Abstract

Among the many implications for development of the global revolution in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) is the possibility of using ICTs as tools in providing policy-makers with useful information, in a useful form, to plan and make policy to the benefit of poor people and to the benefit of the environment. This paper reflects on the author’s experience of drafting the policy modules of the "Livestock-Environment Toolbox". Using an electronic web-based format for the Toolbox allowed it to be a highly compact, non-linear document, mixed in content and in media, that serves as a "soft" decision support system for developing-country policy makers, while remaining highly accessible through Web and CD-ROM versions. Some policy issues for similar use of ICT are raised: no field of policy is self-contained, and there are trade-offs between global outreach and regional specificity, and between participation/interactivity and authority. The electronic dissemination of policy information must be supported through training, capacity-building and back-up, and however well-designed can only go so far in influencing policy.

The global revolution in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has many implications for development. While the likelihood, or otherwise, of the rural and urban poor benefiting directly from ICTs has stimulated much analysis^[2], there has been curiously little comment on the ways in which new ICTs can be used in communication with Southern policy-makers. ICTs can be powerful tools in providing policy-makers with useful information, in a useful form, to plan and make policy to the benefit of poor people and to the benefit of the environment. This paper reflects on the author’s experience of drafting the policy modules (Morton et al. 1999) of FAO’s "Livestock-Environment Toolbox" (LEAD 1999, Campbell et al. 1999), and on some of the issues that that experience raises for future use of ICTs in policy dissemination and development.