Executive Summary

Background and context

The World Bank/DFID Transport and Rural Infrastructure Services Learning and Sharing Project (TRISP) aims to strengthen the demand for, and improve access to relevant knowledge for stakeholders working in transport and rural utilities in developing countries. The first ‘demand assessment’ phase seeks to provide insights into the information required and by whom to increase the impact of knowledge in transport and rural utilities in developing countries; the most appropriate way of targeting relevant information, raising awareness of its existence and making it accessible to the relevant stakeholders; and what polices and guidelines already exist which can be developed and disseminated more widely. This document provides some interim results. More…

The assessment concentrates on transport, and includes a literature review, interviews with key informants in the World Bank, DFID and other organisations working in the sector, and stakeholder workshops in the UK, Peru and Zimbabwe. The results of these activities (which are described in this report) will be supplemented by an electronic questionnaire to a broad group of stakeholders, an e-conference based on information posted on a project web-site, and follow-up dialogue with key staff in DFID and the World Bank. More…

Existing information and information systems

The literature review found that there is virtually no literature specifically about the demand for information on transport issues in rural areas in developing countries, although there is much tacit knowledge and a substantial volume of knowledge about transport needs and much detailed case-study information is available in the literature or on web sites. There is a general assumption about the demand for and value of information for policy makers and practitioners, and information is recognised as vital for learning about the impact of development interventions in general. Many organisations in the sector have information strategies based on this assumed demand, rather than measured actual demand, and there is much information about methodologies for developing and delivering different sorts of information to different kinds of user, and much factual information about transport infrastructure and constraints, although much of this describes very specific local situations. More…

DFID and the World Bank are both producers and disseminators of substantial volumes of information about transport and rural infrastructure, though their internal learning mechanisms and external information strategies are very different. The World Bank promotes itself both as a neutral gateway for knowledge while at the same time promoting itself as a primary producer of development knowledge. The focus of the Bank’s communication strategy is to push its branded information out to different parts of the bank, as well as to client communities mainly through electronic media. Knowledge processes within DFID’s Infrastructure and Urban Development Division on the other hand are contracted out to wide range of internal and external partners, largely under DFID’s knowledge and research programme (KaR). DFID’s information strategy for transport, and other rural infrastructure services, has grown organically, alongside and largely within the research programme, and has focused on printed materials. Over the last 18 months, IUDD's Communications and Information Management Resource Centre has been developing a strategy, and a range of ‘Communications Guidance Notes’ that identify and promote best practice, to promote greater coherence, particularly for making information available on the internet. More…

There are an increasing number of initiatives which recognise the important role of making information more accessible although most professionals involved in the study described a growing mismatch between their ongoing – and changing – demands for information to do their jobs effectively, and the information supply. For most of them, this was the first time that they had been asked to think strategically about the role of information in pursuing their development objectives, and they helped identify a wide range of issues of concern including: out of date mailing lists, limited information in languages other then English, low awareness of the information that is available few incentives for staff to produce information, under use of existing information services, poor coordination, inconsistent behaviour of professionals who admit not reading, but still generate long reports; very traditional communication outputs; and little assessment of the impact of information. More…

What’s unique about transport?

Although transport budgets are large, relatively few professionals work in the transport sector, they are fragmented, and there are few effective intermediaries who can pass on information in appropriate formats for end users. Other sectors (eg water and energy) seem to have developed better systems over the last few years, possibly because it has been easier for them to demonstrate impact on poverty. More…

What information do people need?

The study looked at the information seeking patterns of a range of stakeholders, through the three workshops, and through the secondary information from information brokers. There is a difference between expressed demand, and latent demand for information. The former is what information people are actually saying they want and need to carry out their professional jobs effectively, and the latter is the information that they don’t yet know that they need to perform effectively. The study found that the formal systems that are in place within organisations to make information ‘user-driven’ are generally meeting expressed demand (or the organisation’s estimate of what it might be), rather than latent demand. Although some of the assumptions made by information providers about information needs are correct, they focus on technical information whereas in other sectors (eg energy) there is an increasing demand for information on the more social aspects. It is difficult to assess where the real demand for information is, since information providers tend to describe the demand coming from their existing audiences, and DFID KaR researchers, who describe the primary users of their information as design engineers and planners, tend to be expressing personal opinions rather than the results of empirical studies. More…

Users want to know what kind of information is being presented to them, what it will enable them to do, and what other information is available. They are particularly interested in information relevant to their local situation that ‘reflects their reality’. Information from other contexts needs to be ‘localised’ to be of any use. Workshop participants expressed frustration over content that is: not gender disaggregated; lacks local content; contains the wrong level of detail for their purpose; is out of date; is filtered at source rather than allowing them to decide whether it is useful or not; and the absolute lack of information on water transport, traffic, and micro-level costs. More…

Since the electronic surveys have not yet been implemented, our understanding of how stakeholders use information on transport and rural infrastructure is largely based on the literature. David Webber’s Seven Meanings of Use describes seven different ways that policy makers use social science information: to acquire new knowledge, to solve problems, to build on existing knowledge, to justify political positions, to delay action (by asking for more information), to triangulate with other information and to satisfy their intellectual ambitions. Marketing literature suggests that people are interested in products (or information) that is immediately useful, is packaged interestingly, and stimulates interactive thought. The Rockefeller Foundation’s work on Communication for Social Change (CFSC) project concludes that if external agents wish to contribute to the process of communication and social change at local level, they need to engage in dialogue and discussion with members of the community rather than simply deliver information. More…

Information availability and usefulness

The way users access information seems to depend on: existing knowledge about the sources of information, existing levels of information technology, the filters that they consider important, and the type of information they require, and these vary significantly between geographical regions and language groups, and between different users (e.g. technical practitioners, researchers, policy makers). Participants in the workshops obtained information from a very range of sources, but described how they filter out what they think will be useful based on what they know, or can divine about the source - its credibility and reliability, how up to date it is, how much effort it took to obtain, the language and the potential for interaction with the source. More…

The workshops also shed some light on the ways that different groups access information within a region, and between regions. For example, technical practitioners in Peru found the internet and CD-ROMs the most useful, whereas the same group in sub-Saharan Africa preferred newsletters, workshops and seminars, while those in the UK tended to prefer direct contact with colleagues and fellow-professionals. Government institutions and policy makers worldwide valued World Bank literature, but in Zimbabwe preferred printed versions, though it is often not available, and in Peru, internet versions, though much is not in Spanish. Researchers value a wide range of information, though often find it difficult to get hold of for the same reasons. All groups preferred to read documents on paper than on screen, though the cost of printing is an issue for groups with scarce resources, especially government policy makers and planners at the end of the year. Community groups and poor households were not represented at the workshops, but previous studies show that social networks that already exist in the community are the main source of information for the poor, along with information brokers that put in place mechanisms to deliver information and communicate with marginalized groups e.g. NGOs working with farmers. More…

The influence of providers and brokers

International information providers (e.g. World Bank, DFID) are increasingly concentrating on the internet as a means of making information available though internet access is very uneven across the continents, as well as within a country. Information providers tend to create their own places to locate information rather than build on what already exists and this produces duplication and confusion on the part of users, and is unsustainable. In the commercial world, ‘takeovers’ and ‘mergers’ build on and strengthen existing products and information without duplication. This could be mimicked for information centres. There is some brokering of information though networks and communities of practice, and through networking events, though it appears that this is biased by users, who tend to associate particular providers with particular kinds of information, and by providers who assume they know what their audience want. More…

The way in which information is generated and presented, as well as its content influences how usable or useful it is for a particular user. Participants in the workshop in Peru felt the available information not only favoured African experience, and was rarely translated into Spanish, but also provided generalised conclusions in a way which made it difficult to relate to their own situation. They needed more information about the African context so that they could filter the conclusions through their own screens of knowledge and expertise to decide if it might be useful for them also. More…

Conclusions and recommendations for TRISP

Interim conclusions and recommendations focus on:

• Increasing demand for information – through knowledge demand assessments and information components in all transport and rural services projects, awareness campaigns, improved linkages between professional staff, potential users of information, information producers, and systems to assess information user satisfaction.
• Increasing availability of useful information – through better sharing of information among existing information providers (e.g. WIN, SUSTRAN, PIARC, IFRTD and ILO-ASSIST), improved user needs assessment, specialisation of information providers, improved resources, staff development and training in communication skills and wider translation of existing material.
• Packaging information to be appropriate to different users – through user satisfaction systems, creating the right balance between electronic and printed media, and encouraging organisations and information provides involved in transport and rural service issues to link their work to other sectors & issues.
• Increasing impact of information – through making information more widely available, involving users and policy makers in generating and sharing the information, and improved marketing.
• Marketing information more strategically to priority users – through a specialised Search Engine on the internet for information on transport, the establishment of outlets for hard copies near to users, promotion through appropriate networks, incorporation of information into other DFID publications, encouraging information providers to adopt clear ‘acquisitions and deletions policies’, and improved internal mechanisms to keep staff informed about what material is available.
• Improving organisational learning and sharing systems – through interactive programmes involving professionals, users and communicators, advisory groups, improved internal knowledge and learning systems in organisations involved in this sector, with appropriate incentives for staff.

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Next steps

Further activities over the next few weeks to complete this Knowledge Demand Assessment will include an e-mail questionnaire to transport and rural service specialists to collect empirical information about what information they need and how they use it; an e-discussion among transport and rural service specialists and mini-workshops will be held at DFID and the World Bank. More…