BARRIERS AND SOLUTIONS TO OPEN SOURCE APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGY FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: INNOVATION THROUGH COLLABORATION

It has been proposed that the field of appropriate technology (AT) - small-scale, energy efficient and low-cost solutions, can be of tremendous assistance in many of the sustainable development challenges, such as food and water security, health, shelter, education and work opportunities. Unfortunately, there has not yet been a significant uptake of AT by organizations, researchers, policy makers or the mainstream public working in the many areas of the development sector. Some of the biggest barriers to higher AT engagement include: 1) AT perceived as inferior or ‘poor persons technology’, 2) questions of technological robustness, design, fit and transferability, 3) funding, 4) institutional support, as well as 5) general barriers associated with tackling rural poverty. With the rise of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for online networking and knowledge sharing, the possibilities to tap into the collaborative open-access and open-source AT are growing, and so is the prospect for collective poverty reducing strategies, enhancement of entrepreneurship, communications, education and a diffusion of life-changing technologies. In short, the same collaborative philosophy employed in the success of open source software can be applied to hardware design of technologies to improve sustainable development efforts worldwide. To analyze current barriers to open source appropriate technology (OSAT) and explore opportunities to overcome such obstacles, a series of interviews with researchers and organizations working in the field of AT were conducted. The results of the interviews confirmed the majority of literature identified barriers, but also revealed that the most pressing problem for organizations and researchers currently working in the field of AT is the need for much better communication and collaboration to share the knowledge and resources and work in partnership. In addition, interviews showcased general receptiveness to the principles of collaborative innovation and open source on the ground level. A much greater focus on networking, collaboration, demand-led innovation, community participation, and the inclusion of educational institutions through student involvement can be of significant help to build the necessary knowledge base, networks and the critical mass exposure for the growth of appropriate technology.

Calling for resistance: The political economy of Indian and Canadian call centre industries

Call centres have in the last three decades come to define the interaction between corporations, governments, and other institutions and their respective customers, citizens, and members. From telemarketing to tele-health services, to credit card assistance, and even emergency response systems, call centres function as a nexus mediating technologically enabled labour practices with the commodification of services. Because of the ubiquitous nature of the call centre in post-industrial capitalism, the banality of these interactions often overshadows the nature of work and labour in this now-global sector. Advances in telecommunication technologies and the globalization of management practices designed to oversee and maintain standardized labour processes have made call centre work an international phenomenon. Simultaneously, these developments have dislocated assumptions about the geographic and spatial seat of work in what is defined here as the new international division of knowledge labour. The offshoring and outsourcing of call centre employment, part of the larger information technology and information technology enabled services sectors, has become a growing practice amongst governments and corporations in their attempts at controlling costs. Leading offshore destinations for call centre work, such as Canada and India, emerged as prominent locations for call centre work for these reasons. While incredible advances in technology have permitted the use of distant and “offshore” labour forces, the grander reshaping of an international political economy of communications has allowed for the acceleration of these processes. New and established labour unions have responded to these changes in the global regimes of work by seeking to organize call centre workers. These efforts have been assisted by a range of forces, not least of which is the condition of work itself, but also attempts by global union federations to build a bridge between international unionism and local organizing campaigns in the Global South and Global North. Through an examination of trade union interventions in the call centre industries located in Canada and India, this dissertation contributes to research on post-industrial employment by using political economy as a juncture between development studies, critical communications, and labour studies.

A Framework for Citizen-Centred Social Statistics and Analysis (Working Paper 48)

Economic policy-making has long been more integrated than social policy-making in part because the statistics and much of the analysis that supports economic policy are based on a common conceptual framework – the system of national accounts. People interested in economic analysis and economic policy share a common language of communication, one that includes both concepts and numbers. This paper examines early attempts to develop a system of social statistics that would mirror the system of national accounts, particular the work on the development of social accounts that took place mainly in the 60s and 70s. It explores the reasons why these early initiatives failed but argues that the preconditions now exist to develop a new conceptual framework to support integrated social statistics – and hence a more coherent, effective social policy. Optimism is warranted for two reasons. First, we can make use of the radical transformation that has taken place in information technology both in processing data and in providing wide access to the knowledge that can flow from the data. Second, the conditions exist to begin to shift away from the straight jacket of government-centric social statistics, with its implicit assumption that governments must be the primary actors in finding solutions to social problems. By supporting the decision-making of all the players (particularly individual citizens) who affect social trends and outcomes, we can start to move beyond the sterile, ideological discussions that have dominated much social discourse in the past and begin to build social systems and structures that evolve, almost automatically, based on empirical evidence of ‘what works best for whom’. The paper describes a Canadian approach to developing a framework, or common language, to support the evolution of an integrated, citizen-centric system of social statistics and social analysis. This language supports the traditional social policy that we have today; nothing is lost. However, it also supports a quite different social policy world, one where individual citizens and families (not governments) are seen as the central players – a more empirically-driven world that we have referred to as the ‘enabling society’.