The Principles for Digital Development
One of the interesting courses I took in grad school provided an overview of digital technologies for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR). The term project was to craft a tech fix that fits into a DRR strategy. My first steps included defining a problem, identifying and questioning my biases and assumptions, and tackling the roadblocks to completing a perfect project. Two progress reports in, I realized I was missing something. My project was neither realistic nor practical.
As providence would have it, I chanced upon a video by Wayan Vota, a digital development expert I follow on Twitter. In the video, he provided a cursory look at the Principles for Digital Development, which is essentially a framework for tech fixes. This was the missing link in my term project. In this post, I briefly describe each of the nine principles and their importance.
1. Design with the User
Proffered solutions should be user-centered and developed in consultation with those concerned. A good framework to utilize with this principle is Design Thinking, a human-centered approach to problem solving. Designing with the user ensures that developers questions their assumptions before deploying solutions.
2. Understand the Existing Ecosystem
Solutions that fail to appreciate the complexities of a target ecosystem run the risk of big-time failure. Bolstering the first principle, understanding the ecosystem is useful in defining and scoping the problem for which a solution is to be designed. Without a thorough understanding, the proposed solution can be all but effective, appropriate, and useful.
3. Design for Scale
Digital technologies innately enable the economies of scale, scope, and speed. In addition to achieving these, solution developers should consider wider societal adoption and sustainable funding mechanisms for solutions.
4. Build for Sustainability
A very important concept, sustainability should be at the heart of every developmental pursuit. Projects which are not sustainable will in the long run potentially cause more harm than good. Collaborating with local communities and ensuring a sense of ownership, utilizing locally sourced materials and expertise, and making decisions for the medium to long-term are all ways of ensuring sustainability of development solutions.
5. Be Data Driven
Data is the new oil and it runs the modern digital economic engine. Using digital technologies to generate data which in turn informs decisions is an ascendancy of the digital era. Coupled with machine learning techniques, data can reveal unexplored patterns, models, and options.
6. Use Open Standards, Open Data, Open Source, and Open Innovation
Collaboration should be encouraged in all projects to encourage synergy, reduce redundancy, and drive up efficiency. The Open movement facilitates this in a unique way, bringing people together to work on projects that transcend global, political, and even economic barriers.
7. Reuse and Improve
Working together with stakeholders in the development field, developers should seek to make improvements to existing solutions. Since there is no need to re-invent the wheel, methods that have proven effective should be reused. This principle encourages research; before embarking on a problem-solving journey, it is useful to ascertain the available methods and solutions in the vast digital ecosystem.
8. Address Privacy & Security
As the oil that runs our economy, data is valuable and subject to breaches, theft, and abuse. It behooves developers to map out the flow of data, identifying who will have access, where the data will be stored and shared, and how the “owner” can make changes as and when they demand.
9. Be collaborative
Sharing strategies and useful information within and among different stakeholders will lead to a resilient ecosystem, since the weakest link will be as strong as the strongest. In the development field, this will lead to higher impact in target communities and better living conditions as a result.
I imagine that these principles would be useful for not just the digital development ecosystem, but also for all stakeholders in this digital age. In planning digital products, services, and experiences, it is important that we consider these principles to provide high-quality sustainable and effective outcomes.
Notes
Read about the Principles for Digital Development here: https://digitalprinciples.org/about/