Randomized control trials (RCTs) cannot capture the full impact of ICTs on human development because ICTs have inherently ambiguous and emergent effects.  However, RCTs can capture particular impacts of ICTs, but they cannot tell the whole story.  Evaluations of ICT4D initiatives should concentrate instead on the contribution of ICTs to human development.

In the past few years, academics and practitioners alike have advocated for measuring the contributions to human development and capabilities of ICT4D projects.  They have learned over the past decade that ICTs have various levels of impact on many aspects of social life.  They can completely revamp cultures, like the mobile phone has, or they can but countries into serious debt, like many state-subsidized computer education programs, with little to no impact.  The ways in which people utilize ICTs is often different than development workers initially expect.  As Amartya Sen expressed, “a lot of the advantages that come from mobile phone will not have a predictability feature…There are ways in which predictability of these [technologies] will defeat us.”

If traditional econometric approaches to monitoring and evaluating development projects do not capture the full contribution of ICTs on human development, then how can ICTs’ contributions be measured?

Academic scholars have led the way on devising new measurement schemes about the contributions of ICTs.  For the best decade, scholars have advocated examining ICTs from a functional, utility-based measurement, which in many ways cannot be traditionally quantifiable.  Recently, this discussion has been stimulated by the UN’s adoption of the multi-dimensional poverty index last year, as well as a UNDP publication specifically on the contribution of ICTs and the human development and capability approach (HDCA).  An increasing number of publications on ICTs and the HDCA are appearing among the large development organizations and certainly amongst academics.

Furthermore, the advocacy for ICTs for capacity development is not exclusively rhetorical.  This past month, the UN and the government of Bhutan announced a new project specifically to increase the capacity of government officials by utilizing ICTs.  Make no mistake, we are coming to a gradual consensus: you do not know all the affects ICTs will have on social life or human development, so you should keep your measurements broad and largely informed by project beneficiaries.