Andrew C. Gordon

Native American technology access: the Gates Foundation in Four Corners

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Native American Access to Technology Program (NAATP) was designed to provide computer and Internet access to Native peoples in the Four Corners area of the USA. Through this multi‐year effort, complex packages of hardware, software, installation and training have been made available to 43 tribes in 161 settings. An intensive, collaborative process resulted in a package carefully designed to fit tribal interests, circumstances and political arrangements, including multimedia (graphics‐intensive) equipment, language preservation software, and satellite connections to the Internet as necessary. This interim assessment concludes that the program has substantially increased tribal access to computing and information and has often fostered creative use of the technologies. Deeply embedded economic and political realities and their legacies remain, however, with substantial immediate and long‐term consequences.

Ethnic Diversity in Southeast Seattle

The citizens of Seattle represent many ethnic backgrounds. White citizens predominate, but Blacks, Asians from a variety of ethnic origins, Hispanics, and Native Americans are also in evidence in both the neighborhoods and the political life of the city. According to the 1990 census, the citys population is 75.3 percent White, 11.8 percent Asian and Pacific Islander, 10.1 percent Black, 1.4 percent Native American, and 1.4 percent other (of these, 3.5 percent identify themselves as Hispanic). But population figures for the city as a whole must be examined carefully before conclusions about integration can be drawn.

From infomediaries to infomediation at public access venues: lessons from a 3-country study

This study investigated the role of infomediaries to understand the process of infomediation in shaping outcomes for users at public access venues (PAVs) in Bangladesh, Chile and Lithuania. We examined the extent to which technical skills and empathy are relevant to and appreciated by different types of users, and whether differences in infomediaries are evident across different types of PAVs. We asked whether particular infomediary behaviours were associated with outcome differences as reported by PAV users. We learned that infomediaries provide the human face for the information age by taking on the functions of facilitation, coaching, referral and teaching, and by assuming the role of a trusted gatekeeper. The process of infomediation turned out to be of prominence, within which the infomediary is a key component. In the absence of infomediaries, those left behind (or excluded due to their age, socio-economic status, level of education/literacy, gender, disability or caste) will face additional, perhaps insurmountable, barriers.

Understanding the links between ICT skills training and employability: an analytical framework

This article proposes an analytical framework to better understand the role that information and communication technology (ICT) skills play in improving employment opportunities for low-income groups. The paper draws upon research with over seventy non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that provide ICT training and other employment services in 30 countries around the world. It explores the linkage between ICT skills and employability on three levels: NGO program design, characteristics of individual job seekers or trainees, and environmental dynamics that influence employment outcomes. The researchers argue that basic ICT skills are often important, but are usually insufficient for members of disadvantaged groups to improve their employment situation. The proposed multilevel framework identifies some of the common elements that help situate basic ICT skills in relation to other factors that can facilitate or impede employability.

Understanding and Using Information About Crime

Implementing a crime mapping system is not a simple task. It involves an understanding of the intricacies of the data that are to be analyzed as well as what kinds of additional data might be usefully analyzed that are not currently used. One needs to understand the nature of the crime data normally collected and analyzed by police, how the data are collected and disseminated, how the police use the data for crime analysis and other purposes, and how community organizations have been involved in crime data analysis.

Campbell, Donald Thomas (1916–96)

This article is reproduced from the previous edition, volume 3, pp. 1435–1439,

Selection of Units for Project Implementation

Two units within the CPD were chosen as sites for implementation of the project. Because the project’s goals relate to inferring patterns by mapping crime and community data on computer-generated maps, one of the units selected was a patrol district and another was a unit within the detective division that could take advantage of crime mapping. This chapter describes the manner in which the selection of units was made and the results of the implementations.

Police-Community Cooperative Use of MAPADS

The technological advance represented by computerized mapping constitutes only part of the potential benefit of MAPADS. To be truly effective, MAPADS needs to work in an organizational and social context that permits the police and the community to interact while analyzing the data. This interaction requires trust and practice as well as an organizational and social infrastructure. We expected this infrastructure to be developed as the police and the community used MAPADS jointy in working on problems of crime and safety in the community. This did occur: the project made an important contribution to the development of this infrastructure. Cooperative working relations were established and information was exchanged regularly between the community and the police. This was an important achievement of this project.

Thoughts on Communication in Police Departments

The discussions in earlier chapters all demonstrate the importance of the flexibility of the MAP ADS system. Because such flexibility is built into MAPADS, the organization becomes more responsive to changing local circumstances. One of the important characteristics of crime analysis is that the particulars of a given case, the facts that make it solvable, do not remain the same from case to case. The similarities between cases are mostly unusable in solving cases. By developing sets of routinized procedures, an organization intended to solve crimes may inhibit its own abilities to do so. To increase effectiveness, the organization must be able to adapt to the particular circumstances involved, both on a case-by-case basis (which is the reason for street-level discretion) and on a slightly more general basis, such as concentrating on auto thefts at one time and burglaries at another (which is the reason for command-level discretion). In order to make these adaptations, field units need access to contextual data about local conditions, and they need to be able to analyze that data in a changing variety of ways. These are exactly the benefits MAPADS provided the district personnel and was beginning to provide area detectives.

Use of the Mapping System by Patrol and Tactical Officers

The crime mapping research project was primarily concerned with conceptualizing, developing, and refining MAPADS as a system for use by police. Thus, it was not also possible to perform a formal evaluation of its capabilities, yet we do have strong indications of the benefits of MAPADS for patrol and tactical use. In order to explain the way in which the mapping system was used by patrol and tactical officers, this chapter describes the way they were assigned to anticrime patrols prior to the advent of the mapping system. A number of typical examples of MAPADS use are then given, showing how patrol deployment has been affected by MAP ADS. This chapter then describes one of the most important benefits of MAPADS in police patrol—its use as a beat’s memory.