ICTs connecting global citizens, global dialogue and global governance. A call for needful designs

Humankind is on the transition to a supra-system of humanity, according to which social relationships – that organise the common good – are re-organised such that global challenges are kept below the threshold of a self-inflicted breakdown. In order to succeed, three conditions are imperative: (1) Global governance needs a global conscience that orients towards the protection of the common good. (2) Such global governance needs a global dialogue on the state of the common good and the ways to proceed. (3) Such a global dialogue needs global citizens able to reflect upon the current state of the common good and the ways to proceed to desired states. Each of these imperatives is about a space of possibilities. Each space nests the following one such that they altogether form the scaffolding along which institutions can emerge that realise the imperatives when proper nuclei are introduced in those spaces. Such nuclei would already support each other. However, the clue is to further their integration by Information and Communication Technologies. An information platform shall be launched that could cover any task on any of the three levels, entangled with the articulation of cooperative action from the local to the global, based on the cybersubsidiarity model. This model is devised to ensure the percolation of meaningful information throughout the different organisational levels.2019-2

Enabling Sustainable Management through Kalman Filtering in glossaLAB: a case study on Cyber- Subsidiarity

The article describes the approach of applying the cybersubsidiarity model, based on Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model, to the management of a project oriented to the setting up of a sustainable platform for interdisciplinary knowledge co-creation. The application to this project is shown as a case study for the institution of sustainable organizations based on a subsidiary information management architecture which intends to serve as an innovative alternative to the information management driven by big-data technologies. According to this architecture, the information flow is significantly alleviated and substituted by synthetic in-formation which percolates ‘meaningfully’ across organizational levels.2020-2

E-government iImplementation and adoption: the case study of Botswana Government

ABSTRACT The advancements in the ICT and internet technologies challenge governments to engage in the electronic transformation of public services and information provision to citizens. The capability to reach citizens in the physical world via e-government platform and render a citizen-centric public sector has increasingly become vital. Thus, spending more resources to promote and ensure that all members of society are included in the entire spectrum of information society and more actively access government online is a critical aspect in establishing a successful e-government project. Every e-government programme requires a clear idea of the proposed benefits to citizens, the challenges to overcome and the level of institutional reform that has to take place for e- government to be a success in a given context. E-government strategy is fundamental to transforming and modernising the public sector through identification of key influential elements or strategy factors and ways of interacting with citizens. It is therefore apparent that governments must first understand variables that influence citizens’ adoption of e-government in order to take them into account when developing and delivering services online. Botswana has recently embarked on e-government implementation initiatives that started with the e-readiness assessment conducted in 2004, followed by enactment of the National ICT policy of 2007 and the approval of the e-government strategy approved in 2012 for dedicated implementation in the 2014 financial year. Significant developments have taken place around national and international connectivity including initiatives that offer connectivity to citizens such as the I- partnership, community run Nteletsa projects, post office run tele-centres and Sesigo projects that have been deployed on a wider Botswana. In spite of these remarkable initiatives there is no change management strategy in place and evidence to suggest that citizens cluster groups, government employees, key influential citizens’ stakeholders and other local government administrative governing structures at district levels have been appropriately informed, consulted, engaged and participated in the design, development and implementation initiatives. This position has contributed largely to low e-readiness indices for Botswana, low PC, Internet and broadband penetration levels, which do not commensurate with levels of connectivity initiatives already in place and operational. The strategy development, which is the viability business plan for the entire project has been initiated and concluded without the appropriate input of citizens, employees and local government structures at the districts. Considering that that e-government is new and narrowly researched in Botswana. There is non existing research on both the impact of strategy factors to e-government implementation success and citizens’ involvement and participation in the e-government design and implementation through to adoption and continual use. This study therefore explores and investigates empirically the key e-government strategy influential success elements and the how citizens’ involvement and participation in e-government development can be secured, supported and facilitated towards adoption and continual future use. This culminates in the proposal of both theoretically supported and empirically validated e-government strategy framework and citizen centric conceptual model. The study is crucial as it aims understand how can influences upon success in e-government project be better understood and citizens’ stakeholder adoption of e-government enhanced to facilitate successful development of e-government in Botswana and is also timely as it comes at the time when Botswana has not yet implemented her e-government strategy, hence factors identified are critical to both strategy re-alignment and design of the citizens’ involvement and participation change management strategy to support both implementation and citizens’ adoption of e-government in Botswana. The study utilises the mixed methods research, employing both qualitative and quantitative methods to address the research question and triangulated data collection approaches used to select survey sample for two questionnaire sets carried on opinion holders within government and non government structures and ordinary citizens, use of observations on operating tele-centres, interviews with key e-government strategic stakeholders and document analysis which included e-government policies and related documentations as well as extensive review of e-government published literature including applied implementation and citizens adoption experiences of developing and developed countries. In the analysis of data the multiple regression analysis has been utilised and multivariate analysis performed to ensure linearity, normality and collinearity. The linear regression has been used to test the hypothesis through the Analysis of variance (ANOVA) technique. Keywords E-government, strategy critical success factors, key influential elements, citizen centric conceptual model, strategy framework, Botswana.Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BIUST)Botswana Embass

Qualitative Research in European Migration Studies

This open access book covers the main issues, challenges and techniques concerning the application of qualitative methodologies to the study of migration. It discusses theoretical, epistemological and empirical questions that must be considered before, during, and after undertaking qualitative research in migration studies. It also covers recent innovative developments and addresses the key issues and major challenges that qualitative migration research may face at different stages i.e. crafting the research questions, defining approaches, developing concepts and theoretical frameworks, mapping categories, selecting cases, dealing with concerns of self-reflection, collecting and processing empirical evidence through various techniques, including visual data, dealing with ethical issues, and developing policy-research dialogues. Each chapter discusses relative strengths and limitations of qualitative research. The chapters also identify the main drivers for qualitative research development in migration studies. It is a unique volume as it brings together a multidisciplinary perspective as well as illustrations of different issues derived from the research experience of the recognized authors. One additional value of this book is its geographic focus on Europe. It seeks to explore theoretical and methodological issues that are raised by distinctive features of the European context. This volume will be a useful reference source for scholars and professionals in migration studies and in social sciences as well. The publication is also addressed to graduate and post-graduate students and, more generally, to those who embark on the task of doing qualitative research for the first time in the field of migration

An exploratory study of social media usage and developmental outcomes by government and emerging political leaders : the Nigerian experience

Most political systems around the world, including long-standing democratic systems, have been afflicted by corruption: non-transparent decision making processes, power distribution, cynical public relations and poor consultation exercises. The consequence has been a sense of prevailing injustice; citizenship inequality and lack of transparency in Governance. The media is often seen as a medium that could address and tackle these current socio-political problems within society. However, the role Social Media could play is widely debated between two schools of thought - media and communication studies and critical political economy – the study of social relations, particularly power relations, that constitute the production, distribution, and consumption of communication resources, and this debate leads to uncertainty about the role of ICTs in empowering public participation.This research assesses the views of those in Government Ministries, Democratic Institutions, National IT agencies, and emerging citizen leaders in the form of Nigerian graduate and postgraduate students. Nigeria makes an important case study as it sits at the fulcrum of the battle between citizen freedoms and Government censorship. This research asks how Nigeria’s government institutions and agencies conceptualises ICTs and to what extent they have used the new ICT tools for political re-engineering of the polity as well as to engage citizen’s participation in democratic processes as indices to ICT use for sustainable development in Nigeria. It draws upon power theories and theories on media and technology use in political communications, as theoretical benchmarks to contextualise Nigeria’s hegemonic media institutions, to explore the transparency and accountability within government institutions/agencies together with new participatory culture Social Media use. The study tests various social theories concerning interactive media, and asks whether ,by encouraging audiences to express their opinions, interactive media can be perceived as a tool for expanding the freedom of individuals (Sen, 1999) and in particular their social or political “capability” (Srinivasan, 2007), lending credibility to the label of new ICT’s as “technologies of freedom”(Willems, 2013). This study will establish whether or not expansion of interactive media leads, on balance, to more inclusive or more democratic practices and more transparent governance or more just and efficient delivery of public goods. The study examines how these new mediated ‘public’ spaces enable different expressions of public opinion

Qualitative Research in European Migration Studies

This open access book covers the main issues, challenges and techniques concerning the application of qualitative methodologies to the study of migration. It discusses theoretical, epistemological and empirical questions that must be considered before, during, and after undertaking qualitative research in migration studies. It also covers recent innovative developments and addresses the key issues and major challenges that qualitative migration research may face at different stages i.e. crafting the research questions, defining approaches, developing concepts and theoretical frameworks, mapping categories, selecting cases, dealing with concerns of self-reflection, collecting and processing empirical evidence through various techniques, including visual data, dealing with ethical issues, and developing policy-research dialogues. Each chapter discusses relative strengths and limitations of qualitative research. The chapters also identify the main drivers for qualitative research development in migration studies. It is a unique volume as it brings together a multidisciplinary perspective as well as illustrations of different issues derived from the research experience of the recognized authors. One additional value of this book is its geographic focus on Europe. It seeks to explore theoretical and methodological issues that are raised by distinctive features of the European context. This volume will be a useful reference source for scholars and professionals in migration studies and in social sciences as well. The publication is also addressed to graduate and post-graduate students and, more generally, to those who embark on the task of doing qualitative research for the first time in the field of migration

The adoption and diffusion of information and communication technology in the base of the pyramid population of sub-Saharan Africa: a study of Nigerian university students

The global environment is a complex network of people who are grouped using different types of information. In each country, people are grouped based on such information as age, race, ethnicity, educational qualification, income, occupation, and net worth. These socioeconomic descriptions of people have relevance in our current Information Age. This dissertation addresses a socioeconomic group, the Base of the Pyramid (BOP) population of Sub-Saharan Africa and investigates a sub-set of that population, the university students in Nigeria on their adoption of modern information and communication technology (ICT). The ICT tools and services that were looked at in this study were computers, Internet and mobile phones. Prior to conducting the study, theories and models of human needs, poverty, information seeking behavior, technology acceptance and diffusion as well as the literature on these topics was analyzed. Six research questions were asked and used to explore issues of ICT access, affordability, acceptance and adoption. The survey method was used to collect data from a self-selected sample of 300 students at the University of Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. Two focus group interviews were used to further examine the results of the survey. The data were analyzed and reported. The findings were that students accepted ICT and basic mobile phones diffused successfully. However, computer technology, the Internet and smart mobile phones did not diffuse because the students could not afford expensive forms of ICT tools and services. The students used their basic mobile phones mostly for voice communication in part because advanced tasks like e-learning or Internet access were not supported by these basic phones. They desired their mobile phones to provide better support for their information seeking behavior. It was also established that factors in the mobile phone technology adoption model (MOPTAM) - personal factors (including technology advancement and technology orientation), perceived ease of use and facilitating conditions such as cost and quality of service influenced attitude towards the use of mobile phones. Overall, the students perceived mobile technology as an innovation that they could no longer live without and that it had the potential to help improve their lives