I was really excited and inspired to hear about Tap’s approach to field work and involvement with ICTD issues. There are centuries of oppression and absurdity involved with technology solutions to “development” problems. The fields of health and agriculture and finance have been particularly bad of applying paternalistic approaches to solving the problems OF under-served communities FOR under-served communities in the past. Tap’s approach to technology development and application in his own work and those of his students and colleagues is refreshing to hear about, and in my opinion really important to internalize.

Building trust and rapport is so critical to successful research, but of course, caring about the longer-term effects of those relationships is equally important. Being a good listener, thinking through sustainability from the beginning, addressing real (not imagined) problems, taking the time and making an effort to understand the cultural/political/social/economic context in which you’re working – this is what is hopefully going to help make the next generation of “practitioners” of development more effective than those that have come before us.

One point that Tap raised that is unique to some of the ICTD world is how to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of technology solutions across many axes when resources may be so limited to invest in “high value” interventions (in Public Health parlance) – usability, efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and the longer-term issues with potential changes in infrastructure changes. This is the skill-set that I’m most interested in developing further: impact evaluation strategies to help inform ICT and eHealth solutions to priority global health problems. How do we dynamically evaluate how well something is working and how to make it better (or decide to go with another kind of ICT solution, or none at all) when there are so many externalities to ICT solutions being successful?