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

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