interview with steven livingston on information systems and development

7/30/2019 Interview With Steven Livingston on Information Systems and Development

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D E V E L O P M E N T O U T R E A C H24

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Q: Proessor Livingston, your current research looks at the

emergence o inormation systems in developing countries

and their eect on collective action. What is the link between

inormation systems and development?

A:My take on inormation and development goes back to

what Max Weber had to say about the relationship between

the kinds o organizations and institutions that societyneeds to accomplish its goals and the nature o that societys

inormation inrastructure. Weber said that the reason or

bureaucracy, the reason or large hierarchical institutions,

is because inormation is hard to gather, hard to manage,

hard to distribute. So, specialized command-and-control

hierarchical institutions were created because it was dicult

to collect and manage inormation. It was scarce and di-

cult to gather and manage. The transaction costs o doing

so were high.

The key to understanding the point Im making is the

act that inormation environments have changed since the

creation o hierarchical, bureaucratic institutional structures.

It has become richer, in the sense that inormation is nowabundant and shareable on a near-global scale. We have

more cell phones5.3 billion globally at last countand

other ways o sharing inormation. That means the underly-

ing rationale or hierarchical command-and-control bureau-

cracy has diminished.

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STEVEN

LIVINgSTON

A N I N T E R V I E W W I T H


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D E V E L O P M E N T O U T R E A C H26

The point o bureaucracy was the management o

inormation. Now, thats done over electronic networks,

search engines, and lters, which means we can learn about

the needs o a community, not by sending in teams o World

Bank or NGO employees alone, but also by using distribu-

tive inormation systems like cell phones to share and gather

inormation. Inormation and communication technology

allows us to design development programs that are rooted

in an understanding o needs as dened by the communities

themselves through a sharing o inormation among mem-bers o the community and the outside world. Obviously,

Bank and NGO expertise is important. But we can now listen

to the communities themselves in systematic, meaningul

ways when developing development programs. What do they

want, need to live better l ives?

Q: You emphasize the importance o needs as identied by

the community. In this issue oDevelopment Outreachwe

eature a debate on whether development should be expert

driven or community driven. Why do you think that a com-

munity-based needs assessment o development problems is

better than a technocratic approach?

A: An integrated approach is best. The role o the outsideexpert is crucial, but the outside expert can also learn rom

the community. Outside experts come into a situation with a

lot o ormal education and a lot o insight into the theories

and best practices in a specialty, but theyre still outsiders to

that environment. The ideal development program combines

outside expertise with the local insight and knowledge that

we now have access to because o inormation technology.

Policies are then open to iterative development, to revision,

to reorientation.

Q: How do emerging inormation systems relate to collec-

tive action?

A: First o all, what is collective action? Collective action

is, as Mancur Olson and others have dened it, when two

or more people work together to achieve a common goal orpurpose. There are other complexities to collective action

that should be discussed, but or now we can say that the way

in which inormation technology aects collective action is

by lowering transaction costs. The impediments to collective

action are all o those things that involve costs in terms o

the time, money, and expertise required to gain an under-

standing o what is needed, approaches to achieving it, who

can help you achieve it, and so orth. Inormation technol-

ogy reduces those transaction costs. In an inormation-rich

environment, created through inormation technology, the

transaction costs o collective actiono understanding

rom each other what you need to do to realize your com-

mon goalare lowered, in some instances, to essentially zero.My current research is ocusing on unplanned urban

communities, or slums, in Arica. Slums lack basic services

sanitation, clean water, health care, educationbut also

security. In none o these communities is there a unctioning

police orce that is accountable and responsible. Bribery and

extrajudicial killings are common. How can we use a net-

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worked inormation environment to create an eective and

accountablepolice, and provide or the allocation o policing

orces where they are most needed?

To do that, one must rst knowsomething about wherepolice are most needed. In a major city like Washington

or Berlin there are institutions that keep crime statistics,

and inormation technology can be simply used or police

reporting. In a place like Kibera or Mathare, slums on the

edges o Nairobi, that doesnt happen. Here we can use

Geographical Inormation Systems (GIS or digital maps) like

Ushahidi to tap into that latent capacity or communities

to gather inormation. In the case o Kibera and Mathare,

this is being done by Map Kibera (http://mapkibera.org)

and Map Mathare (http://mappingnobigdeal.com/tag/map-

mathare). In Lagos, Nigeria, a local NGO, the Cleen Founda-

tion (http://www.cleen.org) is leading the way in developing

a mapping platorm or tracking the occurrence o policewho are demanding bribes. By tracking these reports one

can build a database that allows you to isolate bad behavior

by police at particular checkpoints, trac circles, and police

stations. What one tracks with GIS eventmapping platorms

is up to the developers and the community.

Police accountability may be the key to better secu-

rity. There was a recent case in Nairobi where a suspected

criminal was summarily executed on a public street by three

Nairobi police ocers. It happened to be captured by some-

body with a cell phone sitting in a car nearby. The ocers

were held to account or their behavior. Can we mobilize

mobile telephony to create systems o accountability or po-

lice orces or security orces that are not adhering to properprocedure and policy? The idea is that all o those people

with cell phones in their pockets provide a latent capacity to

help organize the community. Frontline SMS or Rapid SMS

or Ushahidi or other platorms can take that distributed

latent capacity and tie the nodes together.

Q: From your perspective, what can international devel-

opment agencies do better or do dierently to promote

community-driven or network-driven approaches to devel-

opment?

A: This is a challenge to all hierarchical organizations. I

think that the challenge or development organizations, as

conventionally understood, is the same challenge aced by all

kinds o institutional structures that are rooted in a pre-net-

work era. Institutional structures are designed or a particular

inormation environment where inormation is scarce, di-

cult to manage, dicult to maintain, dicult to distribute. So

we create things like newspapers, magazines, and bureaucra-

cies that have as their unction the collection and distribution

o inormation. As Weber said, the point o a bureaucracy is

to manage inormation fow. Thats why we have hierarchies:

we have sta oces that are based on inormation expertise.

Technology can radically fatten these structures: i inorma-tion is all o a sudden abundant and reely available, you no

longer need Encyclopedia Britannica, you dont need librar-

ies, because what you have instead is a searchable inormation

platorm that puts inormation at your ngertips.

This also means that networks are corrosive to hierar-

chical institutions. Weve seen this most clearly in the last

six months or so as it relates to the really ossied, inecient,

closed, autocratic, hierarchical system called the Mubarak

government in Egypt, or the Tunisian government, which

simply crumbled under the Facebook-inspired network chal-

lenge. At a commercial level, Amazon.com is a networked

inormation environment that is undermining the physical

presence o books. We now buy books in digital orm. Soto answer your question, hierarchical organizational struc-

tures must learn to adapt to fatter more nimble networked

inormation environments. That means looking or ways to

incorporate networks into daily and long-term planning and

operation unctions.

Q: Do you think Egypt and Tunisia would have happened

without Facebook?

A: No. People in Egypt and Tunisia would not have realized

their own power. Without that networked environment, they

would not have been able to communicate and to become

aware o their own power as part o an extended movement.It would not have happened.

Another way o putting this is that networked inor-

mation environments collapse distancesboth physical and

interpersonal. You and I are sitting across rom one another,

but we dont know one anothers intentions on a given issue

and wont reveal those intentions unless we can share them

with some saety, or example online, and say: Yeah, Im also

really upset at the crummy condition o the metro system

here in Washington. Lets do something about it, or what-

ever the case may be. So the distance between us that might

be maintained in a repressive environment because o ear o

police brutality, or example, can be reduced or eliminated i

we can gure out a way o communicating with a degree o

saety. We then become aware o our strength. We realize that

we share something in common, and not only the two o us,

but thousands o us, or tens o thousands o us, and then

perhaps millions o us. At that moment, it doesnt matter

how much repression and brutality there is, its going to be

met with the enormous condence o collective intention

and will.

interview with steven livingston on information systems and development

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