humble engineer's comment, ready to take experts bashing: It is transparency. It is crowd sourcing. Ask the people. They know it all. Make information about the projects available. To everybody. What did it cost? What was planned? If you bring ICT to a school: ask the parents (two years afte the end of the project!) if it had an impact. Ask the owners of the kiosk if new services had an impact. A blog on the internet. For every project. Known to everybody. Open to everybody. karl

Dear All, for the rural areas, ICT does _not_ just happen. No company connects rural areas. Unless, of course, there is either legal enforcement (Universal Service Obligation) or public money. Now, this is the situation in the developed world. In many developing countries, legal enforcement is not effective (or does not exist), and public money is not (made) available. (Correct? Please comment!) I visited Chikanta in rural Zambia. No electicity grid, no GSM, no internet. Young people were taking computer courses (donated computers, energy from a diesel engine in front of the hut). These young people were desperate. The Internet will come to Chikanta (and many other places throughout the world) within the next few years. Or these young people will have left for the city. karl

Dear All, for the rural areas, ICT does _not_ just happen. No company connects rural areas. Unless, of course, there is either legal enforcement (Universal Service Obligation) or public money. Now, this is the situation in the developed world. In many developing countries, legal enforcement is not effective (or does not exist), and public money is not (made) available. (Correct? Please comment!) I visited Chikanta in rural Zambia. No electicity grid, no GSM, no internet. Young people were taking computer courses (donated computers, energy from a diesel engine in front of the hut). These young people were desperate. The Internet will come to Chikanta (and many other places throughout the world) within the next few years. Or these young people will have left for the city. karl

The question is extremely general. * Analyzing socio-economic impact of ICT is of value, I would be surprized if anyone would question this. * and yes, also in rural areas :-) If we are discussing development aid projects, and the _specific_ impact of an _individual_ project, THEN this discussion may make sense. Because here we find a trade-off between the original intention of the project, and the effort to evaluate its impact. And as we know, sometimes the evaluation (and preparation, monitoring, other overhead) of projects consumes more ressources than the project itself. * Am I wrong? * Was the idea to focus on this last point (impact in dev projects), or was it meant to be as general as it was put? karl