Beyond Wsis: Charting a Course for Holistic Information Development Policies

This paper will discuss a reframing of the ICT4D agenda of WSIS, and the importance of culturally relevant, grassroots, and " bottom-up " approaches for ICT interventions. The " ICT4D " framing needs to be expanded to accommodate a more realistic expectation of the effects and promises of ICTs. ICTs can have unexpected effects on communities, as " good " and " bad " outcomes can be intertwined (Burbules and Callister, 2000). Rather than directly linking ICTs and development, the issue of addressing the " digital divide " in the developing world should be framed in terms of social inclusion and exclusion. Creating more ICT-based opportunities in developing countries can be viewed as contributing to social inclusion. Addressing this issue, however, requires a holistic approach. A combination of technical, human, social, and economic factors is involved. This paper focuses on developing innovative infrastructure development, investments in human capacity, and overall economic development to maximize the effectiveness of ICT interventions in the developing world. The broad framework for guiding ICT development policy begins first with creating culturally relevant and useful ICT interventions. ICT introductions in developing countries must be able to complement and enhance existing social and cultural contexts, and not work against them. For instance, one area of great importance is the development of culturally and linguistically relevant World Wide Web (WWW) information content for local populations. The second area of focus should be on human capacity building, and the development of social capital in communities. Related to the idea of cultural relevance, human capacity building includes investments in literacy and education, among other things. Literacy must also include development of information literacy and multi-media literacy. Developing human capacity will aid in enriching the uses and applications of information technology in societies. The third focus for information technology development policy should be on developing appropriate infrastructure for greater utilization of ICTs. This focus on infrastructure development is a straightforward one, but is important nonetheless. Finally, the fourth area of focus should be on the overall economic development of developing country populations. Just as with human capacity building, investments in economic development will help develop more beneficial uses of ICTs. With a more developed economic base, ICTs can have better and more lasting benefits for developing country communities. Some examples of culturally relevant ICT interventions are found in India. For instance, the case of the digitization of land records in the …