[Sigiii-l] Fwd: October 2010 Issue of “Information Technology in Developing Countries”

[M.J. Menou]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	October 2010 Issue of “Information Technology in Developing 
Countries”
Date: 	Wed, 27 Oct 2010 11:58:05 +0530
From: 	IFIP Newsletter <ifipnewsletter at iimahd.ernet.in>
To: 	



Dear Subscriber,

Warm Greetings! The October 2010 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 articles that assess the impact of a visionary rural
e-governance project "Akshaya" in Kerala and examine whether the project
succeeded in achieving its objectives; illustrate  the findings and
experiences from the Rural e-Services Project in India (ReSPI) which
resulted in designing of Knowledge Help Extension Technology Initiative
(KHETI); present a comparative picture of cybercrime vs. conventional
crime and propose a Real-time response model to overcome the challenges
in cybercrime; discuss an initiative called  " Virtual Krishi Vigyan
Kendra " and how different ICT tools can be used to empower the farmers
of India; express views on  how E-learning can help India overcome its
shortage of doctoral degree holders; and describe the impact of GSM
revolution on Low Income earners in Nigeria.

The first article "Are Rural e-Governance Programmes in India at
Crossroads? " by Dr. C. Krishnan  investigates the impact of a rural
e-governance project " Akshaya" implemented in Kerala . A case study
approach is adopted and the impact has been analyzed based on both
primary and secondary data. The current scenario is that most of the
objectives of the project could not be accomplished even after eight
years of completion and number of Akshaya e-kendras has been drastically
closing down. The  findings suggest that that the cost availing service
at Akshaya centres are lower than that of the departmental counters.
However it was found that e-kendras established in the rural areas were
unviable due to insufficient income ; core services expected to be
provided through the e-kendras are still in the pipe line and lack of
co-ordination among the stakeholder departments and agencies make the
programme less attractive not only to the public but also to the
entrepreneurs.

This is followed by an article on “Knowledge Help Extension Technology
Initiative (KHETI) - A Participatory Interactive ICT Designed Solution
in Agriculture for Livelihoods Promotions " by Dr. Syed Rizvi and Dr.
Andy Dearden. The paper discusses their findings and experiences from
the Rural e-Services Project in India (ReSPI) which resulted in
designing of Knowledge Help Extension Technology Initiative (KHETI). It
also explains the strengths and challenges in the participatory
designing processes of KHETI system and examines how it addresses the
problems of local poor farmers by recognizing their socio-economic
realities.
The next article by Olumide Longe and co-authors’ presents an overview
of the social theories relating to crime and criminology and examines
the challenges involved in fighting Cybercrime with the existing Peel
model of of community policing. In the last section of the paper they
propose a Real-Time Cybercrime Response Model that can assist law
enforcement agents in their fight against cybercriminals

Meeta Bagga's article on " vKVK - A way to empower Krishi Vigyan Kendra"
presents vkvk -a portal initiative that can empower India's Krishi
Vigyan Kendra's to be able to communicate with their large set of
registered farmers via three kinds of medium i.e. voice, SMS and email.
This is followed by Steve Foerster's article "Solving India's PhD
Shortage through E-Learning" which talks about existing challenges with
distance learning programmes in India and emphasizes on the use of
various methods of e-learning to increase the number of doctoral degree
holders in India, without which any rapid expansion to the higher
education sector is doomed to fail.

The next article on " The Impact of Global System for Mobile
Communication (GSM) Revolution on Low Income Earners in Nigeria"  by
Efe-Omojevwe, Zelda. A and Adesope, Olufemi M describe how GSM
revolution has helped to bridge the communication gap between urban and
rural dwellers in Nigeria.

Conference announcements include e-Gov World 2010 conference in India
and eLearning Africa (eLA) 2011 : 6th International Conference on ICT
for development, Education and Training in May 2011 to be held in Tanzania.


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 October 2010 Issue can be directly accessed at:
http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/egov/ifip/oct2010.htm. A downloadable PDF
version of this Issue is also available on our website (URL:
http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/egov/ifip/oct2010.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





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