Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are widely acknowledged as important resources for socio-economic development. Due to resource constraints, shared access forms the dominant mode of access to these technologies in most developing countries. Governments, non-governmental institutions and entrepreneurs have invested significant amounts of human and financial resources in public libraries, telecenters, internet cafés, and other forms of public access — without clear evidence on what the ultimate outcomes will be and the actual costs.  This report presents a review of empirical research on the impacts of public access to ICTs in order to document what is known about this approach to ICT service delivery.

The results show that there is limited conclusive evidence on downstream impacts of public access to ICTs. The evidence that does exist suggests that the public access ICT model is not living up to the expectations placed on it. This is not necessarily because public access has had no impacts, but because its impact is particularly difficult to identify and measure. As a model, public access to ICTs has experienced success and failure, leading to both reinforcement of the belief that the model should be expanded and strengthened, as well as to claims that public access ICTs are ultimately ineffective or even counter-productive from a development perspective.

Four main types of evidence are identified: evidence on venue performance and sustainability, users, usage patterns, and downstream impacts. Assessment of this evidence indicates that trends are most apparent in the first three areas, while evidence of downstream impacts remains elusive. Most studies show that sustainability is a critical challenge especially in low resource, low income environments where commercial services are not viable. They also show that users are primarily young males with relatively high socio-economic status and prior access to computers and the Internet. Users tend to engage mainly  in social and personal activities as opposed to economic activities, for example. Findings on downstream impacts fall on both sides of the equation: some studies conclude that impacts are high in a variety of areas (development of ICT skills, job creation, civic engagement etc), while others find limited impacts.

There is as yet no definitive evidence-based statement on the impacts of public access to ICTs. A research agenda is required that shifts from individual case studies and nominal level impact claims, to lines of enquiry that not only cut across contexts, but also utilize methodologies that (whether quantitative or qualitative) enable some quantification of identified impacts.

CITATION
Sey, Araba, and M. Fellows. April 2009. Literature Review on the Impact of Public Access to Information and Communication Technologies. CIS Working Paper No. 6, University of Washington Center for Information & Society, Seattle.

• An overview of ICTD impact assessments methods, approaches, and frameworks
• Descriptions of eleven impact assessment frameworks
• A bibliography summarizing 150 works on ICTD impact assessment, many drawn from case studies

A bibliography summarizes 150 assessments, mosty drawn from case studies. Heeks is professor at the Institute for Development Policy and Management of the University of Machester and a Global Impact Study partner.

Production of the 157-page compendium was sponsored by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC). It is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license, so that it can be freely accessed, shared, and adapted.

It includes issues, methods, main findings, and gaps in the literature. This review does not include documents that only describe a specific project; that only discuss public access typologies, definitions, or policy; or that critically comment on public access strategies. Also excluded are documents that discuss the socioeconomic impact of ICTs in general.

The review focuses mainly on electronically accessible research articles and on research published after 1999. The documents were accessed via database searches as well as directly from members of the Global Impact Study community.

Main findings:

Most of the literature leans toward formative (process) evaluation as opposed to summative (impact) evaluations. Several reports that claim to be examining impacts in reality present data and conclusions on venue access and use patterns.

Studies have not established a clear link between public access to ICTs and socioeconomic change/impacts. Researchers are beginning to go beyond anecdotal evidence of public access impacts on end-users, but are still limited in their ability to make definitive statements about impacts. There is a trend toward the view that the impacts of public access to ICTs are so highly tied to contexts that generalizability may be impractical.

Research conclusions generally still speak to the potential rather than actual impact of public access to ICTs. Aside from the fact that impacts are difficult to measure and attribute, this could be linked to the tendency for most studies to find that public access is underperforming. Despite overall dissatisfaction with the performance of public access ICTs, the perception that they are an important means of bridging digital gaps remains strong.

Limited application or testing of theory and hypotheses. Very few studies are placed in the context of any theoretical framework (other than the general idea of ICTs for development). Some exceptions are:

• Actor-Network (Ashraf, Swatman & Hanisch, 2007)
• Diffusion of Innovation (Ashraf et al., 2007; Hudson, 2001; Rajendra Kumar & Best, 2006b; Simpson, 2005)
• Ecology of Games (Qiu & Zhou, 2005)
• Stakeholder Theory (Bailur, 2006)
• Sustainable Livelihoods (Parkinson, 2005; Parkinson & Rami­rez, 2006; UNCTAD, 2008)
• Sustainability/Failure Model (Rajendra Kumar & Best, 2006a)

Even fewer studies test specific hypotheses, and those that do don’t always fully report the statistics or the process. Studies that include some hypothesis testing (with varying degrees of rigor) are:

• Gitta & Ikoja-Odongo (2003) — Reasons for using cybercafes, relationship between education and internet use
• Miller (2004) — Statistical significance of findings on gender, occupation and location of infoplazas
• Wahid, Furuholt, & Kristiansen (2004) — Several hypotheses about the characteristics of early adopters of internet cafes (users and investors)

CITATION
Sey, Araba. 2008. Public Access to ICTs: A Review of the Literature. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Center for Information & Society (CIS)

TASCHA has also contracted with researchers familiar with ICT literature in Chinese (Guo Liang), English (Susana Finquelievich), Spanish (Susana Finquelievich), and Portuguese (Mariana Balboni). The researchers will provide English summaries of the 20 references in their respective languages that they deem most important for describing the impact of public access to ICT.

References used in the literature review may include journal articles, books, reports, and conference proceedings. References and summaries are being compiled, annotated, and stored in EndNote.

A first draft of the literature review is underway.