Asian Perspectives Series – Achieving Digital Development Goals: Partnering with Asia’s New Creative Class

While the proliferation of the Internet and smart-phones has enabled citizens to become increasingly more engaged on economic and political issues in their own countries and beyond, the specialized skills needed to design and develop civic tech tools to make this happen are in high demand. In many cases, the lure of private sector jobs deprives the public sector and civil society of the assets that are needed to build the modern, mobile web. Today’s digital development goals require new, innovative approaches to program design and implementation, which in turn, factor in the realities of the ICT4D labor market.

The Asia Foundation has been working to engage Asia’s new creative class – top local private sector designers and software developers – in an effort to successfully collaborate with government and civil society leaders in ways that reflect the realities of the labor market. According to Mr. John Karr, The Asia Foundation has been curating data for technology developers to use, aiding developers so that they can avoid the “heavy lifting”, enabling them to work quickly and effectively in the production of applications and interfaces. While connecting developers, civil society, and government is sometimes challenging, Mr. Yohan Totting noted that the developer community is usually very willing to engage, but the community often lacks the knowledge of how to do so. Reiterating a desire by the technology development community to be of service, Mr. Ye Lin Aung declared that “during the weekdays we [developers] work for our companies, during the weekend we work for ourselves.” Challenges that the developer community faces include knowing how to find ways to solve problems, but often needing to be included in discussions of what the problems are. In addition, developing basic applications and interfaces which can be rolled out quickly and accurately to the public remains difficult without the support of civil society actors.

Moderator:

Mr. John Karr, Senior Director, Digital Media and Technology Programs, The Asia Foundation

Featuring:

Mr. Ye Lin Aung, Community Manager, Mae Pay Soh “Let’s Vote!” Myanmar; Software Engineer, Zwenexsys Intl., Yangon

Mr. Yohan Totting, Creator, Bandung Hackerspace & Forum Web Anak Bandung (FOWAB); Google Development Expert, Indonesia; Consultant, The Asia Foundation