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Melvin KING 1 & Laxmi RAMASUBRAMANIAN 2
1 Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and The Technology Center at Tent City,
Boston, MA 02116, USA. E-mail: mhking@mit.edu
2 Department of Geography, The University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee,
Milwaukee, WI 53201, USA. E-mail: laxmi@uwm.edu
ABSTRACT
The dominant discourse about information technology (IT) diffusion is surrounded by diverse and sometimes contentious debates regarding their capacity to ameliorate social and economic inequities. As academic debate continues, IT adoption and use by grassroots groups has increased rapidly in the last five years. Cyber-utopians are quick to point to IT adoption by non-technical users and community-based groups as an indicator of community empowerment. However, the linkages between IT adoption and use by advocacy groups and the overall development and empowerment of the communities they serve, remain tenuous. In this context, the authors use data from case studies of Boston-based community-based organizations (CBOs) to describe how advocacy organizations use information technologies. We argue that one of the most significant contributions of information technologies lies in their ability to assist community-based organizations in re-framing problems in order to influence local and national policy decisions. The paper concludes that community-based organizations with the capacity to harness the benefits of information technologies (while transcending both organizational and technical barriers) are likely to better advocates for their communities.
One of the more troubling impacts of the information technology revolution has been a steadily growing digital divide separating the "information rich" from the "information poor" (Wresch, 1996; Benton Foundation, 1998). In the United States and other developed countries, the digital divide now mirrors and exacerbates existing divisions such as those that are based on race, gender, age, and income (NTIA, 1999). These wide disparities challenge and limit cyber-utopian visions of individual empowerment created and sustained by information technologies.
In the United States, community-based organizations (CBOs) are engaged in a range of activities - they deliver services, advocate on behalf of individuals and groups, run educational programs, and develop affordable housing or economic development initiatives. Historical evidence suggests that many CBOs operating under relatively "powerless" circumstances have been able to influence, challenge, re-shape, or counter-act policies and programs developed by dominant economic and political interests (e.g. King, 1981; Peirce & Steinbach, 1987; Medoff & Sklar, 1994).
CBOs and community development corporations (CDCs) usually emerge to address social, physical, economic, or political issues that are not being addressed by the private or the government sector. Community-based organizing, resident involvement and/or strident activism precede their creation and evolution. While most of these organizations begin as single-issue organizations, they often expand as they evolve to include sustainable community development (Peirce and Steinbach, 1987). The continued existence of CBOs within a community often speaks to the existence of problems or unresolved issues in that community. At the same time, we must be aware that CBOs evolve over time moving from being service organizations to becoming community-controlled institutions (King, 1981).
In the last decade, many CBOs have invested considerable resources in information technologies in an effort to become more effective advocates for their constituencies (Ramasubramanian, 1995; Sawicki & Craig, 1996; Sieber, 1997). IT-based community development initiatives are now used to address a wide range of social problems in many "distressed" communities (Mitchell, 1997; Shaw & Shaw, 1999; HUD, 1997; HUD, 1998). Governmental and private funding has been crucial in the development of IT-based solutions (Sparrow and Vedantham, 1995). In this paper, we consider how CBOs actually use information technologies to achieve their objectives and resultant impacts.
Data and information have influenced decision making and planning long before the first computer-based information systems emerged. It is anticipated that technology's influence of decision-making in CBOs is closely related to the extent to which data and information influenced decision-making in CBOs. Data is raw material produced by observation or measurement. Information is data that is processed in order to serve a particular purpose (Geiss & Viswanathan, 1986). Data and information use among community-based organizations can be classified in a simple typology: i) community advocacy/organizing; ii) planning; and iii) marketing. This typology is not dissimilar to the one developed by Craig and Elwood (1998).
Decision making, in its idealized state, involves: the diagnosis of problems and the articulation of goals and objectives; the analysis of the environment to identify relevant resources; the design of alternative strategies, or courses of action; a projection of the likely outcomes of these alternatives; and their evaluation in the light of goal-related criteria. The process results in a choice that is realized through action by which the selected alternative is implemented (Alexander, 1992).
It is almost impossible to present a comprehensive definition of community-based decision making without falling into definitional traps. In addition, the wide range and scope of community-based organizations (CBOs) precludes the articulation of an inclusive definition. Therefore, using Alexander's definition as a reference point, we argue that understanding the role of information technologies in defining problems, determining lines of action, and developing policies and programs (three aspects of an idealized decision-making process), will facilitate an assessment of the potential of IT to serve as a decision-support system.
Most communities experience problems first hand, long before planners or other decision-makers living outside the community formally define those experiences as problems. These problems are more likely to be tangible problems associated with their physical and social environment (see Medoff and Sklar, 1994). CBOs provide residents living in vulnerable physical and social environments with a first line of defence by providing a physical and an organizational environment that is designed and equipped to address their concerns. CBOs are a part of the community they serve. Typically, the heightened awareness that exists within the organization and its staff (who usually reside in the neighborhood) regarding the issues affecting their neighborhood and community often precludes the use of IT in identifying problems.
However, our research found that IT was invaluable in re-defining or re-framing problems. Framing problems have a powerful impact on the solutions that are proposed. Schön and Rein (1994; xii) propose that institutional action frames are "beliefs, values, and perspectives held by particular institutions and interest groups from which particular policy positions are derived." The concept of re-framing problems is better understood if one considers the politics and policies of urban renewal.
During the urban renewal phase of US City planning, architects and planners often framed the need for redevelopment or renewal in the context of poor housing quality. They also argued for the need to create large-scale industrial development projects in the context of spurring economic development. However, the proposed economic development ventures did not account for the destruction of a number of viable small business enterprises in the area. Mel King, a long time resident of the South End, describing the same events observes "labelling those streets as slums depersonalized the issue, and blocked out any understanding of the impact urban renewal would have on the lives of the people, like my family and friends, living there" (King, 1981; 21).
Key decision-makers including engineers, and urban planners perceived the South End neighborhood to be in a state of urban blight, primarily because of over-crowding, lack of open space, out-moded street patterns and decaying buildings. At the same time, community residents, social activists, and sociologists perceived the South End as a vibrant multi-cultural, multi-ethnic community with strong informal social networks that offered the inhabitants a sense of belonging. These different ways of looking at the "problematic situation" determined the strategies that each group developed to address the problem and the policies that were proposed and implemented to solve the problem.
Moving from the 1960s to the 1990s, we now consider a situation that confronted the South End Community Organization (SECO), a service and advocacy organization based in the South End.
In the early 1990s, SECO became aware of large-scale economic development ventures proposed by the City of Boston and the State of Massachusetts to develop a Bio-tech hub in the South End neighborhood. SECO decided to conduct its own research on the specific issue of economic development in the South End and the larger issue of the promise of biotechnology because of the absence of reliable information.
SECO and other CBOs in the South End challenged the developers' proposals on the ground that the costs of these projects far outweighed any possible benefits that could have resulted. SECO's analyses demonstrated that the promise of jobs would not directly or indirectly help the communities in which the projects would have been sited because of the nature of bio-tech production processes. SECO successfully argued that the production and manufacturing jobs that would have traditionally used low skilled workers were more likely to shift to the Third World or other areas of the country that offered cheaper land and labor and other economic incentives, thereby greatly minimizing the community-wide benefits that were likely to result because of new job creation.
The research and analyses were so compelling that it empowered SECO and other CBOs in their negotiations with the city and the project's developers. SECO obtained tangible community benefits in return for approving zoning variances to facilitate institutional and commercial developments related to the development of several scaled-down bio-tech initiatives in the South End.
The question that begs to be asked is this, Could SECO's research have been conducted without information technologies?" Although we concede that it would have been possible, we suggest that it would have been practically impossible to accomplish the outcomes within the time frame at which the research was required for negotiations.
SECO's chief decision-maker argues that research and analysis is not (and should not be considered) an unusual endeavor for community groups. He points out that community groups have become more self-reliant, developing techniques to match the times. At the present time, grassroots groups, supported with information technologies, can develop sophisticated arguments using data from a variety of sources, something that was not possible three or four decades ago. Some of the benefits of IT are discussed below.
The use of information technologies optimized their time and resource management. In many interviews with decision-makers, "efficiency" was cited as a significant benefit. The contribution of information technologies was discussed at two levels -- to mean the speeding up of routine tasks or activities (for example internet-based research); and, its positive effects on the quality of the processes and/ or the outcomes (GIS analyses or plan documents, maps for community-based planning).
IT offered simple ways to communicate complex concepts to community groups through maps or other visual presentation techniques. The added value of IT was associated with the real time modifications that were possible to demonstrate "what if" scenarios and trends. They also allowed community residents to create and nurture a "community memory" of historical and current events considered significant to the development of the community. Community email networks were successful among some CBOs.
Typically, CBOs did not trust data and arguments solely based on the data provided by government or private sector sources, particularly when those analyses did not correspond to their perceptions and assessments of their community. In these instances, information technologies allowed CBOs to conduct their own research, identify the underlying constructs, assumptions, and data models that supported these arguments. At the same time, outsiders (like city agencies) relied on the use of data generated by information technologies as a measure of the seriousness or the trustworthiness of some claims made by CBOs.
Some CBO directors and community leaders observed that information technologies provided them with additional support in their negotiations with developers or representatives from other city agencies. According to them, some city planners and developers did not provide many design options while planning public/community spaces. When their design concepts were presented for review during community meetings or public forums, they were usually reluctant to modify their original concepts.
Over a period of time, certain individuals and organizations developed the ability to harness the power of information technologies and also transcend their shortcomings. The authors argue that a common theme, defined and described as empowerment, links the individuals and organizations that demonstrated this capacity. Empowerment is defined as the process and outcome of critical reflective practice. Empowering instances, moments, and/or outcomes emerge when community organizations comprehend the interconnected triad of psychological, social and political power as they negotiate the dialectic continuum between action (activism) and reflection (research and analysis). This linkage of action and reflection, i.e. praxis, (Freire, 1989) integrated with the concepts of power and radical practice (Friedmann, 1987, 1992), is referred to as critical reflective practice.
Empowerment is not a fixed resource, rather it is a process that constantly evolves and changes. For example, an individual who is able to examine his or her actions and reflect upon them while taking into account the larger social and political context in one instant or situation may be unable or unwilling to engage in a similar process in another context for a variety of reasons. Therefore, the same individual or organization can act in an empowered manner in one situation while appearing disempowered in another. Finally, empowerment is not an end in itself (or a static state to be attained by the creation of certain favorable conditions) but a guiding principle that should form the basis of problem solving and decision-making throughout the life of an individual or organization.
Interpreting research data, the authors argue that empowerment, defined as the process and outcome of critical reflective practice, facilitates an organization's advocacy agenda. Information technologies can directly and indirectly facilitate critical reflective practice because of the various benefits they offer.
Using a metaphor of a story, we argue that there are many ways of telling a story. Each story offers a different view of reality and "represents a special way of seeing" (Schön & Rein, 1994; 26). Each story selects and names different features and relationships that become the "things" in the story which are woven together to create a compelling tale. Each story uses the features it has selected in a particular context, for example in the case of urban housing controversies discussed in earlier sections of the paper, as the removal of urban blight or as the dissolution of naturally occurring, thriving communities. If we substitute the word "data" for "things", then we can begin to observe how community-based organizations selectively use data and information to better support the normative action frames embedded in their policy arguments. Reframing requires the support of ancillary evidence that in turn depends of data and analyses. In the 1990s, such data collection, analysis and display are reliant on, supported by, and enriched because of information technologies.
What is so unique about information technologies? We propose that their most unique contribution, hence their comparative advantage over conventional means of research and analysis, rests in their capabilities that allow CBOs to link formal, technical, data and empirical evidence with the every day life experiences and concerns of citizens in a tangible manner, thereby supporting participatory research and organizational learning, embedding the ideas of reflection in practice firmly within the mission and activities of the organization.
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