Taking eRiding Global

Similar to their brethren in the United States, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) around the world face challenges in their access to and usage of technology. While this is true in virtually every country, those working in the developing world must routinely grapple with chronic problems, such as viruses, power fluctuations and outages, and lack of proper data backup. Internet connectivity can be a continuous and costly challenge that can render the World Wide Web largely irrelevant, inhibiting access to important knowledge and resources. Hardware and software purchases strain available resources, leading to the use of inferior or jerry-rigged equipment and unlicensed software. Reliable information is often not available in local languages. In some instances, regulatory environments at the national level limit or even repress the use of e-mail and the Internet.

The global response to the broad technology needs of societies, communities and development efforts is considerable. The UN, World Bank, and other large, international bodies all address aspects of the digital divide, including access to and usage of appropriate technologies. The large international donor agencies all integrate technology issues to some extent in their development efforts. There are countless initiatives under the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) banner, working to develop, test, and deploy specific solutions in service to community and economic betterment, health, agriculture, governance, education, and all other sectors of international development.

Yet tremendous technology support gaps remain, and the fledgling international eRider movement (similar to the "circuit rider" movement in the U.S.) is positioning itself to address these gaps as they pertain to the many NGO communities and sectors worldwide. While the players in the international eRider efforts currently are few, there is a growing body of experience that underscores the need for and potential effectiveness of eRiding internationally. And there is a consensus emerging as to the building blocks and strategies for the development of an international eRider movement, one primarily rooted in the models, tools, methodologies and guiding principles of the U.S.-based circuit riders, namely:

• individuals and organizations with wide ranging technology, assessment, planning, and communication skills, and often knowledge rooted in a particular service sector, such as the environment, civil society, humanitarian relief, etc;
• practice models that work closely with the NGO staff to ensure technology tools and methods appropriate to the agency's nonprofit mission are applied;
• a commitment to freely sharing ideas, resources, and tools among others active in nonprofit technology support.

The basic assumption -- and it is a compelling one -- is that the U.S. circuit rider model works even better internationally, especially in the developing world. From the initial development costs, to the cost for support to local NGOs, to the impact of the intervention, eRiding provides a cost-effective and much-needed solution to help organizations achieve their mission using the tools of technology and new media.

The Foundation of an International eRider Network

Broadly speaking, the goal for international eRiding is a network of individuals and groups offering high quality, reliable, and affordable technology support to the local and international NGO communities worldwide -- including the developing countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, as well as developed countries across the north. Many envision that the foundation of this network will rest on several pillars, similar to those that have emerged in the U.S.-based circuit rider movement:

• Tools, resources, and services to support the cohesiveness and effectiveness of eRiders, including local listservs, opportunities for eRiders to meet, the internationalization of tools such as TechAtlas, TechSurveyor, and eBase, and a collection of best practices and guidance to ensure eRider initiatives in the field are effective in their work, and financially and operationally viable;
• generally accepted knowledge base and principles of practice, including the means and methods to enhance this base over time, and eRider training curricula sufficiently rooted in the essential elements of eRiding, yet flexible enough to address local needs, and available in local languages;
• strategies and structures to establish or encourage local eRider networks, reaching out to the thousands of organizations and individuals currently engaged in tech support for NGO communities around the world, and building the links necessary to share, collaborate, discuss, and communicate: to forge meaningful and supportive tech support communities;
• efforts to promote eRiding to the NGO, government, ICT, and funder communities worldwide, ensuring the awareness of eRiding as an effective, dynamic, and viable technology support option.

Getting from Here to There

While ideas about taking eRiding global exist in a conceptual realm, there is no single, grand initiative moving this forward. Rather, a collection of several independent efforts are informally coordinating with each other. Nevertheless, from among these various initiatives several key elements of the building process can be identified.

In large part, taking eRiding global is a matter of rebuilding many of the essential eRider tools and resources to work internationally, testing and deploying them in the field, and evaluating their effectiveness. For example, a current project of Aspirations and NinthBridge is exploring the developing TechSurveyor Lite and TechAtlas Lite, versions of these popular tools designed for low-resource environments.

The channels and opportunities for incorporating the efforts of techies outside the U.S. are being made as well. The London Advice Services Alliance (Lasa), producers of KnowledgeBase, and the Computanews for NGOs in the UK, now incorporates selected writings into TechSoup, and vice versa. Developers in Poland are taking the lead in setting up eRiders.net, envisioned as the ongoing repository of eRiders tools, resources, and communications.

On the ground, it is recognized that the development of eRiders internationally will depend on key individuals and agencies -- SupeRiders, as they are often called -- able to set in motion the initial elements of a local eRider movement, such as a listserv, and opportunities for NGO-based techies to meet and begin to share advice and resources. Lasa is currently playing this role in the United Kingdom; the Open Society Institute (OSI), often in partnership with The Advocacy Project, has seeded these efforts in several countries throughout Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics; and NinthBridge is taking this approach in various parts of East and West Africa, and Southeast Asia. While networking on a local basis will likely be a relevant and helpful exercise for practicing techies, networking among the SupeRiders is felt to be essential to the cohesiveness and vitality of an international eRider movement.

Linking to individuals providing tech support to NGOs is a primary means of growing the eRider communities. However, training efforts to strengthen and broaden their skills, and to incorporate the values and mission-orientation of NGOs is an important seeding effort as well. Leading this effort are individuals from OSI, The Advocacy Project, and CompassPoint, who have assembled a "train the trainers" curriculum as a means to teach more local tech support providers about the concept of eRiding and about best practices. These trainers then take the ideas back to their countries, where they implement their take on the concepts and train others.

It is critical to recognize that eRiding is not a "one size fits all" solution, and that taking eRiding global is a matter of finding the appropriate approach to nonprofit tech support in any given setting. As noted above, in many parts of the world a thriving ICT community already exists, exploring the frontiers of technology usage and deployment. In these communities, the eRider niche may be in the ongoing support and maintenance of existing technology installations. In other countries, the techie work force may be considerable in numbers and highly skilled, and eRiders may focus on developing models in which small tech support businesses are provided guidance on the unique needs and the market potential of the NGO community. In other places, those providing tech support to NGOs may be few in number and disconnected from each other, in which case eRiding may focus on the fundamental tools to link these individuals and enable supportive communications.

Finally, while international adoption of eRider models is a tribute to the many visionaries and leaders of the U.S. circuit riders movement, care must be taken introducing the knowledge, principles, and methodologies of eRiders to others. The focus must remain on building a locally-driven and sustainable model through which skills and methods can be transferred, rather than on delivering or providing the "nonprofit tech support solution" to those we feel need it. Similarly, the U.S. circuit riders movement must have a means of accommodating and sharing the many lessons learned from their counterparts around the world. Crafting the right cross-cultural balance to share and spread the vision and spirit of eRiding is an exciting and compelling challenge, and necessary if technology tools are to play a meaningful role in strengthening the capabilities and effectiveness of the global nonprofit communities.