The World Bank has published the World Development Indicators 2009. The indicators and the report that accompanies the updated version of the indicators are, arguably, one of the best comprehensive snapshots on the state of the question of development worldwide.
Concerning Information and Communication Technologies, the report devotes 5 pages to comment the subject (see chapter 5, States and Markets, pp.265-269, 
ICTs used in e-government projects can reduce corruption
This is a statement I fully agree with. I already wrote about this in my article entitled The end of paper, open gates to on-time democracy (not about journalism) and there is plenty more evidence about what ICTs can do for transparency, accountability, democracy and human rights; and and efficiency and efficacy in the provision of public services.
Some ICTs, such as broadband, can contribute to economic growth
Again, see Economic Benefits of ICTs.
We must not, nevertheless, forget how broadband is unevenly adopted in the world:
The problem is not, actually, that broadband distribution is unbalanced, but that the trend seems to reinforce this fact. As the International Telecommunication Union report Measuring the Information Society – The ICT Development Index 2009 shows, the broadband divide in the World has increased and the irruption of the mobile broadband has only worsened this unequality:
Good government policies and regulations are creating competitive ICT markets, increasing access to ICT services for people everywhere […] Many countries that have created a competitive market environment for ICTs have more people using ICT services
This is, to my understanding, where long term and broad impact ICT4D strategies should be headed. Thus, there is an urgent need to change the socioeconomic and political frameworks regarding ICTs and the Information Society in general.
My own research shows (more about this soon) that the role of the government has a huge impact in the probability (that is: it is a cause) of achieving higher levels of digital development. To be more specific, the following aspects highly determine digital development several orders of magnitude higher than other issues:
- Economic Incentive Regime
- Government prioritization of ICT
- Importance of ICT to the government vision of the future
The well known success of mobile telephony worldwide has been achieved through high demand, low-cost technologies, and market liberalization
Complementary to what has already been said, macro-level policies have to be accompanied by grassroots and micro-level strategies and projects. The first one that comes to my mind is the — in my opinion — successful FrontlineSMS:Medic, building on the acknowledged flagship of SMS for development projects Frontline SMS. In a recent — and most insightful — talk I had with the promoter of Kiwanja, Ken Banks, we both agreed that “scalability” in the developing world might not mean the same thing as in developed countries, which follow market-led rules, but could be closer to the concept of “copy-and-spread”. In his own words in Time to eat our own dog food?: we need to think about low-end, simple, appropriate mobile technology solutions which are easy to obtain, affordable, require as little technical expertise as possible, and are easy to copy and replicate
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(continues in World Development Indicators 2009: a commentary (part II))
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