Technology transfer and local capacity building

Important aspect of the technology transfer and capacity building in this project has been the variations that exist in technical capacity, needs, and professional composition of our international project partners.

Firstly, technological local capacity and needs is uneven amongst our partners. While the partners from Cape Town and Katmandu have a highly developed database for their urban indicators at different levels of disaggregation; the project partner from Gaborone lack the basic GIS data for the city. Secondly, the local levels of technical capacity are quite distinct among our project partners. Cape Town Metropolitan Council is staffed with highly qualified and GIS capable professionals and technicians. However, this level of local technical capacity is not present in other cities. Thirdly, the professional composition of the international partners is diverse. The project partner in Gaborone is with an academic institution and in Katmandu with an internationally funded unit, both able to enjoy certain degree of autonomy in their engagement with the UCGIS project. The partners in Cape Town, however, are practitioners that have to justify their engagement in the UCGIS project to their senior officials by their ability to demonstrate certain "deliverables" as project outcome.

These variations in local technical capacity of the partners clearly influence the distinct needs and priorities of the project partners in terms of capacity building. For Cape Town, which participated in this project with a reliable database and qualified staff, the priority need was in application of the tools that could measure levels of accessibility for different urban indicators. But for Gaborone the value of the project was in creation of an operable database on urban indicators and training of their staff in basic use of GIS and accessibility measures.

The particular case of Bandung, however, is worth mentioning here. As it constituted one of the initial international partners listed in the proposal, but their data was not included in the exercises developed for the training modules. This was for several reasons including the inoperability of their data set and the heavy load of the team to work with the data set available from the other partner cities. We will, however, work with the Bandung partners at the final stage of the project by seeking their feedback on the web-based training module and evaluation of its utility.

Lastly, as to this final stage of the project, except for Cape Town, other project partners are yet to receive the ESRI software packages, which was to be the basic step towards technological transfer and improved local capacity.

Evaluation of the training module and project interaction

In each country context target groups are currently testing the training modules developed by this project, to assess the clarity of the training instructions and improve those accordingly. The UIUC team members will also participate in this as they each have different strength and insight into the substance or technical development of the training material and exercises involved. Although the Indonesian data set was not used for development of the training exercises, their input will be sought to assist us improve the clarity of the training material. A combination of these feedbacks, to be received within the next two weeks, and the subsequent improvements to be made to the site, is hoped to optimize the effectiveness of the project's web-based training material as its final output.

To evaluate the effectiveness of the project output and process, we will conduct a formal project evaluation among all participants. The evaluation forms will be circulated to international partner institutions (including Bandung) as well as the UIUC team members. The evaluation form will include questions about the project in respect to the following:

I.e., how permeable was the process of the project; did the process of the project allow them include their views, needs, and priorities as oppose to a donor-driven agenda; did the process of project participation in itself (i.e., meeting other partners and working with an international team) had any positive contribution at personal and professional/ technical levels?

I.e., how far did they find the outcome of the project of relevance to their current needs and priorities; the fit between the training material and the needs and technical capacity of the targeted trainees in their institutional or other envronments (e.g., other agencies, governments in other cities, or other community groups); the clarity and usefulness of the exercises; in specific the clarity of the training material in respect to the site organization, intended audience, ease of downloading, (how easy they are to follow); downloading - vs web-based (ArcIMS)?

I.e., has this project dove tailed with any other of their activities or allowed them to mobilize other projects that needed the particular tools or data facilitated through this project; did the focus of this project on urban indicators and data disaggregation open new avenues in ways in which urban issues were framed, question s were asked; did the project work as a catalyst to help them develop certain data set that otherwise would not have been collected or registered?

I.e., has it worked as a catalyst to bring different units or staff within their organization together; has it helped the individual's status within their organizations; has it provided a medium to push for collection of disaggregated data within their organization?