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From: "Michael Gurstein" <mgurst@vcn.bc.ca>
To: <nettime-l@bbs.thing.net>
Subject: Global Development Gateway.Com
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2001 09:45:39 -0400


(This was written but not circulated before the recent events, but there may
still be an interest...

MG


For anyone who hasn't yet wandered through the World Bank's
controversial Global Development Gateway <http://developmentgateway.org>
it might be worthwhile to take the time...

The criticisms that have been raised of the GDG have mainly been of
"crowding out" (of existing sites), skewed funding priorities (toward WB
associated sites rather than indigenous or grass-roots developed sites),
and supposed self-dealing (of WB officials).

I won't go into those--they have been well presented by others and
particularly on the GKD listserve.

What interests me is how the strengths and weaknesses of the site(s) are
so revealing of larger issues concerning Development and the very harsh
realities that are being discovered about information and E-Commerce on
the Net.

The GDG sites that I looked at were, I think, quite useful as
compilations of materials--lots of useful (but selected) links and some
access to information not readily accessible elsewhere (particularly WB
and related information). So far, not very different from any of the
zillions of sites which rose so quickly in everything from flower
growing to auto-mechanics.

Clearly, the model employed was that of the late '90s E-commerce
"portal" phenomenon. And the approach appears equally to suffer from the
limitations of most of those portals--naive (and failed) attempts at
creating communities of interest, self-interested (and failed) attempts
to generate volunteer enthusiasm and thus voluntary labour and
(information) contributions, and overall a rather partial window on the
very complex reality(s) into which they were meant to provide a
"doorway".

In the case of some portals, particularly those that didn't arise from
or manage to create a linked self-organizing community of interest, the
output has tended to be skewed to the interests/biases/limitations of
its creators and raises the hackles and competitive juices of all those
who don't share those assumptions.

In the Development sphere particularly, there are a range of competing
interests and "communities" and what seems evident from the WB portal is
that the primary community with which it is associated is the "official"
ODA/government/agency/consulting world. Thus the
documents/links/presentations--"reality" which is provided through the
portal are the "official" documents/links/"reality" etc.

Nothing particularly wrong with that--it gives useful access to
something that certainly occupies a lot of the available
financial/psychological/political space; but there is, as many have
observed, the very real danger (likelihood) of this having the result of
crowding out/unfairly competing/defunding all the other
"realities"--many of which may be closer to the interests and activities
of folks on the ground or in the trenches--the NGO's, the implementers,
the communities, the development activists.

And over all of course, is the central dilemma of the E-Commerce
phenomon which, though unstated, is visible on every page--how is all
this "sustainable"--financially (and socially).  For many of the
E-Commerce folks, the answer was "advertising" and "community building"
and those sites have been disappearing at an incredible rate as
funders/advertisers asked uncomfortable questions of who was looking,
for how long and for what purpose and the toughest question of all--is
this site (and the money I'm putting in), cost-effectively having the
desired outcome for my "bottom-line" i.e. impacting the behaviour of
those I'm trying to reach.

What most of them found was that maintaining an up-to-date useful,
interesting, relevant portal was fantastically labour intensive (and
thus expensive). And ultimately it is unsustainable unless there is a
direct link to a supportive volunteer community where the
updating/populating of the site is done as a matter of course by a
community communicating within itself and as it goes about its normal
community building and community maintenance activities, cf.
<slashdot.org>.

The dilemma for the WB is that the only folks who, over the longer term
are likely to provide on-going content development and in-put into the
portal, are those who do it because they have a stake (financial) or are
paid--take a look at the (lack of) participation in any of the "forums"
associated with the various GDG topics or themes and compare this with
any of the multitude of "community of interest" voluntary lists in those
same topic areas.

The very very much larger number of others who are involved in
Development and who ultimately the portal is designed to reach, will
find other and more accommodating and responsive/effective ways of
participating in a "Development community" and making use of the Net and
certainly ones that are inclusive of both "official" and unofficial
channels and information.  And they are very unlikely to offer their
labour or their information for free where others are being (well) paid
for the same efforts.

So, the very hard truths of E-Commerce and Development are likely to
come home to the WB GDG as they have to many others--content on the Net
is an expensive business and communities (whether virtual or geo-local)
are difficult to create and even more difficult to harness for any goals
other than their own.

Of course, the WB has the resources to ignore this, but I would guess,
not for very long.

Mike Gurstein

(Visiting) Professor:  School of Management
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Newark NJ USA

Michael Gurstein, Ph.D.
Michael Gurstein & Associates
Vancouver BC CANADA





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