[Sigiii-l] [Fwd: November 2007 issue of ‘Information Technology in Developing Countries’]

[M.J. Menou]

-------- Message original --------
Sujet: 	November 2007 issue of ‘Information Technology in Developing
Countries’
Date: 	Mon, 05 Nov 2007 16:16:26 +0530
De: 	IFIP Newsletter <ifipnewsletter at iimahd.ernet.in>



Dear Subscriber,

Warm Greetings! The November 2007 issue of ‘Information Technology in
Developing Countries’ is now available at:
http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/egov/ifip/current.htm

The current issue of Information Technology in Developing Countries
carries five articles followed by an interesting news article, a
post-conference report, and reviews of two recently published books. The
first article by Rajendra Kumar on 'Making E-Government Projects in
Developing Countries More Successful and Sustainable' evaluates two
projects based in India and examines the sustainability of these
projects. The paper argues that in addition to analyzing the critical
factors responsible for success or failure of a project using a
cross-sectional analytic framework, it is also important to examine
sustainability using a longitudinal framework along financial, cultural
/ social, technological, political / institutional and environmental
dimensions. Ensuring a project’s sustainability along all these
longitudinal dimensions is critical to its long-term success in meeting
its objectives. The paper concludes by saying that creating suitable ICT
infrastructure and coordination among supporting institutions for
service delivery are also very important.

The second article 'Defying the Odds: A Success Story from the Mountains
of Nepal' by Stephen Ruth and Jiwan Giri describes a successful
IT-facilitated development project implemented in one of the most
challenging locations in the world - Nangi village in Nepal. Based on
the experience, it shares the important lessons learnt that can be
useful to the entire E-Government community. While available literature,
websites and blogs are replete with positive stories of IT deployment in
a developmental context, this particular project seems to be metaphor
and fits in that rare 15 percent of success stories, despite being
located in an area that would seem least likely for high achievement.

In his article 'Broadband and Governance: Empowerment or Illusion?',
Vickram Crishna examines whether smart connectivity that appears to be a
powerful argument for the spread of equitable governance does exist in
reality, whether alternate technologies can really provide meaningful
leverage for development, and what the technology choices for India are.
The fourth article 'Community Informatics, Past, Present & Future' by
David Wortley, who is responsible for the establishment of the Serious
Games Institute (SGI) as a brand new self-financing centre of excellence
for the emerging serious games application area, gives a brief
description about his journey and hardships faced by him in establishing
his current initiative. The article also chronicles the role of social
enterprise and emerging technologies - how they can and will shape the
social and economic health of our communities - and provides five key
lessons to the readers based on his experiences and learning from many
informatics projects around the world.

The fifth article 'Social Innovation and the Partner State as Emerging
Models for the Developing World' by Michel Bauwens says that countries
like India and China are now living the capitalist dream, oblivious to
the fact that we are already consuming two planets, and that parity with
the Western lifestyle would demand four planets. Preparing for these
coming limits, they would do well to develop policies that can draw from
the new forms of social innovation, which are creating dramatic gains
and positive externalizations from social cooperation, and can also
contribute to thriving market ecologies.

Jhumpa Ray's article 'West Bengal Women Log In To ICT-Based Enterprises'
highlights the work being undertaken by Change Initiatives, a
Kolkata-based NGO that has been promoting ICT-based enterprises in West
Bengal for almost two years. Its activities include localizing and
translating a handbook in Bengali, organizing workshops and helping
women to set up enterprises. The last article 'Integrated & Sustainable
Rural Developmental Model for India' describes a model proposed by
D.S.K. Rao in order to bring about development in rural areas with the
fervent and wholehearted support of the government and potential
contributors. It hopes to achieve this through the establishment of
100,000 community centers that would reach even the remotest villages.

The report on e-Learning Africa's 2007 conference presents the
highlights of the conference and covers experiences and examples of
issues including challenges of bringing gender balance in e-learning
programmes; online learning opportunities for health professionals; and
digital courseware and learning materials developed with a focus on
African learners. This report is followed by two book reviews. D.C.
Misra's review of 'Dangerous Enthusiasms: E-government, Computer Failure
and Information System Development' authored by Robin Gauld and Shaun
Goldfinch provides a critical analysis of the book. The second book
review by Tod Newcombe on 'Public Information Technology and
E-Governance: Managing the Virtual State' authored by G. David Garson
gives a brief description about the book and highlights its importance
as being the first true text book for technology and government, which
provides a comprehensive overview of the political issues raised by
information policy in the public sector and administrative issues that
managers will likely encounter in governing the virtual state.

Conference announcements include the forthcoming '4th Annual State of
the Net Conference' to be held on January 30, 2008, Capitol Hill,
Washington; followed by the four-day '9th Annual International
Conference on Digital Government Research' to be held in May 2008 at
Montreal that is being organised by the Digital Government Society of
North America (DGSNA), with major support from the US National Science
Foundation. DGSNA is an organization of professionals and scholars who
share an interest in furthering the development of democratic digital
government. The conference theme ‘Partnerships for Public Innovation’
focuses on information-intensive innovations in the public sector that
involve linkages among government, universities, NGOs, and businesses.
Other conferences mentioned include eLearning Africa's 3rd International
Conference on ICT for Development, Education and Training, and the '8th
European Conference on e-Government'.

We hope you will find this issue interesting and we look forward to
receiving your feedback on the same. We welcome your contributions for
the forthcoming issue of the IFIP WG 9.4 Newsletter. Interested
contributors are requested to refer to the guidelines for authors
available at: http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/egov/ifip/guidelines.htm or may
mail us at: ifipnewsletter at iimahd.ernet.in

The November 2007 Issue can be directly accessed at:
http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/egov/ifip/nov2007/nov2007.htm. A downloadable
PDF version of this Issue is also available on our website (URL:
http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/egov/ifip/nov2007/nov2007.pdf) to ease access
and facilitate printing.

With Best Regards,
Editorial Team, IFIP WG 9.4 Newsletter.

Editorial office:
Centre for Electronic Governance,
Indian Institute of Management,
Ahmedabad - 380 015, India
Tel.: +91 79 2632 4128
URL: http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/egov/ifip/wg.htm




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Dr. Michel J. Menou
Visiting Professor, SLAIS, University College London, U.K.
Consultant in ICT policies and Knowledge & Information Management
Adviser of Somos at Telecentros board http://www.tele-centros.org
Member of the founding steering committee of
Telecenters of the Americas Partnership http://www.tele-centers.net/
B.P. 15
F-49350 Les Rosiers sur Loire, France
Email: micheljmenou[at]gmail[dot]com
michel[dot]menou[at]orange[dot]fr
Phone: +33 (0)2 41511043
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ciber/peoplemenou.php
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