This page considers telecentres or telecottages - community versions of cybercafes. It questions hype about telecentres as a mechanism for the revitalisation of rural communities, particularly in remote Australia.

It covers -

• introduction
• community, commerce and culture
• bridging digital divides?
• or a digital placebo?
• studies

     introduction

Australian and New Zealand telecottages - often referred to as teleservice centres - are generally in rural locations, often run on a voluntary basis (sometimes with government support), may offer subsidised ICT training and are often associated with other community facilities.

Telecottages first appeared in rural Scandinavia - notably Sweden and Denmark - the late 1980s and thus predate the first cybercafes.

Australia's first telecottage (oriented towards distance education) opened at Walcha in 1992 after a range of government and academic studies about rural disadvantage and the supposed scope for 'community teleservices' to drive regional employment growth. The 1991 Telecottages: the potential for rural Australia report by David Horner & Ian Reeve for example claimed that such facilities

have the potential to overcome many of the traditional handicaps suffered by rural and remote communities. They enable rural communities to participate fully in the new information society which is emerging around the globe.

That was echoed in the 1993 conference 'Telecottages, Teleworking, Telelearning: Road to Rural Revival' - which was followed by establishment of over 100 Australian telecentres - and in overseas initiatives discussed in works such as the 2002 report on Telecenters for Socio-economic and Rural Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, produced by the International Telecommunications Union, UN Food & Agricultural Organization and the InterAmerican Development Bank and in Connected for Development: Information Kiosks and Sustainability (New York: UN Information & Communication Technologies Task Force 2003) edited by Akhtar Badshah, Sarbuland Khan & Maria Garrido.

Many of the Australian centres expired within five years of establishment, both through lack of community interest and because they were not financially self-sustaining. The major achievement over the past decade has been the Western Australian state Telecentre Network, with around 100 centres that often feature personal computers, two-way 128kb videoconferencing, photocopiers, scanners, facsimile machines, printers and VCRs. The network has been driven by distance learning and by substantial government funding: in practice it is an arm of the state Department of Local Government & Regional Development.

Arguably much telecottaging within advanced economies has not involved substantial skilling of participants - access to fax machines, personal computers, photocopiers and modems is insufficient - and few are self-sustaining. The viability of telecottages as the centrepiece of call centres in Australia is also problematical, with major organisations choosing to export their call centre operations to India, China or other low cost jurisdictions.

Expectations about distance learning have also not been met, as evident in the 2001 Perspectives on Distance Education: Telecentres: Case studies and key issues (PDF) and Rosie Simpson's 2001 The Internet & Regional Australia: How rural communities can address the impact of the Internet (PDF).

Detailed statistics are hard to obtain but there appears to have been little substantial transfer of work from major metropolitan businesses to unskilled individual contractors, contrary to the vision of rural mums making a living tending a personal computer rather than the farm animals. One reason why expectations have not been met is that from a managerial perspective it is easier to outsource code development, bill processing or other keyboarding to a 'digital sweatshop' in Mumbai or Guangzhou.

     community, commerce and culture

As with cybercafes, the significance of telecottaging has been community - bringing people together, introducing them to ICT and revitalising rural life.

The movement embodies a range of values. Telework New Zealand ambitiously asserts that telework

• is a critical component of a truly sustainable economy. In a US Government trial in Puget Sound, telework was shown to reduce net energy consumption by 10%. No other initiative comes close to this.
• eliminates many contemporary problems at source. Traffic is only one example. Infrastructure and service delivery costs, urban drift, and collapsing urban and city environments are also good examples.
• increases productivity.
• increases the possible contribution of every citizen to the local and national economy. It decreases the costs associated with government. It enhances the ability of citizens to achieve their own objectives. Some telework strategies work directly to alleviate the symptoms and causes of the 'digital divide'.
• saves money. Service delivery is more economic, infrastructure costs are reduced, and productivity is increased.
• can also improve flexibility. Physical structures and traditional organisations are cumbersome and hard to change. Those based on location-independent concepts are far more flexible and adaptable in our rapidly changing world. With more flexible response, more productive enterprises, and the ability of all individuals to contribute, the region or nation becomes more competitive and attracts more employment and development.

     bridging digital divides?

In discussing various digital divides (overview here, details here) we have noted that in many emerging economies much of the population is offline because people cannot afford personal computers and phone lines or because communications infrastructure simply is not available.

One response has been to bridge such divides by providing access through community centres operated on a not-for-profit basis or through commercial cybercafes. Advocates have accordingly suggested that cybercafes will reach their maximum extent in Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia. Some divide initiatives have centred on plans to deliver state-of-the-art facilities to remote regions, with MIT for example gaining attention for plans to airlift telemedicine and e-learning gear in shipping containers to the Amazon.

A 2002 study by Boase, Chen, Wellman & Prijatelj notes that in the West public venues

disproportionately provides a place for disadvantaged groups to access the Internet. Although the different percentages are not large, to some extent public terminals give disadvantaged groups, such as women, the unemployed, newbies, and those from developing countries, a place to be. Not surprisingly, the variable most strongly associated with the use of public terminals is employment status: The unemployed are most likely to use public terminals. This suggests that public terminal users are not disproportionately high-income road warriors or young gamers.

A 2001 report by Katherine Reilly & Ricardo Gómez on Comparing Approaches: Telecentre Evaluation Experiences in Asia & Latin America (PDF) offers guidelines for telecentre evaluation. Hani Shakeel & Michael Best's paper Comparing Urban & Rural Telecentre Costs (PDF) considers the costs of urban versus rural telecentres in Costa Rica, suggesting that rural centres may not be significantly more expensive. It is complemented by Patrik Hunt's True Stories - Telecentres in Latin America & the Caribbean (PDF). A perspective is provided by the US BusyInternet initiative in West Africa, building centres that offer a local e-business incubator and public access to around 100 online PCs per location.

     a digital placebo?

In practice telecottaging in Australia has attracted high-profile but not very substantial funding, with an initial burst of support during the first half of the 1990s followed by more money under a range of federal and state/territory government programs at the end of the decade.

Much of the second round of funding was drawn from the 'Telstra bonus' (eg under the Networking the Nation initiative), dismissed by critics as "buying off the bush" regarding the privatisation of the dominant telecommunications provider - profiled here.

Reports from academic institutions and government research bodies about the potential of telecottaging and rural telework have been more positive than the small number of evaluations of outcomes from past spending. One might ask whether the moment for Australian telecottages has passed.

A spirited 2005 review by Chris Russill of the UN Connected for Development: Information Kiosks & Sustainability questioned the syllogism

• ICTs contribute social benefit and help eradicate poverty;
• Information kiosks are ICTs;
• Information kiosks contribute social benefit and help eradicate poverty.

and went on to comment that

Even if we accept the assumption that some ICTs contribute to the eradication of poverty, there is no guarantee that all forms do so and different models of information kiosks may impact the distribution and degree of their various benefits. Even if it turns out that commercial models are superior to public funding in terms of extending the life of information kiosks, it does not address the relationship of operating and management structure to matters of kiosk usage and content. Of course, these questions never arise if one blithely assumes access to information as the primary function of ICTs and the main determinant in their usefulness for combating poverty.

     studies

A useful introduction to early developments in the West is provided by Christopher Campbell's 1995 study Community Technology Centers: Exploring a Tool for Rural Community Development. For an Australian perspective see the upbeat paper (PDF) by Judy Young, Gail Ridley & Jeff Ridley on A Preliminary Evaluation of Online Access Centres: Promoting Micro E-Business Activity in Small, Isolated Communities regarding 18 Tasmanian centres.

Cautions from overseas are provided by the 1999 APC Gender Analysis of Telecentre Evaluation Methodology paper, lamenting

Telecentres are not working properly because the people who started them had no programme for long-term sustainability. Very few are properly utilised by communities. There is a general lack of commitment and diligence and this leads to people feeling demoralized and not open to learning new skills. In South Africa we need a culture of commitment. We cannot talk about gender perspective until telecentres are viable for the whole community and this will not be the case until there is a context for appropriate management structures. Issues of accountability are a problem. People lack leadership qualities and management qualities

and the 2001 UNESCO Telecentre Cookbook for Africa: Recipes for Self-sustainability by Mike Jensen & Anriette Esterhuysen (PDF). International comparisons are provided in works such as the 1998 IDRC Little engines that did: Case Histories From The Global Telecentre Movement report by Richard Fuchs.

Public policy questions are highlighted in Stephen Woolgar's 1998 survey Cyber Cafes and Telecottages: Increasing Public Access to computers and the Internet, the more searching Community Informatics: Enabling Communities with Information & Communications Technologies (Hershey: Idea Group 2000) by Michael Gurstein and Technology & Social Inclusion: Rethinking the Digital Divide (Cambridge: MIT Press 2003) by Mark Warschauer.

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