Shaun Pather

University of the Western Cape | uwc · Department of Information Systems

There can be no debate about the central role of postgraduate studies in the enterprise of the research university. Reflecting on the past and the future of higher education, it is clear that the economic foundations of nations are built on their ability to create new knowledge through research and, in turn, transform the same into innovations and...

Diabetes mellitus has been documented as a global health problem with a high mortality rate. In the current digital age, the use of technology to overcome such health problems in pursuance of Sustainable Development Goal 3 is widely recognised. The increased penetration of mobile devices provides one avenue to support the self-management of conditi...

Cite this paper as follows: Hufkie. T. and Pather, S. 2018. Establishing effective ICT Adoption and Use strategies among Public Access Centres. Working Paper in fulfilment of the requirements for the Honours Information Systems Degree. Department of Information Systems, University of the Western Cape, South Africa. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.31484.00646...

Data, information and information sharing are key aspects of development in globalized economies. Developing and developed economies need a cross pollination of information in order to align their development strategies. However, there exists a mismatch between information sharing among technocrats of technology and would be users of the generated...

The global Covid-19 pandemic has created a heightened sense of awareness of the inequalities that prevail in society. Access to real-time information delivered via broadband internet has become critical for survival. However, the reality of the digital divide implies that some citizens, especially those in far-flung rural areas, are not as fortunat...

There has been a widespread consensus for some time that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can play an important role in the lives of individuals in poor and under resourced contexts as it enables them to engage in economic and social activities through access to information. The Covid-19 global pandemic has highlighted the need to re-...

Policy statements by the United Nations, the African Union and most African countries boldly pronounce on the anticipated benefits of the internetworked world and associated ICT to society in general and to the world of business specifically. In terms of the latter, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are recognized as being critical to the growth...

The recent COVID-19 pandemic, and associated mitigation strategies of social distancing and self-isolation, has elevated the importance of telecommunications networks. The recent COVID-19 pandemic, and associated mitigation strategies of social distancing and self-isolation, has elevated the importance of telecommunications networks. In the current...

This research investigates the impact of socio-demographic factors such as age, gender, income and location on ICT acceptance for diabetes self-care. The investigation is due to the increasing number of diabetic patients in South Africa, where large segments of the population experience technological forms of exclusions. The context warrants resear...

The literature illustrates that technology will widen health disparity if its use is restricted to patients who are already motivated and demonstrate good self-management behaviours. Additionally, despite the availability of free mobile health (m-health) applications for diabetes self-management, usage is low. There are also limited studies of m-he...

The exponential increases in the number of patients with diabetes warrants the use of innovative health solutions, especially in low socioeconomic areas. Yet the acceptance of Information Communication and Technology (ICT) for diabetes self-management remains low, especially in developing countries. The study used key constructs from the Unified Th...

There have been expectations across the developing world that information and communications technologies (ICTs) will deliver benefits to marginalised people. Despite many programmes related to the promotion of Internet uptake and usage amongst poorer communities, evidence regarding such benefit is lacking, and there is little agreement in respect...

E-government projects should be at the heart of service delivery in developing countries if the lives of citizens, especially the socially and economically marginalized, are to be improved. However, quite often in developing country contexts, citizens have been treated as recipients of technology projects through a top-down approach from central go...

The increasing disease burden in developing countries inhibits the provision of quality care to citizens. However, the increased availability of information communication and technology (ICT) tools makes this a viable option for inclusion in primary health care. Even so, barriers are impeding the successful adoption and usage of ICT tools in health...

The growth and penetration of Internet across developing countries has led to availability of a plethora of ICT applications. Quite often, potential users of these applications hold varying perceptions, both negative and positive, in respect of potential usefulness. This in turn, results into variations in adoption outcomes. The extant literature p...

Research is central to the life of the career academic. However, the framework in which academic research is conducted is not generally well understood and neither is it often articulated or discussed. The literature tends to rather focus on issues in relation to specific research methodologies and the evaluation thereof. Additionally, previous res...

Information Communication and Technology (ICT) delivered interventions, such as mobile health (m-health) applications (apps), can improve the health behaviours and clinical outcomes of persons with diabetes, but only if end users engage with these interventions. In order to improve the probability of ICTs achieving developmental goals it was noted...

This policy brief makes a case for how a community networks model may be harnessed to address the rural digital divide.

Information Systems evaluation (ISE) is an area of research that has been conducted in depth across various contexts in relation to all phases of the systems development life cycle. In practice though, ISE is an often-overlooked dimension in the management of technology. Outcomes from carefully planned ISE exercises can potentially add value to an...

This paper identifies key factors affecting the acceptance of ICT for diabetes self-management among patients in low socioeconomic communities, using the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model. A case study, using purposive sampling, was used to gather data from 498 diabetic patients in the Western Cape, South Africa. The...

Given the continued state of the digital divide, the South African government has made several strides to advance the availability of broadband internet to meet objectives outlined in its National Development Plan. Government at all three levels has over the recent years been deploying broadband internet infrastructure and associated access infrast...

Over several decades, Information Systems (IS) researchers have grappled with the problem of how best to evaluate the success or effectiveness of computing systems. Consequently, researchers working within the IS Management realm have contributed to an ever growing body of knowledge to the field of IS Evaluation. Much of the debate has focused on t...

Micro-enterprises have been generally recognized as a bedrock of innovation and industrial development in many countries given their cumulative contribution to countries' Gross Domestic product (GDP). However, despite their significance and importance to economic development, micro-enterprises across the world, including South Africa, are still fac...

Over the past twenty years there have been substantive efforts across the African continent to ensure penetration and reach of mobile technology to the citizenry. However there continues to be a debate on precisely how developmental outcomes may be forged through this escalating penetration of communications technologies. This paper responds to the...

Notwithstanding massive injections into broadband infrastructure, large sectors of the world’s population remain without access to the internet. One of the strategies employed by government and the private sector to address the digital divide has been to provide basic computing services and internet access to communities in the form of public acces...

In a quest to offer better services to both citizens and businesses throughout Africa, efforts to adopt e‐government projects are gaining momentum. As a result of this, there is a need for effective measurement of delivery and quality of such e‐services. Currently, there are several metrics applied to measure and rank the e‐readiness of various Afr...

Governments of the developing world, including South Africa, have a strong commitment and resolve to accelerate the rollout of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to achieve developmental benefits in communities. Consequently both government and the private sector are delivering a number of interventions in South Africa based on Informat...

This paper assesses the impact of a new academic workload model on research and technology innovation in a new university of technology. The project was framed by understandings of "the innovation journey", as well as emerging understandings of "temporality" against the background of the intensification of academic work and shifts towards project-b...

It is with great pleasure that we present the first Southern African special issue of The Journal of Community Informatics. This is the culmination of a long journey, which started with an initial discussion with the Editor-in-Chief, Dr Michael Gurstein, almost three years ago. After the initial call, in latter 2012, all submissions were subjected...

In recent years, developing countries have witnessed an increase in availability of e-government services. This is good news for all stakeholders, especially citizens, as it ensures that services delivered by governments and interaction between governments and citizens can be facilitated, and then evaluated for efficient and effective delivery. How...

The public access computing (PAC) ecosystem in South Africa includes public libraries, telecenters, and cybercafés. These PAC venues offer marginalized and underserved populations opportunities to use computers and the Internet to meet their information needs. Based primarily on interviews with telecenters and cybercafé staff, and on focus group wo...

The evaluation of information and communication technologies (ICT) in development activities has metamorphised through different phases in the last 30 years. In this paper we explore the experiences of ICT evaluation in the broad business environment and draw parallels with the ICT for development (ICTD) environment. The paper motivates the need fo...

The public access computing (PAC) ecosystem in South Africa includes public libraries, telecenters, and cybercafés. These PAC venues offer marginalized and underserved populations opportunities to use computers and the Internet to meet their information needs. Based primarily on interviews with telecenters and cybercafé staff, and on focus group wo...

As e-government adoption becomes widespread, governments face a myriad of challenges which are fait-accompli when technology is introduced into organisational processes. Amongst these challenges governments are faced with ethical dilemmas associated with the use of ICTs to provide services to its citizens. Hence questions on what constitutes ethica...

The Internet has become an omnipresent and integral part of the information society, with an ever increasing role in the delivery of learning, professional industry, recreation and a myriad of other aspects of life. Internet enabled services provided by governments have been identified as possible tools that could help to bridge the socioeconomic d...

The measurement of Information Systems (IS) effectiveness has been prominent on the research agenda since the 1980s. Consequently various approaches for measuring IS effectiveness have been produced including that of service quality. This approach has its roots in the marketing discipline where service quality is primarily used to measure business...

Over the years business researchers have been challenged in their quest to develop evaluation models and instruments to evaluate Information and Communication Technology (ICT) effectiveness. In the current era in which ICT4D (ICT for Development) has been firmly entrenched on the social and development agenda, researchers have been confronted with...

Over the past decade, many developing countries have initiated programs that provide public access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) as key components of their strategies for social and economic development. However different countries have had varying levels of success. In this paper we present a comparative analysis of public a...

Over the past decade the World Wide Web (WWW) has had far reaching implications on the way in which information is shared, and services are rendered by both public and private organisations. One important issue on the research agenda has been the adoption of the web by the public sector, in the form of electronic government or e-government. Previou...

Surveys have been used by research communities for many decades to collect data, in especially the Social Sciences. The advent of the world-wide web has facilitated a proliferation of surveys both for scientific and market research. The main tool for conducting surveys has been questionnaires mainly because they are relatively easy to administer an...

With the continued growing investment in WWW technologies by e-Commerce businesses the measurement of Information Systems (IS) effectiveness in this business sector has become increasingly important over the last decade. As business users, especially in the SME sector, have become reliant on outsourced IS service providers for a wide range of servi...

Over a period spanning approximately twenty five years IS researchers have been plagued by the problem of how to evaluate IS effectiveness or success. After the advent of the WWW in the 1990s, questions have arisen regarding the relevance of previously established evaluation approaches to the evaluation of web-based IS. In this paper, we describe a...

The business community in the past decade has been characterised by debate over the value or effectiveness of e-Commerce and how this type of technology needs to be implemented. During this period the business world has witnessed many examples of failures of Internet based business. There is little doubt that the high failure rate in Dot.Coms had m...

The role of CIO has been around for a little more than 20 years. In that time it has evolved significantly. Much has been written about the specific challenges faced by incumbents, describing the characteristics needed to be a business-focused executive leading a technology-intensive function. One aspect that has not been given enough consideration...

In response to the South African Journal of Computing's editorial of June 2003, this paper reviews some of the philosophical issues underpinning academic research in Information Systems (IS). This is a reflective or theoretical paper, which considers a number of research paradigms and traditions and explores the relevance of Critical Realism as an...

The evaluation of user satisfaction is an established means of assessing Information Systems (IS) effectiveness. However, the advent of e-Commerce has shifted the location of the traditional user of Information Systems out of the physical domain of the organisation or business. e-Commerce businesses now have to deal with a new type of user viz. the...

The advent of e-commerce has brought about new implications on research directions in the business arena. Is it not sufficient to just study the formation of electronic markets in e-commerce. It is also necessary to have insight into the electronic markets' innermost workings. This chapter, therefore, highlights the factors that give these new orga...

The advent of e-commerce has brought about new implications on research directions in the business arena. Is it not sufficient to just study the formation of electronic markets in e-commerce. It is also necessary to have insight into the electronic markets’ innermost workings. This chapter, therefore, highlights the factors that give these new orga...

The advent of e-commerce has brought about new implications on research directions in the business arena. Is it not sufficient to just study the formation of electronic markets in e-commerce. It is also necessary to have insight into the electronic markets’ innermost workings. This chapter, therefore, highlights the factors that give these new orga...

Higher Education in South Africa at tertiary level has been undergoing intensive investigations about restructuring by national government in the last few years. South Africa has two distinct types of tertiary educational institution: Technikon and University. South Africa is seeking to build a mixed research/teaching profile for Technikons. In Jan...

The Internet has revolutionized the capacity for the sharing of information and online transacting in the Business-to-Business (B2B) sector. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) has been the technology used during the pre-Internet (WWW) era. With the extensive use of the Internet new technologies such as the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) have emerg...

Word processed copy. Thesis (DTech (Information Technology))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2006. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 345-346).