Information and communication technology , communities and social capital — how the Digital Ecosystem approach can work

The role of information in promoting development has been well researched and documented, and there has been much interest in harnessing ICT (Information & Communications Technology) for this purpose. At the same time, the need to create projects that are successful as well as sustainable is recognized. We propose that adopting a more community centric design for ICT interventions can improve their sustainability and lead to the evolution of a more complex and multi functional ICT enabled socio-technical system. The digital ecosystem (DE) is one such paradigm. A DE describes an ICT enabled network that displays associative and autopieotic properties capable of self sustenance and of expansion through heightened inclusion and growth. We explore how such a system can be developed, and how this evolution can be understood in terms of whether the emphasis is on increasing individual access to ICT, or on transplanting social relations into the digital space. To illustrate this point, we briefly review the DEAL (Digital Ecosystem for Agriculture and Livelihood) project, a rural development initiative in agriculture in Northern India. The DEAL project is a step towards addressing issues related to designing an ICT intervention that leads to sustainable development. This paper studies the impact of DEAL on existing community networks in the field agricultural extension in rural areas around Kanpur. We find that while DEAL has not led to a rapid expansion of the network, it has successfully deepened ties and created new weak links between existing actors. As a result, it is expected that this intervention would positively affect social capital and lead to the formation of a digital ecosystem in the agricultural knowledge domain.