[Asis-l] ICTD 2009 panel "ICTD Evaluation 20/20: Voices from Around the World."

[Mike Crandall]

Dear colleagues:

We want to invite you to participate in a short online discussion leading to a panel at the ICTD international conference in Doha, Qatar in April 2009 (http://www.ictd2009.org/).  Sponsored by the Center for Information & Society at the University of Washington, this panel will bring together leading figures with different perspectives on the world of ICT for development:  

o   Industry (Microsoft: Akhtar Badshah) 

o   Development: (IDRC: Richard Fuchs, Teresa Peters: Kickstand Consulting)  

o   Academia (U Washington: Karen Fisher,  U Manchester: Richard Heeks, IIITB: Balaji Parthasarathy).  

Check out their profiles and opening statements, and participate in the online discussion through the panel web site at http://cis.washington.edu/ictd2020/

The online discussion will be focused on these three topics, covering one topic every two weeks:

1)      ICTD evaluation studies have been conducted for years and yet a common criticism is that these seem to be done infrequently, in poor quality, and are little used.  How much of this do we owe to various stakeholders' goals in seeing certain outcomes from the research? Has this changed?
2 weeks, starting March 2, 2009

2)      Explain your favorite ICTD evaluation model (and why) in 1 minute (alternatively, explain/critique your least favorite model).
2 weeks, starting March 16, 2009

3)      Academic studies reflect communities' ICTD needs and uses, however: top-down, deductive, blueprint evaluation measures impact but is not truthful; bottom-up, inductive, process evaluation is truthful but does not measure impact.
2 weeks, starting March 30, 2009

The panel at Doha will bring in key elements of the online discussion for a 90 minute, lively debate moderated by Ricardo Gomez, on April 16, 2009.

Join the online discussion NOW at:
www.cis.washington.edu/ICTD2020

-
Michael Crandall
Chair, Master of Science in Information Management Program
The Information School
University of Washington
mikecran<at>u.washington.edu