Every society is an information society. Some societies have and use information well- they tend to thrive; others have and use little information - they survive. Businesses thrive and survive on the information they have about best practices, technology, markets, customers, regulations, costs, stock and the like. Today, most of the information needed to make businesses work better is in written form. Unfortunately, at the very least, half of the world’s workers cannot access this information - they can barely read and write; they are functionally or totally illiterate.

Governments and international institutions have put a lot of effort and money into programmes for digital inclusion. They teach people, young and old, to use computers hoping this will help them become part of the Information Society, hoping this will make it easier for them to compete in the global information-driven economy. This works well for some people; they find it easier to get better jobs and improve their economic and social standing.

Nevertheless, those that most desperately need help cannot get it from computers, cannot get it from digital inclusion programmes. These programmes only include the easily includable - those that already find it easy to read, write and learn. The rest, at the very best, will learn to play games or send simple, ‘Hi Mom’, emails.

Today, you must be able to read and write to make good use of computers - but it does not have to be that way and the ICT sector, governments and international organisations and institutions - including CITEL -can help!

Digital inclusion programmes are supposed to drive economic and social inclusion, to create jobs - or at least help people participate fully in the information society and the global economy. In fact, they do a poor job. Micro, small and medium enterprises create the great majority of jobs worldwide, including in Latin America, but few of these businesses use information and communication technology (ICT) for much more than a phone call and there are almost no inclusion programmes aimed at helping businesses use information and communication technology (ICT).

There are two main reasons why small businesses make little if any use of ICT and cost is not one of them. Even the smallest businesses manage to pay for the equipment they need to make their business run and generate a return - return on investment, not cost, is the problem. Unfortunately, ICTs do not generate a reasonable return on investment for most microenterprises. First, we have few applications that a microenterprise can use effectively and, second, most people who work for microenterprises, especially in developing regions, are either totally or functionally illiterate.

Functionally illiterate people can read and write, but so poorly, they cannot absorb useful amounts of information from a text - certainly not enough to become ‘digitally included’.

A Wikipedia article on functional illiteracy, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_illiteracy, gives a brief picture and presents some of the shockingly high statistics on functional illiteracy in the US, and the UK. Statistics for the EU are similar. The numbers, depending upon the definition of functional illiteracy adopted, can reach as high as 40 per cent in even the most developed regions of the world. In Latin America and in other developing regions the percentages are much higher.

One of the most important technologies of the Information Society - reading and writing - is five thousand years old. Despite its long spectacularly successful history - today’s civilisation would be impossible without it - much more than half the world’s people still cannot read or write adequately. The great success of the written word hides its great failure.

In a great many cases, it is not even a question of schooling. In the most advanced countries of the world, where schooling is almost universal, let’s use the UK as an example - see the Wikipedia article referred to above - in the UK almost 100 thousand students that are functionally illiterate graduate each year. Unfortunately, the UK is by far one of the better countries in this respect; most are considerably worse. There are scores of reasons for functional illiteracy and schools cannot deal with a great many of them; as often as not, it is not just a matter of better teaching.

If we want to promote social and economic inclusion, we need to offer this enormous mass of workers digital devices and applications they need and can use. Only then will we achieve the hoped for economic and social impact. This is a killer app - and a lifesaver app at the same time.

We need to give small companies the ICT tools they need - tools that improve productivity and provide a good return on their investment if we are ever to achieve digital, economic and social inclusion. Instead of trying to make an old technology do something it has not been able to achieve in five thousand years, we need to use new technology - ICT - with graphics, sound, audio visual and new applications designed to meet the needs of functionally illiterate workers.

Imagine the impact of mobile phone systems and applications that eliminate the written word and use voice, graphics and video to handle the tasks the small (micro) businesses where most of the functionally illiterate population works.

There is no education better than real-time on-the-job training. To be productive, even university graduates must learn on the job. If a worker can access a manual built upon symbols and photos, get video instructions for any task or procedure, get real-time spoken or visual diagnostics to handle difficult repairs, verbally handle accounting or get sound business advice and help for hundreds of common business and practical problems - all on their mobile phones - their productivity, their earnings and social inclusion all grow.

Multiply this by hundreds, thousands or millions of workers and local, national and regional economies grow. This creates jobs and economic inclusion. Workers that earn enough can let their children go to school and get a better start in life. This is social inclusion. This is digital inclusion.

We have the technology - we can replace the written word with voice, video and images for the vast majority of business systems. I call this Talking Business! It will not be simple and it will not be cheap, but it is highly doable and the returns will far outweigh the costs. Talking Business! can provide true digital inclusion. It can make otherwise unemployable people employable, it can boost productivity and efficiency of almost any business.

To get to the point where we can truly ‘talk business’, conduct business verbally or graphically, we will need international support from the ICT sector, international organisations and governments. CITEL cannot fund a project such as this, but its official support - should it decide to give it - could be an important factor in getting large corporations to organise to meet the challenge.

Bill Gates defines ‘strategic corporate philanthropy’ as being, “Where social needs overlap with both corporate  expertise and business interests...”. Talking Business! meets that definition perfectly. It serves profound social needs and, of vital importance, since it serves a currently un-served market that includes more than half the world’s workers it provides ample incentives to invest in and develop the equipment and applications that meet their needs. Traditional operating companies and other telecommunications service providers could provide the service within a wide variety of business models.

Today, we have the technology we need for a good start, if not yet for a great finish. We have voice, voice recognition and response, graphics, video, augmented reality (aviation ‘heads-up’ displays, for example), databases and knowledge bases, netbooks, smartphones, wireless broadband and much more - and everything gets cheaper, smarter and better every day. Cloud computing offers a hassle-free infrastructure to reliably, simply and economically deliver the applications and content to users’ mobile handsets. Cloud computing hides the true complexity of the supporting systems, infrastructure and applications from the user.

We do not have:

·         A sector-wide vision regarding the best way to make the world’s vast stores of information usefully available to those that cannot absorb meaningful amounts of information from the written word;

·         Standard audio, video and graphic interfaces to make this information available;

·         Applications and the special content that meet the needs of the world’s small businesses and of the people that work in them

Given the rapid changes in technology, products, methodology and processes we need applications and content available on handheld wireless devices to:

·         help people learn by doing, coaching them step-by-step using video and spoken  content

·         help them diagnose and solve day-to-day work problems

·         provide services including, for example,  full-scale

Workers cannot be expected to spend years learning how to do something they need to do today, so the systems must be self-teaching. First-time users must be guided visually and verbally through the necessary procedures step-by step until, over time, they become accustomed to the required tasks and can perform them unassisted. On-the-job training, learn-by-doing, is still the most effective schooling that exists, and this, plus hope, is what Talking Business! can provide.

Nevertheless, there are some very real problems. First, there are no business applications or content today not based upon the written word. In addition, there are no applications and content especially designed to meet the needs of the functionally illiterate micro-enterprise worker. Worse, we do not even know what they, and the small businesses they work at, really need to be more productive! This is an area where partnerships between businesses and academia, with universities the world over, might be uncommonly productive.

Next, there is no ICT/social ‘ecosystem’ to support the development of such an ambitious and, yes, costly, programme. I have spoken with many people in many companies, governments and organisations concerning the need for such a programme. Most agree, but no one does anything. In truth, no one can do anything - that is, no one can do anything alone.

Yes, there are problems, but this can be good, incredibly good, business. It is a new market, made up (as a start) of more than half the world’s workers - workers who now use little if any, except voice, ICT products or services. It can be a win/win proposition for the sector - manufacturers, software, applications and content developers, service providers, operators suffering from bit-pipe disease - and for society as a whole.

The good news is that big companies - not to mention the uneducated, the disabled and the rest of us - will also find the hardware, the interfaces the methods - and even many of the applications we develop for small companies - to be truly useful, very cost-effective and highly productive tools.

Archimedes said, “Give me a place to stand and a lever long enough and I will move the world”. The problem with developing a programme and the tools, for true digital inclusion is the lack of a place to stand - a base, a platform. Alone no one person, no one company, no one country or organisation has the resources to develop everything needed to effectively resolve the problem. There is no business model that will survive without a broad base of support, without a true industry-wide technological base, without a wide reaching set of accepted standards and without ample support from governments and international institutions.

I strongly believe there is a need for a broad-based organisation dedicated to creating a viable ‘talking’ business ecosystem; let’s say a Talking Business Forum. It should be comprised of thought leaders, ICT sector players (manufacturers -chips, data centres, network equipment, etc., software and application developers, content providers, service providers, telcos – fixed and wireless) governments, universities and international institutions. Anyone that can contribute to the vision is welcome.

It will be a battle to move ahead, to get a critical mass of companies and institutions to sign on to the vision and create an official working organisation to develop the standards and tools for real digital inclusion, but the battle matters; it can be won.

Fredric Morris
Editor-in-Chief
Connect-World & Managing Partner, MBW Consultores Associados