UK – ICT4D Collective

DFID Announcement Richard Clarke, Director General for Policy, Research and Humanitarian at the UK’s Department for International Aid (DFID) announced today that a consortium involving Dr. David Hollow and Tim Unwin, both from our UNESCO Chair in ICT4D, has been awarded the contract to lead its new £20 m research and innovation hub on technology for education. This will explore how the world’s most marginalised children and young people can learn best through the use of new and innovative technologies. The members of the consortium are the Overseas Development Institute, the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre at the University of Cambridge, Brink, Jigsaw Consult, Results for Development, Open Development and Education, AfriLabs, BRAC and eLearning Africa. David will serve as Research Co-Director and Tim as Chair of the Intellectual Leadership Group.

The new Hub aims to undertake and promote the highest quality of comparative and longitudinal research at the interface between technology and education, and then share the findings widely so that everyone is better aware about how technology can best serve the learning interests of the poorest and most marginalised. This builds in part on the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D’s long established experience on technology and learning, dating back to Tim’s leadership of the UK Prime Minister’s Imfundo initiative (2001-2004) creating partnerships for IT in education in Africa, our DelPHE and EDULINK funded collaboration with African universities, the wider work of the World Economic Forum and UNESCO Partnership for Education initiative between 2007 and 2011, and the cohort of PhD students doing research at the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D on technology and learning in Africa in the latter 2000s , including David Hollow and Marije Geldof.

We are all very excited to be a part of this new initiative, which will be the largest ever education and technology research and innovation programme designed specifically to improve teaching and learning, especially in poorer countries. It is a clear example of the ways through which research undertaken within the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D is having real global impact, and is the second £20 m grant to have been awarded to consortia that include members of the Chair in the last six months, the other being the UKRI GCRF South-South Migration, Inequality and Development Hub.

Liz Quaglia and Tim Unwin from the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D attended the launch discussion for the Institute for Government’s new report on Improving the Management of Digital Government at a breakfast meeting on 21st June, which focused on the question “Who is responsible for effective, efficient and secure digital government?”.

Speakers at the event included:

Ciaran Martin CEO National Cyber Security Centre
Janet Hughes, Doteveryone
Bryan Glick, Editor Computer Weekly

and it was moderated by Daniel Thornton from the Institute of Government, one of the co-authors of the report (the other being Lucy Campbell).

Concluding thoughts from the speakers included:

It is very difficult to deliver effective digital government, but we should not despair and must keep moving forward to make things better;
It is essential to have a joined up approach across governments, with leadership at the highest level; and
How governments are organised is a secondary issue; what matters is beginning with a clear strategy, and then finding ways to deliver it.

The report itself makes interesting reading, and has wider relevance beyond the UK context.