OLISTICA is an original venue of research oriented into action that will build upon MISTICA's network of researchers and practitioners and will provide with significant contributions and appropriate methodologies for virtual communities interested on the social impacts of ICTs.

Based upon a participatory action-research network, OLISTICA will create and consolidate an observatory of the social impacts of ICT in the LA&C region as a tool to gain influence in ICT policies at national, regional and global level.

The observatory will emerge from a coordinated group of national observers who will use and validate a set of indicators and indexes designed by a research group to properly assess ICT’s national policies and actions that contribute to development in the regional contexts but from the perspective of ICT’s social impacts. Both the research and the observation processes will involve and be supported by MISTICA’s virtual community, maintaining the process orientation of the initial project.

In parallel, OLISTICA will create and experiment with adequate methodologies that facilitate equal access to ICTs and are supportive of collective action and collaboration. The project will thus complement and extend the scope of the virtual communities management methodologies that MISTICA has experimented in its first stage (with focus on providing a multi-lingual environment and preventing information overload). This part of the project will apply to different forms and procedures both to the network of observers and to the project articulation to MISTICA’s virtual community, with a permanent concern on providing education about the topic of telecommunication policies.

The dissemination of the results of OLISTICA will extend beyond the research practices by supporting further action geared towards building an alternative vision with a social mandate for ICTs in the LA&C region and exerting a more visible incidence on the regional decision making processes concerning ICT policies and strategies.

Project proposed by:
FUNREDES - http://funredes.org/

Project coordinator:
Daniel Pimienta ([email protected])

Partners:
Fundación ACCESO -http://acceso.org/

Chasquinet - http://chasquinet.org/

GK-LEAP/Bellanet -http://bellanet.org/gkleap/

City University of London

University of Toronto

Associates:

FLACSO Ecuador-http://www.flacso.org.ec/

APC LA&C-http://www.apc.org

Estimated length:
24 months