Research in the multi-disciplinary domain of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and Development indicates there is potential for ICT to contribute to a nation's socio-economic, socio-technical and socio-cultural development. Because of this, developing countries have been rushing to implement ambitious ICT for Development (ICT4D) projects, in rural areas, through the direct/indirect supervision of institutions such as the World Bank, the United Nations (UN) and other local and international donor agencies. These interventions aim to provide positive developmental impacts on people's lives at an individual, group or community level. However, debate is continuing regarding how and to what extent the ICT4D projects further the achievement of development.
Research in the multi-disciplinary domain of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and Development indicates there is potential for ICT to contribute to a nation s socio-economic development. We contend that there is a need for extending existing IS or ICT theoretical paradigms by the creation of frameworks set in the local context that will either analyse individual ICT applications or understand/measure ICT impacts on socio-economic development, especially in developing countries. Our research constructs a conceptual framework in order to understand the developmental impact at micro or community level in rural areas of one developing country, Bangladesh. We achieve this through an interpretive case study of one type of ICT4D project or intervention in three village areas in Bangladesh. Its results were analysed using Heeks information chain model and Sen notion of development as freedom. Our research makes a contribution to expanding the scope for impact assessment and to identifying social constraints (religious issues, perceptions held of female community members, and so on), and we believe that these constraints demand further investigation.
Mobile phones are close to ubiquitous in developing countries; Internet and broadband access are becoming commonplace. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) thus represent the fastest, broadest and deepest technical change experienced in international development. They now affect every development sector – supporting the work of hundreds of millions of farmers and micro-entrepreneurs; creating millions of ICT-based jobs; assisting healthcare workers and teachers; facilitating political change; impacting climate change; but also linked with digital inequalities and harms – with the pace of change continuously accelerating. Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) provides the first dedicated textbook to examine and explain these emerging phenomena. It will help students, practitioners, researchers and other readers understand the place of ICTs within development; the ICT-enabled changes already underway; and the key issues and interventions that engage ICT4D practice and strategy. The book has a three-part structure. The first three chapters set out the foundations of ICT4D: the core relation between ICTs and development; the underlying components needed for ICT4D to work; and best practice in implementing ICT4D. Five chapters then analyse key development goals: economic growth, poverty eradication, social development, good governance and environmental sustainability. Each chapter assesses the goal-related impact associated with ICTs and key lessons from real-world cases. The final chapter looks ahead to emerging technologies and emerging models of ICT-enabled development. The book uses extensive in-text diagrams, tables and boxed examples with chapter-end discussion and assignment questions and further reading. Supported by online activities, video links, session outlines and slides, this textbook provides the basis for undergraduate, postgraduate and online learning modules on ICT4D.
Written by a team of expert practitioners at the Independent Office of Evaluation of International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), this book gives an insight into the implications of new and emerging technologies in development evaluation. Growing technologies such as big data analytics, machine learning and remote sensing present new opportunities for development practitioners and development evaluators, particularly when measuring indicators of the Sustainable Development Goals. The volume provides an overview of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the context of evaluation, looking at the theory and practice, and discussing how the landscape may unfold. It also considers concerns about privacy, ethics and inclusion, which are crucial issues for development practitioners and evaluators working in the interests of vulnerable populations across the globe. Among the contributions are case studies of seven organizations using various technologies for data collection, analysis, dissemination and learning. This valuable insight into practice will be of interest to researchers, practitioners and policymakers in development economics, development policy and ICT.
The second volume in the SIRCA book series investigates the impact of information society initiatives by extending the boundaries of academic research into the realm of practice. Global in scope, it includes contributions and research projects from Asia, Africa and Latin America. The international scholarly community has taken a variety of approaches to question the impact of information society initiatives on populations in the Global South. This book addresses two aspects— Impact of research: How is the research on ICTs in the Global South playing a role in creating an information society? (e.g. policy formulation, media coverage, implementation in practice) and Research on impact: What is the evidence for the impact of ICTs on society? (i.e. the objectives of socio-economic development). This volume brings together a multiplicity of voices and approaches from social scientific research to produce an engaging volume for a variety of stakeholders including academics, researchers, practitioners, policy-makers and those in the business and civil sectors of society.
What can we learn about the development of public interaction in e-democracy from a drama delivered by mobile headphones to an audience standing around a shopping center in a Stockholm suburb? In democratic societies there is widespread acknowledgment of the need to incorporate citizens' input in decision-making processes in more or less structured ways. But participatory decision making is balancing on the borders of inclusion, structure, precision and accuracy. To simply enable more participation will not yield enhanced democracy, and there is a clear need for more elaborated elicitation and decision analytical tools. This rigorous and thought-provoking volume draws on a stimulating variety of international case studies, from flood risk management in the Red River Delta of Vietnam, to the consideration of alternatives to gold mining in Roșia Montană in Transylvania, to the application of multi-criteria decision analysis in evaluating the impact of e-learning opportunities at Uganda's Makerere University. Editors Love Ekenberg (senior research scholar, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis [IIASA], Laxenburg, professor of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University), Karin Hansson (artist and research fellow, Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University), Mats Danielson (vice president and professor of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, affiliate researcher, IIASA) and GOran Cars (professor of Societal Planning and Environment, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm) draw innovative collaborations between mathematics, social science, and the arts. They develop new problem formulations and solutions, with the aim of carrying decisions from agenda setting and problem awareness through to feasible courses of action by setting objectives, alternative generation, consequence assessments, and trade-off clarifications. As a result, this book is important new reading for decision makers in government, public administration and urban planning, as well as students and researchers in the fields of participatory democracy, urban planning, social policy, communication design, participatory art, decision theory, risk analysis and computer and systems sciences.
The two volumes IFIP AICT 551 and 552 constitute the refereed proceedings of the 15th IFIP WG 9.4 International Conference on Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries, ICT4D 2019, held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in May 2019. The 97 revised full papers and 2 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 185 submissions. The papers present a wide range of perspectives and disciplines including (but not limited to) public administration, entrepreneurship, business administration, information technology for development, information management systems, organization studies, philosophy, and management. They are organized in the following topical sections: communities, ICT-enabled networks, and development; digital platforms for development; ICT for displaced population and refugees. How it helps? How it hurts?; ICT4D for the indigenous, by the indigenous and of the indigenous; local technical papers; pushing the boundaries - new research methods, theory and philosophy in ICT4D; southern-driven human-computer interaction; sustainable ICT, informatics, education and learning in a turbulent world - "doing the safari way”.
The effectiveness of information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) projects has been deeply questionable over the past decades, despite the much attention paid to ICTs among academics and practitioners as a possible catalyst in the betterment of people's lives in the Global South. Significant failures during the early phases of ICT4D era led to increased attention to evaluation of the projects-the lessons from which can contribute toward increased potential of successful and sustainable ICT4D initiatives. However, ICT4D evaluation is yet to be seen as a field with a clear global consensus on what it constitutes. In this setting, the study aims to identify the major foci, gaps, and challenges of ICT4D evaluation and explore ways to strengthen its conceptual elements and resolve prevailing issues. To address the above research problem, content analysis of journal articles and aid/development agency reports on ICT4D evaluation and interviews of ICT4D researchers in academic and practitioner spheres were conducted. Moreover, to identify and strengthen the field's conceptual elements, the study refers to the three areas of evaluation with a long history of rich discourse and/or strong foundation of models, theories, and approaches-program evaluation, information systems/information technology (IS/IT) evaluation, and aid/development evaluation. The study finds that: there have been changes in foci in ICT4D evaluation in terms of development notions, research or evaluation approaches, and methods; challenges exist in terms of structural, stakeholder, and methodological issues; there have been associations between ICT4D evaluation and the three evaluation fields but with limitations; and that more discussion is needed on areas such as sustainability, participatory evaluation design, and ethical considerations of researchers. Also, the study argues for the significance of socio-technical lens and development notion-impact connection in addressing the current challenges, and that domain-oriented consolidation of knowledge in ICT4D evaluation among the researchers may help facilitate engagement with decision makers. The study can serve as a ground for facilitating discussions on how the field can be improved and how it can accommodate various perspectives and interests of the ICT4D community.
A journal examining the impact of global IT from a publisher of quality research Information Technology for Development is a journal that specifically addresses global information technology issues and opportunities. It's dedicated to providing quality research, including social and technical research regarding information technology's effects on economic, social and human development. This journal's purpose includes serving as a forum for discussions about strategies, best practices, tools and techniques for assessing the impact of IT infrastructure, whether it's in government or the private sector. This is a single issue of the journal, Volume 13, Number 2, from 2007.
