I developed the TADA framework after a number of years witnessing technology-oriented projects and programs in the international development arena failing due to their strong bias towards only technological artefacts – i.e. desktops, notebooks, servers, software, web sites, etc. As ICT was viewed by commercial organisations throughout the 1990′s and perhaps up to the ‘dot com bubble’ burst, international development projects often share a narrow view of how an organisation derives its benefits from technology. The use of technology in the developed world has matured and obtained almost ‘magical’ status in some sectors, and so too, the approach to how technology is incorporated into developing contexts and the expected benefits derived will require a more evolved view of how technology works. My hope is that the TADA framework will be used by designers, assessors and implementers of international development projects to apply a more evolved and comprehensive approach to the use of ICT.

The aim of the framework is to promote a comprehensive approach to ICT projects and programs based on what has been learned over the last 20 or so years in the commercial world across developed countries. The framework is simple. It divides up an ICT program into six areas of attention: (i) policy, (ii) human resources, (iii) process, (iv) natural environment, (v) the commercial context and(vi) technoware. Each area of attention then uses a simple scale to reflect the degree of maturity of the planned or incumbent ICTD program or activity. The framework has already been used in a number of international development projects and has been warmly received. In Kiribati, where power is expensive due to it being produced by diesel generation, the framework helped to expose significant cost savings to be made by using more energy-efficient mechanisms for computing (using thin-client technologies).

Greater savings in recurrent costs, of course, increases the sustainability of the initiative. In Indonesia, where free and open source software is popular and is frequently adopted by government agencies, the framework helped to illuminate existing government policy on the use of open source and showed how the commercial context would be able to play a positive part sustaining the government’s planned ICTD initiative. The framework is intended to be ‘lightweight’ and to be descriptive, as opposed to prescriptive. It is intended that it be used to guide assessment, design and analysis of ICTD initiatives and also to assist with the setup of a sound monitoring and evaluation scheme for the activity.