When we speak about leadership in a digital age, we use to list plenty of “new” skills that the “new” leader should have, namely: problem solving, critical thinking, team-working, etc. While I might share this or any other combination of skills that one may make up, the problem I find with this approach is that it focusses too much on the consequences and not on the cause, on trying to deal with the resulting scenario of the deep changes we are witnessing instead of trying to understand the causes behind that very same change. In other words, most lists of 21st Century Skills are symptomatic when they should be systemic.

In the following interview (in Spanish) for The Project I tried to depict what is a leader in a digital era and, by construction, what is an “Enterprise 2.0″ — a term with which I do not feel very comfortable, but that everybody seems to understand (which is what matters).

The baseline is that we have succeeded in digitizing information and communications, with two major consequences: the end of scarcity and transaction costs, and the substitution of human mind-work by machines. In this context, two main strategies arise:

• The substitution of hierarchical structures by horizontal networks, which imply being able to work very differently, enabling connections.
• The need to master digital skills — a complex set of — as the new landscape is digital.

Networks

In an industrial society, goods are scarce (apples are not infinite, nor are sheep or any other resource) and working with them requires transaction costs.

Hierarchies and intermediaries used to be efficient and effective ways to cut down transaction costs while working with scarce goods. Information — which was embedded in physical supports as books or brains, both of them scarce — was also scarce and costly to handle. Thus, decision making had to be centralized: only the one on top would be able to have all the information necessary to make an informed decision.

When we digitize our inputs (information), the way we apply labour (knowledge), capital (computers), and our output (information and/or knowledge), goods become non-scarce (as material goods used to be) and dealing with them (storage, “handling”, transformation, distribution, etc.) becomes costless.

The hierarchical architecture becomes now a burden: information has to artificially circulate along the chain of command, infringing an added cost in matters of time and, sometimes, matter. When information is abundant and transaction costs are few, networks are more effective and efficient than hierarchies. That is a fact.

In a digital society, the good leader is the one that enables the network to be, to run smoothly, to create connections between all the nodes, to shift the process of decision making to the nearest and most appropriate node, more likely to be much more knowledgeable about a specific matter than any other node in the network.

Digital skills

Not only understanding that the network is the new architecture is what is needed, but also being able to live in it. And as networks are boosted by digital technologies, a collection of digital competences apply.

An explanation of such a collection can be found at Towards a comprehensive definition of digital skills. I will just list them here:

• Technological Literacy: HOW
• Informational Literacy: WHAT
• Media Literacy: WHERE
• Digital Presence: WHO
• e-Awareness: WHY

When asked for an example where all these skills can be put into practice, I like to cite Analyzing digital literacy with a single simple tweet, where each and every conception of digital literacy can be explored by using a message on Twitter.

Social networking sites

A typical question that usually comes at this point is whether firms should be on social networking sites. In an interview (also in Spanish) entitled Redes sociales: ¿oportunidad u obligación? (Social networking sites: opportunity or obligation?) I talked about this.

The main points of the interview are the following four:

• Living in the social networking sites is both a problem and a requisite of the “new times”. On the one hand, as social animals, we have to acknowledge that social networking sites are boosting our social potential: committing with a cause, hanging out with friends or engaging in collaborative work are much more easy when gone digital. On the other hand, if we are knowledge workers (and we increasingly are), social networking sites are tools which usage we should master.
• Digital technologies are becoming general purpose technologies. This means that each and every aspect of our lives will be affected and transformed by digital technologies. And now that we just added the “social layer” onto the Internet, we will never more be able to tell a social networking site from the “rest of” the Internet and vice versa.
• This is a change of era, not a collection of small changes. Institutions will be radically transformed as will be the concept of citizen (or worker, in the context of businesses).
• Thus, we have to acknowledge and understand those changes. And we have to acquire the necessary (digital) skills to deal with the new scenario that is unfolding before our eyes.

The posters are, actually, the usual poster and the corresponding academic paper explaining what the poster is picturing. Below can be found the two papers and the two posters for anyone to download. The posters are a set of 8 slides in A3 size plus a first slide that maps how to build the puzzle so it all ends up with the actual A0-size poster.

Paper:
Towards a comprehensive model of the digital economy

Poster:
Towards a comprehensive model of the digital economy

Paper:
Policy-making for digital development:
the role of the government

Poster:
Policy-making for digital development:
the role of the government

Ismael Peña-López: The role of governments in promoting the Information Society for reducing the Digital Divide

It has become usual to criticise (and I agree with that) the lack of monitoring and evaluation practices in ICT4D projects — see e.g. the latest example I’ve read about it in the interesting Worst practice in ICT use in education by Michael Trucano — and, notwithstanding, little attention is given in ICT4D courses to the macro indicators related with development and the Information Society, that is:

• What are the different concepts of e-readiness and the digital divide;
• what are the different models that are addressing this question at the quantitative level (Gillwald, Sciadas, ITU, UNCTAD, the World Economic Forum, the Economist Intelligence Unit, The World Bank, Waverman, etc.) and
• what are the main tools that “everyone” is using to measure infrastructures, usage, etc. related to the digital economy.

According to this, now follow what I think would be the basics in an introduction to the concepts and tools around the measurement of the Information Society.

In my opinion, I think there’s a huge revolution in the way the Information Society is measured in 2003 with George Sciadas‘s work Monitoring the Digital Divide… and Beyond that ended up in his acclaimed report From the Digital Divide to Digital Opportunities, being this second reference a perfect starting point for this whole subject.

An adaptation of this methodology (and an interesting reflection) for the case of Africa can be found in Towards an African ICT e-Index: Towards evidence based ICT policy in Africa by Alison Gillwald and Christoph Stork.

Sciadas‘s methodology became somewhat mainstream when was adopted by the International Telecommunication Union to build their ICT Development Index (IDI), which is a merger of two previous indices: ITU’s Digital Opportunity Index (an infrastructure-biased index) and UNCTAD’s ICT Opportunity Index (the first adaptation of Sciadas’s).

Information about the ICT Development Index can be mainly found in:

• Measuring the Information Society – The ICT Development Index 2009
• Measuring the Information Society 2010

Besides ITU’s index (which we can assume as to have become the “official” United Nations’ Index), I think it would be very good worth mentioning other international and well reputed indices/tools like:

• The World Bank’s Knowledge Assessment Methodology (see also KAM);
• The World Economic Forum’s Networked Readiness Index; and
• the Economist Intelligence Unit’s e-Readiness Rankings.

To end up this introducion, four more recommendations:

• e-Readiness overview, for a definition to the concept of e-Readiness;
• Real Access / Real Impact Criteria, with a list of 12 criteria that define “real access” to ICTs;
• Comparison of e-readiness assessment models and tools, for a list and comment of a (now outdated) list of models and tools; and
• Measuring digital development for policy-making: Models, stages, characteristics and causes, for a deep analysis of tools and (55) models.

The report provides new and up-to-date calculations of the ICT Development Index, which are then used to back the statement that The digital divide is shrinking slightly. The problem is that, in my opinion, the digital divide is widening. How is it so?

Four years ago I already had this same sort of reflection then concerning the World Telecommunication/ICT Development Report 2006. The ITU’s calculations were then technically right, and nevertheless my disagreement was twofold. On the one hand, I thought that not only euclidean distances but the absolute values themselves of telephone penetration should also to be taken into account; on the other hand, the ITU just did not took into account broadband to define the digital divide, an (in my opinion) unforgivable omission.

This year the problem comes over again. The report repeatedly states that the digital divide is shrinking. To be able to do so, the ITU creates four groups (high, upper, middle, low) in which economies are aggregated; averages are calculated et, voilà, the digital divide is shrinking. But we know the problem with averages: (1) I’ve got two apples, you’ve got none, on average we’ve got one each; (2) my left foot stands in frozen water, my right one in boiling water and, on average, I’m pretty comfortable, thank you very much.

Source: ITU (2010). Measuring the Information Society 2010, Executive Report, p.4.

Let us look instead at what has happened at the disaggregate level. And to do so, let us build a hypothetical model where, in the last year (from 2007 to 2008) every economy would have reduced by a half the distance they had in the previous year with the leader. That is:

IDI^e_y = IDI^e_y-1 + 1/2(IDI^l_y-1 – IDI^e_y-1)

Where e is a specific economy, l is the leading economy (the economy with a highest IDI value), and y is the year. If we plotted the IDI values for year 2007 against these hypothetical values for year 2008, the result is:

Source: ITU (2010). Measuring the Information Society 2010
for year 2007 values (year 2008 are made up).

If all blue dots stayed just on the red line, nothing would have happened. As the lesser digitally developed countries are far from it — while the higher digitally developed ones are closer to it — it means that their IDI values for this year are higher than in the previous one, and they are higher the more distant they initially were in relationship with the leader, whose IDI value has remained constant. This is what a shrinking digital divide would look like.

Let us look now at what has happened between 2002 and 2007 and 2007 and 2008, which is how data is provided in the two last Measuring the Information Society reports:

Source: ITU (2010). Measuring the Information Society 2010.

As can be easily seen, the evolution of the IDI during the 2002-2008 is just the opposite to what we should be expecting was the digital divide really shrinking. Instead, we see that the economies with higher IDI values (i.e. more digitally developed) increased their IDI values during that period much more than the countries with lower values. Yes, all economies achieved higher degrees of digital development as measured by the ICT Development Index, but the richer, the more development achieved, not the other way round, thus increasing the digital divide, not shrinking it.

My calculations could be wrong and my approach could be plain wrong, but aggregates usually are worst approaches than disaggregates. Besides, people wants to hear bad news (the digital divide is shrinking) rather than listening to wet blankets. The problem is that if we do believe the divide is shrinking then we can shift our attention and resources elsewhere, thus worsening a situation that was even worse than admitted.

Update 20100301

Giacomo Zanello suggests in the comments to analyze whether the distance of a specific country with the leader has either increased or decreased. That is, to calculate this (I slightly modify his proposal to adjust it to the nomenclature already used and to produce mostly positive values):

Δ IDI_distance_to_leader^e_y = |IDI^l_y – IDI^e_y| – |IDI^l_y-1 – IDI^e_y-1|

Source: ITU (2010). Measuring the Information Society 2010.

The results are even more clear than the ones I had already used. By using Zanello’s exercise, we do see that the distance to the leader in tems of IDI values increases the less digitally developed countries are. In other words: lesser digitally developed countries are increasingly far from higher digitally developed countries, hence the digital divide is increasing, and it increases more the worst you are.

Thank you so much for the tip, Giacomo!

More Information

• International Telecommunication Union (2010). Measuring the Information Society 2010. Geneva: ITU.
• International Telecommunication Union (2009). Measuring the Information Society – The ICT Development Index 2009.
• World Telecommunication/ICT Development Report 2006: digital divide narrowing?, another article in this blog
• A collection of works by the International Telecommunication Union related with e-Readiness and ICT4D

Dissertation supervisor: Tim Kelly

Composition of the committee:

• President: Tim Unwin (University of London)
• Secretary: Joan Torrent Sellens (UOC)
• Members: Robin Mansell (London School of Economics)
• Bruno Lanvin (INSEAD)
• Laura Sartori (Università di Bologna)

Substitutes:

• Gustavo Cardoso (Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa)
• Rosa Borge Bravo (UOC)

The slides for my PhD Thesis Defence. Enough said…

More information about the PhD, here: http://ictlogy.net/tag/phd

As the presentation shows, the speech is made up of four parts or general ideas:

1. The industrial era — or the industrial economy — is based (among many other things) on two main issues: scarcity and transaction costs. These two limitations have shaped the world as we know it, especially institutions: schools, parties and governments, firms, civic associations… When shifting towards a knowledge based economy, both issues of scarcity and transaction costs fall down into pieces. Will institutions, and intermediation in general, follow?
2. Second part is an overview on some of these institutions, and how their models and, sometimes, their sheer survival is threatened by these radical changes on costs and scarcity. Some will violently disappear, some will just fade, some will suffer adaptations along the following years. All in all, it’s about the risk of exclusion from society — not digital exclusion —, the risk of becoming worthless.
3. Thus, there might be a need for new (digital) competences to face the present and the nearest future. These competences (to be acquired both by individuals and institutions) will be necessary to interact with each other and rebuild how we learn, work, or engage in politics or everyday life.
4. To foster the acquisition of these competences some policies to foster the Information Society will have to be put to work, and the role of the government seems to be a crucial one

I will conclude that it all is a matter of bringing on changes while making sense of them.

More information

• Browse: Darwin a la societat de la informació: adaptació (i beneficis) o extinció
• Browse: Darwin at the Information Society: adaptation (and benefits) or extinction
• Download: Darwin a la societat de la informació: adaptació (i beneficis) o extinció ( 10.4 MB)
• Download: Darwin at the Information Society: adaptation (and benefits) or extinction ( 8.68 MB)
• Slides from previous sessions, at Generalitat de Catalunya’s Slideshare
• Briefings from previous sessions, at Generalitat de Catalunya’s Sessions Web website.

I want to heartily thank Jordi Graells for giving me the excuse — actually, to push me — to sit down and put together some ideas that had been rambling on my mind for some time. The title is his and it was great inspiration that helped me in weaving those ideas together. Not surprisingly, his work with the Catalan e-Justice Community (Compartim) is a most inspiring one too.

The following lines are a very simplified approach on what I think should be the design of public policies to foster ICT usage in a place like Catalonia or Spain, though it is my guess that it can be extrapolated to most developed countries facing similar problems like Spain’s.

Barriers for adoption

In general — and again, being really simplistic with the analysis — there are three main issues identified as a barrier for ICT adoption in Spain and a third issue that, unlike developing countries, it is identified as not being a barrier:

• Age (and some would add gender) is a barrier: younger generations are way more online than older ones, being dramatic in elder people
• Skills present a barrier too, as people do not feel confident, or even threatened, by Information and Telecommunication Technologies
• Indeed, most people not using ICTs also state that they find them useless. Thus, utility and attitude are also a dire barrier and the one with a strongest trend.
• Last, and in general terms, infrastructures and affordability are not a barrier or, at least, they are not stated as being as important as other reasons for lack of usage.

Critique

I believe that the previous barriers can be summed up in just one single barrier: lack of utility of ICTs, with a stress on lack of utility on being online.

This lack of utility can be explained in two ways:

• A real lack of utility, mainly due to lack of digital content and services that fits one’s purposes, be them personal or professional: for leisure, for activism, for work, for training en education, for health, etc.
• A perceived lack of utility, mainly due to lack of e-awareness and not knowing the benefits (or a real measure of the costs) that ICTs can bring to one’s life. This lack of e-awareness, of course, can be accompanied by the lack of several digital skills, which create a vicious circle: less digital skills, less e-awareness; and so.

What about age? I believe that youngsters — besides the fact that they find ICTs not technologies but something that was always there since they were born — have already found ICTs useful: they absolutely fit their needs in matters of education (the Internet is full of stuff) and in matters of socialization (the “communication” part of ICTs), which are the two main “occupations” of people under 16.

Policies

So. We’ve got digitally illiterate people and people that cannot find in the Internet anything worth being connected. What to do from the government?

Concerning utility, my own research shows that pull strategies are the ones that work. It’s absolutely coherent, on the other hand, with trying the Internet to make sense for unconnected people. More hardware or software or broadband will just put stress on the citizen to use something for “nothing at all”. In my opinion, policies should be threefold:

• A high commitment to put public services and the dialogue government-citizenry online, by means of e-Administration and e-Government
• Help the private sector not to have an online presence, but to go beyond and use the Internet for their transactions, with the government (G2B, a part also of the e-Administration strategy) and with their customers (B2B and B2C)
• Last, but not least, empower the citizenry to bring relevant content and debate online. Citizen organizations (political parties, NGOs, neighbourhood associations, patient associations, foundations, clubs, etc.) would be my pick as huge impact collectives which to begin with, as they’ll have manifest multiplier effects by pulling other citizens towards the use of ICTs.

Concerning skills, there three groups of evidences that are worth being remembered:

• People with digital skills are more likely to be more productive and, hence, to earn higher wages. On the other hand, lack of digital skills is likely to reduce employability.
• People with digital skills go more online and happen to meet more people, which improves both their social engagement (and self-esteem and so) and their professional opportunities.
• Digital skills are, by far, acquired on an autodidact basis or, in the best cases, on a P2P basis (family, friends, colleagues). Formal training in digital skills is only partially present in schools and is rare past school age.

That said, and again in my opinion, policies should be threefold:

• Urgently mainstream ICTs — in a very broad and intensive sense — in curricula and syllabuses. This mainstreaming should be based in two approaches: (1) training for trainers and (2) embedding ICT practices in the overall learning process (i.e. not just bound to the computing subject or classroom — though I’m neither saying students should forget about pencil and paper)
• A proactive public strategy aimed to people out of the educational system to catch up with these skills, by means of telecenters and libraries (and other points of access), subsidised courses in computing academies, etc.
• A joint strategy with the private sector to do alike in their in-company training programmes. The public sector could provide training for decision-takers to raise their e-awareness and even help with funding in-company digital skills programmes. But, the private sector should be committed enough, as the benefits are evident and would sooner or later positively impact the firm with higher productivity rates.

Summing up

I honestly think that pull policies to trigger demand (trigger, not contribute to the aggregate demand with direct expenditure) would, sooner or later, trigger to a demand for training in digital skills, which implicitly states in which order I’d be setting these policies.

These what-to-do-policies also, by construction, set aside the what-not-to-do-policies. If we keep in mind we’re talking about (digitally) developed countries and their characteristics, policies not to foster are mainly those aimed at subsidising hardware or connectivity in any way, or fostering the creation and expansion of infrastructures and carriers without anything to be carried on. Static and eminently informational public or corporate websites fully fit in this category; and also fits in this category the creation of content with no further purpose or strategy of usage behind.

Some bibliography

Though I had previously presented part of my phd research in public, this is officially the first time that I present final results.

The presentation only shows a brief introduction to Part II (quantitative analysis) and partial highlights from Part III (quantitative/statistical analysis), which makes most slides quite cryptic without a speaker (more cryptic, I mean).

Put short — very short —, after defining a conceptual framework (the 360º digital framework) the research draws 4 stages of digital development (after cluster analysis), the three of which are but different levels of a similar digital development path, and the fourth of them a completely different digital development model: leapfroggers.

These stages of digital development are characterized (a profile for each of them is described), and some determinants (causes) for this digital development (or underdevelopment) are calculated by means of logistic regressions.

Main ideas/findings

The research shows the huge importance of governments in framing and fostering digital development, which is more important and should be more direct the less digitally developed is a specific economy.

It is important to note that government action should be, firstly, focused in framing and give incentives to the real economy, entrepreneurship and innovation; and secondly, to foster the digital economy by means of providing it with an appropriate policy and regulatory framework but also by means of “pull” strategies.

Thus said, the findings show that digital development is compatible with both liberal and Keynesian policies, and that supply-side policies and direct intervention are only worth applying below a minimum threshold of infrastructures. After some infrastructure is installed, policies should especially focus to trigger demand (not to increase the aggregate demand, which is a completely different thing).

This goes against the belief that the government should subsidise computers or content; but it also goes against the belief that the government should just care for the regulatory framework: public policies are a determinant of digital development.

What policies then? Fostering digital services, both private supplied as public e-services, as these services will pull de demand more effectively than other kind of policies.

Two caveats:

• Basic development (income, health, education, equality) accompanies any other kind of digital development, which means that it has to be addressed first hand and, indeed, be the target itself where to apply the benefits of digital development.
• Leapfroggers show that another model from the previous one is possible. It is my concern, nevertheless, how a model based in a powerful ICT Sector aimed towards international trade will impact the domestic economy beyond an eminently direct level. In other words, policies fostering a domestic digital development will have both direct and indirect multiplier effects, the latter being the most powerful ones and, maybe, absent in a leapfrogger model.

Citation and downloads

So, is there no reason to be optimistic about mobiles in Africa, then? Well, it depends. Let’s bring some data in for the rescue:

Or, graphically:

Source: ITU ICT Eye

Data don’t clearly show the distinction between developing and developed countries, though it can be roughly inferred at least by (sorry for the rude simplification) looking at Africa and Asia (with mostly Low and Lower-middle income economies with very few exceptions — see the World Bank’s Country Classification). The big highlights are:

• Developing countries have less cellphones per capita than developed ones
• Most phones in developing countries are mobile and digital
• The compound annual growth rate of mobile telephony is higher the less saturated is the market

A logical comment about the last statement would be that it’s natural that less penetration leads to higher annual growth rates. Well, it is not that logical: on the one hand, there are countries with penetration rates above 150% (United Arab Emirates, Macao, Italy, Qatar or Hong Kong), so the concept of “saturation” is a tricky one; on the other hand, there are plenty of other commodities and capital goods (e.g. cars or washing machines) that not even dream of reaching these growth rates.

That said, one need to be cautious when stating that there are “many” cellphones in developing countries: this is true in absolute terms, but most untrue in relative ones. But reality shouts out loud that this is changing at an overwhelming speed and that innovation happens at a terrific pace.

The ICT Development Index (IDI) is a merger of two previous indices: the Digital Opportunity Index and the ICT Opportunity Index. From the DOI it takes indicators related to households and broadband and the methodology and presentation, while from the ICT-OI it takes indicators related to skills, the normalization method and the digital divide analysis and methodology.

This merger responds to the proposal — and need — of the ITU and other international agencies to concentrate all efforts in just one multi-purpose measuring device, instead of having several complementing indices fostered by different organizations. So we should congratulate all agencies contributing to making this possible for that effort.

But. While some consensus has been reached, the cost of is that the new index has evolved towards a lowest common denominator. In our opinion, losing the information that affordability brought to i.e. the DAI is a loss of shades that were of most utility. This way, the new index is more polarized and is mainly intensive in infrastructures and just shyly on usage and skills, leaving a big void in all other aspects of digital life: the ICT sector, digital skills (the new index uses but proxies) or the legal framework.

On the other hand, the most interesting thing to highlight from this index is that, unlike most other indices, the coefficients of the weigths assigned to each indicator and subindex are calculated statistically, using principal components analysis. Undoubtedly, this provides much legitimacy to the final index values, at least at the formal level.

To clarify the evolution within the UN Sytem of how ICTs have been measured we have prepared the following scheme:

Evolution of the UN System ICT related indices
[click to enlarge]

More brief information related to these indices can bee accessed in the following links:

• Technology Achievement Index
• Digital Divide: ICT Development Indices
• Digital Access Index
• ICT Opportunity Index
• ICT Diffusion Index
• Digital Opportunity Index
• ICT Development Index

More information

• Extensive bibliography on e-Readiness and the measurement of the Information Society
• Selection of concepts, tools and data sources on e-Readiness and the measurement of the Information Society
• ITU Press Release: New ITU ICT Development Index compares 154 countries
• Measuring the Information Society – The ICT Development Index, the official report, including free download (, 1.54 MB)

Note: I want to thank Ivan Vallejo from the ITU for his quick and effective answer to my requirement. ¡Gracias!

The research (partly) belongs to E-Health and Society: An Empirical Study of Catalonia, at its turn belonging to the Project Internet Catalonia (PIC).

Introduction

Francisco Lupiáñez-Villanueva

Historically, the concepts of health, healthiness, public health, etc. lack of consensus. The scientific revolution brings a new approach to these concepts, secularizing the way it is dealt with drawing the biomedical model. But social sciences imply a disruption in the building of consensus and a separation from the usual biomedical model, relating it with society, the relationships of power, human structures, etc. Castells goes one step further stating that the informational paradigm, within the Information Society, brings in yet another change: how (specially) the Internet newly interrelates the different authors around the concept of Health.

The thesis wants to identify and characterize these authors and how and why they use the Internet to get informed and interact amongst them.

Hypotheses

• The Internet is a space for information
• Decision taking determines the uses of the Internet for Health related issues
• A new profile arises between the health professionals: the networked health professional

Methodology

Data come from surveys answered by patients, physicians, nurses and chemists.

(Complex) Information is simplified by factor analysis and cluster analysis.

Binomial logit regressions are used to find the determinants of Internet use for health related issues.

Results

Citizens

patients tend to browse the Internet to get information about their diseases or other health related issues, somewhat limited by the lack of personal infrastructures (hardware, connectivity, skills, etc.). This means that patients are empowered by the Internet to decide about their health based on better grounds. Those are the connected citizens. At the other end, we have the disconnected citizens, mainly due to their socio-economic background: income, education… The relationship (not the causality) between connected citizens, better health and higher socio-economic status is evident.

The Health digital divide excludes 40% of the total population.

Interaction does not happen: Internet is out of the equation in the physician-patient relationship.

Physicians

Three types of Internet use: focus towards research, health information dissemination and institutional information.

The network physician: uses the Internet to get information and communicate with their peers, disseminate their research and spread information about their institutions. These are just 5% of the total physicians.

Networked physicians believe that the Internet is good for their patients, but only half of them encourage their patients in browsing the Internet.

Orientation towards research and intensive search and use of international information mostly determines a physician being or not being a networked physician.

Nurses

The networked nurse follows a similar path than the networked physician: focus on research and lowest proportion in relation to the whole population of nurses (4.5%). As the physicians, networked nurses also believe that the Internet is good and empowers their patients.

Chemists

Just like the prior professional profiles, the networked chemist is research and international information focused, and they also believe that the information in the Internet is good for their patients and has a positive impact on them being autonomous.

Conclusions

1. Internet is a space for information, not interaction.
2. The e-patient is determined by access to information and intensive use of the Internet to get information about health.
3. The health e-professional is determined by orientation towards research and access to international information.

Future lines of research

1. What are the determinants of innovation processes in the health system, including its impact on productivity.
2. What are the determinants of the state of health in the framework of the Information Society
3. What are the public policies to improve the health system in the framework of the Information Society,
4. How the biomedical paradigm evolves within the framework of the Information Society

Discussion

Answers to Joan Torrent

There is a lack of available data about the impact of the use of the Internet on the health of the patients. It is, undoubtedly, a future line of research.

The e-patient paradox: the networked patients are the ones — because they are healthier — that benefit less from e-Health.

The public health system tends to use the Internet to inform, while the private health system has a more intensive use of information technologies for management issues (e.g. e-invoicing), though not necessarily related with physician-patient — or interaction — focused applications.

While physicians see the Internet as a gate to access better information, they are also threatened by a potential use of authority in front of their patients. Thus why they are intensive Internet users, but only for information related issues, not for interaction with their patients. On the other hand, chemists have to ensure their customers’ loyalty, so they have more incentives to share information and open new channels of interaction with them, which might explain why they are more eager to encourage their customers/patients to enter the Internet.

Answers to Gustavo Cardoso

It is very likely that both the methodology and the findings of this research can be applied into other economies that are in their transition towards the Information Society, provided their health and social systems are similar.

It seems there is a new health paradigm: the technoscientific health paradigm, where technology plays an important part along with health infrastructures (e.g. hospitals), culture, etc.

Internet does not replace — in the eyes of the patient — the professional: it’s complementary. Actually, patients are fully aware on who’s behind the information on the Internet, and asks for a professional backup of this information to consider it quality information. But the professionals don’t usually feel alike. A further research, indeed, should analyse the actual relationships of power between patients and professionals, and how these relationships change or can change due to the Internet and the information that it makes broadly available.

A technological layer, in combination with an evolving social layer, has enabled Health “getting out of the closet” and being present in all aspects of life, way beyond the walls of the hospital. This is new, and this issue should be addressed seriously in further research about society in general and Health especially.

Answers to Miquel Àngel Mayer

It’s very difficult to define “quality” in the Internet, specially when speaking about websites about Health. Maybe, the focus should be not quality of the information, but the skills of the one that searches and accesses this information. Indeed, the concept of quality is closely related with the authors that issue and access the information, thus why the stress in capacity building, digital skills and, in general, digital literacy.

Internet is becoming not an exogenous, dependent variable of the Health system, but an endogenous, independent one that should be included in the equation of Health studies.

Answers to Eulàlia Hernández

The e-patient, unlike the networked professionals, cluster around patient associations, engaging into interaction amongst them and not restricting themselves only to access to and use of information.

Answers to Ferran Sanz

There are dire problems in most researchers about Internet uses: how to define the population, how to define the actual use, how to define authorship, how to define jurisdiction, etc. These problems make it difficult to state with statistical significance some findings that might be perfectly valid for the sample.

Bibliography

For a complete listing of references for the PhD Dissertation, please see The definitive references’ collection of my thesis.

NOTE: summa cum laude. Congats!!

Extended information

Thesis defense: The Internet, Health and Network Society, by Francisco Lupiáñez-Villanueva.

ICTs, development and government: from e-Readiness to e-Awareness

Presentation

Recommended Readings

Assignment

Take your home country as the basis.

Describe the strengths and weaknesses of this country in the following five fields:

• Infrastructures
• ICT Sector
• Digital Literacy
• Content and Services
• Legal Framework

and relate them to what you think is critical to establish a full range of operational e-Government initiatives (basic, intermediate and advanced levels).

Evaluation criteria:

• Identification of main/critical aspects
• Depth of analysis, conclusions backed with data/evidence…
• Use (and citation) of appropriate and complementary references
• Quality of exposition, structure, clarity of language…

Where to start from:

• Country At a Glance tables – The World Bank
• ICT At a Glance tables – The World Bank
• Global Information Technology Report 2007-2008 – WEF/INSEAD
• ICT EYE – International Telecommunication Union

More information

• Citation
• Download the presentation (, 1.6 MB)
]]> http://ictlogy.net/20081020-icts-development-and-government-from-e-readiness-to-e-awareness/feed/ 0 http://ictlogy.net/20081015-network-society-course-ii-irene-mia-state-of-development-of-the-networked-society/ http://ictlogy.net/20081015-network-society-course-ii-irene-mia-state-of-development-of-the-networked-society/#comments Wed, 15 Oct 2008 10:39:51 +0000 Ismael Peña-López http://ictlogy.net/?p=1097 Notes from the course Network Society: Social Changes, Organizations and Citizens, Barcelona, 15-17 October, 2008.

State of development of the Networked Society
Irene Mia, World Economic Forum

The Global Competitiveness Report and The Global Information Technology Report

The Global Competitiveness Report

A network of experts that reports the state of the economy in most countries of the World (covering circa 98% of the World’s GDP). The network works also on tourism, technology, private investment, etc.

The main goal is seeing why, given different countries with very different frameworks and socioeconomic backgrounds, why some of them behave similarly. It seems that there is a high correlation between competitiveness and e-readiness: ICTs are a general purpose technology that impacts all levels, thus why its relationship with competitiveness.

The Global Information Technology Report and the Networked Readiness Index

To see how countries can benefit from ICTs, how ready are they to enter the Information Society. To do so:

• A proper environment: business environment, government environment, individual environment
• A joint action between all the social actors to work together and share a common vision towards the Information Society
• Readiness, to make usage possible.

A composed index of three subindices:

• Environment: Market, Political/Regulatory, Infrastructure
• Readiness: Individual, Business, Government
• Usage: Individual, Business, Government

Data come from two different kind of sources: hard data, coming from national statistics; soft data, coming from experts that note down their perceptions. There is criticism on this last kind of data, dubbed as subjective; but perceptions, in the Economy, do play an important role, so despite the bias that might arise, it is also a way to gather all subjectiveness from a country’s reality.

Denmark — and other Scandinavian countries — are normally on top of the rankings. They are countries that are very innovative, competitive and wide open to international trade and a way of understanding the World as a global arena. On the other hand, some small Asia-Pacific countries have transformed their economies from having poor natural resources to be able to export hi-tech products and services. Last, some Arabic countries are also quickly scaling up the rankings, the reason being the diversification of their economies beyond oil.

Evidence shows that when there is an acknowledged strategy and philosophy to foster the Information Society (especially between businesses and governments), results are much better at achieving higher e-development goals.

The role of Governments in e-Readiness

The level of government readiness and usage is crucial, as it is a vector that dynamizes the introduction of new technology, the supply of services, the activation of the demand for those digital services, etc.

The case of Estonia

The shift from a planned (soviet) economy towards an open market one.

A huge effort was made to make government more efficient and to provide an appropriate environment so that the digital economy could develop: high usage, computers and Internet at home and at school, high level of e-government, etc.

• Leadership from the top
• Holistic national ICT Policy
• An inclusive information society
• Public-private partnerships

The case of Israel

Strong bet on software and exporting software — coming from a traditional economy based on exports of citrus.

How to create the appropriate environment? The government acted as an “ICT powerhouse”: investment in infrastructures, in R&D, in capacity and skills, in enterprise-university partnerships, firm incubators and venture capital, etc. Even this government “intervention”, it was always seen as “market friendly” and contributing to its dynamization without crowding it out.

The case of Taiwan

Incredible economic development based on hi-tech exports, with a highest share of ICT products worldwide.

Again, the strong role of the government and its vision and leadership. An emphasis on education, high quality training; innovation and investment, fostered through incubation programmes and parks.

Other countries that had high positive changes in their Networked Readiness Raking were China, Guatemala, India, Jamaica, Lithuania, Romania, the Russian Federation, Ukraine or Vietnam. Reasons for success being similar to the ones afore mentioned, including many important changes in education too. On the other hand, Africa or the Western Hemisphere showed poor change, normally due not (only) to lack of infrastructures, but to more fundamental reasons like being able to make change happen, the educational and socioeconomic framework, etc.

Q&A

Q: What does it take to shift one point upwards in the index/rankings? A: We don’t know, because the problem is that each country’s reality is too complex to draw a single model.

Q: In the case of Spain, how will it impact the law of access to the e-Administration or the electronic ID? How ambitious is the year 2010 deadline? A: It surely would, but it will not be in the short run. On the other hand, rankings are comparative, so it not only depends on your own performance but on your neighbours’. Of course, accomplishing deadlines also depend on the complexity of specific countries, so it is difficult to tell.

Q: Why e-readiness and usage measured apart? How it is that usage can be higher than readiness? A: Usage is more about e-government (public services, content, etc.), e-readiness more about strategy and policies.

Q: Are there rankings amongst countries with similar populations? Where’s France? Are there any countries going backwards? A: There are no rankings amongst similar populations, but it does make sense as implementation quite often depends on the total population (both positively and negatively).

Q: Is there any repository of best practices? A: The World Economic Forum publishes their case studies — based on successful practices —, as do some other organizations, but normally not as repositories but within reports, etc.

Q: Andalousia (southern Spain) has implemented telecenters and put computers+Internet in the classroom… but it looks like teachers are not ready to (efficiently) use them in teaching. Have other countries (e.g. Denmark) found the way to (efficiently) promote the use of ICTs in education? A: More than ICT policies, it is about education policies. Finland, for instance, invested highly in teachers and their skills (but also in wages). [see also "more info" below]

Q: Why is the civil society scared of the government having an important intervention? A: Public intervention is a need, and it should be better explained why, but there also is a need to protect the individuals in front of some violations of rights like privacy, security, freedom of expression, etc.

Q: What’s the role of web 2.0 apps in e-Readiness? A: It is especially about the role of the citizenry, the relationship of individuals with organizations, etc. And it will have a positive impact on usage, availability of information, etc.

Q: Intellectual property rights… are a barrier or a protection? A: It surely is a double-edged instrument, and there are reasons to and against having IP rights, and there is no clear positioning about them. What it is clear, is that governments should have a criterion about it and act according to it, coherently and consistently.

Demand or supply policies, push or pull strategies? A: In the case of developed countries (e.g. Spain) that already have some amount of infrastructures and skills, most probably the bet should be on demand-based policies and pull strategies to put the user actively in the equation.

More info

Dutta, S., López-Claros, A. & Mia, I. (Eds.) (2008). Global Information Technology Report 2007-2008: Fostering Innovation through Networked Readiness. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Dutta, S. & Mia, I. (Eds.) (2007). Global Information Technology Report 2006-2007: Connecting to the Networked Economy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Dutta, S., López-Claros, A. & Mia, I. (Eds.) (2006). Global Information Technology Report 2005-2006: Leveraging ICT for Development. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Dutta, S. & López-Claros, A. (Eds.) (2005). Global Information Technology Report 2004-2005: Efficiency in an Increasing Connected World. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Dutta, S., Paua, F. & Lanvin, B. (Eds.) (2004). Global Information Technology Report 2003-2004: Towards an Equitable Information Society. New York: Oxford University Press.
Dutta, S., Lanvin, B. & Paua, F. (Eds.) (2003). Global Information Technology Report 2002-2003: Readiness for the Networked World. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kirkman, G., Cornelius, P. K., Sachs, J. D. & Schwab, K. (Eds.) (2002). Global Information Technology Report 2001-2002: Readiness for the Networked World. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mominó de la Iglesia, J. M., Sigalés Conde, C. & Meneses Naranjo, J. (2008). L’Escola a la Societat Xarxa: Internet a l’Educació Primària i Secundària. Barcelona: Ariel.
Mominó de la Iglesia, J. M., Sigalés Conde, C. & Meneses Naranjo, J. (2008). L’Escola a la Societat Xarxa: Internet a l’Educació Primària i Secundària (Volum I). Informe Final de Recerca. Barcelona: UOC.
Mominó de la Iglesia, J. M., Sigalés Conde, C. & Meneses Naranjo, J. (2008). L’Escola a la Societat Xarxa: Internet a l’Educació Primària i Secundària (Volum II). Informe Final de Recerca. Barcelona: UOC.
]]> http://ictlogy.net/20081015-network-society-course-ii-irene-mia-state-of-development-of-the-networked-society/feed/ 6 http://ictlogy.net/20081008-demand-based-ict4d-policies-and-the-role-of-the-ict-sector-as-a-development-locomotive/ http://ictlogy.net/20081008-demand-based-ict4d-policies-and-the-role-of-the-ict-sector-as-a-development-locomotive/#comments Wed, 08 Oct 2008 19:28:15 +0000 Ismael Peña-López http://ictlogy.net/?p=1076 Ricard Ruiz de Querol — always worth reading him — has an interesting reflection around the alternatives for an ICT sector (in Spanish). Based on the Financial Times article , the issue is whether and how it is possible to foster a national ICT sector so that it becomes a driver, and a locomotive, of development, in substitution of other traditional (obsolete) industries like oil, mining or raw materials.

Ricard highlights to trends to keep in mind:

• Developing an ICT industry to foster competitiveness of other established industries
• Protecting the local market from foreign competitors, trying to nationally replicate foreign technology and services

Recent history has provided good examples — Ireland, Finland… even Bangalore or Bangladesh — of strategies focused on the creation of a strong ICT sector, but I personally growingly doubt it can be generalized on a one-solution-fits-all basis. Four reasons:

1. In many cases, developing and ICT sector was not a solution but the only remaining choice, so the relative success of the initiative changes dramatically if the rest of the economy is doing (more or less) well. I am not saying those examples were not successful (they where, and quite a lot), but one should be careful to take ultimate chances, well backed up and supported by most agents of the economy, as perfectly planned from scratch strategies that became magic solutions. I don’t think there is nothing like a blueprint for ICT sector based development.
2. The successful examples benefited from well set socio-economic frameworks: the language (i.e. English), the quality of the educational system, a strong welfare state/economy that perfectly leveraged all other efforts. As the iceberg, we just saw the visible part of the whole system.
3. (As the article also states) Even if it is said that the road of ICT development can be leaped so that leapfrogging is possible, it is nonetheless true that the firms that have been able to establish themselves strongly in the market, have achieved quasi-monopolies or, to say the least, have made things very difficult for late comers.
4. In addition to the first point — and somehow a consequence of the other two — we (I) still have to find strong evidence of ICT sector based strategies and policies that have proven effective and brought a deep impact at the macroeconomic level. Most impact on the GDP of the ICT sector is due to expenditure, investment and revenue of the sector, but not (which is what we’d call a locomotive effect) because of a positive impact on other industries from the supply point of view. If the railroad had an impact on the iron and steel industry, the energy industry, etc., I find it difficult to find what have been — from a supply point of view — the satellite industries that are being developed around the ICT sector at the national level.

That said, I agree with (a) fostering competitiveness of other established industries but not in (b) protecting the local market from foreign competitors and trying to nationally replicate foreign technology and services: the goal should not be developing a national ICT sector, which, in my opinion, can be a desired side effect, but not a primary outcome.

I am more and more convinced that the focus has not to be on the supply, but on the demand.

• Stimulate demand so that ICTs are incorporated in everyday’s life, most especially in industrial and business processes so that they enhance their productivity
• Stimulate demand so that the level of technology absorption comes naturally, thus upgrading the digital capacity of human resources and firms, and benefit even more from everyday’s life ICT use
• Stimulate demand so that it requires the corresponding supply growth, that will come from abroad but will equally generate business opportunities in the national ICT sector, based on the real economy
• Stimulate demand so that ICT use is based on real needs, the only formula for long-term sustainability

Summing up, it is my opinion that, despite the evidence on the benefits of a powerful ICT sector, these benefits (while important) are limited to the direct impact and have a small multiplier effect on the rest of the economy. Thus, we should focus on the adoption of technology, which has proven to have huge and much broader effects at all levels, and let the development of the ICT sector be a second derivative of economic development — and not the other way round.

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