I got some really good feedback from last week’s proposal to create incentives for those kinds of computer equipment that are most suited to creating opportunity and improving access to information for ni-Vanuatu.

Not all of the news was necessarily good, but all of it was useful. Daryl Moon, who runs the local Datec store, responded that he’d done a little math on the issue, and he found that computer vendors would certainly be able to sell computers for less if they were constructed locally from tariff-exempt components.

But he went on to explain that in order to justify hiring extra staff for that purpose, he would have to sell 20 computers per week – a number which, he suspected, exceeds the weekly sales of all local computer retailers combined.

I also had discussion with a few local economists and trade experts. One of the issues raised was the difficulty of actually measuring the outcome of such tariff exemptions. Generally speaking, government is willing to accept a drop in revenues in one area provided that it sees an increase elsewhere (VAT income from increased sales, for example) or that the social benefit is sufficient to merit the cost.

As I reflect on these conversations, I’m beginning to realise that, ultimately, the most compelling argument for Appropriate Technology incentives is not economic in nature. The capstone on this discussion is a moral one.

We need to take steps to improve access to information, learning and communications for all ni-Vanuatu. The steps we’ve taken so far are necessary, but not sufficient. We need to do more. And in the absence of a coordinated national strategy, we should take small steps like this simply because we can.

The cost of failure is measurable, and probably low. Maybe there won’t be a huge surge of new employment; maybe it won’t help local small business people as much as we like. If it doesn’t work, though, at least they won’t suffer for the mistake.

Though we can’t really know exactly what the value is on the upside, we can all agree that if it does work, it will benefit people in countless small ways: expediting business, enabling both formal and informal political, social, religious and community networks, encouraging learning and exposing people to a world that many have never encountered before.

The benefits are likely to be intangible and difficult to measure: One more scholarship won because a young woman studied extra at home on her netbook. A few extra bookings at a resort via email that kept one more person employed. A better-attended fund-raising for an important cause. None of these will ever show up directly in a statistical analysis, but nobody doubts their value.

There are liabilities inherent to the idea, of course. As I cautioned last week, if the Appropriate Technology designation is reduced to a laundry list of specific products approved by government, ample room might be created for error, inefficiency or even abuse. If a local vendor, for example, becomes the sole distributor for a given brand of products, then succeeds – by hook or by crook – in getting them included in the list, they would stand to profit more than before. Conversely, if other vendors were to lobby to block the inclusion of a certain brand of products, that same sole distributor might find itself working at a deficit.

The solution is to ensure that the criteria for this list are generic in nature, and are described in functional language that references the purpose and performance of a given product rather than its name, version, manufacturer, what have you.

Low-power devices, for example, could simply be classed as any computing device that uses less than X number of watts under normal circumstances. While the value of X might float higher and lower as we fine-tune things, the criterion is clear enough that equipment clearly either meets or misses the mark, with little room for ambiguity or misapplication.

Now: Let’s pause for a second and look at the bigger picture. This kind of proposal should really be part of a larger dialogue about a national ICT strategy. It’s unfortunate, actually, that one of the strengths of the argument for an Appropriate Technology tariff exemption is that it stands on its own and doesn’t necessarily need to be integrated into a larger framework. By rights it should be leading us to bigger things.

My hope is that ideas like this start people thinking in strategic terms. The idea of liberalising the telecoms market is a similarly simple (albeit more ambitious) idea that was led by a stalwart few within Government, but which ultimately involved many parties, nationally and internationally. One of the greatest benefits we derived from this (after the obvious win of vastly improved mobile communications) was the creation of a regulatory body to oversee things.

When the Ministry of Infrastructure and Public Utilities first embarked on the long road toward an open telecoms market, I’m not sure everyone realised the full implications of the work they’d taken on. Happily, with assistance from numerous parties, the idea served as a fulcrum to develop the will and then the resources necessary to make this undertaking an internationally noteworthy success story.

I confess I’m a little nervous that people will rest on their laurels. Mobile communications are great, but more is needed.

There’s a subtle but crucial difference between mobile communications and the Internet. It’s often hard to see because there’s a good deal of overlap between the two. Email and SMS are essentially equivalent, modulo a few small differences, as are VOIP and traditional telephone services.

Even though the lines are blurring between the two, one fundamental difference remains: Mobile telecoms enable mostly one-to-one communications. They recreate our kitchen conversations. The Internet is by default a public (one-to-many and many-to-one) medium that allows us to recreate the kind of dialogue we see in our schools, our churches, political meetings and – most importantly – in the village nasara.

Mobile Internet services soon to be available in Port Vila and Santo will blur that line even further. We need to enhance that effect, and promote devices that make best use of both technologies.

We also need to push these services out into the islands. Currently available solutions are expensive, but it’s the cost of buying and running the equipment required that shuts the door with finality for most island residents.

As happy as I am to see our capital growing in resemblance to its overseas counterparts in Australia and New Zealand, I can’t escape the realisation that, in part because of our own complacency, our brothers and sisters in the islands are still miles behind.

Small steps like an Appropriate Technology exemption are useful, especially if they lead to bigger steps further down the road.

One of the joys of working in IT is the endless tide of change that seems to run through it. The stereotypical geek – and I confess I bear a strong resemblance to him – is constantly, almost pathologically curious. Like mynah birds we flit from one shiny piece of technology to the next, changing our song moment by moment.

Some may find it dizzying. Just as they get used to one set of jargon terms, the lexicon changes and their stuttering education in techno-Babel starts anew.

IT professionals typically work with about a six month window before the bleeding-edge products they’re using slip down the next rung of the ladder of obsolescence. After about two years, they’ve dropped away completely.

Governments and other institutions often find this a constant source of aggravation. It takes so long to develop standards that they’re often outdated even before the testing, analysis and verification is complete.

But their mistake is one of emphasis….

Focusing on specific technologies and products is a mug’s game that forces planners to make predictions about the unforeseeable. If, however, planners focus on underlying principles, standards and processes that are common to all technological progress, they can achieve great things.

Learning to properly understand the nature of technological progress is a simple task, but not an easy one. The difficulty lies in the fact that, while the principles are simple, their application is very complex. The secret to IT policy making, then, is knowing how far you can safely generalise and what you can reasonably expect to achieve.

Vanuatu’s government operates within fairly tight constraints. While it is the single largest employer in the country, it has relatively little reach in terms of enforcing public standards or creating incentives to drive private sector innovation.

That said, it can and should be doing more. Ignoring the lack of a national IT strategy for the moment, let’s take a look at a number of small, low-cost steps that the Government of Vanuatu could take to improve people’s lives through technology.

While mobile communications have swept over nearly all the populated islands, uptake of Internet services has been much slower, mostly due to the cost of entry. Standard desktop computers cost the equivalent of several months’ salary for most ni-Vanuatu, and laptops even more.

The Government could address this in two simple steps:

First, implement a salary deduction scheme that allows public servants to purchase used government computers for reasonable prices, with payment installments spaced over a 12 month period. Not only does this ensure that computers are accessible in the home, it also enables rapid turn-over of computing equipment in Government itself, lowering maintenance costs and helping the civil service stay efficient.

Second, incentivise local businesses to offer lower-cost computer systems by creating a tariff category for Appropriate Technology. Right now, computers are listed as luxury items, and are subject to a total markup of about 40% of the original price once VAT and import duties are added.

This has a stultifying effect on local suppliers. In some cases, it makes more sense for an expat to fly to Suva or Sydney, purchase a top of the line laptop there and fly all the way back than it does to purchase one in Port Vila.

While a lot of high-tech gear merits its luxury status (a 100,000 vatu iPhone, for example), a great deal of it does not. If the government were to drop tariffs on computer parts, for example, they’d create strong incentives for local businesses to import all the components and construct PCs locally.

Not only would this reduce the cost of finished systems for local consumers, it would also help to create a cottage industry, with additional local staff laid on to build the machines. These staff would also be exposed in much more detail to the inner workings of the machines they support. This can only lead to improved levels of service, maintenance and support.

What’s more, opportunities would be created for small-time, one-person businesses to flourish. Buying full-blown systems is beyond the means of the average would-be entrepreneur in Vanuatu, but purchasing a few hard drives, memory chips and the like is not. This means that an aspiring independent technician could set up shop for next to nothing, and offer repairs and upgrades for far less than their brick and mortar competitors in town.

Let’s go one step further with this. If we were to exempt the emerging family of so-called ‘Netbooks’ – low-power, solid state laptops with tiny screens and even tinier power requirements – we could make it possible for people with limited access to power and technical service to productively use the Internet.

Simple consumer demand could make these devices the new standard in Vanuatu, with the effect that someone could arrive from the islands with a fistful of cash and return to his village with a new information device that will make life at home much better. His children will have a crucial key to better opportunity, and he will have an important business tool. More importantly, the computer itself requires lower levels of service (no moving parts means it will stand up better to wear and tear) and if it does need to be serviced or replaced, it can be done in town without huge expense or wasted time.

Any loss of revenue related to such tariff reductions would be more than made up for by increased VAT revenues and higher employment levels in the local market.

An ‘Appropriate Technology’ class of items. Two simple criteria. And nothing required of government but to quit making it harder for local business. It’s hard to see how a step like this couldn’t help.

Technology is complicated, and in relation to other aspects of daily life in Vanuatu, it’s expensive. But its value to society is indisputable.

Without a doubt, the Government needs to develop a clear, comprehensive policy concerning use of technology within its own sphere of operation, and on the national level as well. But that will take time, and there’s much that can be done in the mean time.

The benefits of telecoms market liberalisation are undeniable, but as the Pacific Institute of Public Policy rightly pointed out in its baseline study of social effects of the opening of the mobile market, more needs to be done. Uptake for business purposes is still low. Secondary infrastructure needs work as well, and if we want to see the same growth in Internet as we’ve seen in mobile use, we’re going to have to take steps to make it possible.

Programmatic support of technology that’s proven appropriate for ni-Vanuatu is a goal that’s simple to achieve. All we have to do is put the right tools into reach, then get out of the way.

I think there’s another aspect to this too, one that shouldn’t be undersold: There’s a moral argument to be made that access to the Internet is a disruptive but ultimately necessary and positive thing. Therefore, any reasonable proposal that takes us in that direction should be tried. Ultimately, this is the most compelling reason of all for me.

More on this in my second take on the issue.

Half an hour’s walk down a muddy mountain trail lies Ranwadi School. It recently received nearly a million Australian dollars in upgrades. The school has always been a beacon to PENAMA province’s brightest students. Now, due to strong support, solid administration and high quality resources, Ranwadi is stronger than ever.

I walked down to the school one rainy morning to provide assistance with a computer that had been acting up. A spyware infection had damaged some system files and the machine could no longer start. I spent about an hour re-installing the operating system software on the machine, and everything was fine.

Well, it should have been, anyway….

When we restarted the machine to complete the configuration, the software – purchased overseas by the donor – needed to be ‘activated’. It said it needed to contact the company that manufactured it in order to make sure that the software hadn’t been pirated.

Fair enough. As there is only one telephone line in the campus – it’s the only one for several kilometres – we unplugged the machine, carried it to the admin building, connected it there and started the activation process.

Nothing worked. The software just didn’t understand where it was. It wanted to use the local network to connect to the Internet, but there was no local network. If we told it to use the modem, it wanted to dial the US directly. It apologised for the fact that this was patently impossible, but gave us no alternative.

In the end, a little ingenuity and some extra hardware saved the day. We dialed up to the Internet through someone else’s laptop, then connected the PC to it via a ‘fake’ network built from odds and ends lying about. This was just enough to allow the newly installed operating system to phone home and ensure its corporate masters that it was being used in accordance with its license terms.

In all, the repair process took us a few hours. The costs in terms of time lost were somewhat greater, however, because the computer had sat unused for some days until someone came along with enough experience to diagnose and fix the problem. It would have been longer if I hadn’t happened along. We also disrupted work in the administration office for about an hour as we futzed about with cables and rigged up our ‘kiaman network’.

I can’t help but feel a little nervous about the fragility of the setup. Last August, in a similarly-titled column, I argued that we need to find hardware that suits our particular needs here in Vanuatu. The same is true of the software that runs on these machines.

Vanuatu can be roughly divided into three categories: First come Vila and Santo, with a fairly healthy (if modest) local economy, and therefore very good access to power, telephone and Internet. Next, the provincial centres of Lakatoro, Saratamata, and the Lenakel/Isangel area are each improving markedly in terms of power supply and telephone services. It’s expected that they will see reliable Internet access before long. Low levels of economic activity mean that access to these resources is not universal, but at least they exist.

The last section consists of the rest of Vanuatu – the islands and villages where 80% of the population reside. Power is only intermittently available, often only by burning costly and hard-to-obtain fuel to power unreliable generators. Telephone service is expensive, relative to income, and difficult to access. The Internet is a pipe dream.

Improving communications for people in Vila and Santo can be done fairly easily, because these towns have a great deal in common with towns throughout the developing world. Models developed elsewhere can be copied and pasted here with only nominal adaptation. The government and its private sector partners have demonstrated their commitment to this, and we’ll soon see the first fruits of their labours.

The provincial centres of Lakatoro, Saratamata and Isangel present some challenges. The problem of improving communications services here can be attacked two ways: We can invest disproportionate amounts of money and resources into their development in an effort to bring them up to the same level of economic, or we can tailor-make a series of scaled-down, incremental measures that will provide improvements on a gradual but more cost-efficient basis.

The first course is the one taken by Canada and the US during their development period. With little regard for cost, they made it a national priority to provide communications to every single household in the nation. The wisdom of such a commitment has been borne out by the vast increase in economic activity that resulted, providing more than commensurate return on the investment.

But Vanuatu has only a tiny fraction of the resources that these nascent giants had at the time. An alternative might be to take a more tactical approach, to build a simpler communications infrastructure based on commodity hardware that meets the present need, and which can be upgraded when the time is right.

The development challenges at the village level are of the same nature as those experienced in our second-category towns, only they are more pronounced in every way. So pronounced, indeed, that we can’t contemplate huge North American-style infrastructure works nationwide. Even a comprehensive roll-out of low-cost, basic communications will prove a challenge to all concerned.

So why, then, do we assume that what’s good for Vila is good for Lalwari? Why do we try to use the same software on the same PCs, with the same power requirements and the same support needs as we do in Vila? Not to put too fine a point on it, this approach will never work. Not, that is, unless we find our way to making a massive investment in rural infrastructure at immense cost.

The typical argument provided to justify this one-size-fits-all approach is that we don’t have the special knowledge and skills to stray from the beaten path. Fair enough, but if we accept this argument, we should accept as well that we don’t have knowledge, skills or resources enough to stay on it, either. When even the most trivial problem can render a computer unusable for days down in Ranwadi, how can we ever hope to keep one running in Lalwari?

The simple answer is that we can’t – at least, not using the tools we currently have at hand. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t run computers in Lalwari, either. We only need to accept that the knowledge and skills we need are special, appropriate to our unique situation.

And make no mistake, the right tools exist. There are flourishing communities on the Internet who daily share their experience and knowledge concerning development in areas every bit as challenging as Lalwari. They use software and operating systems that have been tried and tested in these areas, whose usefulness, robustness and supportability is proven.

Most importantly, this software doesn’t create silly barriers to its own users by demanding to ‘phone home’ to the mother company by means unavailable anywhere but in the developed world. The same tools that work for us in the village can work with few if any changes in everywhere else. If we work from the bottom up, we actually can make one size fit all of us.