[Sigiii-l] [Fwd: February 2009 issue of “Information Technology in Developing Countries”]

Tue Feb 24 09:15:19 EST 2009

-------- Message original --------
Sujet : 	February 2009 issue of “Information Technology in Developing 
Countries”
Date : 	Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:39:19 +0530
De : 	IFIP Newsletter <ifipnewsletter at iimahd.ernet.in>
Pour : 	mamvincent at coraf.org, manish_ras2003 at yahoo.co.in, 
manojjhalani at rediffmail.com, marcus.koll at uni-bonn.de, 
martin.maier at gmail.com, mateja.kunstelj at fu.uni-lj.si, 
mb_rodriguez at gmx.net, mb387 at cornell.edu, mdadamo at jhuccp.org, 
mggutti at gmail.com, mhovey at csc.com, micheljmenou at gmail.com, 
mikeb at cc.gatech.edu, mikhail at e-belarus.org

Dear Subscriber,

Warm Greetings! The February 2009 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 
includes articles that discuss the use of an innovative business model 
in an e-government project to make it self-sustainable, the impact of 
computerisation of agricultural markets in the state of Madhya Pradesh 
in India on farmers and traders in the state, information dissemination 
to farmers via a  telephone, problems and hurdles faced in establishing 
community radio projects, a practical guideline for setting up a rural 
telecenter, a few news articles and announcements of forthcoming 
conferences.

The first article is a case study on the Janchetna ("Public 
Consciousness") project implemented in Hardoi district of Uttar Pradesh, 
India. The article illustrates how important it is for the governments 
to share information with citizens and at the same time, to provide 
citizens a public grievance redressal mechanism to give feedback to the 
Government on governance issues such as implementation of development 
schemes and utilization of public funds. The project facilitates 
citizen-centric services through an online grievance redressal portal 
accessed from Janchetna kiosks. Janchetna has brought about a well 
appreciated transparency to the working of the district administration, 
and its success demonstrates how widespread awareness combined with a 
strongly formulated public opinion can go a long way in the fight 
against corruption. The project is also an outstanding example of a 
highly cost-efficient, economically self-reliant and user-financed 
community network that works on an innovative operational model 
requiring no investments and operational support from the government, 
generates its own funds from the citizens, and contributes to the 
earnings of the kiosk operators.

The second article “ICTs as Enablers of Process Change in Agriculture" 
by V. Shunmugam and Sarita Bahl advises that for an ICT initiative to 
succeed in driving development of agriculture, it is necessary to make 
the service delivery holistic and two-way. Instead of simply replicating 
the piecemeal initiatives that have already been taken up in rural areas 
by several entities and have largely focused on agricultural knowledge 
dissemination and providing price information, there should be an 
attempt to reduce costs of implementation, improve access to technology, 
inputs, capital and markets, and to leverage these initiatives and 
integrate them towards the common national development goal.

Ranjan Vaidya's case study on "Computerization of Agricultural Marketing 
Board" describes and compares the process of selling produce that a 
farmer has to undergo in a typical mandi (agricultural market) and one 
in which certain operations have been computerised. The article is based 
on observations gathered during the author's field visits to certain 
mandis administered by the Agricultural Marketing Board (also referred 
to as the Mandi Board) in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India. The author 
concludes that end-to-end computerization of processes, process 
reengineering and appropriate legislative reforms are necessary in order 
to harness the full potential of an ICT intervention.

The next article by Anusha Lall and Swati Sahi describe the LifeLines 
India Initiative launched by OneWorld International in collaboration 
with British Telecom and CISCO. The project was originally designed to 
deliver critical information pertaining to agriculture and animal 
husbandry to farmers in rural India via a digital platform, using the 
telephone as a primary medium for information access and use. But its 
success in these areas have led to the project being extended to the 
field of education, and its replication in Nepal and Sri Lanka is also 
being explored. This article is followed by Mahesh Acharya's piece on 
Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs), which attempt to make best use of the most 
widely available but least explored communication technology - the radio 
- to offer radio broadcast services for farming communities. The article 
describes the cumbersome government procedures and the content creation 
guidelines that KVKs have to follow for setting up a community radio, 
which limit their widespread  growth and affect their sustainability in 
the long run. Ron Hebert's article discusses the 'Economics of Health 
Informatics' in developed and developing countries, replication of 
Health Information Systems in public and private hospitals of developing 
countries, and highlights a few lessons from ICT based health 
initiatives functioning in different countries.

Arvindd Narayanan and Gaurav Chakraverty's article is an abstract of the 
unpublished manual compiled by the authors on “Running ICT Telecenters 
in Rural India”. The manual attempts to lay down guidelines to be 
followed by professionals handling operations of these networks, so as 
to enable a better success rate and low burnout. It has been compiled on 
the basis of the authors’ understanding of hurdles faced by community 
and telecenter operators gained through their field experience of 
working with them. This is followed by a report on the two-day "Workshop 
on Impact Assessment of e-Governance Projects" that was jointly 
organised by the Department of Information Technology (DIT) and the 
Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA). The workshop was 
attended by 68 participants including senior officials from state 
governments and the Government of India, academicians, and 
representatives of market research agencies that had been involved in 
the impact assessment study undertaken by DIT.

The conference report is followed by a brief note on the launch of a 
portal by the UK Department for International Development's Knowledge 
and Research programme in coordination with the Centre for Development 
Informatics at the University of Manchester. The project focuses on 
providing useful material in the form of books, audio-visual 
presentations and case studies that could help women-based ICT 
enterprises to gain comprehensive knowledge on how to start, manage and 
evaluate the project. Other news articles announce the launch of new 
e-government initiatives in India such as the E-Gram Vishwa Gram project 
in the state of Gujarat, and the introduction of a facility for property 
tax payment via mobile phones by the Municipal Corporation of Mumbai. 

Conference announcements include the annual International Conference on 
E-government and E-governance to be held in Turkey in 2009, followed by 
the IT Web eGovernment 2009 conference to be held in South Africa. These 
two conferences will focus on the fundamental shift that is taking place 
in governments across the world, with the need for governments to be 
adaptive to a virtual, global, knowledge-based digital economy. The 
other conferences include the 3rd International Conference on 
Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD2009) to 
be held in Qatar, the 10th IFIP Conference whose theme is "Assessing the 
Contribution of ICT to Development Goals",  eLearning Africa 2009 to be 
held in Dakar, Senegal and eINDIA 2009.

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 February 2009 Issue can be directly accessed at: 
http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/egov/ifip/feb2009/feb2009.htm. A downloadable 
PDF version of this Issue is also available on our website (URL: 
http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/egov/ifip/feb2009/feb2009.pdf) to ease access 
and facilitate printing.

With Best Regards,
Editorial Team, IFIP WG 9.4 Newsletter.
Centre for Electronic Governance,
Indian Institute of Management,
Ahmedabad - 380 015, India
Tel.: +91 79 6632 4128, URL: http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/egov/ifip/wg.htm

-- 
=====================================================================
Dr. Michel J. Menou
Visiting Professor, SLAIS, University College London, U.K.
Consultant in ICT policies and Knowledge & Information Management
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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