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Digital connectivity and the SDGs: Conceptualising the link through an institutional resilience lens
... The development of science and technology, particularly in the field of communication, has transformed the way humans interact, including among teenagers (Park et al., 2024). Although digital platforms offer many benefits in terms of connectivity and access to information, this technology also facilitates the emergence of harmful behaviors, such as cyberbullying (Madon & Masiero, 2025). One platform that has garnered attention is WhatsApp groups, which are widely used and have the potential to become a means of bullying that often goes undetected. ...
This study aims to explore the role of science and technology in bullying behavior that occurs through WhatsApp groups among students of Al Ma'sum Private Junior High School, Langkat Regency. The method used was a descriptive qualitative approach with data collection through observation, in-depth interviews, and documentation. The results showed that common forms of bullying include verbal bullying, cyberbullying, and social exclusion, which are triggered by factors such as lack of empathy, peer pressure, and the influence of negative content on social media. This study recommends science-based prevention strategies, including anti-bullying education, awareness campaigns, and active parental involvement, to reduce bullying behavior in school settings. The findings provide important insights into the dynamics of bullying in the digital age and emphasize the need for a more systematic approach to tackling it.
... Digital environmental monitoring systems help control water, air and soil pollution, and automated agricultural technologies contribute to the rational use of water and land. Social equality and digital inclusion (SDGs 5, 10) are ensured by the formation of digital platforms that contribute to the empowerment of women through access to knowledge, finance and entrepreneurship, the use of artificial intelligence and Big Data that help identify discrimination and improve social policy, access to the Internet and digital technologies, which allows eliminating the gap between urban and rural areas (Madon & Masiero, 2025). The article's purpose is to analyse modern digital practices that contribute to achieving sustainable development goals and to study the world experience of implementing innovative technologies in environmental, social, and economic sustainability 2. Literature Review. ...
Digital technologies are critical in ensuring sustainable development, contributing to economic growth, social equality and environmental security. The article reviews modern digital practices and their impact on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and also analyses international experience in applying innovative technologies in various spheres of society. The study assesses the role of artificial intelligence, big data, the Internet of Things, blockchain and financial technologies in shaping sustainable economic models and improving resource management. In particular, the impact of digital financial technologies on expanding access to banking services and lending for vulnerable population groups is highlighted, contributing to economic inclusion. The development of e-commerce and digital platforms allows small businesses to enter global markets, which positively impacts the competitiveness of economies. The environmental aspect of digitalisation includes the development of “smart” cities, the implementation of IoT solutions for environmental monitoring and efficient management of energy resources. Digital environmental platforms facilitate monitoring of air, water and soil pollution and help automate waste management processes. The use of blockchain in tracking supply chains allows for transparency of business processes, promoting enterprises’ environmental responsibility. The social aspect of digital transformation includes improving access to quality education through online courses, digital platforms and adaptive learning based on artificial intelligence. Such technologies allow for personalisation of the educational process, making it more effective and accessible to the general public. An analysis of the European Union’s financial investments in digital transformation indicates a significant level of funding for the development of artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, cloud computing and digital infrastructure. At the same time, the article considers key challenges of digitalisation, including the growth of digital inequality, cybersecurity issues, the need to regulate artificial intelligence and the problems of e-waste management. The article also presents recommendations for the effective use of digital technologies for sustainable development. The study results can shape digital transformation strategies that promote balanced economic growth, environmental sustainability, and social equality.
While research in healthcare service provision for transgender and gender diverse (TGD) people has seen rapid progress, health information communication technologies (health ICTs) research on this key population is falling behind. Blindspots in the literature risk perpetuating systemic barriers to healthcare access. This critical, cross-disciplinary literature review applies a health equity perspective alongside the lenses of structural violence and intersectionality. It presents a research agenda for building systematic knowledge in the Information Systems (IS) and Information Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) fields, identifying and addressing blindspots that risk amplifying existing inequities for TGD people. It makes theoretical contributions to discourse on health equity and ICTs by exploring how health ICTs shape the inclusion and exclusion of marginalized communities. In facilitating a scholarly and practice-based understanding of the effect of health ICTs on TGD health provision, it paves the way for these fields to make significant contributions to global health equity.
Keywords: Health ICTs, health equity, transgender, gender diverse, intersectionality, structural violence
Digital systems are significantly associated with inequality in the global South. That association has traditionally been understood in terms of the digital divide or related terminologies whose core conceptualization is the exclusion of some groups from the benefits of digital systems. However, with the growing breadth and depth of digital engagement in the global South, an exclusion worldview is no longer sufficient. What is also needed is an understanding of how inequalities are created for some groups that are included in digital systems. This paper creates such an understanding, drawing from ideas in the development studies literature on chronic poverty to inductively build a model of a new concept: ‘adverse digital incorporation’, meaning inclusion in a digital system that enables a more-advantaged group to extract disproportionate value from the work or resources of another, less-advantaged group. This new model will enable those involved with digital development to understand why, how and for whom inequality can emerge from the growing use of digital systems in the global South. It creates a systematic framework incorporating the processes, the drivers, and the causes of adverse digital incorporation that will provide detailed new insights. The paper concludes with implications for both digital development researchers and practitioners that derive from the model and its exposure to the broader components of power that shape the inclusionary connection between digital and inequality.
The infrastructures deployed by classical telecommunications operators are appropriate and cost-effective for urban-oriented business models, but rural areas with very low population density require alternatives both in terms of the technology used and in business models. New generation networks become more and more dense and heterogeneous, increasing the gap as operators cannot spend the required CAPEX and OPEX in sparsely populated areas where the revenues will certainly be very low. At the same time, an increasing number of communities worldwide provide themselves networking solutions, which is becoming a global alternative movement called “community networks”. However, rural areas are challenging because of the technical difficulties of getting connected to the world and the scarcity of technical skills, among other reasons. Other stakeholders such as municipalities or regional governments are also relevant actors but cannot provide a solution by themselves. Partnerships between different actors for deploying rural connectivity could be the answer, taking advantage somehow of the “shared infrastructure model” proposed in IETF RFC7962. This paper analyses the relationship between different stakeholders and the main elements to consider when deploying mobile communications services in isolated and sparsely populated regions. The analysis uses a case study from the Napo River Network in Peru and compares it with other experiences such as Zenzeleni Networks in South Africa or Rizhomatica in Mexico.
This article is the introduction to a special issue of Education Policy Analysis Archives entitled, “Critical Policy Analysis in Education: Exploring and Interrogating (In)Equity Across Contexts.” The special issue presents contemporary critical policy analyses from the United States, Canada, and Australia, which collectively represent methodological, contextual, and theoretical diversity. Individually, they offer incisive critiques of policy processes and outcomes that shape the way equity, and indeed inequity, are manifest in situ. The articles represent a spectrum of approaches to understanding (in)equity in education and point out various ways that educators, scholars, policymakers, and activists can engage with systems to leverage change. In the article, the co-editors identify key themes that distinguish the special issue’s contribution and explain the importance of critical policy analysis as a relevant and necessary alternative to policy analyses that ignore issues of equity, social justice, and oppression.
In the two decades since the establishment of the 2030 Agenda, the world has faced significant challenges to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Before COVID-19, the SDGs were not on track to be achieved, and disruptions in implementation resulting from the pandemic have had significant effects, turning back years of progress. The pandemic has highlighted the essential nature of digital technologies in advancing the SDGs, continuing education, including higher education, social, and commercial activities, as well as enabling people to participate in society, democracy, and the economy during crises. As humanity enters this new period and begins to reset after the ‘great pause’, it is imperative to reconsider how the digital revolution has affected progress, especially in realizing the SDGs. Digital inclusion and connectivity inform and are essential to achieve all of the Goals. This article builds on the Just Digital Ethical Framework conceptualized by the authors in O’Sullivan et al. published in Nature Communications, which argues that four strategic drivers (digital capabilities, technology, infrastructure, and governance) are imperative to complete all of the 17 SDGs. It takes the Just Digital Ethical Framework to the next critical step, in which there needs to be a new SDG dedicated to these four drivers. This article is an exploratory study that uses a systems thinking approach and presents an 18th SDG called Digital Connection. Digital Connection focuses on the equitable distribution of digital wealth guided by the drivers. Understanding the relationship between these drivers and how they operate, where they are used, the pace of change, and systems’ ability to adapt are essential for sustainable development and to address the challenges that face society equitably and fairly.
Digital identity platforms are widely regarded as important means to improve social protection systems. Yet these platforms have been implicated in the production of a range of unintended outcomes for development beneficiaries. To clarify how digital identity platforms enable the production of one such outcome that we call degenerative, because it causes target systems to deteriorate, we conduct a case study of the incorporation of Aadhaar, the world's largest digital identity platform, in India's primary food security scheme. Based on the data from two South Indian states, we show how the incorporation produced degenerative effects in the access, monitoring, and policy layers of the social protection system. These effects lead us to theorise how Aadhaar enabled the degenerative outcome via exclusion, distortion, and redirection, making public distribution of subsidised goods displaceable in favour of cash transfers.
This paper draws lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic for the relationship between data-driven decision making and global development. The lessons are that (i) users should keep in mind the shifting value of data during a crisis, and the pitfalls its use can create; (ii) predictions carry costs in terms of inertia, overreaction and herding behaviour; (iii) data can be devalued by digital and data deluges; (iv) lack of interoperability and difficulty reusing data will limit value from data; (v) data deprivation, digital gaps and digital divides are not just a by-product of unequal global development, but will magnify the unequal impacts of a global crisis, and will be magnified in turn by global crises; (vi) having more data and even better data analytical techniques, such as artificial intelligence, does not guarantee that development outcomes will improve; (vii) decentralised data gathering and use can help to build trust – particularly important for coordination of behaviour.
We pursue three main objectives in this editorial for the Special Issue on Identification in a Digital Age: Implications for Development. After outlining the motivations that led us to launch this Special Issue call, we first propose a framework to map the theoretical link between digital identity and human development, articulated in three dimensions linking digital identity to expected development outcomes. Secondly, we present the seven papers in this collection in terms of how they problematise such a link, observing how each of them uses empirical data to increase existing knowledge on this connection and question it. Thirdly, we leverage insights from these contributions to put forward a research agenda on digital identity and human development, suggesting possible avenues to engage with this topic and ultimately, framing digital identity as an object of ICT4D research.
Connectivity has become the foundation for organizing as it increasingly underpins and defines the way we live and work. Notwithstanding all the advances in connectivity within organizations, there are even more pervasive changes between and around organizations. In a digital world, more and more of us are working anytime, anyplace, and companies deliver value by better connecting with customers and external partners within digital ecosystems. In this introduction to the Special Issue, we summarize four waves of connectivity – globalization, socialization, personalization and datafication – that combine to create opportunities and challenges for contemporary organizations. We then introduce the papers in the special issue and discuss their contributions to theory and practice. Finally, we draw upon currently emerging challenges to suggest enduring tensions and trade-offs for connectivity research in the future.
Evidence on early achievements, challenges and opportunities would help low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) accelerate implementation of health and health-related sustainable development goals (HHSDGs). A series of country-specific and multicountry consultative meetings were conducted during 2018–2019 that involved 15 countries across five regions to determine the status of implementation of HHSDGs. Almost 120 representatives from health and non-health sectors participated. The assessment relied on a multidomain analytical framework drawing on existing public health policy frameworks. During the first 5 years of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) era, participating LMICs from South and Central Asia, East Africa and Latin America demonstrated growing political commitment to HHSDGs, with augmentation of multisectoral institutional arrangements, strengthening of monitoring systems and engagement of development partners. On the other hand, there has been limited involvement of civic society representatives and academia, relatively few capacity development initiatives were in place, a well-crafted communication strategy was missing, and there is limited evidence of additional domestic financing for implementing HHSDGs. While the momentum towards universal health coverage is notable, explicit linkages with non-health SDGs and integrated multisectoral implementation strategies are lacking. The study offers messages to LMICs that would allow for a full decade of accelerated implementation of HHSDGs, and points to the need for more implementation research in each domain and for testing interventions that are likely to work before scale-up.
This study aims to analyze the institutional capacity of provincial governments of West-Java and East-Java on the implementation of Indonesian e-government hence providing lessons learned for the government in developing e-government institutions. It uses a qualitative method with a case study approach to explore the implementation of e-government in local governments. This research focuses on five dimensions of the action environment, public sector institutions, task networks, organizations and human resources, and the Chief Information Officer (CIO). The results showed that the action environment dimension of each region has different social and economic profiles so that the literacy level of the population in responding to e-government also varies. Unlike the East Java province, the West Java province has specific rules and procedures as well as clear standards and planning related to e-government on the second and third dimensions. Yet, the West Java province has not determined particular regulation on task and duty of its Office of Communication and Information. The aspect of the human resource dimension shows that the professional ICT group has not yet been fulfilled and there are still many positions related to IT are occupied by those who have no IT background. With regard to CIOs, only West Java province that has specific rules regarding CIOs.
Policy science has developed various approaches, such as agenda-setting and goal-setting theory, aimed at explaining the emergence of policy shifts and behavioural changes. The 2030 Agenda sets an ambitious vision for human development in times of global environmental change and makes for an interesting subject to study the explanatory power of these approaches. While the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) enshrined in the 2030 Agenda resulted from a process of intergovernmental negotiations, they will ultimately have to be implemented by national governments. Using the case of Mexico, we take the governance of water as a starting point to investigate whether the 2030 Agenda has indeed become a focusing event for sustainability transformation. Building on data from 33 expert interviews and findings of a Social Network Analysis of communications between water stakeholders from different sectors in the Cuautla River Basin, we conclude that major paradigm shifts in water governance in Mexico are thus far rather attributable to domestic focusing events and windows of opportunity than to the motivating impact of globally set goals. The Mexican case also illustrates that the implementation of the 2030 Agenda is strongly dependent on political will at the highest level. Ensuring the continuity of its implementation across administrations will, therefore, require mainstreaming and anchoring the SDGs into the sectorial strategies that determine activities at the lower working level of government.
The purpose of this article is to prompt some questioning of current "e-development" priorities. We have too readily assumed the Millennium Development Goals must be the priority for application of ICTs. Yet the MDGs themselves can be challenged, as can the relevance of applying ICTs to those goals. This article will argue that we ought at least to be considering some different priorities if we want to make most effective use of the opportunities that new technology affords.
Open government has become a goal for countries all over the world, but it remains an
elusive concept. Despite innovative methodologies to assess open government policies, action plans, and interventions in different countries, scholarly research and practical decisions are hindered by the lack of a precise concept and an operationalization. In this paper, we make two contributions to this discussion. First, we argue that the discussions about open government would benefit from taking the grammatical structure of the concept seriously (open is an adjective, government a noun). Second, we propose that, in order to be conceptually and practically useful, open government should be observable. We present the methodology, application and results of an effort to observe and measure open government in Mexico, based on a study of 908 government offices in terms of transparency and participation.
Since the year 2000, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have anchored efforts to combat global poverty. As we near 2015, this article assesses ICTs' role in reaching the goals, with an emphasis on urban poverty. Over the lifespan of the MDGs, debate about ICTs and development has grown. At one pole of this debate are those who see ICTs as enabling rapid growth and citizen empowerment; at the other pole are those who warn that " technical ªxes " cannot overcome the historic and structural causes of poverty. In this article , using the organizing framework of the eight MDGs, we discuss these debates by reviewing examples of ICT projects that aim to further the goals' realization. Many of these projects suggest that ICTs are useful, particularly with respect to increasing information and enhancing services, a common theme throughout this article. However, we also raise critical queries about the allure of " technology-boosterism " (Heeks, 2010, p. 629). These range from questioning the measurable impact and sustainability of ICT4D to the vision of development embedded in ICT4D and whether new technologies can subvert the underlying causes of global poverty. Our article shows that, while ICTs can be enablers for developmental processes, we must listen to communities in poverty when deciding how ICTs should feature in the post-2015 agenda.
African countries like other developed nations are beginning to open up data towards attaining transparency and accountability. A better understanding by citizens of what a government does and the level of performance achieved can be better understood by making public sector data open. Citizens can therefore hold their government accountable for not meeting up with stated goals and misconducts. This study employs a survey through content analysis to evaluate the extent of implementation of open data portals. Variables used for the evaluation are Berners-Lee 5 star of open data, implementation technology, data formats, licensing, major data sets and functionality across the African continent. A total of twenty-two data portals from seventeen different countries were assessed. Seven of the data portals representing 32% of the total number of the data portals were implemented using Drupal tool (Dkan). About 60% of the portals under investigation are national initiatives, and Nigeria has the only regional/state initiative and the only two independent organisation data portals. The only two university related-initiatives as well as the only city-based data portal were from South Africa, while a specialised data portal dedicated to the Ebola crisis was captured from Sierra Leone. The dates for the creation of the data portals span from 2011 to the current year (2015). The result indicates that an appreciable effort is being made in the creation of data portals; however, more countries need to take the giant stride to data provisioning in the open formats.More data sets also need to be populated onto the portals. Movement towards attaining the 5-star status of open data portals is in progress but a lot needs to be done towards attaining this. There is also a need to complement the efforts of national governments, and this could be done by regional/state, cities, universities, and independent organisations.
How to analyse the dynamics of informal governance that takes place in networks that are multi-party, polycentric, trans-national and – almost by necessity – inter-cultural? This paper portrays informal governance in the EU as a complex game of negotiation. Actors not only negotiate outcomes but also the rules according to which the negotiation is to take place. This process creates ‘living institutions’ in which participants agree upon rules and credibility and authority for its joint decisions gets established. The argument of the paper is that this implies a crucial role for the dramaturgy of negotiation that co-determines if a negotiation is successful or not. The paper suggests governance should be approached as a sequence of staged performances.
Resilience thinking has in recent decades emerged as a key perspective within research and policy focusing on sustainable development and the global environmental challenges of today. Originating from ecology, the concept has gained a reputation far beyond its original disciplinary borders and now plays a key role in the study and practice of environmental governance in general. Although I fully support the interdisciplinary ambitions of resilience thinking, I argue that if the resulting scholarly insights and policy advice are to be of any true added value, resilience thinking should take existing social scientific advances more seriously. In particular, I argue that resilience thinking does not give sufficient recognition to the already existing accounts of, for example, institutional change trajectories, the dynamics of path dependence, the distributional character of institutions, or the fundamental political determinants and drivers of institutional design and diversity. A resilience theory truly recognizing social scientific advances in these areas, however, has substantial chances of truly furthering our understanding of and practical abilities in facing the fundamental environmental challenges of today. © 2015 by the author(s). Published here under license by the Resilience Alliance.
What counts as critical policy analysis in education? Over the past 30 years, a tightening of national educational policies can be seen in the USA and across the globe. Over this same period of time, a growing number of educational policy scholars, dissatisfied with traditional frameworks, have used critical frameworks in their analyses. Their critical educational policy work has contributed to a unique intellectual landscape within education: critical policy analysis. This article presents a qualitative exploration of the critical policy analysis approach to educational policy studies. Participants included scholars known to utilize critical theoretical frameworks and methods in their research. Through a historical approach that makes use of oral history interviews with educational policy, we developed an understanding of the critical approach to policy studies, its appeal among critical education policy scholars, and the rationales driving its use.
Most powerful analytical tools used in the social sciences are well suited for studying static situations. Static and mechanistic analysis, however, is not adequate to understand the changing world in which we live. In order to adequately address the most pressing social and environmental challenges looming ahead, we need to develop analytical tools for analyzing dynamic situations – particularly institutional change. In this paper, we develop an analytical tool to study institutional change, more specifically, the evolution of rules and norms. We believe that in order for such an analytical tool to be useful to develop a general theory of institutional change, it needs to enable the analyst to concisely record the processes of change in multiple specific settings so that lessons from such settings can eventually be integrated into a more general predictive theory of change.
This article presents evidence that--alongside the successes-- many information systems in developing countries can be categorized as failing either totally or partially. It then develops a new model that seeks to explain the high rates of failure. The model draws on contingency theory in order to advance the notion of design-actuality gaps: the match or mismatch between IS designs and local user actuality. This helps identify two high-risk archetypes that affect IS in developing countries: country context gaps and hard-soft gaps. The model is also of value in explaining the constraints that exist to local IS improvisations in developing countries. Overall, the article shows how model and theory help understand IS cases in developing countries, and equally, how those cases provide valuable data to help develop IS models and theories.
Shaping how information and communication technology (ICT) adoption supports sustainable development has become a major challenge for countries worldwide. The concept of a digital ecosystem has recently become prevalent among development organizations to aid diagnoses and guide actions addressing that challenge. However, not only are there various ways in which a digital ecosystem is conceptualized, but its meaning is also blurred with earlier uses in business studies. Against this backdrop, the present paper takes stock of how the digital ecosystem concept has come to be used as a tool to describe the state of ICT adoption in countries and understand ICT impacts on development outcomes. Systematizing existing uses of the concept, the paper distinguishes between a descriptive, enabler-centered, and actor-centered digital ecosystem perspective. It furthermore discusses existing uses of a digital ecosystem and the extent to which they realize the potential added value of this concept for development practice and research.
Some 35 years after the United Nations published its Brundtland report [Brundtland Commission. (Citation1987). Our common future: Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, Geneva, UN-Dokument A/42/427. Retrieved December 24, 2022, from https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/5987our-common-future.pdf] on the many threats our planet is under due to over- and underdevelopment, we are still struggling with how to make our world sustainable. Today we have the Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) to guide us, but they have been largely criticized just like their predecessors. The debate in Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) mainly concerns to which extent Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) may contribute to the SDGs. This editorial offers a historic overview of the different development goals that the UN has offered and eight papers that offer a view into the discussion of the challenges facing the SDGs, but also examples of experimental strategies on how ICTs can be used in realizing, or undermining, these goals.
Much recent scholarly investigation has been focused on the promise of digitalization and the new ways of working and organizing it makes possible. In this paper, we analyze how the COVID-19 pandemic has acted as a natural breaching experiment that has challenged taken-for-granted expectations about digitalization and revealed four important issues: uneven access to digital infrastructures, the persistence of the analog in digitalization, the brittleness of unchecked digitalization, and panoptical surveillance. The sudden shift to digital work has exposed taken-for-granted assumptions about the universality of digital access. The crisis has also revealed that many highly digitalized processes still rely on analog elements. The pandemic has also exposed that many algorithms used in digitalized inter-organizational processes are brittle due to overreliance on historic patterns. Finally, the pandemic has breached fundamental expectations of privacy when organizational surveillance was extended into private and public spaces. Thus, the pandemic has laid bare fundamental challenges in digitalization and has exposed the limits of rose‑tinted thinking about the relation between technology and organizing.
This article focuses on Mexico’s struggle with development—reflected in the country’s continuing persistent poverty, inequality, lack of inclusion, and social mobility—as Mexico finds itself caught between global compromises (the Millennium Development Goals, 2000‐15; the Sustainable Development Goals, 2015‐30) on one hand and National Development Plans (NDP) on the other. I analyze three consecutive NDP since the transition to democracy in 2000 and look ahead to announced changes in the “Project for the Nation 2018‐24.” I also take stock of how international and national organizations have monitored and evaluated these issues. Doing so enables us to identify, problematize, and reflect on where Mexico is heading with this particular struggle. It has produced, I argue, a certain dissonance or even myth concerning development entangled between grand documents mirroring global compromises and a rather bleak reality when transformed into domestic policies for development.
What has changed in the decade or so since the ideas of a new “ICT4D 2.0” phase were first mooted? This paper reviews those changes, based on a new framework model. At a foundational level, it looks at recent and current trends in digital technologies, data, processes and the implications these have for the user demographics and network structures that underpin the role of digital ICTs in international development. It then summarises some of the new building blocks of development: digital roles, digital products and digital business models. We could call what is emerging “ICT4D 3.0.” However, this paper argues that the changes are such that we could talk of a paradigmatic shift and suggests that the elements could be collated as a new “digital‐for‐development” paradigm. Part 2 of this paper explores the patterns of change in the economy and in politics that may be associated with this paradigm.
Protracted negotiations between the main role-players steered in the new South African state on 27 April 1994 and final Constitution, 1996, which constitutionalised local government. A cursory analysis points to some municipalities which are pockets of excellence; however, local government generally is in ‘distress’. Local communities are rapidly losing confidence in the system as the majority of municipalities are unable to discharge even basic functions. Local government has been characterised by violent service delivery protests; abuse of political power and increasing corruption; financial challenges; poor infrastructure planning/maintenance/investment; political strife and factionalism and staff turbulence. Despite governmental interventions to improve local governance, there are still major constraints hampering good governance, namely political posturing and factionalism; corruption; lawlessness and poor service delivery, symptomatic of virtually all post conflict states. Good local governance is an integral part of post conflict reconstruction and development and is key to building a new local government dispensation.
The notion of resilience is rapidly gaining influence in public administration practice and research, but a more comprehensive resilience research agenda in public administration is yet to emerge. This article aims to clarify how experiences and potential contributions from social-ecological resilience research can inform resilience studies in public administration. By contrasting key components of the resilience paradigm and its policy prescriptions with established findings from public administration research, a set of key shortcomings of social-ecological resilience thinking are identified: (1) deterministic systems models; (2) simplified accounts of politics and policy; and (3) a lack of systematic and generalizable empirical studies. To avoid these shortcomings, it is suggested that public administration resilience studies should explore multiple and competing models for how resilience can be generated; analyse trade-offs between resilience and other values of public administration; avoid systems theoretical resilience models; and apply the notion of resilience in areas beyond crisis management.
Central to this paper is the argument that existing classifications of the information and communication technology and development literature fail to explicitly acknowledge a fundamental duality between two distinct problem domains found within the research body. Through an extensive review of 184 journal articles and conference proceedings, a framework is proposed that suggests a partitioning of the existing literature into two distinct streams of research: (1) those studies that focus on understanding technology “for development” and (2) those studies that focus on understanding technology “in developing” countries. More than an exercise in semantics, the authors argue that the two streams represent separate sets of research objectives that are currently being conflated and addressed interchangeably within the same research environment. At present, there appears to be little recognition or explicit acknowledgement of this branching of research domains, as well as little reflexive discussion on the epistemological, methodological and theoretical implications of this delineation. A discussion related to the efficacy and relevance of the two separate research agendas is provided, along with recommendations for future research directions.
The current landscape of the information systems research literature concerned with developing countries is surveyed by examining a range of research articles published from 2000 onward. These are discussed in terms of the key challenges addressed, including the role of technology, and the methodological and theoretical approaches used. Prospects for future research are discussed, based on a conceptual view as to how to study information and communication technologies (ICTs) in developing countries, to classify existing work, identify gaps, and suggest future opportunities. The authors contribute to the important debate on how ICTs in general, and information systems research in particular, can make a positive difference in the developing countries. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
In this paper I review the Information Systems (IS) research on how developing countries have attempted to benefit from information and communication technologies. First I identify three discourses on IS implementation and associated organizational and social change that coexist in Information Systems in Developing Countries (ISDC) research, namely as a process of technology and knowledge transfer and adaptation to local social conditions; as a process of socially embedded action; and as a process of transformative techno-organizational intervention associated with global politics and economics. I then point out the distinctive research agenda that has been formed for ISDC studies both in the more familiar IS themes - failure, outsourcing, and strategic value of ICT - but also from studies of themes relevant to the context of developing countries, such as the development of community ICT and information resources. Finally, I call the reader's attention to the potentially significant theoretical contributions of ISDC research for understanding IS innovation in relation to social context and in relation to socio-economic development theories and policies.
"If we are to understand these changes, we must develop new tools (Jones, 2003). Several colleagues and I are in the early stages of a study of the 'dynamics of rules' (Anderies, Janssen, and Ostrom, 2004; Janssen and Ostrom, 2006). We will use agent based modeling as one of our tools since that does enable one to examine the pattern of likely outcomes over time when agents who have limited information are making choices over time (Janssen, 2002). We also intend to study institutional choice overtly, both in the experimental laboratory as well as in the field with companion modeling by participants who have experience in working with irrigation, fisheries, and forest resources (Cardenas and Ostrom, 2004; Cardenas, 2000; Cardenas, Stranlund, and Willis, 2000; Bousquet et al., 2002). We have already examined the difference in cooperative behavior when participants in an open-access foraging experiment have a chance to choose rules to regulate their behavior as contrasted to just learning from experience about the structure of the experiment (Janssen et al., 2006). "The remainder of the paper is organized in the following fashion. In the first main section, I provide an overview of our findings from studying irrigation systems in the field so that readers who are not familiar with our prior research gain an initial sense of these findings. In the next section, I provide a second overview--this time of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework that we have been developing at the Workshop since the early 1980s in an effort to provide a general method for doing institutional analysis (Kiser and Ostrom, 1982; Ostrom, Gardner, and Walker, 1994; Ostrom, 2005). In the third section, I introduce the possibility of looking at the change of rules as an evolutionary process. "The new method for studying the evolution of rules, which is introduced in the fourth section, will be based on the IAD framework and on our long-term study of rules related to irrigation systems. Before one can really think of developing a general theory of institutional change, it is helpful to begin to understand change in a specific type of setting. The method will focus on a technique for arraying a norm and rule inventory and recording changes in that inventory over time brought about by diverse processes for making changes. In the conclusion, I return to the question as to why it is important to authorize resource users' relative autonomy in the development of their own rules and to learn from the resulting institutional diversity. Rule diversity can generate higher outcomes than the institutional monocropping of imposed rules by external experts (Evans, 2004)."
Understanding barriers in the implementation of the one data policy in Indonesia: Insights from health data journey modelling
- Maail
‘Digital provide’or product consumption diffusion cycle? The diffusion impact and potential of digital technology in the global South
- Carmody
Supporting institutional resilience
- Anderson
Getting budgets right
- Kumar
Performance lessons from India's universal identification program
- Gelb
Assessing gender equality in the South African public service
- Vyas-Doorgapersad