Project Proposal Draft

A Holistic Proposal for Long Term, Sustainable Health Care and Disaster Preparedness Knowledge and Information Delivery in Southern India.

This proposal calls for the delivery and development of over 100 healthcare information and training centers in and around Madurai in the state of Tamil Nadu, India. The goal is to improve training of health care professionals and make health and disaster preparedness information more accessible for both practitioners and the general public. The WiderNet Project will work with in-country partners to install 100 or more eGranary Digital Library Labs with tailored health curriculum and reference material. The WiderNet Project will also provide refurbished computer workstations and networking equipment for each center, along with training in the installation, maintenance and use of the hardware, software, and digital training resources.

Needs Assessment

The Internet and the World Wide Web have, in a few short years, established themselves among the world’s premier intellectual resources, hosting billions of pages of information and providing unparalleled communication and collaboration opportunities to on-line academics. With their enormous resources and collaborative capacities, these technologies offer a historically unique opportunity for scholars and practitioners in developing countries to gain a more equal footing with their counterparts in technologically advanced countries.

In southern India, this technology is a privilege of the wealthy. After the 2004 tsunami that took nearly 60,000 lives in India (CNN 2004), many communities were toppled from the inside out. Many are still rebuilding. According to the National Sample Survey, 22 percent of the population is living below the poverty line. Though this reflects a decrease from 36 percent from twelve years ago, there are sizable regional disparities in per capita income and poverty levels. The number of poor in the region accounts for more than 900 million. It has been estimated that 80 percent of their income goes to buying food, making resources like bandwidth and computers an unaffordable luxury. These resources are inhibitively expensive in the first place.

Despite Herculean efforts on the part of many advocates, there remains a serious and persistent lack of access to free digital information resources in developing countries. Today only a tiny fraction of scholars, educators, and health care practitioners in developing countries have access to computers and - for most - Internet connectivity is either non-existent or woefully inadequate and unreliable. Worldwide, only 17 out of 10000 people have Internet access, according to World Bank 2005 reports. In southern India, only one in 10 have even heard of the Internet, according to Dr. V. Arunachalam, professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

There are a host of ambitious projects that aim to serve the information poor by creating portals to free and subsidized digital knowledge. In the Tamil Nadu region, these efforts are already being made to increase technology literacy. One drawback of current efforts is they offer free resources via the Internet on a “come and get it” basis, but what most people lack is any kind of Internet access, making the free resources unattainable to the majority of the population. At current rates, most educational institutions in developing countries are years -- if not decades -- away from full, reliable Internet connectivity.

Many experts have discovered that simply laying down Internet connections is an inefficient approach to bridging the digital gap. The high cost and lack of users' knowledge about integrating the technology into their lives result in very little return to the people from this so-called investment. Moreover, it remains essential for their administrators, planners, advocates, and partners to recognize the complex material and human infrastructure that needs to be established before the so-called “digital divide” will be bridged.

Proposed Project

WiderNet seeks to offer open access to healthcare and disaster preparedness knowledge through well-designed technology that offers readily accessible and quality information.

Global Partnerships

Together with Meenakshi Hospital in Tamil Nadu, we will tailor the eGranary search engine as necessary and augment its extensive Digital Library collection with content resources to facilitate education, teach technology literacy and bolster human capacity among end-users.

Establishing the Infrastructures

Our eGranary Digital Library -- "The Internet in a Box" -- provides a new, proven, and viable method for overcoming a host of infrastructural barriers and delivering open educational resources to scholars and practitioners. We seek to deliver eGranaries to interested institutions and demonstrate how these millions of high-quality digital documents can be made available for educational purposes - all without prohibitive cost implications and frustrating technical and administrative delays to the end-users.

Delivering Disaster Relief Content

The public health content will include a Web interface with resources for disaster preparedness and relief to be used by health professionals, students, and public service experts. Given the devastating blow of the 2004 tsunami in this region, such a resource is highly sought. For a list of organizations that have confirmed interest in partnering on this endeavor, click here. 

Training

We will focus on one extensive delivery model where we collaborate with the Meenakshi Hospital to train subscriber staff, technicians and librarians in capacity-building workshops, curricula, and promotional materials aimed at accelerating the adoption of these digital open education resources. We will also create tools to simplify content discovery and curriculum creation via the eGranary. For more information on our training programs, click here.

Project Details

With a three-year comprehensive schedule, our goal is to develop, deliver, disseminate  health training and disaster preparedness technology through means of installation, maintenance and training: 

Initial Installation

In year one, we will deliver a cargo container of 100 eGranary servers, 1500 workstation computers, 100 appliance servers, 100 kits of networking hubs, network cables and accessories, plus a batch of printers, spare parts, and thousands of donated printed medical journals, books and magazines. All of this will create 100 individual health care training labs in and around Madurai, each with a server, six client work stations and the networking equipment needed to operate them, and an eGranary Digital Library, stocked with health care and disaster preparedness content.  Each server will be high capacity to allow for additions to the eGranary in future years. 

Maintenance and System Updates

Participating institutions will be expected to provide space, power, and protection for the equipment as well as sending their staff to WiderNet trainings. Each eGranary recipient will pay between $200-500 starting in the second year. These funds will sustain content updates and support from the WiderNet Project and fund the salaries of field technicians in India to deliver updates, provide on-site training, and system maintenance.

On-going Training

We will work with the librarian society and library science department at Madras University to identify public health promotion and health training resources for the eGranary on an ongoing basis. 

In years one through three, WiderNet staff will travel to Tamil Nadu to conduct training sessions in the usage and maintenance of the eGranary Digital Libraries and computer systems in three two-day sessions. Here, staff will learn how to integrate the technology into their lives, as well as how to teach others in an ever-growing base of knowledgeable end-users.

Project Outcomes

At the project's completion, Tamil Nadu will have gained computer centers, each with an eGranary Digital Library and computers. More important is that we will have trained hundreds of technicians, librarians, and end users about system usage and maintenance. These new experts will obtain skills in technical literacy, as well as health care and disaster relief -- potentially improving the quality of life, especially for the more disadvantaged segments of society.

The project will have produced:

• 100 eGranary Digital Library Labs
• 1,500 networked computer workstations
• 8,000 donated books
• A public health disaster planning and management portal with over 200,000 resources available on each eGranary
• 5 full-time technicians and trainers in Tamil Nadu, supported by local subscriptions
• Two in-country visits from WiderNet Project staff each year
• Four weeks of on-site training by WiderNet Project staff each year
• Monthly training sessions for end-users by in-country technicians
• Over 200 trained librarians and technicians
• Several thousand trained library patrons

Assessment

To track and assess usage of the systems, there will be a complete evaluation system, consisting of the following four parts:

• The first section of the evaluation will be from the WiderNet staff, who will create reports from the digital logs of usage statistics in the computers.  These logs reflect which sites were visited and how often, as well as what additional sites were not available and should be added to the eGranary.
• Patronage of the computer centers will be monitored with sign-in books, administered by the lab technicians and librarians.
• External evaluation will be administered by a third party technical expert. This person will provide feedback and assessment of the program's efficacy. This person will most likely be from the Tamil Nadu region.
• Finally, computer center patrons will be able to offer voluntary feedback on the servers in the form of a questionnaire and a digital comment drop-box.

Examples of past feedback and assessment reports from other WiderNet projects can be viewed at www.widernet.org/reports.

Budget

The three-year integration plan will cost $444,738, paid for with grants, donations, and in-kind matches. This figure includes all costs - from shipping and installing hardware, to training, flights and staff salaries, both in the U.S. and in India.

Though hardware is a tangible expense, the majority of the budget – 47 percent – is investment in knowledgeable staff members who can train potentially hundreds of users for the 100 computer systems.

Eight personnel - five from The WiderNet Project and five from India - will bring decades of experience and training to the project. WiderNet Director Cliff Missen will oversee the entire process, offering technical, cultural and administrative consultation. The Office/Business Manager will oversee the finite details of global communication and logistics, including intensive coordination in the first two years, and then transitioning to a support role in the project’s third year.  Padmini Srinivasan, a professor in library and information science, who is also from the state of Tamil Nadu, will assist in consultations regarding technology issues and coordination of eGranary material.  Ed Miner, a University of Iowa librarian specializing in African, Asia, and Middle East collections, will assist in finding content appropriate for Tamil Nadu needs.  Three new field technicians in India will tend to technical updates and system maintenance, while spurring interest in the eGranary.  (Their salaries were determined after a cost of living and average wage analysis for the region.)  Two student assistants will offer eager assistance at a comparatively lower cost than hiring a professional. 

The project takes only a fraction of each person’s time, capitalizing on individuals’ skills at only a percentage of their full-time salaries. The Project Director will contribute 25 percent of his time in the first two years and 15 percent in the third year. The office manager will contribute a quarter of her time. Drs. Srinivasan will contribute 10 percent and Miner will contribute five percent.  The rest of the staff will work part time. 

Indirect costs (the overhead paid by the University of Iowa for space, utilities, insurance, and administration) comprise 23 percent of the budget, three-quarters of which will be met by The University of Iowa as a match.

Over the three-year timeframe, projected costs decrease annually as training and travel needs decrease.  Now, most of the staff is based in the United States because there is not yet a local business franchise in southern India.  Once this is established, the costs of communication, shipping, and personnel will decrease. The decreased need for staff over the three years reflects in the budget.

Making It Happen

Contributions to this three-year endeavor will be met by donors and subscribers in a truly collective effort to meet Tamil Nadu's IT and educational needs.

Already, about one-fourth of costs are met by commitments from various contributors. The University of Iowa has committed to over $500,000 in support and Dr. Sethuraman, the founder and director of the Meenakshi Mission Hospital and Research Centre in Madurai, has committed to purchase 100 eGranary Digital Library hard disks for $40,000.

Additionally, each subscriber institution (recipient of an eGranary Digital Library) will pay an annual fee of $200 as a continued commitment to sustain technical support staff in Tamil Nadu and the eGranary Digital Library content updates.

Remaining costs of $383,375 could possibly be met by such organizations as the Satyam Foundation in Hyderabad, Rotary International, Direct Relief International, the American Embassy and American Corners. 

Additional resources:

Visit the list of participants to see who in Tamil Nadu has shown interest in participating in this eGranary Digital Library program.

For descriptions of future additions to this and other eGranary projects, check out the Wireless Connectivity plan, as well as the Business Franchise Model.