3.4 Attractive content and applications Significant effort is required in this critical area that will drive demand.17 First is a government-centric initiative to reengineer the delivery of government services and deliver them to citizens using ICTs. This would also include a significant data analytics component. Second is a civil-society centric initiative to build on the existing momentum around hackathons and barcamps (see Annex 2) to develop apps and content that would be of interest and value to new comers to ICTs including those who are different from the typical app developers, such as farmers and poor micro-enterprises. a. LIRNEasia senior personnel have considerable experience in designing and implementing e government programs.18 Depending on the degree of buy-in obtained from the government, the activities that can be undertaken include (i) “policy enlightenment”19 through the provision of training and familiarization to decision makers, including Parliamentarians;20 (ii) assisting the government to develop evidence-based procedures on which government data files should be opened up for access by members of the public on a priority basis; (iii) assisting the relevant government entities (e.g., local government authority in Yangon) to establish demonstration projects on service delivery and data analytics, etc. The actual funding to implement e government programs are considerable and would have to be directly in the hands of the government. We understand the ADB is likely to fund these initiatives. What we propose, in addition to policy enlightenment, is assistance in conceptualizing the services, and in particular, help with data analytics on the transaction-generated data that are produced. b. MIDO has been among those organizing some of the largest barcamps and hackathons in the region.21 LIRNEasia’s conceptual work on how young app developers could be encouraged to develop apps for “those unlike them”22 contributed to the thinking of colleagues from its African sister organization who wrote up a recent guide for infoDev.23 In collaboration with these colleagues and with those engaged with incubators and accelerators, LIRNEasia and MIDO can help focus and systematize the considerable energy existing in the app-development space in Myanmar. 17 For example, the critical difference between India’s broadband initiatives developed during the previous UPA government and modified by the present BJP government is the emphasis added on demand stimulation. 18 The e Sri Lanka initiative was designed in 2002-04 by a team including Chair, Samarajiva. One of the key implementers was CEO, Galpaya. The design is described in Hanna, N.K. (2006). From envisioning to designing e Sri Lanka: Joining the information services economy, volume 1, Washington DC: The World Bank. The implementation phase is described in Galpaya, H.; Samarajiva, R.; Soysa, S. (2007). “Taking e-government to the bottom of the pyramid: Dial-a-gov?” International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance, Macau China, December 11, 2007. 19 http://www.idrc.ca/EN/Resources/Publications/Pages/ArticleDetails.aspx?PublicationID=769 20 LIRNEasia received a request for such training from the Parliamentarians who attended a recent course: http://lirneasia.net/2014/07/myanmar-parliamentarians-keen-to-learn-about-icts/ 21 http://www.barcampyangon.org/ 22 http://lirneasia.net/2012/03/know-thy-user-mobile-apps-session-at-ictd-2012/ 23 http://www.infodev.org/articles/making-mobile-apps-work-base-pyramid 11