Providing IT services for enterprises through the adoption of Information and communication technologies (ICT) in restricted environments: A Participatory Design process to refine the ‘Telework for people in prisons’ program in Colombia
Abstract
Since 2015, Colombia has been pioneering technology education in prisons by providing Telework certifications and bringing ICT access to prisoners in civil and military prisons. The goal of this program is for convicts to provide IT services to enterprises as part of their resocialization process. Although this program presented clear benefits for the prisoner’s resocialization process, implementing this initiative as a service was challenging due to several restrictions from the context and the grey areas in the related regulations that the prison ecosystem presented. In 2017, two years after the first phase of the program was deployed, the Ministry of Colombian Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), decided to perform a Participatory Design Process to analyze the program status, flaws, and opportunities for refinement so that it could be adjusted to enhance the prisoners’ resocialization process. This paper describes how the Participatory Design Process was carried out, as well as the lessons learned from the social, academic, and regulatory perspectives.
Keywords
Telework; Information and Communication Technologies (ICT); participatory design; prisons
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3384/ecp203038
Citation
Gallo, L.(2023) Providing IT services for enterprises through the adoption of Information and communication technologies (ICT) in restricted environments: A Participatory Design process to refine the ‘Telework for people in prisons’ program in Colombia, in Carla Cipolla, Claudia Mont’Alvão, Larissa Farias, Manuela Quaresma (eds.), ServDes 2023: Entanglements & Flows Conference, Service Encounters and Meanings, 11-14th July 2023, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. https://doi.org/10.3384/ecp203038
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Providing IT services for enterprises through the adoption of Information and communication technologies (ICT) in restricted environments: A Participatory Design process to refine the ‘Telework for people in prisons’ program in Colombia
Since 2015, Colombia has been pioneering technology education in prisons by providing Telework certifications and bringing ICT access to prisoners in civil and military prisons. The goal of this program is for convicts to provide IT services to enterprises as part of their resocialization process. Although this program presented clear benefits for the prisoner’s resocialization process, implementing this initiative as a service was challenging due to several restrictions from the context and the grey areas in the related regulations that the prison ecosystem presented. In 2017, two years after the first phase of the program was deployed, the Ministry of Colombian Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), decided to perform a Participatory Design Process to analyze the program status, flaws, and opportunities for refinement so that it could be adjusted to enhance the prisoners’ resocialization process. This paper describes how the Participatory Design Process was carried out, as well as the lessons learned from the social, academic, and regulatory perspectives.