Factors Influencing Perceptions and Attitudes of Nurses Towards the Use of ICT in Patient Care in KwaZulu Natal Province, South Africa

This paper presents the results of a study to determine factors influencing perceptions and attitudes of nurses towards the use of ICT in 16 hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province, South Africa. Data were collected through a survey questionnaire and factor analysis performed to extract relevant variables. Overall, results revealed positive dispositions of nurses towards the use of ICT. Results further revealed self-efficacy, adoption of computers to improve nursing care, confidence in using computers; usefulness; interactability and knowledgeability were major factors influencing perceptions and attitudes of nurses towards use of ICT at the work place. Findings may inform institutional and provincial ICT infrastructure development decisions to improve nursing services in hospitals. Theoretically the study provides an understanding of factors influencing attitudes and perceptions of nurses’ in the use of ICT at work place from a developing country context such as South Africa and also in vast rural province such as KZN

Ethical aspects of doctoral-research advising in the emerging African information society

This paper discusses the ethical aspects of doctoral-research advising in the emerging African information society from an African perspective. It addresses the following research questions: What is the status of information ethics in Africa? What theoretical frameworks are available to illuminate the ethical dimension of the emerging African information society? To what extent are ethical aspects of the emerging African information society integrated into doctoral research advising in library and information science in Africa? What are the roles and obligations of the supervisor and supervisee in doctoral research? How is information and communication technology (ICT) being used to enhance doctoral-research advising? The paper is underpinned by various ethical theoretical models, such as the Trust Model, Hayward Power Relations, classical and contemporary ethical traditions, and game theory. It relies upon a literature survey to address the research problems. Results reveal, among other things, the milestones achieved by African scholars in promoting information ethics through curriculum development and research. However, there is a need for the evolving information society to take cognizance of African cultural contexts. The results also reveal that supervisor–supervisee relationships are constrained. The ethical dimension of the emerging African information society should be infused into the doctoral-research process to improve the relationships of supervisor and supervisee. This should be supported by responsible use of ICT, taking into account the Africa cultural context and African values to facilitate the doctoral-advising process. All these should be buttressed by an enabling policy framework at the institutional level to promote harmony and productivity in doctoral research.published or submitted for publicationOpe

Information Management as a Nexus to Promote the use of Indigenous Medicine and Enhance Public Healthcare Delivery: A Bibliometric Analysis

This paper uses a bibliometric analysis to explore the citations trend in ethnomedicine and information management. A text mining algorithm of a total number of 8, 333 publications (n = 8,333) was conducted based on the title, abstract and keywords to find co-occurrence of key terms in indigenous medicine and information management. The first objective was to analyze the authorship, outputs and citation trends and establish if researchers have been able to establish a nexus between indigenous herbal use and the role of information management in promoting such use. Secondly, the study sought to establish if there is already a link in information management research through collaboration as a nexus to promote indigenous use of herbal medicine and enhance public healthcare delivery systems on the African continent. A computation synthesis of the data was performed using R programming statistical analysis and bibliometric software to visualize the analyzed data. Based on the R programming output, the total author sample size was 35,970 (n = 35,970), and their total publications output was n= 8,333, while the total outputs parameters was as follows: Min = 5.00 Max = 71.00, µ = 10.59. The average citation per items was 4.74 (ACP = 4.74) h-index=60, sum of times cited (STC = 39,572), citing articles (CA = 32,749) without self-citations (n =36,042) and citing articles (CA= 30,777). The findings suggest that researchers have yet to establish the nexus between information management and its impact in promoting indigenous use of natural remedies within public healthcare to promote its efficacy

Bibliometric Analysis of Citation Trends and Publications on E-government in Southern African Countries: A Human-computer Interactions and IT Alignment Debate

Due to technology adoption, many countries are embracing e-government. This study presents the growth and pattern of research on e-government articles and conference proceedings internationally, by scholars in the Southern African countries. It presents research patterns, trends and current gaps in e-government, as well as the most prolific authors and the level of outputs’ prominence. This paper uses bibliometric tools to present the analysis of articles on Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar databases. R computational programming for big data analysis was used to generate summarized metrics. The citation sample size was (n = 33,689), µ = 625, and the outputs impact based on total link strength of citations were; min =11.0, max = 1,686.0 and µ = 118.2, showing the Southern African scholars outputs visibility and prominence on e-government research. The findings present the most prolific authors in the Southern African region and the prominence of their outputs on e-governance. The study, through the computational synthesis of the data, also reveals some of the missing links in e-governance research designs and implementation. Furthermore, the study indicates that the service-oriented design of e-government platforms are still lacking, and the integration of Information Technology (IT) alignment, which is necessary to successfully implement e-government is lacking. The use and integration of mobile technology to enhance citizen-centric and participatory public governance platform and e-government implementation is not sufficiently addressed. Therefore, there is need to measure the maturity level of e-government IT deployment, its user-interfaces, as well as the design of an e-government that is able to respond to often embryonic and heterogeneous needs of citizens

Information Management as Nexus to Promote Indigenous Medicine Use to Enhance Public Healthcare Delivery: A Bibliometric Analysis

The paper uses a bibliometric analysis explore citations trend of ethnomedicine and information management, and text mining algorithm of a total number of 8, 333 publications (n = 8,333) were conducted based on the title, abstract and keywords to find co-occurrence of key terms in indigenous medicine and information management. The objectives of this study were to first, analyze the authorship, outputs and citation trend and to find out if researchers have been able to establish a nexus between indigenous herbal use and the role of information management in promoting such use. Second, to establish if there is an already link in the information management research through collaboration as a nexus to promoting indigenous use of herbal medicine to enhance public healthcare delivery systems in the continent. A computation synthesis of the data was performed using R programming statistical analysis and VOS bibliometric software to visualize the analyzed data. Based on the R programming output, the total author sample size were 35,970 (n = 35,970), and their total publications outputs were n= 8,333 and the total outputs parameters was as follows: Min = 5.00 Max = 71.00, µ = 10.59. The average citation per items was 4.74 (ACP = 4.74) h-index=60, sum of times cited (STC = 39,572), citing articles (CA = 32,749) without self-citations (n =36,042) and it’s citing articles (CA= 30,777). The findings suggested that researchers were yet to establish the nexus between information management and its impact in promoting indigenous use of natural remedies within the public healthcare delivery to promote its efficacies

A Review of Information Behaviour Literature on Professoriates across Disciplinary Fields

This paper reviewed empirical literature on information behaviour of academic faculty across disciplinary fields with particular reference to studies whose demography included the professoriate in the context of their information needs, purposeful information seeking and use of information for teaching and research. Paucity of literature focusing on the professoriate prompted this study. Literature focusing on the professoriate will provide a rich theoretical and contextual background for researchers embarking on studies that focus specifically on the professoriate in related information context, besides filling the knowledge gap in library and information science literature. The scope of the literature review covers scholarly journals in major electronic databases and search engines such as EBSCOhost, ERIC, Social Science Citation Index, ProQuest, Google and Google Scholar. In reviewing the empirical literature, attention was given to literature with professoriate in their population. The outcome of the literature review revealed the general information needs of the professoriate are for teaching and research. Literature on purposeful information seeking revealed the professoriates’ use of print and electronic information resources varied across disciplinary fields, and is influenced by age, environmental and individual characteristics. Use of electronic information resources is context-dependent and prevailed more in research settings and in studies conducted in the West relative to those carried out in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. The paper concludes that in-spite of the continued relevance of print information resources, electronic information resources usage continue to increase in academic environment that is fast embracing information technology

Policy gaps and technological deficiencies in social networking environments: Implications for information sharing

Background: With the growing adoption and acceptance of social networking, there are increased concerns about the violation of the users’ legitimate rights such as privacy, confidentiality, trust, security, safety, content ownership, content accuracy, integrity, access and accessibility to computer and digital networks amongst others.Objectives: The study sought to investigate the following research objectives to: (1) describe the types of social networks, (2) examine global penetration of the social networks, (3) outline the users’ legitimate rights that must be protected in the social networking sites (SNS), (4) determine the methods employed by SNS to protect the users’ legitimate rights and (5) identify the policy gaps and technological deficiencies in the protection of the users’ legitimate rights in the SNS.Method: A literature survey and content analysis of the SNS user policies were used to address objective four and objective five respectively.Results: The most actively used sites were Facebook and Twitter. Asian markets were leading in participation and in creating content than any other region. Business, education, politics and governance sectors were actively using social networking sites. Social networking sites relied upon user trust and internet security features which however, were inefficient and inadequate.Conclusion: Whilst SNS were impacting people of varying ages and of various professional persuasions, there were increased concerns about the violation and infringement of the users’ legitimate rights. Reliance on user trust and technological security features SNS to protect the users’ legitimate rights seemed ineffectual and inadequate

Assessment of the e-readiness of small and medium sized enterprises in the ICT sector in Botswana, with special reference to information access

D.Litt. et Phil.The purpose of this research was to determine the status of e-readiness of Small and Medium-Sized enterprises (SMEs) in the ICT sector in Botswana with respect to information access using ICTs for competitiveness in the local and international markets. The population of study consisted of key informants from 114 SMEs in the ICT sector in Gaborone and Francistown, the capital city and the second largest city of Botswana respectively. The official list of ICT companies provided by the government of Botswana was used as the sampling frame. The research used a two-phase design - the preliminary survey and the main survey of the project. The preliminary survey consisted of two stages. During the first stage, a short structured questionnaire was administered to a census of 114 key informants from SMEs in the ICT sector. During the second stage, six focus group discussions were used to collect data from key stakeholders in the ICT sector who included representatives from: ICT companies, ICT professional body in Botswana, government utility corporations, academia and the business community. The participants in the focus group discussions involved representatives from 55 SMEs who were identified like in the first stage using the government official list of SMEs in Botswana. The quantitative data collected through questionnaire were analysed using SPSS while the qualitative data collected through focus group discussions and in-depth interviews were analysed using thematic tables. The results were represented using tables, pie charts, categories and narrations. The results of the preliminary survey of the project were used to characterise the ICT sector in terms of its size, key players, nature of businesses, products and services traded in, distribution of business by location and the issues that affected the sector. This characterisation was important in two main respects. Firstly, it provided a clear roadmap for the design of the main survey of the research since little information existed on the subject of e-readiness on Botswana in general and with respect to SMEs in particular. Similarly, the government had invested a lot of resources in ICT infrastructure development and was focusing on SMEs especially those in the ICT sector to diversify the economy from the dominant diamond mining to service industry. Secondly, the results of the preliminary survey of the project supported the development of a structured interview schedule that was used during the main survey of the project. During the main survey of the research data was collected from companies that participated in the focus group discussions. From the focus group list of participants, an alphabetical name list of 55 SMEs was created. There were 43 Small-Sized and 12 Medium-Sized enterprises that were represented during the focus group discussions. For the purpose of carrying out the structured interviews, SMEs were stratified into two (Small-Sized enterprises and Medium-Sized enterprises). From the Small-Sized enterprises stratum, 20 companies were systematically selected (from the 43) taking every other member on the list. On the other hand, in the Medium-Sized enterprises stratum, all the 12 enterprises were selected for interviews because the number of respondents was small. The data collected was analysed using categories and thematic tables because it was largely qualitative. The results were presented in the form of thematic tables and through narrations. The findings from the SMEs surveyed indicated that most of the SMEs in the ICT sector in Botswana were Small-Sized enterprises that were largely not e-ready to participate in the global electronic business environment because of several impediments such as: the lack of awareness, inadequate policy and legislative framework, poor telecommunication and electricity infrastructures, poor e-commerce infrastructure, inadequate government support, the lack of access to credit, investment barriers, the lack of critical ICT skills and more. The major outcomes of the project include an exposition of the e-readiness status of SMEs in the ICT sector in Botswana, a road map that can assist the government of Botswana to establish a strong export-oriented ICT sector. The weaknesses and strengths of Botswana’s e-readiness status with regard to SMEs are brought to the fore, thus creating awareness upon which the government can design interventions that are tailored to meet Botswana’s SMEs’ specific needs. Similarly, this project provides a framework upon which the government can benchmark against its counterparts in the rest of the world in order to define its investment priorities. The project also provides baseline information which the government could use to implement appropriate policy and legislative decisions in order to enhance the e-readiness of SMEs in the ICT sector in Botswana. Finally, the new integrated e-readiness tool that was developed in this project is the first of its kind to bring the different major components of e-readiness (such as enterprise, ICT, human resources, information and external environment readiness) into a single assessment tool with great attention paid to information access. The tool is also modular in design and thus can allow specific e-readiness assessment of individual segments of society to be modelled independently of each other. The tool also enriches the qualitative aspects of e-readiness that are only minimally addressed in a few of the existing macro e-readiness assessment tools. Among the key recommendations from the research is the need for the government of Botswana to promulgate relevant policies and implement pragmatic programmes that would enable SMEs in the ICT sector in the country to use various information technologies in order to gain access to relevant information regarding access to credit, investment opportunities, partnerships, education and training opportunities so that they can effectively participate in both the local and international markets. The policy changes and programmes to be undertaken by the government should be underpinned by an effective legislative and regulatory framework that would enable the small business firms to identify, acquire, process, organise, disseminate and apply information for competitive advantage through the effective deployment and application of ICTs

Changing Trends In Library Automation

The paper reviews the pioneering role of the computer centres and co-operative library schemes in library automation using mainframe computers prior to the evolution of Microcomputer technology. With the development of microcomputer technology, cooperative library schemes diversified their business into new market segments by converting their products and started to provide new services such as, database conversions, training, consultancy, maintenance, documentation, computer hardware and access to a wide range of full text electronic journals. Cooperative library schemes in this way have remained relevant and continued to play an important role in library automation. Computer centres on the other hand have found it difficult to shed off the tradition of providing computing services to the library using the mainframe computer of the parent organisation. Libraries have resisted this encroachment on their `sovereignty' by the computer centre. There is however an emerging trend showing the need for the library and computer centre to co-operate with one another. In organisations that do not have computer centres, Information Technology (IT) units are playing a similar role to that played by computer centres. The paper examines areas where the library and the computer centre can co-operate as partners of the organisation wide management information system. (African Journal of Library, Archives and Information Science: 2000 10 (1): 23-34

Ethical dimension of indigenous knowledge systems

Indigenous people around the world both in developed and developing countries have long been marginalized by governments and /or by other privileged social groups from main stream social, political and economic activities. As a result they suffer indignity because their legitimate human rights are violated by way of social exclusion, linguistic marginalization, erosion of cultural identity, preference for foreign to local content, low literacy levels, intellectual property exploitation, and push/pull factors. The   World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) provided an opportunity for indigenous people to become part of an inclusive information society where everybody without distinction would have access to enhanced services including information and knowledge resources to improve their livelihood.  Indeed WSIS Action Lines (ALs) 1, 2, 3 6 and 8 discuss the various legitimate rights that are pertinent to indigenous people and their information and knowledge systems. However, Action Line 10 (ethical dimension of information society) which should enforce the provisions of the rest of WSIS Actions Lines instead offers omnibus and overarching ethical prescriptions of an information society. This we submit cannot effectively serve the needs and aspirations of indigenous people or promote and protect their knowledge systems that have long been marginalized. This article assesses the ethical dimension of indigenous knowledge and outlines the legitimate rights that indigenous communities and their associated knowledge systems must enjoy in an inclusive information society. The following research questions are addressed in this article: What are the legitimate rights of indigenous people? What is the ethical dimension of indigenous knowledge? What push and pull factors are contributing to violations of rights of indigenous people and their information/knowledge systems? Are indigenous people’s legitimate rights unique? A review of literature is used to respond to each of the research questions. The subject matter discussed has practical and policy implications for the implementation of Action Line 10 of WSIS on ethical dimension of the information society