[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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