Information: Ritual or Tool? The Production and Use of Information in Development Agencies
Mariken Vaa · Forum for Development Studies · 1995
Summary Mariken Vaa, ‘Information: Ritual or Tool? The Production and Use of Information in Development Agencies’, Forum for Development Studies, 1995:1, pp. 61–76. The starting point for this article is how aid organisations have handled information relating to one particular field of development assistance: improved water supply and sanitation services. The first part gives an outline of various efforts undertaken during the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade, where the aim was to deliver sustainable and affordable services. Production and provision of information were important elements in these endeavours. The second part reviews how the Nordic bilateral agencies revised their sector policies in light of their own experiences from the field and the international activities they supported. The final section is a discussion of the challenge facing libraries as tools of development, in light of the twin propensities of organisations to suppress data and to gather more information than they use.