In addition to efforts toward sustainability(7),there is increased interest in understanding the types of impact that telecenters are having as well as the process through which those impacts happen. The lack of rigorous evaluation of most pilot initiatives means that evidence of impact depends primarily on anecdotal accounts. That notwithstanding, a vast literature has emerged identifying some of the critical lessons about sustainability and impact.
As pilot initiatives have proliferated, so have calls for moving beyond the “forever pilot syndrome.”(8) Some of the focus has been on identifying financing mechanisms for scaling up. We argue throughout this book that scaling up is more than simply replicating pilots and providing investment financing to support scale-up efforts. Going to scale with telecenters is more than simply multiplying investments by 10 or 100 times.(9) Indeed, moving from pilots to large-scale implementation will require significant adaptations to business models and operations to function effectively at scale and be cost effective.(10)1.5. Scaling Up Is Multidimensional
Within telecenter initiatives that focus on supporting socioeconomic development, scaling up seeks “to bring more quality benefits to more people over a wider geographical area more quickly, more equitably, and more lastingly.”(11) In this document, we distinguish four types of scaling up: quantitative, functional, organizational, and political.(12)
Discussions about scaling up most often focus on moving away from a few experimental pilots and increasing the number of telecenters—quantitative scale-up. In such cases, scaling up can be expressed in terms of number of telecenters or number of people reached through telecenters. While this quantitative scale-up captures most of the attention in the current discussions, it is only one aspect of the emerging story of the telecenter movement.
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