Week 2 - What are the critical operational aspects in the process of capturing impacts of ICT initiatives in agriculture?
Dear Friends,
We have had a successful and vibrant discussion in the previous week where our Subject Matter Experts - Jim, Jenny, John, Shahid - and the many members of the e-agriculture.org community shared valuable insights, opinions and experiences on the following questions -
- What is the most effective way to measure the impact of ICT for development (ICT4D) initiatives?
- Do you explicitly construct logical and linear paths for your programmes?
- Do you carry out regular monitoring during projects, or do you prefer ex post facto studies?
The online forum has moved on to its 2nd and final week of great discussions. Building on what we have been discussing in the previous week i.e. more on methodology, tools, timings, indicators etc. to assess impact of ICT initiatives in agriculture, let us focus for this week on the operational aspects of impact assessment. Allow me to ask you -
What are the critical operational aspects in the process of capturing impacts of ICT initiatives in agriculture?
Again, the forum is open till 6th Oct and this is a great opportunity for all of us to shed light on this much interesting topic. Thanks all and looking forward to your responses, experiences and insights.
Before it initiates any process to capture impact, a project needs to be very clear about
- who are the targeted beneficiaries?
- how are they impacted?
- To what extent would the project go in capturing its impact?
The answer to these queries, among others, has implication on the operational aspects of the measurement process.
For instance, what should be the sample size, what sampling method do we follow (qualitative or quantitative), how do we attribute (Control vs. treatment-if that is possible), what form of questionnaire we use (open or closed end or mixed) and last but not least how do validate the data.
In developing countries, where secondary data on the universe populatin or listing is scare in terms of availability and perhaps reliability, quantitative measurement often becomes very difficult.
When it comes to beneficiaries questionnaire, questions based on recall of the respondent often is very unreliable. We have come across situations where the respondent was able to tell an overall benefit figure, but when we dug a bit bitter, his benefit figure did not add up.
Under ICT when it comes to capturing impact at end user, one has to realize that there are different channels already existing which perhaps also impact in the same way for the same end user. Case in point ICT channels providing information, but perhaps the same information is also being provided by extension worker, input retailers or other peer groups. How does one then identity the level of impact the project's own interventions has created?
These are just some challenges that I thought are worth highlighting.
Shahroz,
THanks for your thoughtful comments. I agree with these three elements as being crucial towards capturing the impact of ICT for agriculture programs.
I think that one thing that might be worth discussing, however, is the addition of a non-ICT group. In other words, if we want to measure the impact of the ICT for ag program on households' access to information, production, productivity and well-being, what would have happened in the absence of the program?
Here's a quick example. Suppose we implement an agricultural hotline to share information on production techniques with farmers. We do a baseline with those farmers before the program, and another baseline after the program, and find that farmers had more access to information at the end of the program and had more income. The question is: Are these differences do to the ICT for ag intervention, or something else? Was there another information campaign at the same time? Were farmers getting the information on their own (with regular cell phones)? And even if the improvement WAS due to the ICT for ag program, are these results "better" or worse than the new approach?
In order to answer these questions, I think that some of these projects -- especially newer ones -- also need to consider collecting data from from a non-ICT group (ie, a group that uses the traditional ag extension program, or no program). There are different ways to do this, but this needs to be addressed from the outset.
Dear Jenny and Shahroz,
If I can share a completely outsider's perspective to this mix by quoting from Clay Shirky who said in one of his recent books that -
“Communications tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring.”
It seems that ICT tools will have to become kind of 'invisible' and 'ubiquitous' in the lives of the beneficiaries to be really integrated into their livelihood and day to day living. In which case I wonder, will it become even more difficult for them to exactly specify the financial benefits they were able to achieve with the help of the tools? In other words, when the tools become a means only and not an end, will it be even more challenging to pin point the attributions?
Thoughts welcome!
Thanks Shahroz for getting the ball rolling for our final week of insightful discussions on the ICT impact assessment of agriculture. To further build on what I have posed as a question to the forum yesterday, let me specify more -
In terms of attributing impact to project activities, what options does the project have and what should it look out for?
Lets see what our SMEs and community members have to say on this. Thanks.
Thank you Shehzaad for posing such an interesting and stimulating question regarding "Attribution" issue in ICT in Agriculture initiatives
From my limited experience of implementing ICT intervention in the field of agriculture, I found attribution issue to be a bit complicated. To be even more precise, we are yet find a widely acceptable solution for this issue of attribution for the ICT interventions in agriculture.
From our experience of dealing with attribution issue, we came across below mentioned problems:
In most of the cases ICT interventions thrives for facilitating easier access to information (pertaining disease prevention, cultivation technique, fertilizer dose so on and so forth) for the farmers, And it is assumed that by accessing the information the farmers will be able to benefit. In reality, we have come across instances where a farmer got the required solution but could not benefit just because the recommended insecticide/pesticide by the Agri-help line was not available at that specific location. So, it is apparent that JUST providing with the information does not ensure benefit for the farmer. There is this other factor of “availability of recommended solution”. And there could be plenty of other factors that might have contributed to the crop saving or increased income for the farmers (ranging from good monsoon rain to government’s subsidy for irrigation and what not). Hence, isolating the true attribution of the “information” is very difficult to measure. Apart from that, even if you are able to list down all the factores for increased income/productivity for farmers, how do you distribute the attribution among all the factors and on what basis?
I am eagerly waiting to know how other projects are dealing with these issues!
Dear Arafat,
Thank you very much for sharing your experiences. Interestingly if I could draw from your opinion above and ask the following question to the forum -
Considering the diffused nature of ICT and the tendency of farmers to share information with one another, to what extent should the project look into, in capturing its ICT initiatives impact?
Hope to hear from the community!
Can anybody share some successful initiatives exclusively for fisheries
<p>At Katalyst we work with telecenter and call center to provide demand led information for farmer including fish farmers. About 7 t o8 years, there was a project which used ICT call center methodology but the difference there it was aimed at the shrimp farmers and it was the project that operated the content. Learning from such model, we from the get go, looked at new ways at linking ICT content operators with the mobile phone operator who are the final custodian of the call center or the telecenters. Hope this helps</p>
<p>On a different note, today marks the end of this forum that Katalyst and e-agriculture started on Sep 25. During this time we recevied a lot of inputs, queries, knowledge from various participants. We are thankful to them and hope that through this forum we have been to show how increasingly we must be focused in our results measurment system. Resuls measurment are an important process of what we do because they not only help us capture what we have achieved but more importantly if done right helps us do even better. <br />
</p>
<p>ICT initiatives has its own share of challenges and opportunities which makes this whole monitoring process even more exciting.</p>
<p>I would like to thank the E-agriculture and all those behind this initiaitve, in helping us use this forum and highligh this important topic.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p> </p>