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In an age wherein technology is designed and deployed for multifarious gains, it wont be wrong to declare, technology for the community, by the community and of the community. Technology for the community must be user-oriented, must drive home larger benefits, and must serve community and citizen needs. When we say technology by the community, let us agree to the fact that while in the designing process, mainly the policy level and in lab process, technology inputs must reflect the output requirements of the communities for whom policy programs are being designed. Technology of the community would be the other essential pillar to identify the sense of ownership and participative features in a technology led community development program.

Technology policy program design must meet the essential features of any Community Information System. CIS is defined as democratic technology based platform to empower and develop communities, using various information communication technology tools and applications serving diverse information content and communication needs. A key feature of such platforms is that these are based on local, social, cultural, and economic factors.

Thus, community and content become vital inputs towards actualizing CIS outputs. Irrespective of realizing such CIS goals and outputs on actual situations and need based circumstances, the Community Information Center (CIC) program was ideated and launched, specific to the Northeast in the end of 2002. The proclaimed objectives in policy documents were, the CICs to serve critical information and content needs of community users in difficult topographical situations as well as in diverse socio-cultural and economic contexts. The CICs were to accelerate the information and knowledge flow of rural communities, and impacting various socio-economic activities through ICT tools directly or indirectly. All this is to happen in a bottom-up participatory approach and the word community, finding prime space in naming the project.

The CIC program is half a decade old by now. There are not many studies conducted to evaluate the success and utility of the CIC program so far, except for few brief reports. A sample study conducted by this author in Assam and Meghalaya reflects a dysfunctional status of the CICs in terms of information and content service delivery, developing skills and capacities of local communities, improving governance and public service delivery, and in providing a democratic framework for development.

The Sample Study
The sample study was conducted on Gabharu CIC in Sonitpur district of Assam, and Mylliem CIC in East Khasi Hills district of Meghalaya. Just like other CICs, the Gabharu and Mylliem CICs were set up to facilitate local level administration through digitization of information and communication processes in terms of providing all public services and information and content on digital format.

The originally envisioned services envisaged through the CICs included Internet Access and email, printing, data entry and word processing and training for the local populace. In addition, several citizen-centric or government to citizen (G2C) services were to be delivered. However, the current level of services includes basic computer courses and services like CD writing, net surfing and typing and related minor services.

The Content Gaps
Apart from providing basic IT trainings to local youth, the Gabharu and Mylliem CICs are not providing any content and information services to the local communities. The preliminary websites of these centers do not have any relevant and need based community specific information and content. Even the local content available is not being made visible on the sites. Services provided are only training, Internet surfing, and printing. In case of CIC Mylliem, the center running since 2000, is not reflective of anything substantive happening. Currently, the center trains a student batch of ten for three days weekly. The only good news is the Mylliem CIC is serving digitization activities of the Mylliem Block Development office. However, this led one CIC operator to comment that the CIC is not functioning for the community, but for the BDO. The CIC is providing ICT training and capacity building to officials, teachers in batches. Sadly, community participation is not visible.

Thus, there is no sign of real information and communication service delivery to the communities. There is no visible ICT integration in the governance process at the block level of administration. The CIC Gabharu and Mylliem are not providing any actual e-governance related services to the citizens online. One cannot identify the realisation of digital divide gaps from the functioning of these CICs. Local content creation, delivery for local consumption is seriously a huge lapse.

Lessons from CIC Gabharu and Mylliem
Key lessons can be learnt from the actual functioning of the CICs. Any Community Information System, just like the CICs, cannot function and sustain unless the community has enough content and information to serve their needs through the CICs. The absence of content and information cannot be substituted by IT trainings and robust infrastructure set up to attract the community to the CIC platforms. The design and implementation of a need-based information and content service delivery framework is essential to run and sustain such Community Information Systems like the CICs. This calls for involvement of the local communities and their representatives in policy design and implementation, and a constant mechanism to keep public participation always on the upper side of the process. Regular feedback mechanisms, with bottom-up processes, are a democratic way of involving people to manage and run systems meant for them.

Location of the CICs also matters in deciding the fate. In case of the Gabharu and Mylliem CICs, they are planted in a school campus and in BDO office, both far from community reach. These provide great structural and operational limitations. The success of a CIS, like the CICs, is also dependent in seeing the CIC management from the social business angle. The success of CICs is also dependent on providing G2C (government to citizen), B2C (business to citizen) and C2B (citizen to business) and C2G (citizen to government) information and content services delivery. The Gabharu and Mylliem CICs do not reflect increasing activity in terms of integrating ICT for community needs and governance service delivery. The list of services offered doesnt reflect the greater use of ICT for community administrative purposes.

There is no sign of activism from district administration in making the CIC function at a little less than professional manner. There is no visible pro-activeness in going extra mile in making these centers transform into information and content service delivery platforms with a bottom-up approach.

The critical challenge of any CIS, including the CICs, is in providing multifarious information dissemination to the local community like farmers accessing agricultural information including market information; students accessing information regarding education opportunities; job related information for the local youth to find employment; content information on the implementation of various government schemes like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.

The greater challenge today is how to sustain the CICs in the region in the advent of the PPP based Common Service Center (CSC) program of the Government of India. While the CICs were based on socio-economic considerations, the CSCs are more of commerce and entrepreneurial ventures. It is to be seen how the CSCs serve the local communities with relevant content and services and what difference it is going to make in place of the soon to be out-of-place CICs.

Conclusion
The success of any Community Information System lies on appropriate policy design that have provisions adequate to serve information and content services needs of the local communities. The success hinges on how the local communities are involved as a critical stakeholder in the process with regular feedback and monitoring mechanisms. The role of localized content and need based information holds the key. Engaging the local communities in running and managing the CIS will go a long way in successful operation of the system. Development of local human resource is another critical factor for success of a CIS including the CICs. The proposed Common Service Centers are hoped to take note of such developments and drawbacks in to consideration. The communities must benefit immensely from the CSCs through adequate streamlining of various need based content and information service delivery, in a way that reflects a democratic technological approach towards community empowerment.

Syed S Kazi
The author is with Digital Empowerment Foundation
maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in

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