Information and Communication Technologies for Development (IC T4D) in Indonesia: Opportunities and Challenges

Information and CommunicationTechnologies (ICTs) are now advancing quickly in emerging markets such as Indonesia. Between 80-95% of the Indonesian population already has access to mobile phones while Internet access, increasingly via mobile phones, is growing rapidly. In 2012, at least 20% of Indonesians had some form of Internet access—nearly half of who access Internet via mobile phones. The number of Indonesians online has doubled in the two years since 2010. As the uptake of mobile phones and mobile Internet has swiftly increased, so to has the use of social media. Facebook, in particular, has for many Indonesians become the Internet. There are nearly the same number of Facebook users as Internet users in Indonesia; and increasingly now for many new Internet users the rst interaction with the Internet is through accessing Facebook applications already loaded onto even basic (non-smart) mobile phones. At the same time, throughout emerging markets around the world in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, development practioners are increasingly focusing on how ICTs can be used for social and economic development purposes. Over the past decade, development organizations focusing on issues ranging from micro nance to disaster relief have increasingly begun to utilize mobile phones— and to a lesser extent, the Internet—to provide better access to services needed by marginalized and poor target groups.This study aims to provide an overview of the varied ways in which ICTs for development, or ICT4D, has taken root in Indonesia and to examine the opportunities and challenges that remain for ICT4D advocates as the variety and reach of ICTs continues to grow in Indonesia

Information and Communication Technologies for Development in Botswana

Information and Communication Technologies for Development in Botswana takes an exploratory look at the use of information and communication technologies by information technology professionals in organizations. The study makes a link between the micro and macro perspectives of development. Organizations at the micro level are the vehicles of development and an understanding of how they are leveraging their available technology for development enable the gap between the micro and macro perspectives to be better understood

Gender equality and economic development : the role for information and communication technologies

The author focuses on the role that information and communication technologies (ICTs) can play in improving gender equality, so as to enhance long-term economic growth. Employing OLS and IV panel regressions with country fixed-effects, he shows that increases in the level of ICT infrastructure tend to improve gender equality in education and employment. In addition, the author shows that education among the general population is important for improving gender equality. The results provide evidence indicating that gender equality in education is an important contributor to gender equality in employment. Lastly, the results show that economic development tends to lead to some improvements in gender equality in the labor market. Hence, the use of ICTs to improve gender equality in education and employment may initiate a continuous cycle of positive reinforcing feedback effects between gender equality in employment and economic development, leading to further improvements in both.Housing&Human Habitats,Gender and Development,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Public Health Promotion,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Housing&Human Habitats,Gender and Education,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Legal Products

The effect of new technologies on civic participation models

The development of new technologies will enable decentralization and freedom of communication for large numbers of people, by overcoming the barriers that once rendered direct participation of society unfeasible. The continued development of information and communication technologies (ICT) makes it possible for people to participate in political life. Today, the use of e-tools is becoming a way of adapting democracy to the needs of contemporary states and strengthening civil society. The aim of this paper is to answer questions about the essence of ICT and forms of civic engagement through electronic forms of participation. The author seeks answers to the following questions: How does ICT influence political processes? How do electronic communication systems create the conditions for the political engagement of citizens? Can the use of information technologies have a real impact on participation

INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES (ICTs) IN THE SERVICES OF HEALTHCARE SECTOR IN EUROPE

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) consists of all technical means used to handle information and aid communication, including both computer and network hardware as well as necessary software. Information and Communication Technologies tools and services are used in many sectors like development, education, e-services, policy, health and medicine and so one. This paper links the ICTs tools and services for health. ICTs has the potential to impact almost every aspect of the health sector. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have an important role in service engineering, improving medical knowledge and practice, and defining new fields of research.eHealth, healthcare sector, telemedicine services, health portals, health information networks, digital health infrastructure

Information and Communication Technologies Implications for Social and Economic Development

This presentation examines issues surrounding broadband based ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) and the implications for the role of the government, the private sector, the community and academia in supporting the utilization of broadband (internet connectivity) for social and economic development. The study being presented aims to identify key topic areas and questions for further collaborative research and to inform government policy development for an accessible and ubiquitous broadband infrastructure across both urban and rural regions. Living in the society of the Information Age, connectivity has become as vital as hydro, electricity and the roads and bridges that we move on. Moving forward, it will be imperative for the development of a robust but ubiquitous network broadband infrastructure that will allow citizens equal opportunities to broadband that is affordable in order to participate in the digital economy and to improve their livelihoods. The Canadian government’s vision of a “Connected Canada” established in 1999 has been at best subtle rather than impressive where the country’s rural areas tend to have far lower internet use at a household level due to factors such as an older population and lower educational attainment. However such generalization is weak within the context of southwestern Ontario where rural areas have no broadband access while others are still dependent on dial-up telephone modems or slow speed ADSL with major price differences between wired and fixed wireless or satellite coverage. This presentation focuses on rural connectivity for southwestern Ontario by looking at healthcare and agricultural farm families’ ability to innovate, network and communicate through broadband use. Topics that will be explored will include the impact of healthcare through broadband (eHealth), how agricultural farm families are influenced by broadband, investment allocations for a sustainable telecommunications infrastructure and the “digital divide” that pervades Canada’s urban and rural areas. The variables being presented for this study are: affordability, accessibility, usability and value of broadband tools for agriculture and rural healthcare

Practical cryptographic strategies in the post-quantum era

We review new frontiers in information security technologies in communications and distributed storage technologies with the use of classical, quantum, hybrid classical-quantum, and post-quantum cryptography. We analyze the current state-of-the-art, critical characteristics, development trends, and limitations of these techniques for application in enterprise information protection systems. An approach concerning the selection of practical encryption technologies for enterprises with branched communication networks is introduced.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures; review pape

Intervention or collaboration?:redesigning information and communication technologies for development

How can we design and build digital technologies to support people in poor and low-resource environments to achieve their objectives? And how can we do this inclusivelyand ethically, while considering the complexity of their living and working environ-ments? This is the central question in my research.One of the grand challenges of international development cooperation is to makedigital technologies available for social and economic development of poor regions ofthe world. To achieve this goal – often referred to as ICT4D – knowledge and tech-nologies are transferred from wealthy countries to poor regions. Nevertheless, theseefforts have often turned out unsuccessful and unsustainable, despite large budgetsand numerous projects in prestigious international development programs.Mismatch between the transferred technologies and the target environment is a re-current problem of ICT4D projects. Improvement can be achieved, for example, byinvolving end-users in the design process. International development organizationsare aware of this, and terms like "co-creation", "participation" and "user-oriented de-sign" have nowadays become part of the international development discourse. How-ever,realco-creation and user-centered design are incompatible with unidirectionaltransfer of technologies and knowledge (this is how ICT4D is commonly organized,in conventional international development). Moreover, the term participation becomesmeaningless, in the light of externally formulated development goals.One key question to ask is:what do the envisaged users want?Remarkably, many ICT4Dprojects, programs and policies do not really ask and (field) investigate this question,which can only be answered by extensive research on-the-ground.This thesis describes the search for and the design of an alternative approach toICT4D. Ten years of field and action research with partners in Mali, Burkina Faso, andGhana have led to a collaborative, iterative and adaptive approach, dubbed "ICT4D3.0". What is novel of this alternative approach and how does it answer the centralquestion?First of all, ICT4D3.0is a practical approach for critical investigation and action.It consists of a reconfigurable framework that guides the design and development ofinformation systems, bridging the knowledge gap between developers and users tounlock and integrate different domains of (global, local, indigenous, academic, non-academic) knowledge. It targets complex, resource-constrained environments wheremany (for the ICT developers and researchers) unfamiliar conditions or obstacles mayexist. It fosters innovative capacity and learning in action, bringing together peoplewith different backgrounds and perspectives in trans-disciplinary and multiculturalteams. It is socio-technical, result-oriented, focused on the objectives of the stakeholders ers and the requirements of their livelihoods. This approach has been validated invarious different contexts, by users, ICT developers, practitioners and students.Second, ICT4D3.0contributes to a theoretical understanding of ICT4D as a processof networked innovation in complex (adaptive) systems. The underlying idea is thatknowledge sharing and diffusion of innovations are complex (non-linear) dynamicprocesses that evolve and propagate through social networks in rather unpredictableways, whereby innovation works out differently, depending on context, and wherebycontextual (e.g. social, cultural, environmental, political) factors play an important role,and have to be considered. This theoretical framework explains the effectiveness of acollaborative, iterative, adaptative approach in ICT4D.Third, ICT4D3.0is built on ethical principles. When reflecting on the meaningand purpose of digital development, it is clear that digital development is not onlya question of technology and practice, and collaboration is more than a prerequisitefor successful technological innovation and long-term sustainability: collaboration isa fundamental human, ethical value. Therefore, as a reflective practitioner, one hasto ask oneself whose interests one is actually looking after, which goals one is tryingto achieve, where they come from, how power and political issues play a role andwhich core values are at stake. This makes ICT4D3.0into a democratic process of di-alogue and deliberation, in which all voices are heard, in which the local context andcomplexity are central, and in which development goals are determined by the usersthemselves and not imposed from outside. In this light, the approach proposed in thisthesis takes a value position and can be considered a decolonial approach, striving fordemocracy, emancipation, autonomy and social and economic betterment.Field experience shows that ICT4D can be a meaningful, collaborative, networkedprocess of knowledge sharing, driven by local initiatives, realizing change for the better,in a complex world

Intervention or Collaboration?:Rethinking Information and Communication Technologies for Development

Over the past decades information system developers and knowledge engineers in ICT projects in wealthy regions of the world have come to realize that technical work can only be successful when situated in a broader organizational context. However, for low-resource environments (or example rural Africa), where contextual embedding is even more demanding given the complexity of these environments, practical, context-oriented methodologies how to "do" information systems engineering are still lacking. This book gives a basic but thorough insight how to develop information systems and services for people in low resource environments, from a socio-technical, information systems engineering perspective, presenting field-validated methods that cover the complete lifecycle of information systems engineering, with emphasis on context analysis, needs assessment, use case and requirements analysis and (business) sustainability analysis. Since technical development does not go without critical reflection, this book also investigates which (tacit) assumptions affect the way technologies are implemented in poor, low-resource environments. Linking collaborative sociotechnical development with theories of complexity and social networks of innovation, this book offers a reflective and critical approach to information and communication technologies for development