Telework program in prisons (MinTIC)

Design research and Experience Design for social innovation (2017)

Since 2015, Colombia is pioneering by providing Telework certifications and bringing ICT access to prisoners. However, this has been a real challenge due to the conditions that such a restricted environment present. After realizing that participants were abandoning the program, prisons were stopping the process due to a lack of interest and trust in its continuity. Meanwhile, the legal and technical issues were being solved by other external actors. Thus, MinTIC decided to initiate a Participatory Design(PD) process. The latter would involve the final users, as well as internal and external actors that impact the program’s development on any level to understand how prisoners could adopt ICT as part of their resocialization process and produce a scalable model for Colombia and any party interested in implementing the program. The PD process had a duration of 10 months and was developed in four stages that took into account the opinion of the most important actors in order to produce the final results. These stages will be further explained in this document. During the first two phases, the Ministry’s team worked with six prisons where the project was currently running: Faca (Military prison), Puente Aranda (Military prison), Bello (Military prison), RM (Women’s Reclusion) Buen Pastor, San Andrés Prison, and Tunja Prison. Later, the prototypes were developed in four prisons: Faca, Buen Pastor, Tunja and San Andrés.