess the learning processes by which farmers access the information provided through the mobile app, the effect that factors such as digital literacy, socioeconomic status, literacy, gender, and land ownership status has on their interaction with this information, and the extent that they contribute back to their communities and the system.

Theme 3
Theoretical Project
5. Elements of Trust in an Open Model: Exploring the Role and Place of Trust in Open Education and Urban Services in the Global South
By Richard Ling (Nanyang Technological University) / John Traxler (University of Wolverhampton)

The success of open development and open access critically hinges on the trust shared by the various actors. While open development has the potential to facilitate access to a wide variety of services and information in the Global South, it will founder unless users, developers and other stakeholders have a basic trust in the material and services. This is particularly the case with open health and open learning. We intend to examine trust in openly developed education and health applications. Both of these sectors have key social functionality that is being digitalised. Further both institutions share a focus on knowledge management and authoritative information. Thus, the issues of trust in openly developed and openly accessible services have implications for the management of professional knowledge under the purview of expert practitioners.

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Empirical Project
6. Can citizens’ ability to access, participate and collaborate in urban services make the urban governance system more trustworthy?
By Satyarupa Shekhar Swain (Citizen consumer and civic Action Group) / David Sadoway (Concordia University)

Our project adds to the discourse on the importance of citizen science in enhancing the trustworthiness in the governance of urban services. This research responds to Ling and Traxler’s theoretical framework by assessing the openness – as defined by access, participation and collaboration – of one key urban service, namely the road and pedestrian infrastructure in Chennai, India. We will examine the extent to which the urban infrastructure governance system has been designed to be ‘trustworthy’. To assess trustworthiness, we will employ an analytical framework that is based on the principles of transparency, accountability and participation. Second, we will assess the perceptions of trust among stakeholders, and attempt to answer how – rather than whether – open access, participation and collaboration influences citizens’ perception of the trustworthiness in government. Third, we will assess the role that an ICT tool may play in improving trust and trustworthiness of the system and stakeholders, including the trust government gives to citizen-generated data.

Theme 4
Theoretical Project
7. A Critical Capability Approach to Open Development
By Yingqin Zheng (Royal Holloway, University of London) / Bernd Carsten Stahl (De Montfort University)

Drawing upon the critical theory of technology/information systems and Sen’s capability approach, the Critical Capability Approach (CCA) serves as a conceptual basis for a research framework that could be applied to assess the design, implementation and evaluation of open development projects. Instead of measuring the achievement of technological or political goals, we propose sets of research questions that seek to explicate the ideological and political foundations of openness, and the extent to which openness enhances users’ well-being and agency freedom. The research framework aims to equip researchers with some conceptual guidance and methodological suggestions to carry out independent evaluation of open development initiatives, and in this process start a dialogue with policy makers, donors and designers, to engage with all key stakeholders and to protect the interests of the marginalised and disadvantaged. The CCA Research Framework is not sector specific and can be applied to any open development project.

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Empirical Project
8. Using the critical capability approach to empirically analyse the design and implementation of the open government initiative on education sector in Tanzania
By Goodiel Moshi / Deo Shao (University of Dodoma)

Governments are promoting openness through publication of open data, believing that it will result in participatory policymaking and enable positive returns to society. Tanzania adopted the Open Data Initiative in 2011. It carried out its open government partnership (OGP) Action Plan I in 2012-2013, and is currently implementing the OGP Action Plan II in 2014 – 2016. In the current phase, the government of Tanzania is committed to publish its data on prioritised sectors particularly Health, Education and Water on its open data portal (www.opendata.go.tz). This study investigates the critical capability approach to evaluate the design and implementation of Open Data Initiative (ODI) in Tanzania within the education sector. Our research analyses whether the design and implementation of the program was responsible for bringing in a wide range of actors into policy processes and debates, bringing new ideas and thinking on policy making, and stronger public participation in monitoring and citizen feedback, especially those specified by the OGP Action Plan II – particularly academia, media, public administrators and the general public.

Theme 5
Theoretical Project
9. Open development – A focus on organizational norms and power redistribution
By Anita Gurumurthy / Parminder Jeet Singh (IT for Change)

Open development is the employment of ICT-enabled ‘openness’ towards an improved distribution of power across the intended community of impact. Typically, ICT-based affordances rapidly transform the organisational context of development practice, enhancing organisational outcomes. But affordances cannot be mistaken for norms; the interplay between affordances and norms, and crystallisation of new norms, is critical for moving towards appropriate organisational outcomes. Further, improved distribution of power must occur not merely in the proximity of the ‘(networked) organising space’ but across the intended community of impact. The continuum between the organising and community spaces in ‘open initiatives’ must be examined critically, especially with regard to governance and distribution of power. Empirical research to trace how norms related to development outcomes are built and sustained in open organisations, and how improved distribution of power in the wider community of impact is caused or not, would help understand and enhance the impact of ‘open’ practices and organisations on development.

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Empirical Project
10. Digitisation as ‘openness’? Mapping electronic governance and shifting politics of land in West Bengal, India
By Sumandro Chattapadhyay (Centre for Internet and Society) / Himadri Chatterjee (Jawaharlal Nehru University)

In West Bengal, India, the BHUCHITRA project has operationalised an upgraded version of the land management information system titled BHUMI that has been implemented in other states of India. The fundamental plan of BHUCHITRA is to have an integrated database that brings together different land administration functions into a ‘single window service’ system available and accessible to the public in general. This research empirically evaluates and frames the transformation of the ‘organising space’ of the BHUCHITRA project, and thus of land governance, in West Bengal. The inquiry focuses on internal transformations in the structure of land governance in West Bengal — including knowledge and skill flows, internal distribution of power, and the making and reconfiguration of the functions of public and private actors — driven by the deployment of the BHUCHITRA project. Simultaneously, the study seeks to follow the ‘governed’ subject, or the recipient of government ‘service,’ into the field of land dispute settlements to understand the impact of this shift in the technologies of governance on the ‘community space’ of the citizens.

Theme 6
Theoretical Project
11. Public Engagement in Open Development: A Knowledge Stewardship Approach
By Katherine Reilly / Juan Pablo Alperin (Simon Fraser University)

Early open development work assumed that the Internet and openness decentralised power and enabled public engagement by disintermediating knowledge production and dissemination. However, over time, new intermediaries have become involved in the delivery of open information and in the stewardship of open knowledge. We have identified five models of intermediation in open development work: decentralised, arterial, ecosystem, bridging and communities of practice. The goal of this project is to produce exploratory research about trends in intermediation across three areas of openness work: open government, open education and open science. How do intermediaries add value, for whom, and where is this value accruing? Does intermediation serve to maintain openness and facilitate public engagement, or does it create new power structures? To answer such questions, we believe it would be productive to identify common trends or tendencies in how different types of intermediaries take on the stewardship of open information across the different domains of open development work.

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Empirical Project
12. Understanding the structures and mechanisms that foster stewardship in open development
By Jean-Paul Van Belle / Paul Mungai (University of Cape Town)

Kenya has been at the forefront of open development initiatives since 2011. The open government initiative is the most celebrated, as it was the first to sensitise the country on the value of openness through the Kenya Open Data Initiative (KODI). This research identifies the mechanisms that intermediaries use to produce openness in three areas of open development namely open government, open science and open education. Mechanisms will be linked to the five schools of thought established by Reilly and Alperin, namely, decentralisation, arterial, ecosystems, bridging and communities of practice. This study concentrates on the arterial and ecosystems schools of thought because we intend to resolve the obstacles (marginalised) people face when accessing open data/information by introducing “info-mediaries”. Secondly, the ecosystems school of thought seeks to ensure quality in data and production of value out of this data through intermediaries, and supporting policies and systems. These two schools of thought will act as a lens through which the mechanisms will be tested in the Kenyan context.