Experiences in Creating Inclusive Information and Communications Technologies (IICT): Democratizing Software Development in Social Development

Crowd sourcing, citizen journalism and social networks are Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) that have ushered in civil society´s participation in the ICT equation. However, the participation of civil society has been limited to creating content and, to some extent, capturing data about events around the community. An area that has been neglected is the inclusion of these new players in the software development life cycle. Democratizing software development by including civil society in the software development life cycle will increase the variety of software applications and generate more buy-in of applications that improve livelihoods. Such an approach will lead to the emergence of Inclusive Information and Communication Technologies (IICT). The challenges that arise when developing IICTs include, inter alia, ownership of IICT, computer illiteracy of beneficiary communities, balkanized nature of communities in place and the well-known challenge of the communication gap between software developers and user communities. My approach to addressing these challenges was to develop the Integrated Development Spatial Planning Framework (IDSPF), a systems development methodology that seeks to demystify software development for grassroots communities by using participatory techniques that are familiar to stakeholders who implement socio economic development projects.