OLPC : Vision vs Reality

Interesting paper analyzing the One Laptop Per Child project: OLPC: Vision vs. Reality 
and lessons to draw from it.

"The vision is being overwhelmed by the reality of business, politics, logistics, and competing interests worldwide."

" Expecting a laptop to cause such revolutionary change showed  a degree of naiveté, even for an organization with the best intentions and smartest people."

Open Ministry: Finland’s Online Platform for Crowd Sourcing

Democracy is as democracy does. Democracy has been implemented in diverse ways in many countries. The ideal democracy is where the people are given as many feedback mechanisms as possible to influence the rulers. Finland has taken one step towards the ideal democracy by its new initiative. Open Ministry is an initiative by a NGO which allows citizens to form new laws and introduce into the parliament. The initiative started in March 2012 when the laws introduced by citizens have to be backed up signatures from at least 50,000 people. The only eligibility of being a signatory is that he/she should be a registered voter in Finland. In October 1, 2012, the Open Ministry started its Crowd Sourcing Online Platform which allow people to gather electronic signatures from people. This will help new laws initiated from bottom-up to reach as many people as possible in a very low cost. The online platform also allows signatories to suggest changes in the laws, comment, debate laws or even introduce competing laws.

On the government side, The Finland parliament passed the Citizens Initiative Act recently which legitimizes Open Ministry as a platform to introduce new laws into parliament.

BOP and digital empowerment : The Chanderi story

Here is an interesting story that appeared in today's Mint about the Chanderiyaan project

" Chanderiyaan project is defined as the integration of digital technology and media into the entire lif"e cycle of Chanderi weavers cluster in Ashok Nagar district of Madhya Pradesh"

Read more about it here .... Weavers’ digital cluster: Chanderi shows the way

Welcome to the Digital Inclusion for Development Course Blog

This blog is meant for any thoughts, reflections or additional information that pertains to the topics we discuss in class or any related topics.

So if you come across an interesting project/venture related to how Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can be used for development, share it with the rest of your peers.