Next Steps

As discussed earlier, collaboration of various stakeholders and organizations can help ease the digital divide. Through collaborations, media training centers can be established in the rural and urban areas of the country (this strategy can be used in both developed and developing countries). They can help overcome the problems of centers that are created independently on smaller scales. One good example of this is in South Africa. In South Africa, the ICT project centers are established in partnership with the Department of Education and the MIET. They have centralized systems for each district with satellite divisions for adjoining villages.

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a905796506~db=all~jumptype=rss

The benefits of this kind of a system are:
1) Collaborating with local educational organizations can help understand the context of the place better. They help understand the types of resources available, the types of resources that are missing, the gender divide in usage of technology, can advocate for bridging the gender divide, they can form regulations to include every child for education, and they have a certain authority that people seem to respect.
2) Along with bridging the divide, these collaborations can also help in the development of the society. For example, they can offer classes for job training. They can also ask the educational system to make women education mandatory and can therefore enhance women emancipation.
3) By using the educational system, the centers can reach its target audience better. The educational system can integrate the ICT projects within the coursework in order to impart technical knowledge as a part of the main coursework.
4) This kind of collaboration helps reach a broader number of villages (rural area). Every district has a central system and also satellite systems in adjoining rural areas. This helps cover a larger number of villages.
5) The collaborating members can divide the work based on their expertise. They can also prioritize their objectives and assign appropriate members with proper skill sets to these objectives. This will make the process much faster and focused.

However, even with the above stated benefits, there are still a few dilemmas attached to the functioning of such systems.

Many villages and towns in developing countries lack even the basic infrastructure like electricity. So, how can these programs survive in such situations?
One way to achieve this is by collaborating with a big organization that can actually fund the basic infrastructure for the district. This may be impractical but there are companies that have done this in the past. One good example of this is Tata in Jamshedpur, India.

http://www.tata.com/careers/index.aspx?sectid=10thFt4D0OU=

The entire town of Tata has an amazing infrastructure that is funded by the company. The electricity is generated at their power plant and the whole town is provided with their service. However, this is not the most pragmatic way. Mobile satellite ITC centers are probably the best way (discussed in an earlier post) .

http://www.worlib.org/vol17no1/singh_v17n1.shtml

However, much research is still required on this. More data is required in order to understand the situation better. ICTs should seek to understand the local context they are operating in. Also, they should look towards the overall development of the area, rather than concentrating on a handful of people. This is possible through strong strategic collaborations and one good example of this is the collaboration of MIET with the Department of Education in South Africa.

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ763160&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ763160