Citizens, politicians, researchers, have been searching for answers to the defies and new social processes which emerge at the end of the millennium, characterised by three main trends: informatization, urbanisation, globalisation (Castells, 1998). In Latin American cities, these global processes have had many adverse effects: urban fragmentation, increasing unemployment, poverty, socio-spatial dualisation, severe cuts in social services, higher costs in urban infrastructures and services generated by their privatisation, difficulties of local governments to manage the increasingly complex cities and to satisfy the populations demands. One of these possible answers that local governments are beginning to implement is precisely the use of informatics to increase the efficacy of institutional management, to collect the demands of the population, and to obtain political consense.

On the other hand, there are social movements, community organisations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), citizens, briefly, a set of social agents who constitute civil society, which are implementing alternatives to create alternative action spaces, and searching for solutions to the local problems triggered by global processes. These social agents are also beginning to use informatics to create local and international networks, get strength through the dissemination of their actions, access to international funding sources and exert pressures over national and local governments.

These processes do not evolve without severe difficulties. Organisational inertia, resistance to the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), scarce access by the population to ICTs, inadequate policies carried on by telecommunication enterprises, translated into high Internet and telephone costs, contribute to make slow and painful progress along this path. However, some of the existing social agents assume new roles: progressive sectors of local governments and the more active members of the largest community organisations find a common ground in claiming a broader citizens participation using electronic communication.

A set of questions emerges when working on the subject of Community Informatics in Latin America: How are information and communication technologies transforming urban life quality in a developing country? How are technological decisions related to the local political context? How is information technology used in communication between urban managers and citizens? Which are the factors that facilitate or inhibit the implementation of ICTs in the cities? How do community networks emerge in this context? This paper tries to answer these questions, by contributing to the understanding of the potential advantages of Community Informatics in Argentina, and the prejudices and material obstacles it faces. It shows the first results of a three-year research on the subject of information technology, local governance, and community networks, co-ordinated by the author. The main case study is the City of Buenos Aires (13,5 million inhabitants, including Greater Buenos Aires).

Computer-sustained community networks are emerging in Argentina. From 1997 onwards, they have multiplied in various sectors: education, culture, community health and wellness, citizens' rights, participation in urban affairs. The paper studies the particularities of community Informatics in this developing country, focusing on the differences between small and large community organisations, on their diverse us of time, space, and online resources. It summarises the results of the research developed to the present, based on the research work developed by Herzer and Kisilevsky (1998), Kisilevsky (1998), Baumann (1999), and the author herself (1998, 1999), within the research team "City, Society and Cyberspace", in the University of Buenos Aires.

Internet was launched in Argentina in 1995. Although it was awaited with expectation, it is still an expensive tool for the local elites, although it is disseminating among the middle-income groups. It is estimated that less than 500.000 persons (0.7% of the population) have Internet connections in a country of 34 million inhabitants. High costs of Internet connections and telephone tariffs make Internet prohibitive for the majority, given the fact that 27, 1% of the Argentine population earn less than $148 a month (ECLAC, 1999). However, since 1985 some groups were already creating virtual communities through BBSs. Later, Universities implemented discussion forums though e-mails threads, but it was not until 1995 that electronic community network started to play a social role. These emerging networks are for the time being the realm of the middle classes, which is explained because they possess both the financial capital to acquire computer equipments and the cultural capital to use them.

The online research of virtual communities related to citizens participation, during July and August 1998, was deceiving in the first phase (Baumann, 1999). We could not identify virtual communities as defined by Howard Rheingold (1994): "... Social entities that emerge from the Web when a sufficient number of people carries on public discussions during enough time, and with enough human feelings to establish personal relationships in cyberspace". We found discussion forums, and newsgroups, but none of them discussed urban or local policy issues. We decided to focalise our search on NGOs that worked on issues related to urban everyday life, such as human rights, environmental problems, or survival strategies for the impoverished middle class. Among them we found Conciencia (Conscience), and Poder Ciudadano (Citizens' Power) -both of them working on the defense of citizens rights-, Greenpeace, the Asociación Voluntarios de Parque Centenario (Volunteers for Centenario Park), and the Paraguas Club (Umbrella Club, a network which links together unemployed middle-class professionals and micro-entrepreneurs). All of them displayed recent, modest and rather rudimentary web sites, where the NGOs provide information about their goals, work and achievements. In al the sites there is e-mail address where the visitors can contact them, but only as a bi-directional communication. No efforts to establish a network are made.

We decided to reformulate our research, and to focalise on NGOs as possible embryos of virtual communities. We grouped a sample of twelve NGOs around a series of variables: organization (goals, action areas, participation in NGOs forums, human resources), economic structure (funding, budget) and use of technology (use of ICTs, perception of community informatics, usual means of communication and information). Two categories of NGOs were identified: information-rich and information-poor. The first and smaller one (two organisations out of twelve) has computers and Internet connections. They have e-mail, web sites, and they constantly explore new ICT uses and consider information technology as indispensable for their work. These organisations have considerable high budgets (from $500.000 to $700.000 per year). They do not have a local territorial belonging, but work at national levels. They also have highly qualified paid staff (between 15 and 25 employees), besides a relatively high number of volunteer workers (around 40 persons), who use ICTs daily, particularly Internet. Other characteristics are memberships to national and international networks of NGOs, the inclusion of community informatics as a permanent issue in their agenda, and the development of massive communication strategies. Last but not least, these organisations receive financial support from different national and international institutions and foundations, enterprises or individuals, and have efficient fund raising systems.

The NGOs within the second category (information-poor) do not have informatics equipment, or they have some computers, but they are under-utilised. None of these NGOs has access to Internet. They have strong geographic links with a given neighbourhood or urban area, and they have extremely low budgets, which are often informally managed. They have no paid staff, and they works with part-time volunteers, generally professionals in Law and Urbanism who do not use ICTs, but approve of its use. (The staff members explain that they do not use ICTs themselves pointing to the insufficiency of financial resources and the lack of training in computer use). These organisations do not belong to NGOs, national or international, and do not include ICTs as a priority issue in their agendas. Their massive communication strategies are defined according to the moment's requirements, and they do not have sustained relationships with the local media. Occasionally they have spaces in neighbourhood newspapers or newsletters, or in FM radios, but they have serious financial limitations when they must pay for publicity. They are strongly dependent on external financial support, though discontinuous small funds from different State institutions, local enterprises, and/or individuals, and they have serious difficulties to keep autonomous funding systems, since they do not have permanent, self-reliant, and organised fund-raising systems.

In short, there is a direct correlation between the financial situation of a community organisation, its territorial scope, and the use of ICTs. Information-rich community organisations are those which are also financially solvent, have national and/or international scopes, manage massive communication campaigns with the media and have highly specialised paid staff. On the contrary, information-poor community organisations are financially unprotected, have no self-reliant funding strategies, have strictly local roots and goals, and depend on volunteer work. However, these are not the only variables: the dualisation of community organisations concerning ITC use is closely linked to their relationships with space and time.

ICTs, Time, Space, and Social Organisation

Our field work pointed to the fact that the difficulties experimented by smaller NGOs to incorporate ICT use are directly related to their geographical roots and scopes. Their very essence and objectives these organisations are rooted in specific spaces, neighbourhoods or limited urban areas within a neighbourhood, where they implement their actions (Baumann, 1999). Even their names denote the geographic and social areas where they work: "Friends of Palermo Lake", "Volunteers for Centenario Park", "Creative Neighbours of Saavedra and Núñez", etc. Small NGOs operate at neighbourhood level, in face-to-face networks, which constitute their very identity. This is one of the causes that until recent times made their members think that they did not need ICTs, since they have direct contact with other members and with the population they address to. Their target population is the nearby neighbours, and their actions are focused in the defense and conservation of concrete public physical and social spaces. Most of their activities are centred on impeaching the transformation of local places through the global spatial logic, through monumental public works and/or private development projects (large closed condominiums, mega malls, etc.). However, some changes have been detected in the last year: these NGOs have realised that their strength resides in their capacity to integrate local urban networks. When they do, they add demands, get further training, they are able to influence in decision-making levels, and to impose a local logic to the civic society, thus contradicting the global logic of international enterprises, without losing their local power. Some of these networks have achieved remarkable success, becoming important social agents in the process of urban planning, through their participation in the City Government areas where the Buenos Aires 2000 Strategic Plan is being debated. These NGOs are admitting the advantages of ICTs use as valuable tools for their everyday work and the dissemination of their goals and achievements, bat as it is mentioned above, they have still serious financial and training difficulties to implement an efficient use of community informatics.

On the contrary, the largest NGOs are not rooted on physical places (Baumannn, 1999). Their goals reach wider, more general areas, and are focused on environmental or ethical issues. Their names do not refer to any geographical area, but to social principles: Citizens Power, Greenpeace, Conscience, etc. Larger NGOs participate in wider national or international networks. This is a significant comparative advantage, since they have access to financial resources and strategic alliances, which strengthen their actions, and provide them information and training; Since their target population refers to the whole country, or to many other countries, the use of ICTs is fundamental to participate in these networks, mainly through e-mails, chats and web pages. Their space is the globalised world.

The ways in which community organisations conceive, use and manage their relationships with time is also a significant variable when evaluating their relationships with ICT. A member of a neighbours' organisation says: "Our organisation works with socio-biological time rhythms. People come to work here, but there is always somebody who gets married, has a child, gets divorced, loses his o her job, has exams at the University... There are times in which no one comes, and we have to wait until our members have solved their personal problems to reassume community work"

The relationship NGOs establish with time is correspondent with the relationship they establish with space. Large NGOs have a number of specialised, paid permanent staff, trained in ICT uses, who use time in flexible ways, and are in constant contact with other organisations in real time, disseminating and receiving information around the world, and around the clock. ICTs allow them to participate in global or national campaigns, and to take actions in real time. They can plan the most effective strategies, since their networked actions affect power where it is: the space of flows. On the contrary, small NGOs are strongly rooted in local spaces and times, away from the space of flows. Their relative isolation, as well as their reduced budgets, keeps them far away from the space of flows. They seldom have access to funding possibilities and to acquire computers, as well as skills in ICT use. Hence, they do not have a rapid answering capacity towards the advances the space of flows over the local spaces they try to preserve. Their time use is more biological and social than the a-temporal time managed by the enterprises.

These difficulties and limitations are related to their self-perception. An NGO volunteer sadly stated: "We are the falling middle class". Those who actually fight to preserve urban green areas and neighbourhood's life quality from the unyielding development enterprises are those who do not want to give up the benefits of social welfare, those who believe in social redistribution of the national product. The deterioration of public spaces in Buenos Aires is a consequence of the privatisation of life quality in the space of flows. As we stated in a previous work (Finquelievich, Vidal, and Karol, 1992), those who live in the space of flows =96ironically, limited to restricted urban areas, the wealthier neighbourhoods- have more urban services, cared-for green areas, recreation facilities, safety, because they have an income that allows them to afford these commodities. On the contrary, those who live in local space fear the State abandon the increasing absence of public physical and social spaces. For these last social sectors ICTs, particularly Internet, may be specially effective, in order to strengthen the links between community organisations and the whole society, gather together NGOs that work on compatible issues, and thus exert the necessary pressure on the State when necessary.

When participating in discussions and debates about the Informational Society it is frequent to hear theoretical thoughts about the "black holes" in global cities, "dualisation of the informational society" or "Third digital worlds". These concepts refer to the large masses of population excluded from the benefits of the globalised worlds, lacking goods and services to consume or sell (not even their devaluated labour force), and socially irrelevant for the system. The borders that separate these social groups from those who do benefit from the informational society area drawn by their participation in such a society, their management of informatics tools and above all, by their participation the processes of creation and dissemination of knowledge, information and technological production. The city of Buenos Aires is a typical example of these concepts. This is why it has become fundamental the generation, by national and local State, of active policies to disseminate ICTs use, to promote an active, massive and free access to them for those who cannot afford them, and to train the population in the use of ICTs having into account their social uses. We suggest a series of items to be considerate when designing public policies:

• The inclusion of training in new technologies from the earliest stages in education, in order that children may be able to internalise the use of ICTs as tools for information and participation.
• The creation and dissemination of public, free electronic networks. This is feasible through the implementation of a structure of PCs connected to Internet. This terminals could be accesses at CGPs, schools, public libraries, public phone services, etc, or encouraging the creation of Freeness, Civic Networks or Public Access Networks.
• State strategies to provide or help providing computer equipments and Internet connections to NGOs, through "soft" loans from State Banks, agreements between the State, electronic firms, and communication enterprises, subsidies, etc.
• Training and funding of technical teams for permanent training and research, with the goal to train and assist NGOs and community organisations, orienting them towards the different uses of ICTs and adapting informatics tools to the particular needs of each social sector.

ICTs by themselves do not generate an increase in citizen's participation, nor encourage the surpassing of social or economic barriers. ICTs are not intrinsically democratic. They are (only?) tools to communicate, establish links and relationships, and support the huge amount of information in which the dominant economic system is based. Increasing the use of information technologies does not imply the disappearance of social or the emergence of more democratic societies: these ideals depend from the policies adopted by governments and the civil society. But access to information technologies is a sine qua non condition, an indispensable step for any social project that searches to promote those values.

The understanding of the external environment, including technological and socio-cultural changes, is also an increasingly significant factor in the work of civil servants in local governments, particularly for those concerned with the conception and development of public policies and strategies, and for those who are in permanent contact with citizens. In order to help local government's officials and urban researchers to implement Community Informatics in urban services, it would be necessary to consider the following steps:

• To work jointly with local government's officials, representative of Community organisations, and representatives from other governmental levels on the definition of prioritary goals, regarding the use of ICTs for local government, as well as for community uses;
• To inscribe strategies and policies regarding the use of ICTs in urban management in the frame of integrated policies. These policies concern both the restructuration and improvement of local public administration and the rethinking of science and technology policies in order to adapt them to local needs. This would include the permanent training of the City Government staff in ICTs uses, as well as the implementation of direct means of communication between civil servants and citizens, through face to face meetings, web pages, virtual forums, etc, in which citizens participation could break the concept of local government institutions as closed, self-contained environments.
• To implement new norms that contemplate the civil servants obligation to answer to all electronic mail they may receive from the citizens, to participate in public virtual forums and to publicise in the City's networks the available information about the City's budgets, civil servants résumés, urban development projects, etc.

Buenos Aires has still a long way to go before its complete incorporation to the Information Society. The creation and consolidation of a virtual space for public participation, democracy reinforcing, and the strengthening of solidarity community networks requires constant efforts from both the local government and the civil society. We are still far from the generation of a critical mass of ICTs users and community organisation members who could impulse a synergetic movement for the constitution of electronic citizen's networks. NGOs are key agents in this process, and the trends detected in our research suggest that they are heading towards this direction. However, progress in this area needs the generation and extension of a double process. On one hand, it implies the local Government's efforts to change its institutional culture, disseminate and reinforce its own electronic networks and collaborate in the generation of electronic community networks. On the other, it requires the community organisation efforts to create and disseminate their own networks, and claim free access to information. Only when these two movements will converge in the web, Argentine communities will be able to plan a better civil society and a fuller democracy.

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