ICT and Sustainability, local and demand driven solutions? BULLOCKS

Concerning ICT for development, in universities they teach on the importance of demand driven solutions, and the important of business models which can return added value locally.

Now, working for a European Agency for Development, it is clear that this point are just vague words to get grants or to prosecute in career.

This agency for development is promoting collaboration with our beneficiaries (farmers and farmers organizations in rural areas of 79 developing countries) and asking them to work EXCLUSIVELY with a Microsoft environment.

Let's see what kind of invitation is sent to our partners, in order to collaborate with us and receive assistance:

"We have set up a SharePoint portal to collaborate remotely. You can access it via this link: OMITTED Your login is yourfamilyname and your password is +yourfamilyname+ (all in small letters). Provided you have Office XP or 2003 installed on your computer and by using Internet Explorer (not Firefox) you can remotely upload, access, open, modify and save all files. When opening SharePoint, Windows will invite you to install up to 3 libraries (.dll)."

Clearly the message is not editable and mandatory. And the following debate is censored in official discussions here in this Agency for Development, and sustainability of my bullocks.
The privacy level is ridicoulous, since any users knows the login and password of anybody else.
This already killed an optable strenght point (security) of a commercial product. So for, vanishing the coherence for having opted to make such an investment in MS products.


Our action infringes the European Commission guideline for Competition Policy.

Let's read indeed what the European Commission said, (that means we should take into account the guidelines of UE. But clearly the guidelines of UE are for protecting the UE market, not for the regional cooperation to development....)

In confirming the interoperability part of the Commission’s decision, the Court has confirmed the importance of interoperability for consumer choice and innovation in high tech industries. If competitors are unable to make their products "talk to" or work properly with a dominant company's products, they are prevented from bringing new innovative products onto the market, and customers are locked into the products of the existing provider. Consumers want interoperable products, and companies that want to meet consumers’ demands should be able to provide them.
See: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/07/539&format=HTML&aged=1&language=EN&guiLanguage=en


Let's see the consistence of our actions, for enhancing a framework for participatory sustainable development through ICT and the web in 79 developing countries:

1. A collaborative webspace for working with people from 79 countries is developed in Sharepoint (Microsoft product). It is an internet based application which allows only to operate with Microsoft products.
   
2. Despite MS Sharepoint is an application accessible via internet, it is strictly browser dependent: it requires IE, against interoperability promoted by Antitrust regulations.
   
3. If you use Open office, and any other browser not of MS (Google Chrome, Safari, Mozilla, Firefox, and so on) you have limited functions, but still is possible to work properly.

The option:

1. Luckily, since Firefox is open source, the community fulfilled the gap of MS Sharepoint with this extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1419 so that even FF can fully operate with the restricted MS. Keep this in mind to discuss the object of the message sent to our clients.
   

SUMMARY
Where is the problem?
1. We are forcing users to disregards interoperability and open standards
2. we are endorsing abuse of dominant position of a specific vendor against EU court expression
3. we are preventing local development for support and services in ICT solutions
4. we are addressing new customers in development sector towards a specif vendor


THE STAKE of for development
We are working in the development sector. There is an estimated 1 billion new users of web surfers in future years.
Microsoft granted us with 100.000 euros of free licenses for using MS products.
Anyway, MS sharepoint costs money (was not included in the other products): 70000 euros (for what I know) for the intranet, and thousands for just a place where to store documents and collaborate on the same documents online.
Will our beneficiaries of rural areas in Africa be able to pay thousands of euros if they want a similar service?
they will be tight up to an agency for development creating ICT market opportunities for a multinational?


OTHER COMPARABLE options: free / open source possibilities

There are other less costly application that satisfy this tiny purpose.

1. http://o3spaces.org/ provide an open source application competitors of Sharepoint. It can work with open office and MS too (is less costly and more appealing, according to the compared features. Still is based in Netherland, where we are. Reducing costs for assistance and support, now going to Brussels to I.R.I.S. and to UK).
2. For just a worklfow of documents, see the FREE: http://acrobat.com. I allows even VoIP videoconferencing, pdf exporting, file and desktop sharing.
3. "Google Sites" (FREE) http://sites.google.com allows to deploy a tiny intranet or workflow of documents too (it is funny cause Google Sites emulate even the interface of MS sharepoint).
   
   

THE DAMAGE
If we would use for free services or open source services, users could choose whatever to work with us.
To set up new "capacity building projects" in Africa, farmers and our beneficiaries WOULD NOT pay for the licenses. Or, the donors WOULD NOT pay the licenses for them. Or, the money WOULD NOT flow to a specific vendor already fined with 800.000.000 euros by UE for abuse of dominant market position, and currently pursued in China for the same reason.

For our suggestion maked-up with "sustainability" words, our clients will pay the cost of unfair competiotion. That's for us perfectly fine, because our colleagues do not have to learn to use another software. This is what happening internally.
And still, we can use the grant of Microsoft!!!

So, again, the sustainabiliy is addressing new customers to a monopolist and specific vendors.
To operate with us, our clients MUST have Microsoft products.


Our agency has got a budget [16.000.000] [errata correge]: 70 millions euros per year thanks UE. [Source: Cotonou Agreement, Annex I:
http://www.acpsec.org/en/conventions/cotonou/pdf/agr02_en.pdf]
Instead our beneficiaries (farmers and organizations working with them in rural areas in Africa, Pacific and Caribbean) must pay or support the cost for not being able to for interoperability and other options in the market.
If we are thinking to establish a legal framework for licences, let's compare the capabilities of the stakeholders...

• Our budget + MS donation is 16.1 million euros.
• The estimated salary of our beneficiaries of tens (if they are common users, like farmers or individual representative in local NGOs) or max hundreds of euros (if they are officiers in some insitution or consultants) per month.

We don't give a fuck if internet stands for ACCESSIBILITY from any platform / browser (despite our core business is providing content and information in agriculture, and the strategic plan talk about bla bla in spreading access to information through ICT and web 2.0).
We don't care about regulations of UE on internet and business competition. This is for UE, not for the rest of the world and its partners. This is the message we got.

This european agengy for development IS NOT "raising awareness" on sustainable "demand driven" options for document workflow management. And is not even choosing consistently with the declaimed actions we take or the reports we write.

We are suggesting indirectly purchase or opting for Microsoft / specific vendors solutions. And we are imposing to use a specific vendor browser!!!
This steps back to MS actions to eliminate browser Netscape, in the 90s, and to conquer a dominant position for accessing internet.