| 1. |
- Grönlund, Åke, 1954-, et al.
(författare)
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Mobile technologies for development : a comparative study on challenges
- 2008
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Ingår i: Proceedings of Sig GlobDev Workshop Paris 2008. - Paris : AIS SIG GLobal Development. - 9780982606803
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper compares and analyzes three cases where mobile technology is developed and used for everyday learning in developing countries. Preliminary results from field studies and tests are presented and analyzed in terms of the technical, professional, social, cultural and organizational challenges involved in development. In Bangladesh Virtual Classroom SMS is used together with TV to make education interactive. The eduPhone project develops a system and a method for delivering everyday “situated education”, such as emergency medical advice, to people lacking access to such services. The Agricultural Market Information System project disseminates information to improve local agricultural markets and, in particular, supporting small farmers, by mobile phones. The paper reports the cases and findings from investigations and tests, including field studies, laboratory and field tests, and experiences from implementation. We find that technical challenges are not great and in most cases concern innovativeness of application rather than access, use and usability; e-readiness among people is higher than often reported. The main problems lie in organizational challenges – developing a sustainable business model and reorganizing processes consequently – and social and cultural challenges such as local power structures and professional traditions.
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| 2. |
- Hedström, Karin, 1967-, et al.
(författare)
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The quest for development : reviewing ICT4D research
- 2008
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Ingår i: GlobDev 2008. - 9780982606803 ; , s. Paper 24-
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Electronic Government (eGovernment) has attracted considerable investment over many years but there is little agreement on how to measure success. This is problematic as eGovernment has ambitions beyond project success – in particular in developing countries it is expected to yield development. There is also both an academic and a practitioner debate on eGovernment assessment in which social and political values are included, meaning an external perspective is beginning to take root. This paper reports a literature study of ICT4D (Information and communications technologies for development) journals, where the focus on development should be the greatest. Our study investigates to what degree case study research on eGovernment and ICT4D focuses on ICT’s role for development in developing countries or regions. This means that we examine to what degree evaluations of ICT4D-projects focus development assessment. We find that while a majority of the papers include social factors only a few take an external, i.e. development, perspective. It seems that instead of focusing research on the critical factors in developing countries today, on which we need new knowledge, the majority of the research is repeating studies done in the industrialized world in the past twenty years to which we cannot expect to find neither the solution to the problems in the developing world nor radically new findings to enrich the body of research already existing. This said, the few papers that did have a development focus introduced challenging issues, research on which holds promises of relevance to target countries as well as improving the knowledge base of IS research.
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