LIRNEasia wishes to understand how the capabilities of information and communication technologies (ICTs) can be leveraged to create the conditions for hitherto excluded groups to participate in new economic opportunities in global supply chains in agriculture and services.
The past decade has seen unprecedented, rapid growth in electronic connectivity in the form of voice in the developing world. Access to the Internet and to more-than-voice services is quite uneven with those at the BOP being excluded from the benefits of the rich potential of applications and services associated with the Internet. The report is a part of LIRNEasia’s research into the exploration of how to bring about an increase the inclusivity of the currently marginalized BOP by providing more useful services and applications on mobile platforms. In terms of providing useful services, the research will focus on three sectors; telecom, electricity and government services. How can these services be more useful to particularly to the micro-entrepreneurs at the Bottom of the Pyramid?
Information and communication have always opened opportunities for the poor to earn income, reduce isolation, and respond resiliently to emergencies. With mobile phone use exploding across the developing world, even marginalized communities are now benefiting from modern communication tools. This book explores the impacts of this unprecedented technological change. Drawing on unique household surveys undertaken by research networks active in 38 developing countries, it helps to fill knowledge gaps about how the poor use information and communication technologies (ICTs). How have they benefited from mobile devices, computers, and the Internet?
Ranjula Senaratna Perera CRPsouth2013 Mysore, India
The survey was conducted among the low-income, urban micro-entrepreneurs (MEs) in three countries, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. The study defined micro-entrepreneurs as those who employed less than ten hired workers, i.e 0-9. The hired workers are paid employees or full-time equivalent, excluding the owner. This is an adaptation of international definition followed by World Bank and European Commission1.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The report broadly explores the customer relationship management (CRM) practices in the electricity distribution sector in Bangladesh. It identifies some of the existing challenges and how these can be improved with the use of ICTs and better service design. In a country where less than half the population has access to electricity through 13.5 million connections to the grid, the challenge facing the sector is two-fold. First, those that are privileged to be connected to the grid, need improved services.
ABSTRACT This paper investigates the factors that influence formalization of poor micro-enterprises (MEs) in urban locations in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The paper draws from a multi-country survey of information and communication needs of poor MEs in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka in the second quarter of 2013. Through logistic regression, it models business registration among such MEs to understand what affects the decision to formalize within these environments. The paper also looks at the barriers to registration and the policy implications from these findings. Using descriptive statistics and models we find that the MEs lack of formalization is explained to a significant level by their level of education, gender, size of the enterprise and awareness levels.
Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have embarked on government funded e-government and telecenter initiatives, with internet access at telecenters as a central delivery channel for e-Gov services. However, are telecenters still relevant in the delivery of citizen services and should they be subsidized by government? To answer this, a survey was conducted amongst 2,750 poor citizens, who have had a government interaction and who live within 5km of 275 randomly selected telecenters in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Higher awareness and use of telecenters was seen in Bangladesh, with 68 percent of the Bangladeshi sample having heard of the telecenter, and 52 percent having visited a telecenter and used its services. Telecenter awareness in the Sri Lankan sample was lower, at 46 percent, with usage even lower, at 16 percent amongst those who were aware.
National Consultancy for ILO on Green Jobs Asia, ILO-2011June18
Competencies for a holistic education, Sinhala (Adaptation of basic competencies in the teacher handbook for Grade 3 , Sri Lanka)
System of local government in Sri Lanka is long in history but short on achievements. Local authorities are the political institutions closest to people, but, except for a handful that keeps winning national awards, others fall short. While political actors take the center stage, taking credit for achievement or taking blame for failures, professionals in local government take a back stage. Driven by an emerging body of research that points to the power of networks in ICT enabled societies, we carried out a series of action research projects using the solid waste sector in local government as a case in point to induce connectivity among service provider professionals in the sector. Three new ideas for enabling knowledge networks emerged from our study.