Community Informatics: Evaluating the Effectiveness of ICT Initiatives in the Social Economy

Community Informatics: Evaluating the Effectiveness of ICT Initiatives in the Social Economy
Name of Student
Institution
Abstract
Information and Communication (ICT) value as a facilitator of management that can aid in delivering effectiveness to the Community and the Social Economy is well established. However, some parts of the Community are yet to appreciate or get to know more about the benefits of ICT initiatives. These include both formal and informal people of different social groups who have the same interest and would wish to have an interaction with people that think the same way. The research has both primary and secondary roles and benefits of ICT to the community, people and businesses. The primary benefit of the research is of providing new reports from social development and community informatics practitioners, while the secondary benefit of the study will be the compilation and contrast of existing data and reports on ICT social projects, mostly those which were not conducted under a CI context or using the CI framework of “effective use”. Of which may later on expose areas that could have been improved or better implemented and may also drive new areas of exploration for CI theory as field projects may be breaking new ground that theory does not yet cover or has been partially covered by other researchers.
Assessment of the effectiveness of ICT initiatives in the social economy to the people of the community, described the need for education and suggestion of ways to improve the emergent discipline of IS Community informatics (CI) in the last couple of years, being part of the Social Informatics (SI), which is defined as the study of the design that is interdisciplinary, the uses and the consequences of information technology (IT). The researcher did an analysis on a number of participants systematically approaching IS focused on the community and looked first at social organizations within the researcher’s city, Edmonton, Canada, and then other regions and communities such as Kenya, Ghana, and Brazil to evaluate the ability of these organizations and people to make “effective use” of ICTs and found that CI is comprised of two main parts including research and practice. Both of which have not been properly tapped into.
Table of Contents TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION PAGEREF _Toc12402622 \h 51.1Introduction to the Study PAGEREF _Toc12402623 \h 51.2Introduction to Community Informatics PAGEREF _Toc12402624 \h 51.3Background of the problem PAGEREF _Toc12402625 \h 71.4The Problem Context PAGEREF _Toc12402626 \h 81.5 Purpose of the Study and Research Questions PAGEREF _Toc12402627 \h 81.6 Rationale PAGEREF _Toc12402628 \h 91.7 Researchers Positioning PAGEREF _Toc12402629 \h 101.8 Scope and Limitations of the Study PAGEREF _Toc12402630 \h 101.9 Theoretical Framework PAGEREF _Toc12402631 \h 111.10 Outline of Remainder of the Document PAGEREF _Toc12402632 \h 11CHAPTER TWO PAGEREF _Toc12402633 \h 122.1 Introduction PAGEREF _Toc12402634 \h 122.2 Community PAGEREF _Toc12402635 \h 132.3 Community Definition PAGEREF _Toc12402636 \h 132.4 CI Concepts and activities PAGEREF _Toc12402637 \h 142.5The Role of ICT in the Community PAGEREF _Toc12402638 \h 172.6 ICT and the Economy PAGEREF _Toc12402639 \h 192.7 Community culture and Cultural Capital PAGEREF _Toc12402640 \h 232.8 Summary PAGEREF _Toc12402641 \h 25CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHODS PAGEREF _Toc12402642 \h 253.1 Mode of Study PAGEREF _Toc12402643 \h 253.2 Overall Design PAGEREF _Toc12402644 \h 263.3 Site and Research Participants PAGEREF _Toc12402645 \h 273.4 Conducting the interviews PAGEREF _Toc12402646 \h 273.5 Data Collection PAGEREF _Toc12402647 \h 283.6 Pilot Study PAGEREF _Toc12402648 \h 293.7 Data Analysis PAGEREF _Toc12402649 \h 293.8 Ethical Consideration PAGEREF _Toc12402650 \h 303.9 Trustworthiness and Threats to Validity PAGEREF _Toc12402651 \h 303.10 Significance and Implications PAGEREF _Toc12402652 \h 303.11 Timeline PAGEREF _Toc12402653 \h 31CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION PAGEREF _Toc12402654 \h 314.1 Introduction PAGEREF _Toc12402655 \h 314.2 Emergent Themes PAGEREF _Toc12402656 \h 31CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION PAGEREF _Toc12402657 \h 335.1 Chapter Introduction PAGEREF _Toc12402658 \h 345.2 Summary of the Study PAGEREF _Toc12402659 \h 345.3 Recommendations PAGEREF _Toc12402660 \h 365.4 Suggestions for Further Study PAGEREF _Toc12402661 \h 36References PAGEREF _Toc12402662 \h 38
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1 Introduction to the Study
Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have been strong engines of growth within a capitalist private sector context, such that the C-suite is no longer complete without the presence of a Chief Information Officer (CIO) or Chief Technology Officer (CTO). If the private sector has placed the Technology Officer alongside the Finance Officer, it has signaled that the effective management of technology is on the same plane of importance as the effective management of money – a vote of confidence in the capability of technology by any measure. If attention is turned to Community and Social Development initiatives, are ICTs leveraged as effectively or as extensively as they have been in the private sector? Are there fundamental barriers to the effective use of technology?
2 Introduction to Community Informatics
Community informatics (CI) emerges as a discipline of IS in the last couple of years. It is part of the Social Informatics (SI), which is defined as the study of the design that is interdisciplinary, the uses and the consequences of information technology (IT). SI is the knowledge and research study that examines the ICT deployment and usage of social aspects. It looks at the community and social change and how the use of ICT is being influenced by the social practices and forces which assist the researcher to understand and overcome technological diffusion barriers within the communities (Gurstein, 2000; Kling, 2007).
According to Gurstein, CI can be viewed as an approach that is interdisciplinary not only dependent on one department/ discipline to the development of the community utilizing ICT thus enabling the communities to release their full potential in ICT. CI represents two distinct although similar in social interaction (Day, 2010). For starters, how the communities do research and understand the potential uses of ICT as well as how the communities enable, enlighten, grow and empower themselves through the use of ICT. Therefore, after this research, it is safe to say that, CI is comprised of two main parts that are the research and practice.
CI is a field of study that has been described as a systematically approaching IS that is based on the community and the people at large. Gurstein in an earlier contribution termed that CI represented the evolutionary advance on the development systems that are traditional through the combination of ICT with the adaptability and dynamism of life as it is lived in the civil communities. CI is the social-technical approach to system design extension though it concentrates more to the community.
1.3 The Need for Community Informatics
There has been an argument that there is an emerging need for ways in the optimization of opportunities presented by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) by all sectors of the society and community, the emergence of these opportunities that are associated with ICT has brought about the need for people to learn and keep up with the opportunities. Using ICT in the support towards meeting the goals of the community has picked up WELL and fast (Beamish, 1999). ICT can strengthen, improve and revitalize the capacity of communities and their organizations in working individually in fostering and sustaining positive change for their future generations. The role of ICT in the community is what drives the building of a community. There is indeed a great deal in the learning from the community building and community technology viewing as inclusive mutually for everyone to be able to participate rather than being exclusive mutually and only include a number of people from the community.
On the other hand, McIver (2002) has doubts on the ICT deployment on its own in the addressing of problems that are societal terming it as a fallacy. He clearly misuses this word but what he really means is that the cultural, social and community perspectives are doomed for failure through the push without appropriate consideration of technology. Many solutions that are technocentric have failed due to the fact that they have not considered the nature of developing systems that are complex for a community hence end up not being of use to the people that were in the first place intended to serve. (Loader & Keeble, 2004)
Community Informatics (CI), as a practice and field of study, aims to correct this imbalance that is in existence. Gurstein, one of the field’s strongest voices, describes Community Informatics in his 2007 book What Is Community Informatics (and Why Does It Matter?) as “the application of information and communications technology (ICT) to enable and empower community processes” (p. 11). Gurnstein presents the concept of Effective Use as one of the key areas of focus for a CI researcher, describing the concept as “the capacity and opportunity to successfully integrate ICT into the accomplishment of self or collaboratively identified goals” (p. 49). This research proposal aims to, within the CI framework, form the foundation for a study that evaluates the success of community and social initiatives that have ICT as a central or strong component.
3 Background of the problem
Notably, without the community’s efforts in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) initiatives, the sustainability of the community informatics, will not survive. The communities here said have to have an informed decision about ICT. This is because the initiatives are basically the help that is needed in the creation of projects that are sustainable in the exploration of the challenges facing the community both socially and economically. Through its initiative, ICT has become a tool for socio-economic development. ICTs in communities should be very transparent during their implementations so as to make it useful in the influence of cost-effectiveness, productivity and competitiveness and fairness in any industry and business directly or indirectly.
4 The Problem Context
The main challenge that is facing the CI in this context is that there is a difficulty in the description and assessment of the socio-economic development of a community in the contribution of ICT. As much as millions of dollars have been spent by government agencies and donors on ICTs around the world, we do not have sufficient perception into the methods that are appropriate in the evaluation of the effectiveness of the technologies especially the socioeconomic development (panther & Uys, 2010). The impact on the CI domain is assessed by measures like the access or the usage of a telecommunication center (Kumar & Best, 2006) opposed to addressing the impact downstream on the socio-economic development to the community as a whole. However, there has been an attempt to evaluate the ICT contribution by broader approaches means with sustainable framework of livelihoods even though the work doesn’t seem to be widespread, without an integrated approach that is strategically set, it will be very difficult to come up with the full gain.
1.5 Purpose of the Study and Research Questions
The main purpose of the herein proposed research is to provide instances and examples of the successes and failures of ICT utilization within social initiatives, programs, and businesses. With the continued emergence of the idea that ICTs, especially the Internet’s potential, can or will be a liberalizing or equalizing force within economies, communities, and nations, it is important to temper the excitement of such an idea with the reality of the limitations, complexities, and costs associated with ICT utilization.
The review and evaluation of ICT utilization and effectiveness within a social context can provide direction for further research to be carried out and also inform social organizations that are unsure of where or how to direct ICT focused efforts and funds directed to the same course. The research proposed would look first at social organizations within the researcher’s city, Edmonton, Canada, and then other regions and communities such as Kenya, Ghana, and Brazil to evaluate the ability of these organizations and people to make “effective use” of ICTs. The problem could be described as:
* Do social organizations across cultural, economic, and national divides feel that they, and their clients, are able to make “effective use”, as described by Gurstein, of ICTs?
* How does the effectiveness of ICT use in Edmonton compare to other regions and communities?
The objective of this research is not to provide a solely quantitative or financial analysis of social ICT effectiveness but instead provide a space for qualitative review and reflection on projects undertaken within the sphere of the rapidly developing and evolving field of Community Informatics by other researchers who would come later on in the field.
1.6 Rationale
There is a great increase in the participation of nations that are developing through ICT because of the perceived impact of the same which offer a positive outlook of societal improvements, continuity and the growth of the economy in communities. Notably, there has been great change through the technological modernization influence in the Government, education, agriculture, and mobile communications this is however not enough and more needs to be done in the ICT field with relation to creating more awareness to communities and businesses and bringing them up to date on matters ICT.
ICT is playing an important role in social business development. It acts as a central source for both the community and the business and gives an even wider range of resources than those that existed before. Its initiative has made the affordability of social impact by bringing services and products closer to the business and the people and great new ways that connect and engage the communities without necessarily spending a lot of time that can be used to some other programs.
1.7 Researchers Positioning
The researcher is currently an ICT practitioner and works as a consultant as well as a shareholder in two firms that do business with both for-profit and non-profit firms. It is likely that some or all of the local Edmonton interviews will be with current or former clients of the technology firm. The researcher’s profession will create a bias towards viewing the impact of ICTs in social development as positive and the relationships that the interviewees have with the technology firm and/or the interviewer could create positive or negative bias in responses.
In addition to these biases, the researcher believes that the local interviews will likely support a conclusion that effective use is most actively hindered by traditional access restrictions, most obviously the cost barriers to accessing technology, and, secondarily, will produce support for an access and effective use restriction in the form of insufficient skills to consume and create content and benefits from technologies.
There will likely be less severe barriers to access in the local interviews when they are contrasted against international ICT projects such as the ICT for Development project in Uganda, as profiled by Kivunike, Ekenberg, Danielson, & Tusubira (2011) mostly because of the level of education and growth that is happening in the ICT sector but, in both realms of review, it is believed by the researcher to be unlikely that social development initiatives will realize sustained benefits from the effective use, that is the positive creation and consumption of ICTs, that Gurstein suggests is necessary for the enablement and empowerment of communities.
1.8 Scope and Limitations of the Study
The scope of this project is limited to researching communities’ social economies, looking for the effectiveness that the initiatives of ICT have on them and to their local businesses. The study intends to examine the ICT and social economy as a whole and any other organizations that are involved with it both the nongovernmental, governmental and other stakeholders that would be involved in the same. It is this studies intent to discuss after examination of the real impact that ICT has played in communities both socially and economically and also give a baseline for more information on the same topic and further research to be conducted.
1.9 Theoretical Framework
The studies set to asses and describe the effectiveness of ICT initiatives on the community using a systems approach which means the description technologies influence on the social system that governs the people and businesses. Existing literature describing the impact of ICT does so in a way that is destined to be more suitable for the communities and the social economy around the same communities and their businesses. It all begins with its needed identification and what it will accomplish. This will allow considerations of the initial. In case of the use of the structuration theory in the definition of the social systems, they will be defined in social and cultural practices terms instead of demographics and geography which appears to be an appropriate way in the description of a social system.
1.10 Outline of Remainder of the Document
The Chapter that follows is the literature review, it is designed to depict what research has been done on the CI issue y6 2019and reinforce the theoretical framework of the study. The literature review talks about the community’s themes and how people co-exist in one place in the social economy. The literature review will then show how the topics give a language in the discussion of the topics of the effectiveness of ICT initiatives on Social Economy. Finally, the positive impacts that are found in the literature among other CI on ICT are highlighted in the use of contrast against the findings that come up later in the study.
The methodology of the study is discussed in chapter three and introduces the practitioners, the use of ICT in the study. A chosen format of a case study for the topic is discussed and the methods used in data collection are shown this is including the questions and how the data was examined.
In chapter four, the examination of the data that was collected during the research period begins. The data findings are discussed in accordance with the literature review context, research questions and the type of industry that ICT is in.
In chapter five, the discussion and summarization of the study take place. The research leads to certain recommendations that are apparent in the finding’s explanation. These recommendations are discussed and their reasons are provided. Notably, possible further studies areas are discussed based on an overall lack of research on the subject or limitations to this study. The research essay ends with final observations and closing remarks.
CHAPTER TWO
This chapter depicts the social economy and its importance to the communities. There are different definitions of a community explored as some of the changes that are faced also highlighted. A great definition for a community and the social economy is developed before there is an appropriate description of CI created on the same.
2.1 Introduction
The chapters overall aims are to develop the new definitions for the community, ICT, and CI in reflecting the needs and expectations of the society as a whole and the investigation of the potential contribution of a model in aiding the spread of technology in the social economy. There is acknowledgment in this study that there are different ways of existence in communities, they can be based around organizations, institutions or people and therefore should be defined so as to set the scope and context of this research. CI is a study field that describes the contribution of ICT to communities potentially; it also has to be defined in the context of how it addresses the social-economic needs.
Only a few models have been developed in CI, the most notable ones being the Alliance model, Access Rainbow architecture and the Liase Framework that provides an adoption strategy and the implementation of ICT in the community. The models should be evaluated and criticized so as to ascertain their real contribution in this research and identify the activities and concepts that can be used in the proposed model development.
2.2 Community
The rare exceptions of human activities are based in communities. Communities are very important in the development of both as members of society and an individual (Beale, 2000). A community establishes the symbolic boundary to a social group of any size whose members reside in a certain locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage also among the class of people who have the same characteristics that identify them as part of the group. Notably, the characteristics are the ones that set the communities boundaries which may be differently marked in symbolic ways.
2.3 Community Definition
There is difficulty in defining what a community is according to George Hillery who in 1955 identified 94 definitions of community from literature of social science and made a conclusion that a reference to people was the only thing that the definitions held in common. The term community is derived from the Latin communitatem which means the feelings or fellowship quality between people. A more significant definition is the description of society. According to Toynbee (1995), the total network of human beings’ relations is what is termed as a society. The social structure is where individuals are the main leads in the relationships network. Notably, society is not necessarily based on people even though they are an important component; it is the relationship that exists between them.
In the address of the concerns and needs of physical communities, it is found that they are important to the social science research area. The geo communities are a primary location for the research of CI for the past years. Social Economy plays an important role in Geo communities’ development. The literature of CI gives different ways of describing the social economy initiatives which include: enterprises, organizations, and paritarian institutions. The organizations add diversity to society.
2.4 CI Concepts and activities
Notably, ICT can make a great contribution to the society through the support of its operations providing its benefits to not only the management of certain organizations but also their members in helping address the social economic problems and solving them. The concepts and activities should be considered so as to ensure that the models developed to follow the CI practice best. Withal, before the concepts can be investigated, ICT use by communities and the initiatives of Social economy needs to be explored so as to set the research context.
This research is compelling to the researcher as the field of Community Informatics is a relatively new one and literature are just now beginning to be published in higher volumes and only as recently as 2006 did the United Nations form and launch the Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technologies and Development (GAID). The field of CI has started to gain practical and academic traction and, during such a formative period, it is exciting to review the outcomes of CI-centric projects, both locally and globally.
The primary source of literature on which this research will build is, as mentioned previously, Gurstein’s Community Informatics work (1999, 2003, 2007, and others). In addition, the literature on international ICT initiatives will be used as a contrast or complement to the experiences reported by Edmonton and area interviewees.
Community Informatics, as presented by Gurstein, conveys ICTs as a tool for development and enrichment of, primarily, place or spatially based communities. One of the primary challenges of ICT adoption in social and community development initiatives can be understood as not access to the technology, although this is certainly a component of the challenge of using ICT as a growth or development engine, but instead an enhanced interpretation of the “digital divide”. The OECD (2002) defines the digital divide as:
The term "digital divide" refers to the gap between individuals, households, businesses and geographic areas at different socio-economic levels with regard to both their opportunities to access information and communication technologies (ICTs) and to their use of the Internet for a wide variety of activities. 
Gurstein (2007) looks beyond the access/non-access differentiation and suggests that “the key element in all of this is not “access” either to infrastructure or end user terminals (bridging the hardware “divide”), rather it is having the knowledge, skills, and supportive organizational and social structures to make effective use of that access” (p. 48). It is this “effective use” distinction that forces a Community Informatics researcher to re-factor the definition of success in an ICT initiative. A project evaluated solely on how many users in a community were provided Internet connectivity will not succeed as a standalone endeavor – the community must be able to create and modify the new technology to fit its requirements.
When reviewing further literature on Community Informatics, it became evident that Gurstein’s interpretation is the dominating voice of the literature and it is difficult to find any mention of CI in an article without a Gurstein citation shortly following. This is certainly understandable as CI is a young and technology-focused discipline – it is not often that a researcher or scholar can reach out to an eminent voice on their topic via Twitter or a blog post, as one can with Gurstein. This does, however, present difficulties when attempting to build a diverse or balanced view of the subject.
Stillman and Linger (2009) highlight this narrow foundation, noting that “there is an ongoing debate in community informatics about the need for a stronger conceptual and theoretical base in order to give the field disciplinary cohesion and direction” (p. 255). Without a strong theoretical base, the research proposed here may fail to analyze components of ICT projects, in the same way, that CI currently eschews “access” success for “effective use” metrics and results.
The limited scope of CI literature also results in a confined set of parameters for practitioners to operate within, with the emphasis in CI literature being placed on the Community Economic Development theory, as it applies to ICT use, and not on Information Systems theory. This can be seen in Gurstein’s (2003) view on the failings of some ICT initiatives and targets:
The tendency moreover is to understand "access" as a "technical" or "infrastructure" issue particularly by those directly involved with the issue as for example for "development" or more broadly with policy or regulation in less developed countries (e.g. through telecom regulatory agencies or development funding or policies). The result is a greater awareness and capacity to respond to perceived failures in "infrastructure" than there is in other possible issues concerning "access".
This view, among others, aligns CI as more of a social science and could be seen as driving a wedge between established Information Systems and the newly formed Community Informatics; if it has to do with corporate development, it is Information Systems but if it has to deal with social development, it is Community Informatics. This thread is reinforced by Gurstein (2003), noting the current ICT focus on the corporate sector, “Remarkably and sadly … it seems that it has been primarily the corporate sector and even only certain elements within the corporate sector who have truly taken advantage of the revolutionary potential presented by ICTs” (p. 2).
For a field that has ICT use at its core, CI seems much ...