ICTlogy

As an output of the XIII Cumbre Judicial Iberoamericana [XIII Latin American Summit on Justice], some researchers produced a report on the state of e-Justice in the 22 countries members of the summit.

After a first draft, now the report has officially been released. The researchers taking part in the report team are Pere Fabra (who coordinated), Albert Batlle, Agustí Cerrillo, Antoni Galiano, Ismael Peña-López (myself ;) and Clèlia Colombo.

If you can read Spanish (you should ;) I strongly recommend its reading, not because I’m one of the authors but because it goes deep into what I think is still an unexplored issue of both the Information Society and the area of Justice administration, the e-Justice index on of its most interesting contributions.

• Report (4.69 Mb)
• Executive Summary (399 Kb)
• Bibliographic Citation
• More bibliography on e-Justice

Stéphan Gagnon, Patrick C.K. Hung, Katia Passerini and Miguel Vargas Martin, have edited a special issue of the International Journal for Infonomics on e-Readiness, entitled Measuring e-business for Development.

The table of contents looks appealing enough even for those interested in ICT indicators, or e-readiness, out of the e-business focus:

Measuring e-business for Development
Gagnon S., Hung P.C.K., Passerini K. and Vargas-Martin M.

Measuring the Diffusion of e-Business in the Information Society
Salmeron J.L., Banuls V.A.

Assessing e-Business Capabilities and Effectiveness: A Set of Key e-Business Metrics
Chatterjee D., Segars A.

E-governance in India: A Strategic Framework
Mahapatra R., Perumal S.

Synthetic indicators for measuring e-business: A target approach
Vilaseca J., Meseguer A., Torrent J.

Measuring e-business in Developing Countries
Teltscher S.

Toward a Multilateral Effort in Measuring e-Business for Development
Gagnon S.

By the way, the journal’s architecture is an odd one: there is just a sigle issue dated January 2005 and a second issue permanently “fortcoming” (due to July 2005). You might think the journal is the old story of good intentions never sustained, but no: there are five special issues, two of them (one unpublished) dated 2006. Weird.

The Open University of Catalonia organizes the Conference on the European Higher Education Area, a virtual conference taking place from October 2nd to 20th, 2006.

There is a track entitled “The integration of generic competences into curricula” on which I’m presenting a communication. This communication is, actually, a book chapter I wrote last spring: Digital capacitation at UOC: technological literacy vs. Informational and functional competence. I copy and paste here the abstract so you don’t have to be browsing around:

Abstract

If the goal of competences training in the new European Higher Education Area (EHEA) is adapting to new times, it is evident that a correct digital literacy is an essential basis to work in the informational society. There is, nevertheless, a sort of bias in the definition of the term “digital literacy”, a bias that tends to shift towards the most technological side of the concept. Notwithstanding, beyond the knowledge of technology, there is a new world to discover concerning its use, what it is usually called informational literacy – the efficient and effective use of Information and Communication Technologies – and that, along with technology, requires a functional digital capacitation in the use of ICTs.

At the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) the student has at his arm’s reach a collection of services that will help him out through his way over (a possible) technological illiteracy and, above all, he is taught – implicitly and explicitly – in the use of these technologies through the interaction in the virtual campus, in the following of specific subjects and in exercises and practices solving.

This paper tracks the path of the evolution of the different capacities that form, as a whole, the total development of what we could call functional digital competence, and presents the moments or experiences in which the student acquires these capacities by studying in a virtual campus.

9th International Conference on Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries

Organized by the International Federation for Information Processing, the conference presents the following Sub-Themes:

• The role of e-government initiatives in education and health, what lessons can be learned?
• What are the experiences of ICT enabled development stimulated by efforts to develop indigenous ICT industries?
• The role of cybercrime and its effects on development initiatives
• What influence has ICT initiatives on rural development?
• What are the consequences of new organisational forms enabled by ICTs for developing countries?
• ICTs and social inclusion: experiences and prospects
• What have been the consequences of implementing open source initiatives in government and in the private sector?
• What are the infrastructure and human resources factors that influence the implementation of e-development initiatives?
• Evaluating the role of international agencies in the implementation of e-development initiatives. What can be learned? What can be improved?

Conference data:

• When: 28-30 May 2007
• Where: São Paulo, Brazil
• Call for papers until: unknown
• Website: http://www.ifipwg94.org.br/

IST-Africa 2007

The goals of the IST-Africa Conference Series are Community Building to facilitate EU-African research cooperation and successful exploitation of research results, to stimulate take-up of RTD results by industry, Small and Medium Sized Businesses and the public sector, to promote knowledge sharing between commercial organizations, government agencies and the research community, to exchange experiences about the current state of eAdoption at a sectoral, national or regional level, and to support International Cooperation and open up the European Research Area (ERA) to Africa.

Core thematic priorities for IST-Africa 2007 are:
– eHealth – Services to Citizens, Technologies
– Technology Enhanced Learning & ICT Skills
– ICT for Networked Business – Future Forms of Organisations, Technology and Applications
– eGovernment & eDemocracy

Conference data:

• When: 9-11 May 2007
• Where: Maputo, Mozambique
• Call for papers until: 30th November 2006
• Website: http://www.ist-africa.org/Conference2007/

On April 6th, 2006, professor César Córcoles and me gave a seminar entitled Web 2.0 and diffusion of research (revisited and improved).

Now, the review of the seminar has been published in IDP review. The abstract in English goes:

Review of the seminar held in April 2006 -within the framework of the UOC’s UNESCO e-Learning Chair- on the so-called “Web 2.0” applications and new ways of working in the field of research, education and diffusion -i.e. a University’s quintessential activity-, based on a participatory and open spirit, on-line applications and a great wealth of data.

The full text is only available in Catalan and Spanish.

• Web 2.0 i difusió de la recerca: ressenya del seminari (109 Kb)
• Web 2.0 y difusión de la investigación: reseña del seminario (111 Kb)

The 2nd International Conference on ICT for Development, Education and Training will take place at the Kenyatta International Conference Center in Nairobi, Kenya, from May 28 to 30, 2007.

The “subtitle” of the meeting is Building Infrastructures and Capacities to Reach out to the Whole of Africa, thus the list of themes is a comprehensive effort to cover all subjects around education, capacity building, e-learning, development, ICTs, open access, open source, etc.

Call for papers is open until Friday, December 8, 2006. Besides the usual presentations, other possibilities of collaboration are open too.