Open Development: Networked Innovations in International Development

"The emergence of open networked models made possible by digital technology has the potential to transform international development."

This book from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) explores open network structures that allow people to come together to share information, organise, and collaborate. Open development is construed here as not only an agenda for research and practice but also a statement about how to approach international development. In this volume, experts explore a variety of applications of openness, addressing challenges as well as opportunities.

The book's premise is that open development requires new theoretical tools that focus on real-world problems, consider a variety of solutions, and recognise the complexity of local contexts. This volume focuses on one particular source of opportunities and threats: the emergence of open networked models predicated on digital network technologies, often involving information and communication technologies (ICTs). "[D]igital diffusion has fostered an emerging set of open network structures and activities through which people and information come together, thus affecting the ways in which we share knowledge, coordinate, organize, collaborate, make decisions, and so on. Some of these models are widely known, such as the open source software and the Wikipedia collaborative production models. Some are gaining visibility, like open access to scholarly publishing, open educational resources, open government data, and the Ushahidi crowdsourced information platform. Others are less well known, including open access to scientific processes and the private sector's use of open business models. While these models differ in form, content, and outcome, all of them draw on the power of human cooperation and contain some combination of aspects inherent to digitally enabled openness: sharing ideas and knowledge; the ability to reuse, revise, and repurpose content; increasing transparency of processes; expanding participation; and collaborative production."

After exploring the new theoretical terrain, the book describes a range of cases in which open models address specific development issues such as biotechnology research, educational improvements, and access to scholarly publications. Contributors then examine tensions between open models and existing structures, including struggles over privacy, intellectual property, and implementation. Finally, the contributors offer broader conceptual perspectives, considering processes of social construction, knowledge management, and the role of individual intent in the development and outcomes of social models.

As Yochai Benkler explains in the foreword: "Where a country's telecommunications carrier is too politically powerful, or its government corrupted by promises from a major operating system or enterprise software vendor, open models provide an alternative avenue that builds development goals around such failures. In each of the following cases - whether with community-built Wi-Fi networks in Indonesia that provide broadband at rates people can afford; or in operating systems people can use in South Africa; or in real-time violence monitoring systems in Kenya that, through the collaborative, free, and open-source software development model, become globally available as free software for election and natural disaster monitoring - open models provide a workaround for people of good will to come together and build a solution to the limitations of their market and state systems. In some cases, open models must overcome direct competition or pressure from the state or market they disrupt. In other cases, they can operate to lower the load carried by systems that must be provided by the state, such as education and health, and lower the burden enough to make it bearable for less-than-perfect states and markets."

Following an introduction, and a chapter by the book's editors on "The Emergence of Open Development in a Network Society", the contents include:

Part I: Models of Openness

• Enacting Openness in ICT4D [ICT for Development] Research - Melissa Loudon and Ulrike Rivett
• Transparency and Development: Ethical Consumption through Web 2.0 and the Internet of Things - Mark Graham and Håvard Haarstad
• Open Source Biotechnology Platforms for Global Health and Development: Two Case Studies - Hassan Masum, Karl Schroeder, Myra Khan, and Abdallah S. Daar
• Open Educational Resources: Opportunities and Challenges for the Developing World - Marshall S. Smith

Part II: Openness in Tension

• Establishing Publicness in the Network: New Moorings for Development - A Critique of the Concepts of Openness and Open Development - Parminder Jeet Singh and Anita Gurumurthy
• Centering the Knowledge Peripheries through Open Access: Implications for Future Research and Discourse on Knowledge for Development - Leslie Chan and Eve Gray
• Open Government and Citizen Identities: Promise, Peril, and Policy - Aaron K. Martin and Carla M. Bonina
• Open Minds: Lessons from Nigeria on Intellectual Property, Innovation, and Development - Jeremy de Beer and Chidi Oguamanam

Part III: Constructing Openness

• Negotiating Openness across Science, ICTs, and Participatory Development: Lessons from the AfricaAdapt Network - Blane Harvey
• Open Data, Knowledge Management, and Development: New Challenges to Cognitive Justice - Katherine M. A. Reilly
• Open Development Is a Freedom Song: Revealing Intent and Freeing Power - Ineke Buskens

The editors identify several crosscutting themes as areas for future learning, including: "It's about Development, Not Openness", "Openness Is Layered", "Openness Is Disruptive", "Openness Is Disruptive", "Openness: The Ideal Is Never the Reality", "Openness Requires a Critical Perspective", and "Openness Is a Complex Process, Not a State".