Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICTD): Contributing To Human Development and Social Justice

What began with radio and television as tools to help improve the lives of marginalized communities has become a global movement of people using computers, the internet, and mobile devices to help human development. Information and communication technologies for development (ICTD) have become more accessible, more used, and more relevant than ever in the lives of people around the world. A growing body of scholars and researchers work to understand, design, evaluate and critique ICTD interventions, which can bring numerous benefits as well as unanticipated negative consequences to those affected. Recognizing the importance of this work, the EGOV track at HICSS will include a mini-track on ICTD starting on 2015.

The field of ICTD is essentially interdisciplinary. It has been going through a process of consolidation and maturation, and we invite submissions from a variety of perspectives and approaches, with contributions focused on topics such as (but not limited to):

• Successful approaches to human-centered design for development
• Strengthening theoretical contributions to ICTD
• Effective ways to incorporate gender in ICTD studies
• Design, policy and practice implications of ICTD experience
• Measuring the contribution and impact on ICTD for human development
• Social media in ICTD
• Contribution of ICTD to social justice
• others

Rather than descriptions of case studies or experiences, we encourage reflection pieces that address the challenges and opportunities of the field, and point to ways forward as ICTD grows and consolidates as a field of study. ICTD is not limited to work in so called developing countries, and even though it is part of EGov track, the ICTD mini-track is not limited to application of ICTD in e-government contexts.

More information on the mini-track chairs:

Ricardo Gomez- I am an Assistant Professor and Chair of the Information and Society Center (ISC) at the University of Washington Information School. My research interests focus on the impacts of information and communication technologies in international development contexts. I specialize in the social impact of communication technologies, especially in community development settings, and I’m particularly interested in qualitative research methods and in group facilitation and process design. These methods help me find creative ways to communicate complex ideas and research results in everyday language. My web site is at www.ictd.info

Luis Fernando Baron is an Associate Professor of Communication and Languages Department of Icesi University. He has been leader in the study of relations of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), social movements, and migrations, particularly, in the field of human rights in Colombia and the immigration reform movement in the US. His research spans such diverse areas as memories, public opinion and audiences studies on violence and peace processes in Colombia, uses of media for social change, immigration and information, and alternative processes of organization for development. His recent dissertation is about Social Media and Social Movements: Facebook in the Practices of Social Movement Organizations of Washington State. His last book on public access to computers, coauthored by Ricardo Gomez, is going to be presented in Colombia next March 2014.

Øystein Sæbø is an Associate Professor at the University of Agder (UiA), Norway. Sæbø is a member of Association of Information Systems - Special Interest Group - e-Government (AIS SIG eGov) and IFIP W.G. 8.5: Information Systems in Public administration, and is involved in various e-Participation research and practice projects in Norway and Europe. His special research interests are e-Democracy and e-Participation. His work has been published in journals such as The Information Society, Communication of AIS, Government Information Quarterly, Information Technology for Development and Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems. He is head of Centre for e-Government at UiA, and is currently coordinating research projects on ICT4D in Tanzania and Nepal.