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The Times, The Independent and the Daily Express have published articles today claiming a leaked letter shows the Prime Minister has "secretly moved to strip the Department for International Development of its power to determine how the overseas aid budget …

News and updates from the Department for International Development

Through an empirical analysis of Amplify, a crowdsourcing platform funded by the UK's Department for International Development (DFID), we examine the potential of ICTs to afford more participatory development. Especially interactive Web2.0 technologies are often assumed to enable the participation of marginalized groups in their development, through allowing them to modify content and generate their own communication. We use the concepts of platform politics and voice to show that while Amplify managers and designers invested time and resources to include the voices of Amplify beneficiaries on the platform and elicit their feedback on projects supported via the platform, no meaningful participation took place. Our analysis of the gaps between participatory rhetoric, policy and practice concludes with suggestions for how ICTs could be harnessed to contribute to meaningful participatory development that matters materially and politically.

"Barrie Ireton tells the unique history of Britain's international development efforts from colonial times to the present day set in a global context. He brings together original research material as well as his personal knowledge over a 40 year career in government. He argues that the Department, led by successive Ministers, continued to pursue its basic mission of poverty reduction in the poorest countries. He also acknowledges important deviations from this trend, particularly during the 1980s when the Aid and Trade Provision became an aggressive use of aid to win export orders at the behest of the interventionist Department of Trade and Industry under an otherwise not interventionist conservative government"--