Shirin Madon

The Internet and socio‐economic development: exploring the interaction

This article attempts to gain an understanding of the current and potential impact of the Internet on the four‐fifths of the world’s population living in developing countries, two‐thirds of them poor. First, it attempts to put today’s rapid advances in information and communication technology in a broader debate about development and the role of information. Next, it explores the interaction between the Internet and key dimensions of development. Finally, it discusses some key policy implications of Internet diffusion and usage which governments of developing countries will have to address. These include an increasing role for intermediary institutions in the creation and dissemination of relevant knowledge on the Internet in order that the technology is used in a way that is compatible with local development goals.

Evaluating the Developmental Impact of E-Governance Initiatives: An Exploratory Framework

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.

Governance lessons from the experience of telecentres in Kerala

Telecentres are seen as essential components of governance reform in the international development community and great optimism has been expressed in academic and policy literature regarding their developmental potential. The scope of our paper is to move beyond the confines of conventional governance ideology and to propose a broader conceptual lens through which to study the complexity of issues that need to be addressed in order to make telecentres sustainable. Following several years of experience with these projects, evidence shows that their long-term survival depends upon how interactions are managed between a host of players including the government, private entrepreneurs, international donors, telecommunications suppliers, local companies, civil society organisations and individual community members. This paper proposes that the sociology of governance approach is highly relevant for a study of telecentre sustainability. This theoretical approach is used as a lens through which to investigate issues regarding the sustainability of the Akshaya telecentre project in Kerala in terms of interactions between various groups of players. We adopt a practical reflexive-interpretive methodological approach to encourage the development and reshaping of theoretical ideas about governance through our empirical data. We identify five critical issues currently affecting sustainability of the Akshaya project focusing on how relations and exchanges have been managed over time. Our analysis has important theoretical and policy implications for the Akshaya project and more generally for telecentre initiatives launched as part of governance reform in developing countries.

An Information-Based Model of NGO Mediation for the Empowerment of Slum Dwellers in Bangalore

With the rapid increase in population coupled with the seemingly irreversible flow of people from rural to urban areas, cities in the developing world are acquiring unplanned and uncontrolled squatter settlements at their peripheries. The provision of urban services and infrastructure in these cities is hampered by the failure of formal bureaucratic government institutions to collect appropriate information for planning, especially in areas that fall outside the remit of the formal networks. A growing number of grass-roots nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have sought to rectify the situation by acting as intermediaries between urban slum dwellers and the government. In this article, we review the literature on forms of intermediation by NGOs and other organizations working for citizen groups. We then present a case study of Jana Sahayog, an NGO operating in the slums of Bangalore, which employs an information-based model of NGO-mediated intervention. The article describes the various information-based initiatives that Jana Sahayog has undertaken to open up channels of communication between citizens and the government. Jana Sahayogs experience offers valuable lessons for NGOs operating in other parts of the world.

E-Government Policy and Health Information Systems Implementation in Andhra Pradesh, India: Need for Articulation of Linkages Between the Macro and the Micro

In recent years, many different types of e-government projects have been implemented across the developing world. One important application area, especially following the Millennium Development Goals, is the introduction of health information systems to improve the management of health care for development. Despite significant investments in these projects, experience reveals a disjuncture between macro-level policy priorities and micro-level implementation of these programmes. We use a broad conceptualization of evaluation to synthesize priorities at different levels during the implementation of an e-government project—the Health Information Systems Project (HISP) in Andhra Pradesh, India. This enables us to identify important enabling processes and conditions which serve to connect policy and implementation priorities. Our findings suggest that evaluation does help us to understand the disjuncture between policy at the macro level and implementation at the micro level and to identify linkages between the two. Finally, we discuss some of the key institutional issues that need to be addressed to translate the learning derived from the field into policy actions.

Information-Based Global Economy and Socioeconomic Development: The Case of Bangalore

Information technology is at the core of the current process of economic globalization. New areas of the world and new regions within countries are experiencing growth by entering the information age as manufacturers and users of information technology. However, often growth and decline take place simultaneously within the same region due to the tension that results from participation in global operations and the local socioeconomic context of the region. India presents a major case study of this tension, which we describe through a study of the region of Bangalore. The description reveals that the region faces pervasive forms of asymmetry between those who can participate in the global information economy and those who cannot. We argue that these internal disparities will ultimately affect capitalist development and discuss some issues of relevance to planners and policymakers concerned with the twin processes of globalization and local regional development.

International NGOs: networking, information flows and learning

International non-government organisations (INGOs) are increasingly regarded as important in their capacity to influence global policy on development matters such as poverty alleviation, sustainable development, and human rights. This has been possible through their simultaneous attachment to places and local cultures on the one hand, and their critical engagement with the global on the other. With recent advances in information and communication technologies, an increasingly connected INGO community is finding consideration scope for networking and information sharing at multiple levels. However, despite the strategic advantage of INGOs in terms of their multi-level reach, their contribution to date remains limited to small-scale success stories rather than affecting large-scale development. In this paper, we emphasise the importance for INGOs to learn from the field in their quest to influence wider policy-making and improve local accountability. We argue that as their role changes from operational work to international advocacy, INGOs will have to strengthen institutional structures and learning skills to achieve a greater developmental impact.

Information Systems and Nongovernmental Development Organizations: Advocacy, Organizational Learning, and Accountability

This article highlights a set of critical issues for information systems research that can be fruitfully explored through the study of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in developing countries. At the same time, the article argues that research on development NGOs needs to draw more fully on the study of information systems. A case study of the Association for Credit and Empowerment (ACE), a large NGO in Bangladesh that is currently reviewing its information management systems, forms the main part of the article. Our analysis identifies contextual factors that influence the effectiveness of information systems and the overall management of NGOs.

Implementing property tax reforms in Bangalore: an actor-network perspective

Abstract Many municipal governments in developing countries are experiencing serious difficulties in dealing with the rapid growth of population in cities. Catalysed through processes of globalisation, the growth of cities, especially the so-called ‘mega-cities’, has not been matched by investments in infrastructure like roads and power due to the inability of local government organizations to collect adequate revenues from sources like property tax. Recognizing these difficulties, agencies such as the Asian Development Bank have initiated systems for property tax reforms in a number of Asian cities, including Bangalore. In this paper, we discuss the story of this reform process drawing upon the actor-network perspective on translations. We argue that such a perspective helps to go beyond studying innovation processes through the lens of ‘technology diffusion’, and provides a more interesting and insightful perspective of ‘technology translation’.

The Indian software industry: moving towards maturity

Over the last decade, India has made a conscious effort to participate in the global software industry by providing software development services to client companies in the West. We see the Indian software industry as sustaining its competitive advantage and having reasonable growth prospects. In some ways this is a counter-point from many of the earlier predictions in the literature that suggested that the growth of the software industry in India was a temporary phenomenon which exploited an existing opportunity of shortage of software engineers in Western countries and benefited from the consequent moves towards outsourcing.