Input from regional experts clearly suggested that many TAs can help to alleviate problems confronting countries around the world but that technology adoption and implementation will not be easy for most countries; for example, the lack of infrastructure will be a critical hurdle. Thus, technical maturity and feasibility are necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for the implementation of TAs. Many other factors will determine whether a TA will be implemented, how it will be implemented, whom it benefits, and whether its use can be sustained over time and can produce expected outcomes.

This section will delineate and describe the drivers and barriers to the implementation of TAs and the relationships among them to illustrate the complex policy, political, social, and economic landscape in which technology implementation occurs.

Drivers are the motivations or forces that will enable policymakers, as well as individual users, to choose a technology to meet a certain need and to acquire capacity to sustain the application of that technology. Barriers are the opposites of drivers: They are hindrances to the implementation of TAs. Drivers and barriers frequently stem from the same sources. Their main difference lies in whether the source is available or absent (e.g., funding and a technologically savvy population), its nature relative to the technology (e.g., public opinion and laws), the problem(s) that the TA is expected to address in that particular decision environment, and the potential for negative or unanticipated consequences.

Knowing the drivers and barriers and the relationships...