The Dynamics of Technology for Social Change: Understanding the Factors that Influence Results

This book's primary objective is to help nonprofit organisations, foundations, social entrepreneurs, and governments understand how to successfully design, implement, and evaluate information and communication technology (ICT) projects in a complicated landscape. The author draws on his 20-plus years of first-hand operational and programmatic experience with managing information technology (IT) for social change in the philanthropic sector - including a dozen years working for George Soros and the Open Society Institute (OSI) developing both its internal technology function and its internet programme, which provided much of Eastern Europe's original internet connectivity and the earliest approaches using the internet for civic activism, independent media, and the development of civil societies. Distilling his experience into a series of principles and practical guidance for developing an effective IT strategy, the author explains institutional behaviour within and across sectors, and how it impacts the implementation objectives of any project.

A recurring theme throughout the book is that mission-based nonprofit organisations play a crucial role in facilitating social change through ICT. Nonprofits make the necessary translation of the varying metrics, currency, objectives, and language other sectors use. Unlike the private sector however, nonprofits are far more dependent on outside resources to meet critical needs, most notably their core capacity to operate. How these, and other dynamics, affect outcomes as well as strategies to effectively deal with these realities are explained.

Specifically, the first 2 chapters of The Dynamics of Technology for Social Change detail the structure and practices of the Soros Foundation's network and the Internet Program that managed much of the network's ICT for social change agenda in the 1990s. Chapter 3 details the internal dynamics and strategies used by an actual nonprofit implementing ICT for social benefit whose strategy the author managed before arriving at OSI. Chapters 4 through 9 explain the primary dynamics that influence the ICT for social change environment related to partnerships, capacity, and sustainability, and outline the strategies necessary for success. Chapters 10 and 11 introduce a technology and a process, respectively, into the ICT for social change equation and describe how the real-world dynamics of the environment influence them. The final section includes a large appendix of selected internet-related projects undertaken by Soros, regionally and locally, with non-governmental organisation (NGO) partners.