The Protic Project. Outcomes from a ICT4D Action Research in Rural Bangladesh

PROTIC (Participatory Research and Ownership with Technology, Information and Change) is a large-scale ICTs for development (ICT4D) project in Bangladesh (2015-2019). It is international and interdisciplinary in scope, led by the Monash University Centre for Organizational and Social Informatics (Melbourne) in partnership with Oxfam Bangladesh. PROTIC also involves a number of Bangladeshi universities, including the University of Dhaka, and local NGOs, sociologists, community development workers, IT experts and a number of researchers and practitioners working at the crossroad of disciplinary domains. The results of the project are complex. In brief the project has had direct impacts on food production and villager sustainability, and affected researchers’ views on how such impacts via ICT information should be researched. It has also strongly influenced Oxfam’s thinking about ICT4D and the place of information and knowledge flows and transactions in its own practice. In this contribution we introduce our approach to ICTs in community and development projects, and outline the ICTs scenario in Bangladesh. The PROTIC project is then discussed, and finally, some examples and results from the project will be used to critically illustrate how research and practices are intertwined in cooperation activities.