India leads in ICT kiosks

PUNE: While the concept of ‘ICT kiosk’ has gained wide popularity and is being promoted by various governments and agencies as the silver bullet to address the digital divide, little is known about the critical components required to make such a venture successful. Yet, governments and development institutions continue to invest significant resources in various kiosk models with the apparent hope that "if we build, they will come." Despite this uncertain scenario, India has reason to cheer.

According to a research conducted by Digital Partners, India is way ahead of other countries and regions in the development and use of ICT kiosks. The findings are part of the interim research report titled ‘ICT Kiosks: A Comparative Study’. The report covers India, Latin America and Africa and attempts to find out the best practices among various models to guide its investments. Digital Partners initiated the research in April this year.

The research indicates that initiatives being taken in India are much stronger than those in any other country. Not only does India leads in e-governance initiatives being taken in all Latin American and Asian countries, many of the Indian projects are also profit driven. "It seems that in India, the tiered franchised business model is the most common or at least the projects that are using this model are the most visible," the interim report says.

India also boasts of the highest number of local ICT promoters–most likely because unlike in other countries, technical training in India is available much easily. However, some of the projects in India had to contend with limited success because of lack of awareness within the community. "People in villages some time are not aware of the services that these ICT kiosks can bring to them. Perhaps the key issue here would be to consider promoting such facilities before setting up the kiosks and ensure that the effort continues in a sustained manner," the report suggests.

The report, however, says that support and maintenance of equipment at these centers is one of the biggest issues that these projects need to address in order to sustain the effort on a long-term basis. While few of the big projects are already addressing this issue, it could definitely hamper the sustainability of the ICT kiosks, particularly those located in rural areas that lack connectivity and infrastructure.

Then there is the other big issue of government support. Many initiatives by NGOs and other organizations provide access to government services and have been developed with initial support from the government. The uncertainty about the future role of the government may hinder investments in such projects, the interim findings suggest.

According to the report, while in Latin America commercial ICT centres developed by the private sector are a healthy business, they don’t often succeed in reaching the poor. It was also felt that if the ICT centres are commercialized they could dilute or overwhelm the initial focus on social return. For example, in Peru, the progressive RCP initiative has moved away from developing ICT centres since Telefonica has entered the market.

In Africa, it has been found that government support for private or public partnerships was critical. Results revealed that market forces alone could not bring the service to rural areas because they are not as profitable as urban ones. Moreover, unreliability of power, telecom connectivity has led to frustration in service and decrease in use of ICT centres.

(CNS)