Research on Rural PC Kiosks (MSR India)

Research on Rural PC Kiosks

Technology for Emerging Markets, Microsoft Research India

Rural PC kiosks and telecenters are perhaps the most-discussed form of ICT4D, or “information and communication technology for development.” Rural kiosks are shared-access computer centers, run either as community centers or as businesses, which seek to deliver services to support socio-economic development of rural areas. Proponents of rural kiosks hope that these centers can be used to support health, banking, governance, agricultural, and other applications that contribute to development agendas.

Many entities are involved in the set up of rural kiosks – governments, academia, multilateral organizations, corporations, and non-profits, and all have channeled substantial investment into rural kiosk projects around the world. Despite the attention and the desire, long-term “sustainability” of rural kiosks remains an acknowledged challenge.

We believe there are systemic reasons why it is difficult to sustain development-oriented kiosks, though variations of kiosks can and do endure. A current distillation of our findings can be found in our Review of Research on Rural PC Kiosks. It is based on…

· Surveys of 300 kiosks, 1000 kiosk customers and non-customers

· In-depth interviews of 100 kiosk operators

· Conversations with 60 proponents, observers, agencies, and government officials

· Site visits to 200 kiosks spanning 20 kiosk agencies

· Intensive participant observation of 30 kiosks in operation

· Software-based logging of kiosks in 13 kiosks

· Reviews of relevant literature in social science, development, and technical journals

Publications

n Kuriyan, R., I .Ray, K. Toyama, Integrating Social Development and Financial Sustainability: The Challenges of Rural Kiosks in Kerala. Proc. 1st International Conference on ICT and Development, Berkeley, May 2006.

n Veeraraghavan, R., Singh, G., Toyama, K. and Menon, D. Kiosk Usage Measurement using a Software Logging Tool, Proc. IEEE/ACM Int’l Conf. on Information & Communication Technologies for Development, 2006.

n Rangaswamy, N., Social Entrepreneurship as Critical Agency: A study of Rural Internet kiosks. International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies (Berkeley, USA), May, 2006.

n Veeraraghavan, R., Singh, G., Pitti, B., Smith, G., Meyers, B and Toyama, K., Towards accurate measurement of computer usage in a rural kiosk. Third International Conference on Innovative applications of Information Technology for Developing World – Asian Applied Computing Conference, Nepal, December 2005.

n Toyama, K., Kiri, K., Menon, D., Pal, J., Sethi, S., Srinivasan, J., PC kiosk trends in rural India. Proc. Policy Options and Models for Bridging Digital Divides (Tampere, Finland), March 2005.

White Papers

n Kuriyan, R. and K. Toyama (eds.), Review of Research on Rural PC Kiosks, 2007.

n Toyama, K., K. Kiri, M. Lakshmi Ratan, A. Nileshwar, R. Vedashree, R. Fernandez MacGregor, Rural Kiosks in India. MSR Technical Report, MSR-TR-2004-146 2004.

Presentations

n Toyama, K., Frequently Asked Questions about Rural Computing. Keynote talk at MSR India's inauguration (Bangalore), 2005.

n Toyama, K., Challenges of Sustainability. ADBI/CPSC workshop on "Managing Sustainable e-Community Centers" (Agra), 2005.

n Toyama, K., A Closer Look at Rural Computing. Int'l Conf. and Expo on Communications and Computing (Kanpur), 2005.

n Toyama, K., PC Kiosk Trends in Rural India. Workshop on Policy Options and Models for Bridging Digital Divides (Tampere, Finland), 2005.

Related Pages

n MSR India’s software kiosk-usage logging tool

n Technology for Emerging Markets research group at Microsoft Research India

Contributors

Kentaro Toyama (primary contact), Savita Bailur, Karishma Kiri, Renee Kuriyan, Deepak Menon, Joyojeet Pal, Nimmi Rangaswamy, Aishwarya Ratan, Janaki Srinivasan, Rajesh Veeraraghavan

Last updated: June 3, 2007 [Kentaro Toyama]