Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D)

Research and practice in the field of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for Development (ICT4D) is a continuous quest to understand how ICT leads to Development. Research and practice ...

Making decisions for effective humanitarian actions: a conceptual framework for relief distribution

AbstractResponding to a disaster encompasses a myriad of humanitarian actions; the ultimate and crucial is immediate relief distribution. Making effective decisions in chaotic disaster environment is always complex and challenging. Decisions made here are heavily influenced by the decisions made in several related problem areas such as facility locations, relief supply chain, transportation, scheduling, and inventory management. While each of these problem areas has its own set of decision factors, several of these factors are also common in multiple problem areas. These common decision factors offer both an opportunity and a challenge. The challenge is to balance the relative importance of…

A holistic perspective on the theoretical foundations for ICT4D research

While many theories have guided research Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D), we are yet to construct a clear and coherent narrative that would help us answer the question of how ICT fosters development in underdeveloped communities. In this paper, we argue that one of the main reasons for this is that our holistic understanding of ICT4D is seldom grounded in theories to understand the core areas that define the field, namely, ICT, Development, and, ‘4’ which are the transformative processes that link the two. Through a brief literature review, we list theories that have informed ICT4D research in each of these areas. We present examples of theories, namely, C…

Dialectics and contradictions in public procurement of information systems

Published version of a chapter from the book M. Janssen, H. Scholl, M. Wimmer & F. Bannister (Eds.), Electronic Government : Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2014. Also available on SpringerLink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44426-9_24 Public procurement of Information Systems is a highly complex process. Not surprisingly, systems often fail to meet the needs for which they were procured. One of the main causes of this is the contradictions between goals of different stakeholders. Identifying and understanding these conflicts and contradictions are essential to develop strategies to improve the procurement process. In this paper, we present a case study where we examined the procurement p…

Learning processes in user training

While the maturing research literature on training has generated increasingly sophisticated and more comprehensive theoretical models, the actual process through which users learn to use a system remains a relatively neglected area. The extant literature that has paid attention to processes have conceptualized these as structures and examined them through variance studies. In this paper, we address this knowledge gap by advancing hermeneutics as a lens to depict the process through which users come to learn about the system. We explain the hermeneutic process, situate it in a training context and illustrate our conceptualization by interpreting a specific training program at a large organiz…

Institutional entrepreneurs: The driving force in institutionalization of public systems in developing countries

PurposeWhile institutional theory is used widely in the information system (IS) literature to study implementation of systems, the actual process of institutionalization has received less attention. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap in the literature by using three concepts drawn from the theory, namely, institutional isomorphism, institutional logic and institutional entrepreneurship, and the interplay between them to explore the role of the dominant institutional entrepreneur in the institutionalization of a public system, as an instance of e‐government initiatives.Design/methodology/approachIn an interpretive case study, this study examined the institutionalization process…

An ecological model of bridging the digital divide in education: A case study of OLPC deployment in Nepal

Understanding the dynamics in e-Participation initiatives: Looking through the genre and stakeholder lenses

Accepted version of an article published in the journal: Government Information Quarterly. Also available from the publisher at: http//dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2010.10.005 Conventionally, e-Participation initiatives are considered to be successful only if users use these services. While the growing body of e-Participation literature has listed and studied challenges and barriers to achieving this end, conceptual clarity on why such projects are considered as failures is yet to be achieved. We argue that this is due to the inadequate understanding of the complex stakeholder dynamics of an e-Participation project. In this paper, we seek to address this knowledge gap by proposing that using St…

Building collective capabilities through ICT in a mountain region of Nepal: where social capital leads to collective action

In this paper, we explore how ICT can lead to development specifically human development in Sen's capability approach. In answering to the critique that Sen views capabilities as the individual, we incorporate the societal level by adding collective capabilities. We propose that ICT helps to create or enhance SC of communities which in turn can lead to development by building collective capabilities through collective action. To illustrate, we conducted a qualitative case study of an ICT initiative in a remote mountain region of Nepal. We found support for our proposition and further that developing collective capabilities also simultaneously enhanced individual capabilities. We contribute …

Reviewing the views of ICT in development

The role of information and communication technology (ICT) in national development is argued to depend on how ICT is viewed. Building on Orlikowski and lacono's classification of IT views we proposed in an earlier work that ICT can be conceptualized as: tool (means to achieve something), computational (the machine), ensemble (part of socio-economic context) and enabler (what ICT enables). We presented this as a hierarchy where the higher you go from the tool to the proxy view, the stronger ICT influences national development. In using our framework to evaluate ICT for development (ICT4D) projects, we realize that the notion of a hierarchy is untenable. Here, we argue that the relationship b…

Setting the Pace: Experiments With Keller's PSI

The ideal of self-paced learning, which was introduced nearly 50 years ago by Keller in his Personalized System of Instruction (PSI), has not yet been widely adopted. In spite of its perceived promise of helping students to learn at the speed aligned to their individual backgrounds, motivation, and skills, PSI has been challenging to implement. University teaching practice with weekly plans means that instructors expect students to learn at the same pace. Against this backdrop, this paper reports experiences from deploying PSI in multiple offerings of an introductory programming course at a Scandinavian university over five years. These include variations, such as a buddy system, rightsizin…

On Integrating Action Research and Design Research

IS research has been criticized for having little influence on practice. One approach to achieving more relevance is to conduct research using appropriate research methods that balance the interests of both researchers and practitioners. This chapter examines the similarities between two methods that address this mandate by adopting a proactive stance to investigating information systems in organizations. These two approaches, action research and design research, both directly intervene in “real-world” domains and effect changes in these domains. We investigate these similarities by examining exemplars of each type of research according to the criteria of the other. Our analysis reveals int…

Information Ecology as a holistic lens to understand ICTD initiatives

Techno-centric initiatives to bridge the digital divide, such as One Laptop per Child (OLPC), has been criticized for not taking a holistic approach. This has led to limited success in areas such as providing quality education in developing countries. In this paper, we offer a premise for a holistic understanding by borrowing from the field of information ecology. To illustrate our premise, we applied the theoretical lens of information ecology to analyze a case study of Open Learning Exchange (OLE) which has been described as one of the few successes in implementing OLPC. Based on our analysis, we posit that information ecology is a suitable and appropriate lens to interpret and understand…

Trajectory of Affordances: Insights from a case of telemedicine in Nepal

Although Affordance Theory has become increasingly influential in the Information Systems (IS) literature, the exact process through which the affordances of IT are actualised is less studied. In t ...

Designing theme-based tabletop exercise for identifying and dealing with coordination problems in emergencies

Tabletop exercises (TTXs) are used to train managers and other actors to deal with emergencies. These exercises that focus on the organisational coordination are planned and controlled by exercise managers through scenarios with predetermined events that participants discuss and act upon. Such exercises may lead to actors being ill prepared to deal with dynamic and emergent situations and problems. To address this knowledge gap, we apply an action design research approach to develop a TTX structured around non-sequential themes instead of predetermined events, thus allowing the participants to identify their own problems during the exercise. Our research contributes to existing knowledge by…

Towards a cumulative tradition in e-Government Research: Going beyond the Gs and Cs

Published version of a chapter published in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 4656, 13-22. Also available from the publisher at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74444-3_2 The emerging research area of e-Government is gradually moving towards a level of maturity on the back of increasingly rigorous empirical research. Yet, there has been little theoretical progress and a cumulative tradition is not emerging. We argue that a principle reason for this is a lack of shared understanding about basic concepts and entities amongst scholars in the field. Specifically, the entities that form the bedrock of e-Government research, such as “Government” and “Citizen” are conceptualized at a very gen…

The serendipitous impact of COVID-19 pandemic: A rare opportunity for research and practice

Highlights • The Covid-19 pandemic is a rare opportunity to examine some fundamental aspects of IM and IS research and practice. • There are at least three areas where the pandemic has impacted practice: information management, work practices and design of technologies. • The IS discipline has appropriate methods and theories to study the design of technologies and social interactions. • Concepts such as “social distancing” that has emerged in the pandemic need to be studied through philosophical premises. • The IM practices that emerge after the pandemic is over, will be shaped by how well we seize the opportunity to learn from the pandemic.

Steering Institutionalization through Institutional Work: The Case of an eProcurement System in Indonesian Local Government

Corruption is arguably one of the main hindrances to development. In their effort to combat corruption, governments in developing countries turn to information technology to enhance transparency in decision making. However, implementation of an information system in this context is not straightforward. Premised upon institutional theory, this interpretive case study traces the role of institutional actors in the institutionalization of an eProcurement system in Indonesian local government. It draws on different streams of research on institutional work to develop an interpretive lens to understand what institutional actors do to steer the institutionalization process. It identifies a set of…

The “I” between G and C: E-Government intermediaries in developing countries

Published version of an article from the journal: The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries. Also available from the publisher: http://www.ejisdc.org/Ojs2/index.php/ejisdc/article/viewFile/826/371 While there has been a rapid growth in e-Government initiatives in developing countries, whether it has led to providing effective government services to the citizens has remained a question of concern. Evidence suggests that this objective is far from being met. The main hurdle has been that an overwhelming part of the citizens in these countries do not have the capability to either access government information physically or to use it effectively even when they can ac…

How CPR is like Madonna

The purpose of this panel is to provide a formal forum and opportunity to reflect on the past, discuss the present, and provide direction and inspiration for the future of what we now call Computers and People Research (CPR). To what extent have these early concerns and themes endured? How have they been transformed over five decades of changes in technology, changes in the workplace and global business context, and IT worker demographics? What progress has the CPR community made in addressing these concerns? What new issues has CPR brought forward that were not envisioned by the early CPR pioneers?

Grounded Analytic Research: Building Theory from a Body of Research

Track II: Recent Developments in Inductive Research Methods; International audience; In this paper, we present Grounded Analytic Research (GAR) as a method to build theory by synthesizing empirical findings from multiple studies that has been conducted by a single researcher. GAR incorporates concepts from grounded theory, analytic research and systematic literature review. The method was applied in a doctoral dissertation work to build the theoretical concept of Demand Sustainability of public Internet access in the context of bridging the digital divide. We describe GAR and compare it with existing theory building methods that are similar to it in epistemology and ontology.

Action Research as a Proactive Research Method for Construction Engineering and Management

Academic research in applied disciplines such as construction engineering and management (CEM) has the dual mission of simultaneously contributing to the solution of practical problems and creating theoretical and conceptual knowledge. To do so, appropriate research approaches are needed. However, extant literature in the field has paid little attention to this issue and research methods used have been almost entirely either quantitative surveys or case studies. In this paper, action research (AR) is proposed as an answer to this knowledge gap. AR aims at building and testing theory within the context of solving an immediate practical problem in a real setting. The paper describes the under…

Social capital in enabling quality health care: The case of a telemedicine project in Nepal

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can play a crucial role in meeting multifaceted developmental challenges such as providing access to quality health care in developing countries. Init ...

Additional file 1 of Making decisions for effective humanitarian actions: a conceptual framework for relief distribution

Additional file 1.

The public procurement of information systems: dialectics in requirements specification

When acquiring information systems, public entities face a dilemma. On the one hand, they want to procure the system that best suits their needs, which often requires lengthy dialogues with vendors. At the same time, they are restricted by government regulations that mandate limited dialogue in the interests of transparency and equal opportunities for all vendors. To examine how public entities deal with this, we followed three procurement projects in Norway. We show that this dilemma manifests itself as a dialectic between the thesis of getting the system requirements right and the antithesis of strictly adhering to regulations. Public entities search for a resolution of this dialectic thr…

Research-in-progress

In this paper, we present a research-in-progress study where we are revisiting a well known knowledge-level framework of understanding (i.e. knowledge) of a system proposed by Olfman et al. (2006). The catalyst for this relook was the anomalies and incongruencies that surfaced when we tried to apply this framework in another study whose aim was to examine how hermeneutic reflection helps in learning. While the framework proved a useful vehicle to carry out hermeneutic analysis, it also proved inadequate in accounting for some significant aspects of what constitutes understanding of a system. A closer look at the data revealed that other theoretical premises could not only provide a better i…

Editors panel

The purpose of the Editors Panel session is to provide attendees with an opportunity to meet and interact with journal editors from leading international IS journals.

Building educational capabilities through information technology in developing countries

There is one aspect of globalization of IT work that appears only in fleeting glimpses in the mainstream IS literature and is sidelined in the discourse in general. If global IT work is painted mainly as outsourcing IT-infused work from developed countries to poorer countries (euphemistically referred to as "low income countries"), shouldn't the development of capabilities in these very same less-developed countries be a vital cog? Simply put, if these countries do not have a capable workforce, IT work, or any other work for that matter, cannot be outsourced to these countries. The question then is how can capabilities be developed in developing countries? In this research-in-progress paper…

Transformational capabilities of ICT: A technology management perspective in construction

(1) The construction industry typically lags behind in adopting technology. (2) Given the fact that the process of construction is critically dependent on relevant, accurate and timely information, ICT can play a very important role in the industry. (3) The industry is actually missing out on the crucial advantages offered by ICT. ICT is used by and large as mere enhancement tools, not as agents that can transform and thus revolutionize the process of construction. (4) A new approach based on the technology management principles will enable researchers to formulate new strategic directions. (5) This paper will explore successful technology management strategies in the context of ICT impleme…

Improving data quality in construction engineering projects : an action design research approach

Aurthor's version of an article in the journal: Journal of Management in Engineering. Also available from the publisher at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)ME.1943-5479.0000202 The topic of data and information quality (DQ/IQ) is a longstanding issue of interest in both academia and practice in the construction engineering field. Poor DQ/IQ has led to poor engineering drawings that, in turn, have led to delays and, eventually, cost overruns. In this paper, a study is reported that took an action design research (ADR) approach to develop and evaluate a DQ/IQ assessment tool, which is called the information quality system (IQS), in a large global engineering and construction company. The eval…