Edephonce N. Nfuka, Stockholm University: A Holistic Approach for IT Governance in the Public sector Organizations in a Developing Country: A Case Study of Tanzania

What is IT Governance? Business support, IT risks, performance, delivery time, service cost, service quality, etc. Basically, business people have to be aligned with IT people.

A holistic approach covering the following areas of improvement:

• Leadership
• Effective coordination mechanisms
• Reasonable IT investment

Research question: how could IT Governance in the public sector in a developing country be streamlined in order to improve public services delivery? A framework for effective governance:

• ITG Context
• ITG Mechanisms
• ITG Key Decisions
• ITG Maturity
• ITG Problems & Consequences

More info

• Edephonce N. Nfuka A1 and Lazar Rusu Management of IT-enabled change in a public organisation in Tanzania

Marilla Palmen, University of Kuopio: How to develop participatory research methods to assess health information management needs of families with small babies?

Participatory action research approach to help health care workers to improve their work. “My Wellbeing” is an e-health tool (actually in conceptualization phase) for families and individuals to monitor their own health.

Challenges: how to know the user needs? how to know the best way to fit them?

Some approaches to conceptualize this “my wellbeing”

• Health services development
• Information needs assessment, information behaviour, information seeking behaviour, information practices
• Personal information management

Evelyn Kigozi Kahiigi, DSV-Stockholm University: E-learning in the developing country context: Adoption and Utilization at the University Level in Uganda

Ugandan framework for ICT and Education

• ICt acquisition liberalization (1996)
• Rolling out a National Data Backbone
• Growth of the ICT Sector
• Integration of ICT into the curriculum of primary and secondary education
• Integration of ICT in teaching and research in Higher Education
• SchoolNet Uganda, Uganda Connect, Research Network of Uganda

BUT the reality is that there are ICT acceptance issues and limited utilization of ICTs for education: e-mail, LMS to upload notes, and powerpoint presentations to teach. Maybe due to limited access, maybe due to a lack of awareness in the educational framework.

Instead, there is a growing informal e-learning in Uganda: Internet, chats, e-content, mailing lists and chats… This informal e-learning should be exploited.

[this reminds me of Ivan Illich, Sugata Mitra and others about deschooling society and being confident about the ability of children to self-teach themselves when an appropriate framework is provided.]

Niels Peter Nielsen, University of London: Mobile Technology in African Rural Development

Main issues:

• Need for active policies to spread ICTs in rural areas and the benefits of investing in agriculture.
• How does access to mobile technology influence the rural residents bargaining power in the market place?
• How do mobile technologies fulfil social functions in the marketing process? How are issues discussed including and beyond “pure” price negotiations?

Based on action research.