Economic Model and Calculator capable of calculating what are the Additional Tax Revenues from an OLPC XO-XS deployment
Welcome
Welcome to this page. Please feel free to edit it. We're at the beginning of this topic here at the olpc community.
What are the costs of implementation/not implementing?
This is a very to the point question that we should drill to the bottom, i.e. some spreadsheet where numbers can be filled out and it can be shown - calculated - what are the revenues-costs=benefits to the country. The starting concept is that poorly educated people will generate less revenues in taxes for the government than those same people having benefitted from a great education, well connected to the internet, having great access to data and knowledge, etc. Obviously such a population will be able to generate a lot quicker and easier and more additional value, set-up companies, etc. that will result on a certain moment in more revenues from taxes to the government on goods and services these people are using. Let's say that an OLPC XO-XS + portable PhotoVoltaic Panel costs about 190€ (anno 2013). If we can demonstrate that an XO-XS deployment will generate in say 6-12-18 years time more than say 190 € in additional tax revenues, the OLPC deployment would have paid for itself, right? We have a spreadsheet calculator to calculate how much to foresee for implementing an OLPC XO-XS deployment. As Jacobolus mentioned: where costs for infrastructure, hardware, distribution, etc. - I want to add training, electricity generation and consumption, etc. - can all be introduced there and figures come out in how that translates into costs per laptop or child. Enfin, the tool gives you several ball-mark figures that are indispensable for a serious discussion. We are still looking to bring people from the right disciplines together to make a calculator to demonstrate what are the revenues - returns in additional tax revenues from implementing an OLPC XO-XS project. If you google around a bit, you will find e.g. publications based upon such calculators developed by teams but for the mobile phone sector. These are typical university level people in the economics departments, who are specialised in making such models / calculators. There is a consensus on the fork of additional revenues in taxes that bring mobile phone infrastructure deployments. So these calculators ask you to go look for country specific data, like number of people reached, average literacy of these groups that will be able to capture a gsm signal, purchasing power, access to micro-finance, male-female, adults-kids distributions, etc. and then when you input that data, you get ball mark figures to show to investors and the relevant ministers and president, but also IMF/Development Banks and similar, to get a loan. And that's what we need at OLPC: the better we can show that an olpc xo-xs implementation pays itself back within 7 years - average life-span of the XO's - the more helpful it will be to a minister of education U minister of finance U prime minister U president, to go to these IMF/Development Banks together with an OLPC delegation to obtain a loan. It becomes a financing issue then as it can be calculated / shown on a spreadsheet that the olpc xo-xs implementation will generate additional tax revenues with which the government can pay back the loan. All that it needs is a grace period for say 7 years. After all that's what a loan is for: give me a lump sum now, so I can build/buy/implement something now, that will start generating revenues, so that I can start paying back with an interest provided you give me some time to implement the machine/build the house/building etc. and I can actually start selling, generating revenues. And through some calculation: Revenues - costs = benefits, you can show - at least on paper already - that you can pay back the loan in so many years without any danger of going bankrupt meanwhile. At least you have a calculator - a model - with figures and data, a group of people can look at and base a discussion upon. It then becomes a discussion on : do you believe that parameter, what if you be a bit more conservative on that parameter, how does that influence the additional tax revenues generation and pay-back time. How certain are we about the data that's fed into the calculator. Does the uncertainty around the parameters and model balance the risk for the loan. Certain banks - like the IMF/Development Banks can allow loans to projects that are based upon models that are a bit less certain, private banks won't be allowed - according to their statutes - to give a loan to such project. So very to the point question. Where to go from here? Make a page on this wiki. Write to all the Universities - Economics Facultaties and propose the professors there to propose their students to collaborate in developing an Economic Model and Calculator capable of calculating what are the Additional Tax Revenues from an OLPC XO-XS deployment. List what universities you've contacted, who's responded, aks the olpc community to help you with the follow-up of all these emails, etc. Make a page on this wiki: we have to find these teams that have made these models on mobile phone implementations. Contact the federation of mobile phone companies. They're typically the ones that would order and have such studies and models/calculators developed. This is where we are at the moment. Please contact me to take up things to the next level. olpc is an open community project, so it needs you and your network to take things to the next level. --SvenAERTS 11:45, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
