India is faced with a large number of challenges that are typical of developing countries. The Indian government has for the past 3 decades widely acknowledged that expanded use of ICT in the public sector can offer important benefits such as improved planning and monitoring mechanisms, cost savings through rationalisation, and more effective administration and delivery of certain public services. Today, wide ranges of e-governance projects are being implemented in different parts of the country including projects aimed at reaching areas and people that had traditionally not been connected to the outside world.This paper uses Sen's notion of capabilities as an evaluative space for e-governance assessment. Such an emphasis demands a change in the way e-governance is assessed. The capabilities framework allows us to focus on the developmental impact of such projects. We base our evaluation on the FRIENDS and AKSHAYA e-governance projects in the South Indian state of Kerala.
This article concerns digital inclusion projects in developing countries and, in particular, focuses on processes of institutionalization of such projects. Three case studies are described and analysed. The first is the Akshaya telecenter project in the state of Kerala in India. The second is a community-based ICT project in a town in a rural area of South Africa. The third is the efforts of various agencies on telecenter projects in the mega-city of São Paulo in Brazil. The cases are analysed through a simple theoretical schema derived from institutional theory. The analyses are used to derive four key processes of institutionalization, which are argued to be of relevance to all digital inclusion projects: getting symbolic acceptance by the community, stimulating valuable social activity in relevant social groups, generating linkage to viable revenue streams, and enrolling government support. The article concludes with some theoretical, methodological, and policy implications. C 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
In recent years, a growing number of social enterprises have focused their attention on harnessing the benefits of trade in software by involving underprivileged communities from developing countries in the production of information technology (IT). The goal of this type of activity, known as social IT outsourcing, is not only to provide employment and income to low-income individuals but also to address wider development priorities within the locality. This paper focuses on strengthening our understanding of social IT outsourcing as a promoter of development. Based on research in Jharkhand, eastern India, we seek to understand how social IT outsourcing activity is interpreted from the perspective of employees who provide data services for the market and from the perspective of the social enterprise that balances its market orientation with its social development goals. Our findings generate new insights into the mechanisms at play through which social IT outsourcing is able to provide a variety of developmental advantages to rural poor communities leading to policy implications for governments and development agencies.
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