The latest issue features an e-interview with LIRNEasia’s CEO Rohan Samarajiva, but it is not the only reason why we thought of highlighting the issue. The content is interesting and very readable. We publish two e-interviews from July 2010 issue here fully, as they are not available on public domain.

Apart from Samarajiva, This issue carried e-interviews with Alison Gillwald, Indra de Lanerolle, Christoph Stork and Muriuki Mureithi.

If you are interested in future issues please register at http://lists.apc.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/chakula

The need for competitive research for policy influence
e-interview with Alison Gillwald

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“High quality, rigorous research…is required to compete and complement with each other for policy influence… In mature economies researchers from multiple universities would be debating and refining the positions governments should be taking on everything from regulating next generation networks to demand stimulation for broadband.”
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Alison Gillwald is Executive Director of RIA. She is also Adjunct Professor at the UCT Graduate School of Business, Management of Infrastructure Reform and Regulation, and a member of CPRafrica’s organisation and selection committee.

CHAKULA: You have just held the CPRafrica conference in Cape Town. What are you hoping to achieve through the conference?

ALISON GILLWALD [AG]: There is almost no scholarly research being undertaken in the field of ICT policy and regulation on the continent. A Google scholar search on the subjects throws up around five scholars on the continent who are published in peer reviewed or accredited journals. It is this kind of high quality, rigorous research that is required to compete and complement with each other for policy influence. In mature economies researchers from multiple universities would be debating and refining the positions governments should be taking on everything from regulating next generation networks to demand stimulation for broadband. Although there are pockets of applied research being undertaken there is no tradition of critical intellectual engagement in this area on the continent. The purpose of CPRafrica is to provide a forum for nurturing and showcasing research in the area of ICT policy and regulation on the continent and enhancing its quality through rigorous academic review and debate. The conference is complemented by a young scholars programme to expose young scholars who may be excluded from such peer-review, paper-acceptance-only style conferences without such a category. Some of these are part of the IDRC- [International Development Research Centre] funded PhD programme to encourage doctoral research in ICT policy and regulation. The idea here is to build a cadre of policy intellectuals on the continent able to critically engage government on the basis of relevant research and contribute meaningfully to research and policy excellence. This will further enhance Africa’s standing in international research and governance fora, in which its participation has historically been suboptimal.

CHAKULA: Reviewing some of the papers presented at the conference, it strikes me that there are a couple of threads that are emerging. Two in particular stand out: the notion of “innovation” in the telecommunications space, and the challenges around convergence and policy when two distinct sectors with different ways of doing things are brought into conflict with each other. I also went back to Research ICT Africa’s 2008 M-banking policy paper, which raises similar themes, and I would like to use that as a starting point. First, on the issue of ‘innovation’. In the M-banking paper, the following assertion is made: “Policy-makers and regulators need to ensure that evolving systems serve the broader objectives of economic growth and development as well as protect consumer interests, while creating an environment that encourages and rewards innovation”. In what ways can policy inhibit or encourage innovation in the telecommunication’s sector?

AG: Indeed, providing certainty to investors and operators while retaining the levels of flexibility to enable innovation in a fast-changing environment is one of the most difficult balancing acts that policy-makers and regulators have to perform. I think the linkages and catalysts between technology, market and regulatory innovation are becoming clearer all the time. New technologies and service offerings have prized open markets and the entry into less policy and regulatory constrained markets has made taking certain technologies to market more viable. This has triggered further possibilities across historically distinct platforms, not only between broadcasting and telecommunications, but between fixed and mobile services and even entirely separate sectors such as telecommunications and banking. The challenges to the expansion of such services are really regulatory now rather than technological – and that is not to say that one does not want or need public interest regulation either in the telecommunications or banking sector, but it has to be done in new, innovative ways that enable to extension of these services to those who currently don’t enjoy them. Once these various forces are unleashed they are able to intersect and create new opportunities and innovative ways of doing things that have not been done before.

CHAKULA: Innovation here seems necessarily to be tied to market gain – the objective is to increase or capture market share. In both your M-banking paper, and the case study of the mobile operator One Network in Kenya, preconditions exists that facilitate innovation. With M-banking there are low-income earners who are ‘unbanked’ and who could benefit from some kind of low-cost transactional instrument, and with One Network, there is a significant level of cross-border traffic that makes a seamless network attractive.
AG: It is true that innovation is often driven by market forces and pursuit of profits, and, traditionally, with new technologies have focused on high-end markets. But much of the ICT innovation we are witnessing in developing markets is focused on what has been referred to as the ‘gold at the bottom of the pyramid’ – very profitable turn-over of high volumes of sometimes minuscule margins on products that, by breaking them up or making them available at cost, the masses at the bottom of the economic and social pyramid can enjoy things like pre-paid phone vouchers, or transferable airtime vouchers. And many of these products have been commercialised innovative practices by the poor in order to access and affordably use communications services – such as missed calls, multiple sim card usage that allows for same net rates, or ‘plastic roaming’.

CHAKULA: If we consider Indra de Lanerolle’s fascinating case study on the South African convergence scenario, we see two sectors (broadcast and telecommunications) in conflict with each other because policy decisions are made according to different frameworks: simply put, economic versus public interest. In fact, Indra does seem to suggest that these are in competition with each other, and resolves this in an interesting way. It feels hard to believe that ‘consumer interest’ is the same as ‘public interest’?

AG: I think with the shift from public utilities to competitive markets many of the public interest objectives of delivery and service are met through serving the consumer interest. Nevertheless there is public interest regulation that is required to improve wider and collective consumer welfare – to provide access to ‘uneconomic areas’ for example – though with new more cost-effective, rapidly deployable wireless services, this concept in markets that enable competitive entry is regularly not proving to be the case. But as long as we have the large number of poor that we do, we will need some level of social regulation – even though a lot of the current pent-up demand could be met with greater market efficiency (more competitive markets offering better prices). And then there are the more traditional content regulation issues either to restrict certain ‘harmful’ content or activities or to enable it, such as local content regulation. That too may be found to be highly profitable, but may need either protection or encouragement.

CHAKULA: Indra’s paper, like your M-banking policy paper, shows that regulating convergence is tricky because of the ‘convergence’ of two or even more sectors; whether broadcast/telecommunications or telecommunications/banking etc. What are some of the key challenges that policy-makers can expect to face in Africa?

AG: The key challenge for African regulators is that they are still trying to deal with legacy regulation around first and second-generation infrastructure and access. At the same time, if they do not want the agenda to be set for them in international fora, they need to deal with next-generation issues, not only of converged IP [internet protocol] networks and services and the next-generation regulation issues of network and service-neutral regimes, but of cross-cutting issues of electronic commerce frameworks, intellectual copyright rights, security and privacy issues, and so on. And you have to do it all or be left behind…

CHAKULA: One frustration is that when one reads a good paper that seems to offer a solution to a problem, one is also met with the feeling that those with decision-making powers are probably not going to read that paper, or seriously consider its arguments. Do you feel the same? If so, how do you think CPRafrica picks up on this challenge? Is it just a case of repeating issues until policy-makers take them on board?

AG: No. CPRafrica is one of several strategic strands towards having evidence-based ICT policy on the continent. This is about organic and indigenous knowledge creation and contribution, at the national level, at the level of regional association and continentally, and also about global engagement and influence. For too long have the solutions come from the developed world. Of course, there are lessons to be learnt and we don’t need to reinvent the wheel, but we also have different challenges and Africa has demonstrated remarkably innovative responses to these when they are informed by sound policy, effective regulation or thorough and appropriate business plans. The indicator research done by RIA and its analysis in order to assess policy and regulatory outcomes is fed into several initiatives, globally and locally. RIA provides the only comprehensive public domain demand-side data on ICT access and usage on the continent. This is used in national, regional and continental meetings on ICTs, and in the database and reports of multilateral agencies such as the OECD and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), to better inform their understanding of developments in Africa. It is true that sometime decision-makers do not like to hear of the widespread policy and institutional failure on the continent, but many do – especially those that are rapidly improving and beginning to see the rewards of their reforms. This research is also used to develop training curricula that address the needs of policy and regulators in a developing country context. So, for example, as part of the global research and training collaborative LIRNE.net we conduct a professional development course on alternative regulatory strategies at the UCT Graduate School of Business Infrastructure Reform and Regulation Programme to build institutional capacity on the continent. So CPRafrica is just one arm of a multi-pronged strategy of research and education, institutional capacity building and technical assistance and dissemination and advocacy, through our website database, policy papers and workshop and public presentations.

CHAKULA: What is the way forward for the conference? Will there be more?

AG: Yes, in order to build and sustain this much-needed capacity we will have to find a way for CPRafrica to become an annual institution.

Related links:

M-Banking the Unbanked: RIA Policy Paper No. 4:

http://www.researchictafrica.net/new/images/uploads/RIA_Mobile-banking.pdf

CPRafrica conference details: http://www.researchictafrica.net/index.php/news/38-cprafrica-looking-back-at-a-decade-of-communications-reform-looking-forward-to-2020
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Innovation through competition: the budget telecom network model
e-interview with Rohan Samarajiva

Paper link: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1564529

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“The status quo must be unbearable.”
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Rohan Samarajiva is the Chair and CEO of Lirnasia. His paper, “How the developing world may participate in the global Internet Economy: Innovation driven by competition” was presented at a workshop organised by the OECD and InfoDev in Paris, 10-11 September 2009.

CHAKULA: In your paper, you talk about the Budget Telecom Network Model (BTNM), which is brought about by competition allowing operators to reduce the transaction costs of low-end clients. This, as you point out, is different to the standard Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) model. How does it make the ARPU model redundant?

Rohan Samarajiva [RS]: ARPU is a short-hand that outside observers use to see if the firm is doing well, whether its prospects are good, etc. It is, like any indicator, imperfect. You get it by taking total revenue (preferably without extras like roaming) and dividing by number of subscribers. Of course no one really knows what a subscriber is any more, with even poor people holding up to five SIMs, foreigners having SIMs, no agreement on what an active SIM is and so on. You can get better results by looking at revenue per minute. Take total revenue (less roaming and other stuff) and divide by Average Minutes of Usage per User per Month (MOU). This is a better indicator. But investment analysts are still not used to this and it would require disclosing MOUs to calculate.

CHAKULA: Can ARPU be used as a business model?

[RS]: Operators do not actually do much with the ARPU. It is not a business model as such, just an indicator. But getting more from each subscriber (if this is known) is not a bad idea. Just that it does not predict whether the company will make money or not. The best indicator for that is EBITDA [Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization] margin. Sri Lanka in 2007 had an operator with LKR311 (approximately USD3 at the time) ARPU making close to 50% EBITDA margin. In the end, the success of a business model lies in whether it generates profit.

CHAKULA: What is your understanding of ‘innovation’ in the telecommunications space? You talk of “business innovation”, rather than, say, technological innovation?

[RS]: Tech innovation is important, but it is not the only thing. Pure tech innovation is done by manufacturers of network equipment and handsets. That is good. Business process innovations (e.g. lowering the costs of base stations through software) are done by operators. These include technical aspects, but are not limited to them. Shifting from one business model to another (discovering the latter) is also innovation, but it may or may not not have a tech aspect at all.

CHAKULA: What are the preconditions for innovation, do you think?

[RS]: The status quo must be unbearable. The BTNM innovation occurred when competition got so intense that there was no way to gain market share or even survive without doing something new.

CHAKULA: Does BTNM have implications for increased access to broadband internet for the majority of people on a continent like Africa?

[RS]: Yes. The latter part of the paper is entirely on the extension of BTNM to broadband. Some headlines are that operators must have enough money from voice that can be invested in the 3G plus networks. Once the overlay network is built out the operators have to offer low prices. Prepaid sachet pricing is best, where one buys packages of connectivity in minutes or in capacity. Here, because of lower transaction costs and prices there should be an influx of new customers. This is already on offer in Asia. Africa has to lower prices. Access will be over mobile networks, using dongles or built in modems, for laptops and other devices, including phones. ADSL will be a niche product. Wireless access is the future.

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“I came more to learn from you; than to teach” was the message I passed before my two presentations with Sujata. Thanks Fusion/Telecentre.org for the opportunity. The three days spent with 200+ telecenter operators from eight provinces in Sri Lanka was a worthy investment. One does not interact with so many ground level ICT4D practitioners every day. It was a learning experience, for them; and for us.

From what I saw (and heard from others) the workshop, ‘weCAN: Social Enterprise with a Triple Bottom Line’ the second in the series of capacity building workshops of the Telecenter family of Sri Lanka was a grand success. Organized by Fusion/Telecentre.org (and funded by IDRC), we met at MIMT (MAS Institute of Management and Technology), Thulhiriya for four days (two batches). Plan was to amass 400 of telecenter operators from eight out of nine provinces of Sri Lanka but the recent floods in many parts of the island have stood in their way.

200+ participants was not bad. It was a mixed group gender and ethnically balanced. We had mainly ‘Nenasala’ and Sarvodaya multipurpose telecenter operators, but there were few odds too- like those who represented the telecenters at public libraries.

So what did I learn?

More will surely come when LIRNEasia survey results are analysed, but just Four Lessons, for the moment.

Lesson No. 1 (Good News!): GREAT THINGS HAPPEN AT GROUND LEVEL.

More than 50% of the crowd were newbies – either those who have started recently or who run more a ‘hand to mouth’ existence – but on the other hand, successful telecenter operators were not that rare a commodity, as many would think. I picked eight guys who are doing excellent. (Sadly no gender balance here, but things will surely change with many innovative ladies entering to telecenter space.)

Inter alia, we have heard the stories of Kathivan from Badulla whose telecenter earned LKR 300,000 (> USD 3,000) in one month; of U.M.G.Prasad from Sevanagala who uses Internet to link job seekers in his community with prospective employers (This clips tells more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqwU6k8Y35E); of Noel Tharmarathnam from Trocomalee who opens the doors of online IT exams to a post-conflict society (“I have to keep a low profile” he tells me over lunch, “…if I try to do too many things; I might not see tomorrow”); of Sanjeewa Kumarathunga from Nivithigala who told us about his efforts to help agriculture activities of the community and of Jayantha Wickramaratne from Panamura who runs a BPO operation. Congrats guys, and I hope the others have learnt from your experience.

Lesson No. 2 (Good News!): TELECENTER FAMILY OF SRI LANKA IS WELL CONNECTED THROUGH SOCIAL NETWORKING.

Try www.tcf.lk. Not everybody is there yet. Neither every member is a telecenter operator per se. (There are people like myself – who spend more time at our desks than at telecenters) Still, a good start. With this, Telecenter family becomes perhaps the first group in Sri Lanka to *officially* exploit the full features of Social Networking. Glad to see it happening in a place where many consider Social Networking is just for fun. I guess the credits go to Isura for creating this great platform.

Lesson No. 3 (Bad News!): NOT EVERYBODY IS CONNECTED.

This was a real eye opener. I thought Internet connectivity is central to telecenter operation. Without connectivity, a place with few computers does not become a ‘tele-center’. I was wrong. Some ‘telecenters’ in Sri Lanka have neither Internet nor e-mail. There are two groups – the recent additions who eagerly wait till ICTA responds to their numerous requests, and those who once had Internet facilities but now isolated because of an operator/technology transition. One can just forget it attributing to bureaucracy, poor planning and attitude problems. Can they too, who interact with communities on daily basis? What can a telecenter offer with no Internet? Are PCs only to learn inserting clipart on PowerPoint slides? I am not sure whether ICTA is aware that Internet is cut off from some telecenters for months. (Classic case was NINE months). Please do something, fast! Bits and Bytes are the food of net life and if deprived one can starve faster than we think.

Lesson No. 4 (Bad News): MOST TELECENTERS IN SRI LANKA RUN PIRATED PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE.

This is sad, but true. Out of 200+ operators none claimed using original versions or FOSS. With pirated versions no longer publicly sold on CDs (as a result of recent raids) a telecenter operator has to be innovative in finding solutions. I met few ‘gurus of pirated software’ who know A-Z from best download sites to cracking codes. Many think these as ‘originals’.

When asked when or whether ICTA intends to provide licensed versions of these to them, all what its representative has to say was (a) this was an issue from the beginning; (b) ICTA has no solution yet and (c) he needs to talks to his boss, who he thinks may have an answer. (I doubt!)

My question is why donors spend millions of Dollars on Free and Open Source Software if they are not used at ground level. As we say in Sinhala, use a sword has if not for war?

Enough for now. More later, with figures. Please watch his space.

LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO

Bharti Airtel will offer value added services, especially music which has been a big hit in the Indian market.

“We do more music in India than some of the music companies,” Kapoor said.

With broadband and 3G services telecom firms can offer more applications for customers, Kapoor said, adding that they would be “aiming for share of wallet rather than share of telecom.”

New services to be offered include gaming devices, shopping devices, and money transaction devices – applications that will attract customers, Kapoor said.

Powered by ScribeFire.

A crumpled note, delivered to a passing rock star-turned-philanthropist? No, Mr Sokor is a much sharper communicator than that. He texted this appeal from his own mobile phone to the mobiles of two United Nations officials, in London and
Nairobi. He got the numbers by surfing at an internet cafe at the North Kenyan camp. 

As Mr Sokor’s bemused
London recipient points out, two worlds were colliding. The age-old scourge of famine in the Horn of Africa had found a 21st-century response; and a familiar flow of authority, from rich donor to grateful recipient, had been reversed. It was also a  sign that technology need not create a “digital divide”: it can work  wonders in some of the world’s remotest, most wretched places. 

“Technology completely alters the way humanitarian work is done,” says Caroline Hurford of the World Food Programme (WFP), a United Nations body that is the single largest distributor of food aid. Once upon a time, when disaster struck, big agencies would roll up with grain, blankets and medicine and start handing them out. Victims would struggle to the relief camps, if they could. For aid workers (let alone recipients) there was no easy way to talk to head office. 

Now, when an emergency occurs, the first people on the ground are often computer geeks, setting up telephone networks so other aid agencies can do their stuff. Donors keep track of supplies on spreadsheets and send each other SMS messages: this road has been attacked by bandits, that village cut off by floods. Transport agencies announce helicopter flights by e-mail. Aid providers can find out where exactly on an incoming ship their medical supplies are, saving hours hanging round the docks. Aid donors find it easier to locate the victims of disaster; and victims queue as eagerly for mobile-phone access as they do for food. 

Read the full story: http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9546242

The report contains unique insights in to the reliability of telecoms infrastructure throughout the conflict and examines the reasons why mobile communications played a pivotal role in ensuring that families stayed in touch, the population received food and medical supplies to the correct locations and emergency services could effectively plan their disaster response procedures. The study is at the very bottom of this link.

Troops in Kashmir master new weapon: cell phones
Reuters
By Sheikh MushtaqSun May 21, 1:53 AM ET

Minutes after a bomb exploded recently in Kashmir and wounded Indian soldiers, a senior member of an Islamist rebel group called local newspaper offices to claim responsibility for the blast.

A few hours later, troops smashed the door of his hideout and arrested the militant “commander” after a brief gun battle.

Indian intelligence officers credited the bust in south Kashmir to the tracking of his mobile phone.

Until a few years ago, intelligence officials resisted attempts by the federal government to lift a ban on cell phone services in the region, fearing mobile phones would aid militants in planning attacks.

Now they know better and security officials say troops have eliminated many militants by tracking their mobile phones and tapping conservations, citing the example in south Kashmir.

“Such a quick strike operation was just impossible three years ago,” a senior intelligence official told Reuters.

“We tracked the calls made from his mobile to local newspapers which led to his arrest and that of some other suspects.”

India has been battling a 16-year Muslim separatist revolt in its part of Kashmir. Tens of thousands of people have died in shootings, bombings and other violence.

In 2003, New Delhi allowed mobile services, eight years after the rest of India, now the world’s fastest-growing market for cellular services.

At that time, India said it was a move to win the hearts and minds of Kashmiris, weary and alienated after years of conflict in India’s only Muslim-majority state which is also claimed by neighbor Pakistan.

After three years, there are now more than 850,000 mobile phone users in a state of 10 million people. And the spin-off for anti-insurgency operations has enthused security officials.

“So far, we have arrested or eliminated dozens of them (militants) including many senior commanders through mobile-tracking,” the intelligence officer said.

“It is easier to track them if they use mobile phones.”

BOON OR BANE?

Elsewhere across some trouble spots around South Asia, mobile phone services are still seen as a bane.

In Sri Lanka, which is teetering on the brink of a return to civil war, Tamil Tiger rebels do not allow mobile phone services in areas held by them.

“We do not allow mobile telephones because of security concerns,” said rebel media coordinator Daya Master. The Tigers fear they could be tracked and targeted through mobile signals. So they use satellite phones instead.

In Nepal, the ousted royalist government of King Gyanendra resorted to shutting down mobile services when the monarch’s opponents planned big rallies against his rule to foil the protests.

Indian security officials admit their initial resistance to mobile phones in Kashmir was misplaced.

“Earlier, we thought it would help terrorists in their communications and help their subversive activities,” army spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel V.K. Batra said.

“But it is proving counterproductive to them.”

Militants also use satellite phones from their forest hideouts. But security forces say they are able to intercept or jam such communication.

Police in Kashmir say mobile phones have also saved the lives of hundreds of people trapped in buildings stormed by suicide attackers.

Hostages have often communicated with the police through mobiles and managed to guide security forces to rescue them amid gunfire, said K. Rajindra Kumar, a top police officer.

“This is the success story of mobile phones in anti-militancy operations,” Kumar told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Simon Gardner in COLOMBO)

Telecom charity forges links for tsunami victims
by Elizabeth Judge

Vodafone and its industry peers are backing a new kind of aid for
striken areas

AS EARLY images of the Asian tsunami disaster were flashed around
the world, an aircraft loaded with equipment touched down in Sri Lanka
at Colombo international airport.

Within minutes, technicians had set up an emergency
telecommunications centre with satellite phone lines and high-speed
internet connections. Relief organisations were quick to avail
themselves of the service. Satellite lines were made available to
hospitals and to link survivors with the outside world.

The initiative was the work of Télécoms sans Frontières (TSF), a new
charity backed by companies including Vodafone, Cable & Wireless
and Inmarsat. With fixed-line and mobile networks down, the victims in
many of the tsunami-struck regions – as in other disaster zones – had
no way of finding out whether relatives were alive, nor of contacting
friends and family in other countries to provide help.

Speaking from a refugee camp in the Hambontota district, in southeast
Sri Lanka, Oisin Walton, 25, a full-time member of TSF, explained that
the use of a satellite phone had provided not only a physical help but
a huge psychological uplift to the tsunami survivors. “It is just
amazing the difference a simple call can make,” he said. “You can see
it in the faces of these men and women who have literally lost
everything.”

That morning the group had helped one woman to track down her son,
who was based in a navy ship near to the coast where the tsunami hit.
“When she heard his voice the tears were streaming down her face,” Mr
Walton said.

Over the next ten days Mr Walton and his team will roam between
refugee camps in the area, providing this new-style help. A second TSF
crew, from the group’s Asian base in Bangkok, is gearing up to join
them.

Once the normal phone networks are up and running, their job will be
done and they can return home.

The man behind TSF is Jean-François Cazenove, a former worker with
France Télécom, the French telecoms group, who now works full-time
out on the ground with the charity.

M Cazenove launched TSF in 1998 after realising that, along with
medicine and food, there was a real need for telecommunications in
disaster zones. On assignment in Kosovo, he realised how desperate
people were to communicate with others. Mr Walton said: “People kept
presenting him with pieces of paper with their relatives’ numbers on,
asking if he would call them. The next time he went out he took one
satellite phone and literally several hundreds of people were queuing
to use it.”

With communication networks destroyed or jammed, it can be hugely
difficult for rescue teams to co-ordinate their actions and for
families to communicate.

However, the advance of technology and the shrinking size of
electronic equipment has made it increasingly easy for mobile teams to
respond in all kinds of terrain and in all kinds of situations.

TSF, which is based in Pau, France, has played a major role in relief
efforts in crisis areas such as Baghdad, the Philippines and Grenada.

The organisation has only six full-time paid members. The rest of the
20-strong crew is made up of volunteers from every sector of industry.
When disaster strikes, they aim to be in the affected regions within
24 to 48 hours.

Vodafone, which has just donated £100,000 to TSF to help its work in
the tsunami- affected regions, says: “Emergency telecommunications
are a critical aspect of any humanitarian rescue operation.

“TSF’s ability to contribute satellite phones and high-speed internet
connections in affected areas is a great benefit to aid organisations
in their decision-making.”

The wind was not held back

Below is a talk given 6 years ago entitled “To hold back the wind.” That was an attempt to get disaster preparedness going. It failed, obviously. The walls of water came in with no warning; thousands died instantaneously; millions are homeless. Parentheses refer to 9/11 in the US for scale: in a few hours on the 26th of December more that 17,900 (3,000) died out of a population of 19 million (280 million). More than a million are homeless (mostly office space was lost). More will die due to epidemics caused by thousands of unburied corpses, bad water, etc. (insignificant). This is just Sri Lanka. LIRNEasia’s immediate focus is the Bay of Bengal region. We have lost over 40,000 people by the present count. Everything I said above re Sri Lanka applies to the region. We will give food and shelter; we will comfort the living and bury the dead; but we will and must do more. We must create the conditions to minimize deaths on this scale.

The speech below is what I gave at the Workshop on “Effective Use of Telecommunications in Emergency and Disaster Management,” organized by the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka on the 30th of November 1998, just over six years ago. That workshop brought together everyone in government working on disaster management as well as relevant civil society organizations and all the telecom operators. It was addressed by the Minister of Posts, Telecommunications and the Media and by the Deputy Minister of Social Services who was responsible for disaster management in that government. The workshop was preceded by an interim report that had been prepared after extensive consultation with stakeholders. The workshop resulted in a final report with multiple annexes, recommendations, and even a Cabinet Paper authorizing and requiring the Telecom Regulatory Commission to be the focal point for effective use of telecom in disaster management in Sri Lanka. TRC staff were trained in disaster management and work was assigned. The subject of disaster management became so important that the staff of the TRC collected funds to place communication equipment in the ambulances of the National Hospital, remedying a stunning gap discovered in the course of the research. One would think that this was a policy process that had been run by the book; that it would yield the desired results. Or so I thought when I left the office of Director General of Telecommunications and Sri Lanka in June 1999.

The test of good policy is implementation. The test was the tsunami of the 26th of December 2004. The government of Sri Lanka and the Telecom Regulatory Commission failed. There were no early warning systems using telecom technology; there were no procedures to prevent the networks from crashing in the face of the surge of calls; there were no priority schemes for disaster management workers; there were no emergency telecom kits ready to be used; and two days later, newspapers are still carrying reports that the dead cannot be counted for the lack of working telecom facilities.

At this moment, the focus is on disaster recovery. In the face of the unprecedented scale of human suffering that has been unleashed on this poor land, that is understandable. But I will swim against the tide and state that we must use this moment to also look beyond the immediate and urgent needs and think of how we could have reduced the suffering and saved lives if only we had prepared in times of calm. The foundation of disaster management is disaster preparedness.

That is what we were trying to do back in 1998-99 when we worked with all the disaster management agencies. Obviously that did not work. It is possible that the reasons for failure were the lack of incentives meaningful to Sri Lankan bureaucrats and politicians; the tendency in government organizations to denigrate and nullify initiatives associated with the predecessor of the current leader, and so on. But if we leave aside these uncharitable explanations for the moment, what we are left with is the explanation that the previous effort was badly timed; it was undertaken at a time of calm, when the disaster had to be imagined. The valuable work that was done got neglected in the press of everyday matters.

So now is the time to engage the people responsible for disaster management. Despite the fact that our hands are full and our hearts are heavy, this is the moment we must attend to the task of preparing for the next disaster. LIRNEasia will use its capabilities for this task, redirecting some of the funds set apart for other projects to initiate a regional project on the effective use of ICTs for disaster management. Natural disasters do not respect national boundaries as we saw from this tsunami. Our response must also not respect national borders. But we must work and we must prepare. Otherwise, another 50,000 lives later, we’’ll be having this same conversation.

Please await details in the coming days.
Telecom in disaster management

Sarvodaya is grass-roots organization that has been around for 47 years and is doing an incredible job of getting relief to the tsunami victims. They have an extensive network of volunteers and stations in 34 Sri Lankan towns, including the most heavily damaged. Although they are busy providing temporary shelters, drinking water, food and medicine to tsunami victims, they are also gearing up for medium and long-term rehabilitation that includes reconstructing homes, providing trauma counselling, preventing outbreak of disease and providing a home to the orphaned children. Sarvodaya accepts donation by credit card (Mastercard & Visa), Paypal and other methods of sending money. Please visit their website: http://www.sarvodaya.org/

On the poicy intervention front, we are moving fast on a disaster management proposal which will be written by a disaster management expert and will be presented in the third week of January to a group of 70 composed of disaster management experts, civil society groups, and representatives from government. Once this proposal is finalized it will presented to the President’s office and if adopted could probably save thousands of lives when disaster strikes us next, lives that were needlessly lost this time around….

Please check back for regular updates.

Many of you are looking for your relatives and acquaintances in Sri Lanka. Unfortunately, we don’t have resources to locate them ourselves. But we can point you to organizations that are helping out in the search (please list more organizations you may be aware off):

Red Cross: http://www.familylinks.icrc.org/srilanka/locate