The Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) and the World Bank had organised a workshop titled: Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for Rural Development to bring together case studies of various applications of ICT that have been demonstrated to make a difference in the delivery of services or products in rural areas. The cases presented illustrate both the opportunities and challenges in the diffusion of ICT within India and for other developing countries. ICT applications can be classified as those that provided decision support to public administrators for improving planning and monitoring of developmental programs, those that improved services to citizens and brought in transparency, and those that empowered citizens through access to information and knowledge. This paper presents successful examples of each type of application of and discusses one application in detail to draws lessons for what needs to be done to promote ICT for rural development.

https://learning.uonbi.ac.ke/courses/ICS417/scormPackages/path_3/5.3_Social_implications_of_ICT_in_developing_countries.pdf

Social Implications of Information and Communication Technology in Developing Countries: Lessons from Asian Success Stories

This paper describes three case studies of large-scale decentralized computer-based information systems, two from developing countries and one from the UK. Some reasons for their relative success and failure are analysed, and impacts on the empowerment of staff and management control are discussed. These issues are related to a simple categorization of decentralized information systems dependent on their primary purpose and the approach taken to their design and implementation. Some conclusions are drawn on future desirable approaches to the development of large-scale decentralized information systems in a developing country context, and on the possible impacts of such systems for the empowerment of different social groups.

Decentralization of IS in developing countries: power to the people?

Recent years have seen many developing countries taking initiatives aimed at promoting decentralised planning through the application of computer-based information systems at local levels of administration. However, with all these experiments, the key objective of improving the effectiveness of development planning remains unfulfilled. A major reason for this has been the inadequate management of human resource capacity to support the intervention. The problem stems in part from the lack of skilled computer-literate people to operate the machines. This has been acknowledged in the literature. Another problem stems from the complex interaction between the social context of development administration and the process of human resource management. There is, however, a chronic paucity of studies which aim to improve understanding of this interaction. To rectify this, this paper describes a case study of the application of computers for development planning in India. The complex interaction between the social context of development administration and the process of human resources development is examined longitudinally. The findings show that an understanding of this interaction is crucial if information technology is intended to play a meaningful role in managing development.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1057%2Fejis.1993.6.pdf

Computer-based information systems for development planning: managing human resources

This paper highlights the importance of information for bridging the various existing imbalances, reviews various studies and redefines the objectives of the Integrated Infor mation System (IIS). The components of IIS as conceptual ized are discussed and a functional structure of IIS is sug gested.

An integrated information system

Management Information System (MIS) of Indian Government's Flagship Programmes: Are they an adequate monitoring tool?

In most developing countries, the number of micro-computers in use in the field is still very small. For example, only 10–15 micros are in use in district administration in India, whereas each of the 30 departments in the 412 districts in India could profitably use one. Since the expenditure on rural development programmes in India is large, pay off from using computers can be immense. The paper draws upon work done at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) to emphasize the need to provide access to micro-computers at the district level. In addition to large cost savings, there would be other benefits, such as improved quality of data, capability for spatial and model based analysis, and good monitoring and control.

N.R. Patel

Papers

Decentralised computing for rural development