Re: Any experiences with development co-operation?

[Ned Bedinger <doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com>]

Tomi Toivio wrote:
> Hello everyone!

<snip>

> Now I notice that
> nobody is using the computer platform, actually nobody is doing any real
> work with the PGIS project! There is absolutely no data to put into the
> database, and putting data into the database is actually the point why PGIS
> projects exist! 

This is familiar, yes.  Tech writers sometimes find that no one reads 
what they write. Documentation is (realistically) sometimes called 
"shelfware" because it just sits on the shelf and never gets used.

> The manual I wrote for the system has been used for training
> somewhere in Italy... 

Some big development organizations are in Italy! Be glad they're 
exploring what you did, it is better than if it were still-born 
shelfware, yes?

> For PGIS training... So at least the whole effort is
> not completely useless? If the Africans don't get anything out of it at
> least the Italians will?

Maybe new development projects will continue to re-introduce your work 
into Africa.

> 
> I like my day job in technical writing, but I have been really irritated
> about this one.  We put some development co-operation funds into something
> like this and then... Nobody finds it useful?

Commercial technical writing conventionally has a "stakeholder"-- 
someone who needs documentation for their product--who is responsible 
for doing the analysis and determining that the need for the technology 
and documentation exists. The stakeholder is the one who determines that 
some benefit is expected from the technology and the tech writer's 
efforts. That stakeholder also is typically responsible for driving the 
adoption of the technology. In a commercial project, the target users of 
the technology are typically people who work for the stakeholder and are 
paid to use the technology. Does this project model differ from the PGIS 
project?

In a development project such as you describe, there are social and 
technical factors that are not usually important in a commercial 
project. For example, in a tribal setting, there may be a traditional 
social structure that dictates who is responsible for knowing who owns 
certain resources, where boundaries lie in the landscape, how to 
accomodate deities when using resources, etc. Here's a PGIS project that 
illustrates how sociologists try to work within such structure:

http://www.iapad.org/ifugao_and_gis.htm

If the PGIS project does not work within the existing system, it may not 
have any chance of being adopted. There are certain parallels in 
commercial projects.  I have heard many times, when interviewing 
informants and subject matter experts, that the new technology I'm 
documenting for their use is "not the way we do things", and this is a 
powerful predictor that my work will not be used. Management can be very 
bone-headed about dumping new technologies and projects onto developers 
without getting their buy-in and assurances of cooperation first!

The funding you mentioned may be a key. If ongoing funds have not 
provided for implementation and support of the project, such that no one 
gets paid to do the work or supervise the project, or no fuel is bought 
to run the generator that powers the GIS system, then the project might 
run out of gas and stop in its tracks when you leave.

> 
> Today today I took a day off from work cause I found this so confusing. We
> just go to Africa to give people different chances or options of doing
> things... And then you notice nobody cares or will not use these things?

Hmmm. Don't take it so hard that it hasn't yet succeeded. Change is a 
tide, not raindrops rearranging the sand :-)  Hang in there, P-GIS may 
yet become the Facebook of computer-mediated social activity in places 
where indigenous information systems haven't yet been digitized.

HTH,

Ned Bedinger
doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com
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