From Database Design to Community Mobilization: PD in Sri Lanka's Energy Sector

Abstract

This paper presents work-in-progress analyzing the early stages of development of an internet-connected database for local energy research in Sri Lanka. The Energy Forum, a Colombo-based NGO, expects this database to link university and NGO researchers, government policy makers and functionaries, and government and private-sector energy providers, as well as provide an institutional voice for the nearly one-half of the island's population that is without electricity. The Energy Forum is committed to the most general goals of participatory design-better design and greater democracyhowever organizational constraints force them to consider carefully the possibilities and limitations of participatory design in this specific application. In this paper, I introduce the Energy Forum and describe the context in which they work. Next, I describe the Energy Forum's larger project which the database is part of. Finally, I consider how participatory design fits within the Energy Forum's database design effort, where design is understood to include the entire development cycle from database conceptualization to implementation. The paper presented draws on field research in Sri Lanka during June and July of2000.