Progress report for
ICT4SIDS Partnership: Rapid Implementation of SDGs Through Latest Digital Innovations
Achievement at a glance
NOTE: This is an Add-On to the Feb 13, 2019 Progress Report.Our objective is rapid implementation of SDGs at a massive scale by deploying inexpensive smart hubs that provide low cost but high impact SDG services to underserved populations. The following are the distinguishing features of our work:
I: SMART HUBS TO ADDRESS THE BASIC CHALLENGES: Each smart hub addresses many SDG challenges by providing highly specialized region specific low cost and high impact services in health, education, public safety, public welfare and other vital sectors. Specifically, each Smart Hub supports the following powerful portals so that no one is left behind: an Administration Portal for business collaboration and project management, an End-User Portal that directly supports SDG specific activities of the end-users, and a Capacity Building Portal to educate the Hub-Masters to become successful entrepreneurs.
II: SMART GLOBAL VILLAGE (SGV) FOR REGIONAL GROWTH THROUGH COLLABORATIVE HUBS: These smart hubs are designed to collaborate with each other to form a Smart Global Village (SGV) for the Underserved Populations. An SGV consists of smart collaborating hubs located in small islands, small towns and isolated communities.
III: COMPUTER AIDED PLANNING METHODOLOGY FOR RAPID & MASSIVE IMPLEMENTATION: This methodology is based on free pilot projects so that the poorest populations and young entrepreneurs can participate. The most innovative aspect of our methodology is that it uses a “Hub Factory” to produce a complete smart hub within a day.
IV: ACADEMIC RESEARCH TO DEVELOP AN ADVANCED “HUB FACTORY” TO QUICKLY PRODUCE HIGHLY SPECIALIZED AND SOPHISTICATED SMART HUBS: We have developed a Hub Factory that supports the aforementioned computer aided planning methodology. This factory uses an extensive array of latest developments in digital innovations for deployment and management of our growing SGV (60 hubs in 15 countries at present) and is being used in capacity building.
Challenges faced in implementation
FIRST CHALLENGE-HIGH FAILURE RATES OF ICT PROJECTS: Many ICT projects, especially in developing countries, face failure rates of 60-85% due to expensive retries. Smart hub projects are no exception. In response, we have developed a careful methodology that is supported by an integrated set of tools to do more (provide more services to more users) with less (time, money, trained staff and risk). This methodology and the associated tools have been further improved and enriched successively through the hands-on experience and practical insights gained through more than 60 pilot projects. At the time of this writing, the first 3 phases of the methodology are practically error free due to sophisticated use of the Hub Factory. However, the last phase is still prone to failures primarily due to funding issues. We are currently working with some funding bodies such as NSF to address these issues.SECOND CHALLENGE – THE PERSISTENT DIGITTAL DIVIDE: Innovative solution approaches based on people-process-technology tradeoffs are needed to ameliorate the digital divide and other unique challenges facing the SIDS. Based on the lessons learned in the last 3 years, we are continuing the use of “Smart Hubs” to ameliorate the digital divide in rural and isolated populations. Specifically, smart hubs operate on weak networks and are supported by powerful portals that provide highly specialized region and population specific services for SDGs and also fully support the vision of widely distributed information hubs as specified in the Samoa Pathway Declaration (Para h, Section 109). These smart hubs are designed to collaborate with each other for rapid regional growth. Based on our work this year, we feel that carefully designed collaborating smart hubs that serve different populations in rural as well as urban areas can ameliorate the digital divide and significantly accelerate the progress towards the SDGs.
Beneficiaries
The main beneficiaries are:
1) farmers in rural areas who can collaborate with food distributors located in large cities,
2) Hub Masters in rural areas can automatically benefit from the business continuity plans automatically plugged in to all smart hubs
3) patients in remote areas who can get help from nearby smart healthcare hubs,
4) poor fishermen in remote islands who can increase their income by getting satellite-based information about accurate fishing zones from nearby smart fishery hubs,
5) young entrepreneurs who want tangible business opportunities as Hub Masters (e.g., solar energy marketplaces)
6) students who want to specialize in ICT for better employment opportunities, and
7) SIDS officials who want to rapidly implement SDGs in their countries.
Actions
We have implemented over 60 pilot projects that span 15 countries with a mixture of SIDS and LDCs in the Caribbean, Indian Ocean, Pacific Ocean, Africa, Russia, South America and Southeast Asia. The objective of our free pilot projects (about 3 months each) is to provide educational and entrepreneurship opportunities for the youth and poor populations. We are specifically employing local youth as Point of Contacts (POCs) who are given tangible educational and entrepreneurship opportunities in different rural and urban areas around the globe.Specific examples of Use Cases are:
FIRST: Our Healthcare Centers are currently supporting populations in Bangladesh and Nigeria.
SECOND: Young nursing school graduates are being given opportunities to run Telemedicine Centers as “Hub Masters”.
THIRD: In Tanzania, we launched an educational hub for educating high school teachers in ICT (a highly valued skill in extremely short supply). This hub exceeded our expectations by becoming financially independent in just 2 months because of much higher than expected enrollments (we were expecting 30 students, we enrolled 120 students).
FOURTH: The POCs of each hub are required to communicate and collaborate with at least 3 other hubs as part of the training program. They initially exchange educational materials and lessons learned but later start exchanging other vital information such as evacuation procedures in case of a disaster and digital marketing approaches for cottage industries.
FIFTH: Even in its formative stages, the collaboration between hubs provides a rich educational source for interactions between different hubs in the same country (e.g., all hubs of the Solomons), collaborations between different countries but on the same topic (e.g., healthcare hub in Bangladesh collaborating with the one in Pakistan), and mixtures (e.g., micro-entrepreneurship and micro financing in different countries collaborating with each other).