ICT Evaluation: Are We Asking the Right Questions?

Gómez, Ricardo; Pather, Shaun

doi:10.1002/j.1681-4835.2012.tb00355.x

Cited by 58 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…In addition basing the perception of success on intangible benefits is also proposed by Gomez and Pather (2012) who suggest the ICTD evaluation field should rather than focus only on "measuring the tangible and quantifiable economic benefits of ICT for development" should take cognisance of intangible impacts as these are likely to be important for human development than the tangible and quantifiable ones. They also propose that in ICT4D studies ICT should be looked at as an enabler.…”

Section: C) Proposition When Ict Implementation Adds Value To the Promentioning

confidence: 99%

Different Shades of Success: Educator Perceptions of Government Strategy on E‐Education in South Africa

Mooketsi

Chigona

2014

E J Info Sys Dev Countries

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In most literature evaluating ICT4D projects in education, the yard stick used to evaluate ICT implementation in business which seeks to establish value is used. As a result most of the projects are in our opinion, wrongly deemed to have been failed. We propose that a better measure of success should consider the context in which the project exists and the perception of the intended recipients -for example a similar objective measure of project outcome could be perceived differently by people of different economic and social status. In this paper, we will demonstrate this concept by evaluating the perception of success of the implementation of an e-learning strategy in disadvantaged areas in South Africa. Data for the study was collected through various qualitative means in selected disadvantaged areas of Cape Town. Even though a number of existing evaluations point to general failure of implementation of the e-learning strategy, our study showed that the teachers in the disadvantaged areas considered the system a success based on the intangible benefits they derived from the implementation. Therefore this paper calls for a different way of evaluating ICT for education systems. James and Miller (2005), evaluation looks at performance against set goals. Where the ICT implementation is evaluated against policy goals there were two predominant approaches. The foundationalism and the constructivist approaches. These have however have been progressively merged as the current approach is to have evaluation establish the extent to which the goals and intentions of the policy have been achieved and the level of policy support. Within information Systems (IS), approaches to evaluation of information Systems is diverse. There are approaches which posit that IS evaluation should assess and inform economic returns, or assess social costs, political and social dimensions, power relationships or evaluate primary goods, mental states and those things that an individual attaches value to or craves in relation to the Information Technology (Brynjolfsson and Hitt, 1996;Hirschheim and Smithson, 1998;Wilson and Howcroft, 2000;Sen, 1999) All these perceptions on what IS evaluation should focus on have led to different approaches to the evaluation process. There are evaluation approaches that take cognisance of value as the prime driver of Information Technology (IT) evaluation. There are several of these, namely the value scorecard evaluation technique which was developed by Remenyi (2002). Value under this approach is evaluated by establishing the consensus amongst stakeholders of the requisite changes needed for the overall implementation objective to succeed and the extent to which these have taken place. Information systems actability was developed by Agerfalk (2003). This evaluation approach evaluates the social actions of the users of the information system. This is called the real use context. The other approach is the constructivist IS evaluation where the belief is that IT evaluation has to take into consideration ...

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Section: C) Proposition When Ict Implementation Adds Value To the Promentioning

confidence: 99%

Different Shades of Success: Educator Perceptions of Government Strategy on E‐Education in South Africa

Mooketsi

Chigona

2014

E J Info Sys Dev Countries

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“…Institutes and nations urge collaboration on addressing the needs in rural areas. Most ICT research approaches from a quantitative, technological perspective, using conventional wisdom [7]. Work often lacks long term contextual evidence [8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constraints for Information and Communications Technologies Implementation in Rural Zambia

Stam

Johnson

Pejović

et al. 2013

Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering

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Abstract. Introduction and use of Information and CommunicationTechnologies in rural sub-Saharan Africa face a particular array of challenges. Often, challenges interrelate with context, tradition and culture. This poster presentation identifies constraints during sensitisation, introduction and operations of ICT in rural Zambia. Although quantitative engineering aspects play a role, a multitude of qualitative constraints feature prominently. These involve environmental, skills, and cultural ingredients. Research, planning and evaluation has to be sensitive to these challenges if all rural areas are to receive proper inclusion and benefit from the growing penetration of the Internet worldwide.

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“…The IDRC team of Sinha et al (2012) notes that the programme was borne out of a need for offering institutional support for interdisciplinary and methodologically sound projects led by emerging researchers with mentorship of senior researchers. Among the myriad challenges faced by the discipline were difficulties in measuring development outcomes (and impact), accompanied by an excessive reliance of anecdotal evidence (Gomez and Pather 2012). The lack of adequate scientific documentation and analysis of failures and successes culminated in limited relevance of the research to both practitioners and policymakers .…”

Section: Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Research on the Impact of the Information Society in the Global South: An Introduction to SIRCA

Chib

2015

Impact of Information Society Research in the Global South

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ICT Evaluation: Are We Asking the Right Questions?

Cited by 58 publications

References 28 publications

Different Shades of Success: Educator Perceptions of Government Strategy on E‐Education in South Africa

Different Shades of Success: Educator Perceptions of Government Strategy on E‐Education in South Africa

Constraints for Information and Communications Technologies Implementation in Rural Zambia

Research on the Impact of the Information Society in the Global South: An Introduction to SIRCA

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