Youth Interns and The
Strategic Deployment of ICTs for Public Access
Rachel Gurstein
Masters student, Political Science,
Susan Pell
PhD candidate, Interdisciplinary Studies,
This paper connects discussions of ICT
use as developed through the Canadian government Community Access Program, with
the experiences of the CAP Youth Initiative. While it is argued by policy
designers that youth internships would bring needed human resources in the form
of social and training skills to the technical infrastructure provided by CAP,
it was unfortunately the case that the necessary oversight resources,
networking opportunities and effective reporting mechanisms were insufficient
to support this and as a result the programs have not achieved the degree of
success which might otherwise have been possible at the community level.
Introduction
Understanding the problem posed by rapid technological change has occupied a large part of the attention of community network activists and the Canadian federal government over the past decade. Much of the discussion that has occurred in this area has centred on the theme of ‘universal access’ and ways in which to address the ‘digital divide’. Community networks for their part have been attempting to democratize the Internet and allow for meaningful access to, and use of, information and communication technologies (ICTs). Many of their struggles have been in an effort to sustain their operations in the face of funding cuts while their burdens of servicing those who lack technological means are ever expanding. The federal government for its part has also has been working toward increasing access and creating the conditions for a competitive economy within our digitized world.
Much of the dissatisfaction that community networks have felt surrounding federal initiatives, such as the Information Highway Advisory Committee (IHAC) and its resulting Community Access Program (CAP), has already been well documented.[1] The dominant theme in these discussions has been the schism between government conceptions of access, which tend to focus on the technological infrastructure, and those of community networks, which stress socio-economic factors along with the technical. CAP, in its creation and continuance, has featured prominently in these discussions as evidence of a lack of ability or willingness by the federal government to adequately address universal access in any sort of sustainable way, outside of one-off grants to build a technological infrastructure.
A noticeable absence in the discussions on the government’s shortcomings in the realm of ‘universal access’ has been CAP’s associated internship program, the CAP Youth Initiative (CAP YI). This has been the federal government’s attempt to address the need for training and social interaction around ICTs to help further integrate their use by those people facing barriers to connectivity. As it stands, the different conceptualizations of how the term access is understood has fundamentally affected the implementation of federally funded programs, such as CAP and CAP YI, at the local level of community networks. Due to a lack of networking and reporting built into these initiatives, much of the work of bridging the digital divide has fallen onto the shoulders of community networks. However, because community networks in many ways lack the resources necessary to promote, even sustain, a program of universal access, these organizations have frequently lacked the experience or the knowledge to effectively use the monies and resources available through this type of contingent funding.
This paper hopes to bring the training and social dimension of CAP YI into the conversation about the digital divide and universal access. We argue that the strength of CAP YI is its ability to bring forward the social dimension needed to train marginalized groups on ICTs. This dimension has to this been point been largely neglected in the current economistic model of access reflected in the design of the CAP. As will be further discussed below, each CAP site could through the use of CAP YI be enabled to develop its own unique practices and capacities based on the needs of their users.
To actualize this potential, an effective networking of CAP sites and a means for the retention within individual sites and the overall network of the knowledge gained is required. However, before we can achieve this ideal, it is important to assess the present realities of the use of CAP YI in community networking. In the following section we discuss ICTs within the Canadian context. After that we outline the various federal and community actors involved in universal access. We then move into a specific discussion of the limitations of current networking and reporting mechanisms within CAP YI through a reflection of our experience as Regional Coordinators (Rcs) based in the Vancouver Community Network (VCN). We conclude by returning to a broader look at how communities can leverage federal initiatives to serve the ends of ICTs and social development.
Laying Out the Concepts and Context: The Digital Divide, Universal Access and the
Before directly addressing the strategic use of CAP YI in organizations such as VCN, context in relation to the debates and concepts used in discussion of ICTs is needed. In this section, ‘universal access’ will be briefly discussed through an outline of the historical tension between government and community networks’ approach to these terms. In laying out this debate, it becomes clear that negotiating agreement concerning the underlying values of programs, such as CAP and CAP YI, within VCN and community network organizations in general can be a difficulty process.
The ‘digital divide’ is the current term to describe what is in many ways, the raison d’etre of community networks and federal initiatives, such as CAP and CAP YI. It is the recognition that with the transition to an information society there are those who have the technology to participate and those who do not. The digital divide then describes the split between the ‘have’s’ and the ‘have not’s’ in terms of information and communication technology. In our current context, the digital divide can be said to trace the level of ‘connectedness’ of Canadians on the ‘information highway’.[2]
Though computers and the Internet are far from being a novelty anymore, there persists a gap between those who have access, use and are comfortable with these technologies and practices. A survey of Canadians in 2000 revealed that 42 percent of the population had never used the Internet (Longford, 2005: 10). Rideout and Reddick further explain that in terms of access from home, the digital divide continues to be a reality (Rideout and Reddick, 2005: 3). The digital divide, as can be expected, overlays already existent socio-economic realities of marginality, which include class, ethnicity, gender, and geographical location. As tends to be the case, First Nations people, those in rural areas, women, the undereducated, the elderly, and people with disabilities are the least connected (Rideout and Reddick, 2005; Pigg and Crank, 2004; Clement and Shade, 1996).
While it is important to understand the map of the ‘digital divide’, it is as important to understand how the use of this language has bounded discussion of universal access to ICTs. ‘Bridging the digital divide’ means making ICTs accessible. Accessibility, at the most basic level, translates into having the availability of technology, which would include at a minimum a computer and the ability to get online. However, if access is to mean more than just being a possible consumer of information, goods, and services on the Internet; there is good reason to believe that accessibility needs to be thought of beyond the technical level, to include the social aspects that affect the use of ICTs (Clement and Shade, 1996; Graham and Shade, 1996; Gurstein, 2003, 2004).
Equitable access (an already watered down ideal of universal access) requires more than an infrastructure based on equity, affordability, and ubiquity; it requires access to be understood in terms of physical, technical, economic, and social factors that come into play with shifts in technology (Clement and Shade, 1996: 2). Thought of in this sense, access is defined as having the resources, both technical and social, to use the technology available for self-directed means. This conceptualization moves away from a definition of access that has been predominant in market and government articulations of access as simply ‘use’, and highlights the users needs and desires.
The concept of ‘effective use’ has been utilized to emphasize this non-commercial, self-defined, and participatory understanding of ‘access’ to technology. Gurstein has defined ‘effective use’ as, “The capacity and opportunity to successfully integrate ICTs into the accomplishment of self or collaboratively identified goals” (Gurstein, 2003: 10). This statement stresses that access not be understood as simply access to technology, but as the ability to use the technology in a way that is meaningful to the individual or group involved. It calls attention to the fact that having ICTs available does not assure that people will use them or that they will use them in ways that are meaningful. As Gurstein, suggests, “The challenge, therefore, is to ensure not simply ‘access’ but ‘effective access’ or ‘use’ – i.e., access which can be used and made effective to accomplish the purposes that individuals might set for themselves within electronic environments” (Gurstein, 2004: 230). This type of definition has much more applicability for community organizations that are struggling to expand the democratic capabilities of ICTs than simply a focus on the availability of technology.
Community networking organizations, local and national, have actively tried to influence Canadian federal policy concerning understandings of, and initiatives taken, to address issues of access. These groups and organizations, as already mentioned, are committed to universal access, in the sense of ‘effective use’, and tend to approach the use of ICTs in a social and community development sense, where the technology serves as a tool for participation within neighbourhoods, nations, and the globe (Longford, 2005: 4). To this end, these organizations have tried to lobby the federal government to adopt policy and create an information infrastructure, in the shape of a what has been described as an e-commons, that would enable citizens to be actors, not simply recipients, in the development, implementation, and practical use of ICTs within their localized communities (Longford, 2005; Gurstein, 2003, 2004; Clement, et al, 2001; Moll and Shade, 2001; Clement and Shade, 1996; Graham and Shade, 1996).
While participation within an
e-commons was the goal of community networks, federal policy in most instances
went the route of market-minded initiatives that privileged competition and
passive consumerism on the Internet.
This has been evident in the limited effectiveness of such programs as
CAP and CAP YI in addressing universal access for those individuals and
organizations that are most restricted in their means for using ICTs. Our
experience as Regional Coordinators (Rcs) enabled us to see how the federal
government’s emphasis on economic development through ICTs led to a misaligned
relationship between Industry
With an understanding of
‘effective access,’ the next part of the paper moves into a discussion of the
strategic use of CAP YI in community networks, such as the Vancouver Community
Network. We compare the goals of the federal initiatives (CAP, CAP YI), and the
community network, (VCN), in the context of the experience as the Regional
Coordinators of the CAP YI internship at VCN between July 2004 and March 2005. During this period we were in a unique
position to witness and participate in the successes, failures, and
contradictions of the disjunction between CAP, CAP YI, and VCN.[3]
CAP, CAP YI, and VCN
Discussions of the varying definitions of access, encourages us to examine the current practices of both government and community networks in applying their understandings of the concept in the realm of policy creation and program implementation. In the following section we will discuss the various interests at stake in providing access for Canadians.
Government programs and
community impacts
CAP was initially designed to
assist in the installation of, and access to the infrastructure of the
‘information highway’ in rural communities[4]
for the Industry Canada mandated purpose of fostering the conditions for
economic development. By the time the first phase of the program came to an end
in 1999, Industry
In 1996, in response to the
demand for training on the technology recently implanted in CAP sites, Industry
Canada and what was then Human Resources and Development Canada (HRDC) came
together to create the Community Access Program Youth Initiative (CAPYI). The
program was designed with the interests of both organizations in mind. Industry
Falling in line with the objectives of the 1997 Connecting Canadians initiative,[5] CAP began to consciously target sites that serviced segments of the population for whom access to ICTs was largely blocked. These groups included Aboriginals, seniors, people with low income and low education, and new Canadians. Though the new mandate targeted specific marginalized demographic groups, the program remained economically and rurally focused. The change of mandate did not bring about a change in the structure or implementation of CAP and this oversight resulted in a lack of consideration for the specific needs of CAP sites and their users located in urban and inner city communities where issues such as marginalization due to poverty and mental health are prominent rather than a lack of access to information technology or the Internet.
A tension can thus be seen as
arising between the initial CAP focus that addressed issues of regional
economic development and renewal within a rural context with its later (and
un-adapted) application to urban areas and urban issues of neighborhood and
individual rehabilitation and integration into a knowledge based society.
Managing this mismatch between the expectations of Industry
This lack of foresight into the local implementation of ICTs is most blatantly obvious in the case of the various programs for putting the activities of governments on-line. As an example, various government forms, such as the British Columbia Social Assistance application form, became only available on-line with the responsibility being placed on CAP sites to provide access to the forms and to introduce welfare recipient to the process.[6] However, the resources needed to bridge this gap which inevitably includes issues such as literacy and an understanding of bureaucratic procedures, which had earlier been the responsibility of government, and which had now been “downloaded” to the sites was neither in the CAP nor CAP YI mandates or budgets.
As a result, by participating in CAP, urban sites are taking on the responsibility for the delivery of these services, the supporting technology (and its upkeep) and for training the public in all of this, in addition to maintaining their already existing services.[7] This work is largely done without a corresponding increase in resources, including social, economic, or technological, from the CAP or CAP YI programs.
Examples of this lack of
structural support and acknowledgement of offloading social welfare programs
and services by government onto under-funded community organization is evidenced
in many of the CAP sites within VCN’s network.[8]
A recent example is the case of the UBC Learning Exchange, located in
The
As Industry
VCN became involved with CAP
from the outset of CAP’s expansion into urban communities, acting as the
regional hub for community organizations in the Lower Mainland who were being
funded through the program. VCN managed the administration for CAP for at first
7, then up to 250 and more recently 99 different sites spread across a
geographical area which encompasses Vancouver and its suburbs, and extending
inland to a radius of 100 km. Currently, CAP sites are located in schools,
libraries, community centres, churches, low income housing developments and
employment and training centres. VCN receives a large part of its operational
and project funding through administering Industry
Local CAP networks like VCN
have an interest in acquiring funding, but also to shape the program to serve
their local needs, which at time may or at other times may not be congruent to
the goals of CAP as laid out by Industry
VCN, as the network hub, has communicated
back the demands from the urban CAP environment to Industry
Since 2001, VCN has been responsible for hiring and deploying interns participating in the Community Access Program Youth Initiative (CAP YI) to the CAP sites across the Lower Mainland. Unlike other CAP YI networks, VCN has the exceptional opportunity to interview and hire youth interns directly, and place them in CAP sites. The close geographical proximity of VCN to the CAP sites in its network has allowed the interns hired by VCN to have direct and personal contact with VCN for meetings and training. The CAP YI Regional Coordinators (Rcs) housed within VCN, were able to visit most of the sites at which interns were placed.[13] In other CAPYI networks in BC, interns were hired directly by the site in which they worked and had minimal contact with their Rcs and very little to no contact with other interns working in their region.
Despite all of its best intentions, the various initiatives that involved VCN and Youth Interns only saw moderate successes. As will be discussed in greater depth in the networking and reporting sections, VCN suffered from the lack of continuity in program funding, as well as an evident inability to retain vital information from one year to the next, which would have allowed the building upon of previous knowledge and strengths. Generally speaking, the structure of the funding available through the government program contract system did not allow for a continuity in staffing and a related transfer of knowledge, as the previous year’s project staff were already gone by the time the funding was available to contract with the succeeding year’s staff. Thus there was almost no possibility of building up an organizational memory for the program.
Case Study: CAP YI in the Context of VCN and CAP
Other observers have already
discussed the lack of networking and feedback mechanisms of CAP.[14] This analysis can be extended to CAP YI in
terms of the need for transparent feedback channels that would connect
practices on the ground with policy makers in
The need to use CAP YI
strategically is of course, very considerable as the interns are the face of
the community network, Industry
Policies for developing
programs such as CAP and CAP YI when designed at the national level may bear little
resemblance to how they are articulated with and respond to the needs at the
local level. The result is often a discrepancy between the expectations and
outcomes anticipated (and desired) by the funders and the results as realized
by the on the ground administrators. The implication for the authors, as
Regional Coordinators at VCN, was the reality of having to manage the
difference in the requirements and expectation of program and how we were able
to implement it, when dealing with interns, CAP site operators, and Industry
Industry
Another problem stemming from
the disconnection between CAP and CAP YI contracts was the non-congruent
mandates of the several funding bodies. Industry Canada, which funds CAP and
administers CAP YI, sees the Youth Interns as merely working towards the same
strategic (CAP) goals of enhancing opportunities for businesses by either
enabling local businesses to go online, or by training community members on the
Internet in order that they may become better electronic consumers. However,
HRSDC, which is the funder for CAP YI, has as its goal the creation of work
experience opportunities for young people in order to support them in their
career development. In addition HR
Networking
Community development projects like CAP are based on networks. The obvious benefits of sharing information, resources and best practices between similar organizations within a network are enhanced when many sites have the potential to speak together and support each other on the issues of universal access, and for servicing digital divide communities.
The varying, and at times conflicting, values found in the different bodies that organize, fund, and administer CAP and CAP YI, including Industry Canada, HRSDC and VCN, the success of the programs has had the likely result of limiting the success of the program. The ability of VCN to realize and harness the power of the community networks which it seeks to build and sustain, has also been limited by the flawed connections between CAP and CAP YI, including the inability to retain information and the lack of continuity of projects undertaken and then given up when the funding comes to an end. These types of unresolved issues have had a negative impact on the process of community building.
Industry
By combining strengths, assets and resources from all their partners and
participants, Community Resource Networks can address local and regional issues
and concerns that they must deal with in
There are two assumptions behind this declaration. The first is that
community networks were already in existence prior to CAP, and simply needed to
be tapped and augmented through the use of ICTs. The second assumption is that
community networks are primarily useful as a “cost-effective” means to promote
economic development. Concerning the first assumption, we found that among the
large number of sites nominally included in the Lower Mainland network, many
had different goals than those being assumed above, and some “communities”
being relied on as “partners” did not in fact exist in such a form as is being
assumed and had to be created for the purposes of the program. The second
assumption overlooks the importance of the common values shared between sites,
where participants came together to form networks from the ground-up around
shared goals, and actions directed to meet those goals, but where these goals
were somewhat beyond or outside the exclusively economic goals pointed to in
the CAP mandate. In order to respond to this mandate in fact, some networks
were created specifically to meet the requirements of the program. These networks were of course, ”top-down”
from the outset, and thus completely lacked access to local resources to
support implementation of the program.
The result of this was that there was the need to rechannel available
resources, particularly human resources in order that the program be
implemented as required even though one of the essential assumed sources of
local resources was completely absent..
All of the Lower Mainland networks, whatever their type, came together
in this instance specifically for the common purpose of obtaining funding from
the federal government to assist in the provision of Internet access for their
clients, which is to say that the network was formed in order to fit into the
government policy scheme. As the CAP sites were so diverse in their services
and orientations, they did not necessarily share a vision or a common
purpose. Such a common purpose would
have had the effect of giving them a stake in the program from the beginning,
and would have encouraged them to be more actively involved in shaping the
network to be something of sustainable value outside of CAP and Industry
The lack of cohesion between the sites in the network is partially the result of CAP having what appeared to be three different approaches over time: one emphasizing access to ICT infrastructure for economic development; a second concerned with providing access to training and skills building for youth; and third directed toward enabling marginalized communities to become active participants in society. These only partially over-lapping and consistent set of goals translated into a lack of common understanding among the 99 sites about what their involvement in CAP could and should be.
A second reason for the weak nature of the Lower Mainland Network was the structure of the funding process itself, which had the effect of inhibiting cooperation between sites, and continuity from one year to the next. This can be seen in the basic numbers of sites involved in the Lower Mainland Network, which initially included up to 250 CAP sites, but which in response to funding restrictions and administrative decree was drastically reduced to only 99 sites within the period of one fiscal year. The result of this “slaughter of the sites” was that individual sites that wanted to participate had to, in practice, compete against each other for funding and thus overwhelming for their very existence. Also, the CAP funding was structured in a manner which necessitated that sites were required to spend their allotted money and invoice for it in a very short period of time, (as for example over 6 weeks during the Christmas period). The result was that sites were not able to spread their funding out over the full year, or develop projects which would contribute to the community because of the uncertainty about funding deadlines, restrictions and continued support from the program.
The Downtown Eastside CAP
network includes 15 sites, plus 4 additional independent sites, that are all
situated within 10 city blocks of each other.[16] This neighbourhood,
being one of the poorest in
The high concentration of CAP
sites in this neighbourhood was a result of the way in which Industry Canada
chose which sites to fund. Drawing on census information, demographic maps were
created based on average income. All sites that were located in the zones of
lowest per capita income were funded. No sites west of
As a result of the concentration of CAP sites in the Downtown Eastside, many CAP YI Youth were placed at sites in this area. Due to a failure to provide resources or incentives there was a remarkable lack of coordination between sites that were ostensibly neighbours, and that undoubtedly served the same clientele. One example of the kinds of benefits that could be achieved through such coordination was the connection that was established between the Vancouver Native Health Society Positive Outlook, a CAP site housed within a health drop-in site for people who are HIV positive and living in and around the Downtown Eastside, and Tradeworks Training Society, an organization offering job training to people re-entering the workforce from welfare dependence.
At the time, Tradeworks was also host to the reBOOT program, a national computer recycling and repair initiative[18]. During a site visit conducted at the Positive Outlook, it was noticed that only one computer was available for public use, and that this computer was heavily used by the site’s users for such purposes as researching personal health information and keeping in touch with friends and relatives. The intern placed at the site indicated that this location was for many of the site users the only private access they had to computers and the Internet. An additional computer was desired, but the funds provided by CAP had to cover connectivity for the year, as well as human resource costs, meaning that there was not enough left over to cover the expense of a new computer. In response to this situation, it was possible to contact the intern at Tradeworks, who had taken over the administration of reboot who was able to assemble a computer for donation to the Positive Outlook. This was accomplished within a matter of days.
The lesson to be drawn from this example is very simple. Networks of mutual support and cooperation, be it in close geographical areas such as the Downtown Eastside or further afield as for example the entire Lower Mainland Network, are not spontaneously created through the provision of technology to certain pre-selected sites meeting government identified standards. In order for such linkages to be made, interested and knowledgeable people have to be present. This linking function was provided by the CAP interns, with the assistance and guidance of the Regional Coordinators. In practice, the interns themselves became the most important and successful networking tool available to both VCN as well as the Industry Canada sponsored CAP network. However, this type of activity—the facilitation of inter-networking within the network--however much its value, has been left completely to the initiative of the individual interns and the other contract employees and thus fluctuates year to year. It cannot thus be relied on to provide a basis for creating or strengthening networks among the individual sites that are being funded.
Reporting
The reluctance of the federal
government to engage in consultative processes with community networks during
the formation of its
The expectation for CAP YI was basically that it would complement CAP’s technical mandate with a social training component. Based on the CAP objectives of ‘economic and social development at a community level’, the interns were encouraged to set up a website for their CAP site, assist CAP users to access government online forms, promote e-commerce for local businesses, and host ‘cybercamps’.[20] The forms provided for activity reporting by the interns reflected these priorities.
The top of the monthly impact report form states:
In order to help the Community Access Program (CAP) evaluate the impact
of its Youth Initiative, all CAP Youth Interns are requested to provide
information on the types of community clients served and the specific services
provided. This report is to be completed
on a monthly basis.[21]
The ‘deliverables’ of the CAP YI program consisted of a start-up report, monthly impact reports, a success story, and a youth report. The reports however, were not structured in a way which would allow for open-ended responses nor provided space to write in such things as jobs done, activities accomplished, successes or setbacks. Instead it used a fill-in-the-blank format, with little opportunity to respond outside of the prescribed areas. These survey-like forms, with their lines to indicate that a specific activity was performed, did not provide means to describe work accomplished beyond the specific and narrow interests of HRDC. HRDC thus determined the information that it would receive about the program within a very narrow scope and left any other aspect of the program and the youth’s employment activities “off the radar”.
The reports could be seen as simply a quantitative compliment to the ‘success stories’ that were also required of interns. These ‘success stories’ in turn were solicited but with associated no guidelines, hence no identified expectations, and no indication how or if at all these fitted into a feedback chain upwards into the policy levels in the administration. Most often these stories ended up reporting little information about the work and impact of the interns at their CAP sites, or in their communities. More often than not, the interns had little means to conceptualize the significance of the work that they were performing or its value because the form of the ‘youth’ and ‘monthly reports’ acted so as to limit an understanding of community and economic development issues and the contributions that might be made through their work in the CAP site.
If for example, the interns introduced children to learning games on computers, or helped fill out welfare forms, or typed out the resume of someone with low literacy skills, or if they soothed someone who was paranoid about surveillance on the Internet in order that they could email an estranged family member,[22] these necessary social interactions and training were denied significance and thus ‘legitimacy’ through the failure of the reporting mechanisms both formal and informal to provide a means for identifying these as activities undertaken and communicating these, particularly beyond their own CAP site and VCN. As well, without mechanisms being in place to capture this frontline knowledge, best practices were lost, and the possibility for continuity in successful initiatives was disrupted.
In order to fill in these gaps of knowledge, as a way of obtaining feedback to support program improvement and as a means to ensure accountability (and acknowledgement) concerning the performance of the interns a further reporting requirement for interns was instituted at VCN. These were (web) blogs to be completed after each shift, weekly timesheets, monthly meetings, and additional success stories. The blog was an individual space where information and experiences could be posted for other interns to learn from, as well as an opportunity for developing design and communications skills.
Monthly meetings were established so as to provide opportunities for intern-to-intern training sessions, informal interaction between the interns, and a roundtable where CAP sites were described, as well as to discuss the work done, the problems encountered, and successes achieved. Often at these meetings, challenges at one site were responded to by the provision of resources from another site or by another intern’s knowledge and skill. In this way the CAP sites were networked and projects collaboratively initiated. All of this, was of course, outside of the formal identified program activities or deliverables of either federal funding agency[23].
From these two approaches to reporting – that of the federal program and that implemented by the field managers from VCN, different priorities and understanding of communication processes could be seen. VCN seems to understand that feedback in terms of program implementation and growth requires knowledge from those that are active in the CAP sites, and in the community. This is particularly true of work being done in the technology field where there are continuing and rapid changes. It is also an approach that gives priority to the ‘effective use’ of technology over that of simple ‘access’ to technology. As Gurstein states, “The opportunity for defining and developing strategies for ‘effective use’ should become a dialogue between those responding to the perceived inequalities of the DD [digital divide] and end users who understand most clearly what applications or uses would be most beneficial in particular local contexts” (Gurstein, 2003: 14). Without this ‘dialogue’, in this case undertaken through the reporting mechanisms, the programs are unable to address the issues that are of most significance in specific local contexts—that is, those who are on the other side of the digital divide have little means to influence the activities and programs which are meant to lessen those inequalities.
Making CAPYI Effective and Strategic: Linking Networking and Reporting
Generally the experience with
implementing and administering CAP and CAP YI through VCN has highlighted the
importance of networking and reporting, as the vital links for communication
between loosely affiliated and ill-coordinated organizational structures such
as the Lower Mainland Network. As was
noted in a contribution to a final report from the Regional Coordinators
submitted to Industry
This collective participation in societal change is a strong motivation to stay within and be invested in a network which can to be a tool to this end. The link between networking and reporting, has been identified as a necessary means for building network strength through communication.
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Industry
[1] See, for example: Andrew Clement and Leslie Regan Shade (1996) “What Do
We Mean By ‘Universal Access’?: Social Perspectives
in a Canadian Context,” URL: http://www.isoc/net96/proceedings/f2/f2_1.htm.
Accessed
[2] “
[3] Note that VCN is an exceptional case as far as being a participant in
both CAP and CAP YI. VCN acts as the coordinator of the Lower Mainland Network,
of which there were 99 CAP sites in 2004-2005. As for CAP YI, VCN was the
employer of the youth interns, which is an anomaly in
[4] Defined as communities in remote or northern locations and communities
with less than 50,000 residents.
[5] In the 1997 Speech from the Throne, the government reiterated its
commitment to make
[6] See Rideout and Reddrick (2005) for a discussion on the significance of
government forms going exclusively online, and the government online
consultation process where the unanimous opinion of those involved was that
this would be bad policy and practice. It should be noted that while we see
this as an issue within CAP sites, it also points to the lack of coordination
between federal, provincial, and municipal government in the move to put
essential services online.
[7] While not within the scope of this paper, this “downloading” in this
way of government services raises questions of privacy and security of personal
information, particularly when thinking about the skills and resources of the
generally very youthful CAP YI interns who are placed in CAP sites with only
limited training and are expected to assist users in filling out what should in
practice be confidential on-line forms and in handling other such sensitive
materials.
[8] One of the ways in which community organizations have dealt with this
on-going downloading of social responsibility has been to rely on short term
funding programs like CAP and CAP YI in order to respond to the increasing
demand and particularly in response to the need for access to technology. The
way CAP sites were created when the CAP mandate expanded in 1999, involved
pre-existing community organizations of all kinds, applying to Industry
[9] http://www.vcn.bc.ca
[10]http://www.spartacusbooks.org
[11]http://www.gachet.org/
[12]http://www.purplethistle.ca/
[13] For an article written about the site visits we
conducted, see the article written by Aurelea Mahood “The Bicycle Girls”
<http://bcyk-tech.net/the-bicycle-girls#VwTsDx7p3jexR4y46QbrDg>
[14] Gurstein’s comments about CAP, easily apply to CAP
YI. He states:
A consequence of this [lack of a research
or program evaluation/assessment activity] has been that the program had very little
capacity for self-criticism or adjustment, or for effectively evolving in
response to very rapidly changing technologies and accumulating experiences
with the technologies as they became globally dispersed. The result was a
program that was top-down and ill-adaptive (Gurstein, 2004: 235).
Also see Clement, et al, 2001; Moll and
Shade, 2001; and Graham and Shade, 1996.
[15]
http://www.ic.gc.ca/cmb/welcomeic.nsf/ICPages/Mandate
[16] http://www.dtes.ca/index.cfm?group_id=3353
[17] This way of funding sites based on the per-capita
income of the neighbourhood it is in has meant that CAP sites are concentrated
in often small geographic areas, like the Downtown Eastside, while more
affluent neighbourhoods are ignored, despite the presence of individuals in
those communities who would stand to benefit from a public access site.
[18] Tradeworks lost a major source of their funding in
the spring of 2005 and were forced to downsize their operations. They have
since given up their large space which included a wood shop and construction
area, a large warehouse for storing palates of computers, and the reBOOT
computer repair workshop, along with their classrooms and administrative
offices. Tradeworks has moved to a new location still within the Downtown
Eastside, though they do not provide near the level of services they used to,
including reBOOT. For more information about reBOOT, see their website at
<http://www.reboot.on.ca/>
[19] See Graham and Shade 1996 for a discussion
of a lack of meaningful consultation with communities for the creation of
federal policy.
[20] See Community Futures, the delivery host
of VCN’s CAP YI
http://www.communityfutures.ca/bc/cap/info/scope.html#3
[21]
http://www.communityfutures.ca/bc/cap/info/reports.html A cybercamp was the
term used for any group based training session.
[22] These are all anecdotal stories from the different
interns. Though encouraged, few of these stories ever made these into a
coherent report to Industry
[23]However, it was commonly known to all that these were
not demanded by the CAP and CAP YI program itself, and in many ways not taken
as seriously. The schism between the mandates of VCN and CAP YI and the needs
of the CAP site were never adequately addressed, and in a sense, led to
confusion on all parts as there were three levels of reporting required and
only a minimum wage attached to all of this work
[24] It should be noted that this was the first year that
RCs and the two Provincial Coordinators jointly created and submitted a report
to Industry