Most of our organisations, information and communication has four main ‘functions’:

• To help locate and bring external knowledge resources into our organisation.
• To facilitate networking opportunities for our staff.
• To disseminate information on our activities.
• To facilitate internal communication.

Some words of warning. While the Internet is often seen as the answer to many problems, it poses many new challenges. Looking only at the first function, these include: Information explosion – where more information is available than before; Internet anarchy – where information is produced by more, and more diverse, sources than before; Information scatter – where information is spread across many sites; Indexing nightmare – where, despite advanced search tools, finding information on development issues is more miss that hit; and Information myopia – where most Internet users use a few large ‘portal’ sites that only index parts of the Internet.

The net result is that our development organisations need to re-think how they find and disseminate information. If not, we face a deluge of information that overwhelms our staff, and the strong likelihood that our products will be lost in cyberspace.

Dealing with this emerging electronic environment means making informed ‘investments’ in knowledge, and basing them on appropriate strategies. Increasingly, given the challenges illustrated above, organisations are looking for cooperative approaches and strategies that work.

Here we look at how some development organisations are using the world wide web (or the ‘web’), in cooperative ways, to achieve their information and communication goals.

Cooperative Trends

Our starting point is the way in which organisations currently cooperate on the web. In the past, ICT’s were large and expensive and tended to be centralised. Nowadays, the emphasis is on decentralisation where organisations work on joint web resources and share certain tasks. Examples are the sites of Oneworld Online (http:// www.oneworld.net), where a gateway draws on content from more than 700 partner organisations, and Pan Asia Networking (http://www.panasia.org.sg/) where information from more than forty research partners is pooled.

This potential to decentralise is one of the strongest points of the web. In the past, many tasks were centralised for technical and organisational reasons, which often led to centralised ownership. Decentralised cooperation allows cooperating agencies to join in developing Internet sites and databases, while still maintaining some ‘ownership’ over what they contribute. In an Internet future, the technology can be a tool to assist participation rather than an excuse to take control.

The first services available on the web were lists of resources. Nowadays, these are being replaced by access to the the full content of documents and news, including other media such as radio or video. Globally, we can see an explosion of alliances designed to provide more and better content to Internet users. In the development sector, services like OneWorld give us access to a multi-lingual and multi-media library and a broadcasting and news resource. In doing so, they re-package content from their partners, taking readers to the primary resource.

As is indicated above, more and more organisations are adding structure and content to their web sites, turning them into gateways. Gateways are often created by an organisation or an individual as a service to others or as a way to fulfil an organisation’s mandate. Increasingly, gateways are being run by or on behalf of ‘communities’ and they may involve several orga-nisations in joint efforts. The underlying notion is that the web – made up of private home pages, each with a fenced-in garden – also needs ‘public houses’ where ideas and knowledge can easily be found, without reference to the place where it is housed.

Just as professional associations, journals and libraries cater for specific groups, users of the Internet are clustering in communities around issues and problems. Helping to sustain these ‘communities of interest’ is becoming one of the most productive uses of the Internet and organisations are linking their strategies with communities, in two main ways:

• As a way to target knowledge. Community members share certain characteristics and information-seeking behaviours, they communicate with one another, and they look for similar kinds of information. Thus, they can be reached through similar information resources and tools.
• As a platform for joint action. Organisations that want to share or disseminate information on similar issues are forming communities to better communicate their messages, to attract visitors, to maximise scarce resources, and to increase their impact and visibility.

In development contexts where organisations lack resources and capacities, the formation of cooperating communities is gaining popularity. By working together, synergies are built among organisations with information to share, with people looking for information, and with people that have technical skills and tools.

Categorising Cooperation

Cooperation can be practised at different levels, with varying degrees of intensity and with different results. In a rather simple way, we can identify three main categories. Self-standing is where an organisation builds an information resource or system and makes it available under its own conditions. This approach assumes that the organisation has access to all the skills and capacities it needs. Functional collaboration is where an organisation invites another to contribute to its information resource or system, making it available under its own conditions. Finally, partnership is where several organisations agree to jointly produce an information resource or system.

The main differences in ‘cooperativity’ relate to three factors – ownership, branding, and resourcing. In the first category, they all belong to one organisation. In the second, the costs may be shared and the branding may indicate this. In the third case, the cooperating organisations share the ownership, contribute resources, and ‘co-brand’ the product or service.

We can use these ideas to look at some initiatives currently to be found on the web.

Cooperation in Practice

African Water Page. Set up by a civil engineer, this site aims to disseminate information and exchange views on water issues in Africa. It shows how individual action can create a valued resource but where continued maintenance by one person is a growing dilemma. (http://www.africanwater.org/)

AgNIC. The US-based Agriculture Network Information Center facilitates public access to agricultural and related information. It is based on the collaboration of independent participants bound together by common interests and goals. It illustrates distributed action with central coordination to ensure consistency. (http://www.agnic.org/)

European Initiative for Agricultural Research for Development (EIARD). Established as a policy coordination mechanism, EIARD has developed an information exchange system known as InfoSys. With a decentralised approach – the web activities draw on the efforts of national focal points – InfoSys is a kind of ‘meta-gateway’ with sub-gateways and links to related initiatives. (http://www.dainet.de/eiard/)

ELDIS. This electronic development and environment information system is a project hosted by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in the United Kingdom and mainly funded by the Danish Government. ELDIS is an example of a centralised information service provided to the general development community. (http://www.ids.ac.uk/eldis/)

Europe’s Forum on International Cooperation (Euforic). Legally established as a cooperative with more than 50 ‘owning’ organisations, Euforic maintains a web site, virtual library and directory on European development cooperation. Euforic is financed and owned by a community of like-minded organisations. The community is both a source of content and part of the target audience. (http://www.euforic.org/)

OneWorld Online. Established in January 1995, OneWorld is a global gateway on many themes, a ‘super-site’ on human rights and sustainable developent. Working with more than 700 ‘partner’ organisations, it is decentralising via joint ventures in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the America’s. The allies will be responsible for various elements of the global activity. (http://www.oneworld.net/)

ReliefWeb. Set up in 1996 by the United Nations (UN) Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), this site groups information on disaster preparedness and relief, acting as both central news service and document depository. While it draws on a many ‘contributing’ organisations for its content, it is a UN project with financing through the UN. It is an example of a gateway set up by an organisation as part of its core mandate – as a service to others. (http://www.reliefweb.int/)

SD Gateway. Maintained by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, this site integrates online information from 8 organisations around the world. In May 1998, network members developed a formal ‘network governance agreement’ as a structure for future cooperation. (http://sdgateway.net/)

Scientific Electronic Library Online. Led by the Latin American and Caribbean Centre on Health Sciences Information, this joint project seeks to improve publication and dissemination processes and to create a virtual library based on the content of a country’s scientific journals. (http://www.scielo.br/)

Southern Africa Environment Page. This gateway to sustainable development information is run by a South African NGO as part of its commitment to environmental education in the region. A service provided by a single organisation to a community of scholars and activists. (http://www.saep.org/)

Virtual Library on International Development. Hosted by the Canadian International Development Agency, this is a collection of links on international development resources. (http://w3.acdi-cida.gc.ca/virtual.nsf)

Cooperativity

If we consider the nature of the sector and accepted views on the best ways to implement ‘development’ (emphasising partnership, sustainability, etc.), it is surprising how many web ‘gateways’ are based around one organisation. Despite having ICT instruments that are cooperation-friendly, we do not yet practise what we preach for the sector as a whole.

While technology could be an issue, it is likely that institutional factors, especially those linked to notions of ‘cooperativity’ are to blame. People and organisations are slow to adjust to new opportunities and, in many cases, are just starting to re-think their strategies and to make provisions for greater cooperation.

If we look at our examples we can see gateways that are created by an organisation as a service to its partners and clients. Gateways such as ELDIS and CIDA’s virtual library fall into this category in which ownership is vested in one organisation. As funding gets tighter and as information capacities of organisations evolve, we can expect these stand-alone efforts to evolve towards greater cooperation and even partnership.

The trend towards more collaboration can be seen in agricultural research where centres are collaborating on a joint commodity gateway (http://www.riceweb.org/), are forming partnerships with other networks (http://www.ipmnet.org/), and are joining national actors (http://www.condesan.org/). While these gateways were set up for specific communities they also serve as thematic focal points for wider audiences.

Sites moving towards partnership include parts of OneWorld, Euforic, the SD Gateway, SciELO, and AgNIC. In each, a relatively small number of partners have come together to provide search, exchange, and publishing facilities. In each, the ‘front-end’ is co-branded and is clearly a multi-agency effort.

Institutional factors

While technologies are essential for a cooperative gateway to flourish, getting the institutional elements right is crucial. Thus, early challenges for Euforic were institutional rather than technical – to agree on the scope of the site, its relations with other organisations, the content priorities, and ways to mobilise the members. The SD Gateway began as a project, but has since set up a governance agreement to provide a structure for future cooperation among the members.

OneWorld is looking for ways to build on the expertise of its partners and to involve them in parts of its site. It is also looking for governance models suited to a global operation in which notions of partnership and decentralisation co-exist with common branding, shared editorial values and a common vision. Balancing the ‘public’ missions of development gateways with market and funding realities is difficult and has stimulated a search, by the APC network for example, for financial and institutional models. Publishers are also looking for ways to promote access to knowledge while ensuring that the resulting service is institutionally and financially viable.

Finally, while the technologies are developing very quickly, institutional arrangements need time to evolve and mature. AgNIC, for example, was founded in 1991 but took until late 1994 to formalise a structure for joint action.

Strategies for the Development Community

What conclusions can we draw for our information strategies?

First, since the main search engines and portals (altavista, yahoo, etc.) do not properly index the ‘specialised’ areas that we call development or international cooperation, we need to ensure that the ideas we look for and publish can easily be found. For this, we can create or support Internet spaces, tools, and resources for ourselves, our interests, and our communities.

We can also re-think our roles. Instead of consuming services and content, we can be contributors and participants. The Internet is not just a warehouse of content to be downloaded, we must also ‘upload’ and share our ideas and experiences.

Second, the cases show that these Internet spaces can be built through joint action, that the Internet can be used to foster ‘decentralised cooperation’ and to create joint information products and services. It can also promote ownership and sustainability. This requires that we build partnerships among our organisations, focusing on common interests. Partnerships within our organisations are as critical, especially between the so-called information specialists and the 'content' people involved in knowledge generation and management.

Beyond connectivity, we need to enhance ‘cooperativity,’ making partnership and collaboration essential parts of our information and knowledge sharing strategies. This means paying attention, not just to technologies, content, and users, but also to our institutions, especially their policies, cultures, and attitudes.

Finally, it is not enough to want to cooperate, and that we should cooperate. Our funders need to signal their commitment by supporting activities characterised by partnership, capacity mobilisation and sharing, joint action, and greater cooperativity.

More

• APC Network. 1999. Mission-driven business planning toolkit. http://www.apc.org/english/ngos/business/
• Abrams, L. 1999. The African Water Page: An experiment in knowledge transfer. Water International, 24 (2): 140-146.
• Addison, C. and P.G. Ballantyne. 1997. A 'web without frontiers': Building European partnerships on the Internet. Quarterly Bulletin of IAALD, 42 (3-4): 203-209.
• Ballantyne, P.G. 1997. Euforic: A cooperative approach to web-based information resources. New Review of Information Networking, 3: 203-212.
• Ballantyne, P.G. and C. Addison. 2000. Cooperation on the Web: Trends and practice in the development sector. Information Development.
• Clark, H.C. 1998. Formal knowledge networks: A study of Canadian experiences. Winnipeg, Canada: IISD.
• Hagel, J. and A.G. Armstrong. 1997. Net gain: Expanding markets through virtual communities. McKinsey Quarterly, (2): 140-153.
• INASP. 1999. Scientific communication and publishing in the information age. http://www.inasp.org.uk/psi/