ICTlogy

The Economist Intelligence Unit — in co–operation with the IBM Institute for Business Value — has published the The 2007 e-readiness rankings.

One of the caveats the EUI launches is that the ranking methodology has been modified, hence changes in rankings methodology raise the bar of e-readiness leadership, giving more weight to leadership and, thus, strong government role in promotion and adoption of ICT propel Asian countries upward. It is my opinion that stressing leadership role — and, indirectly, the role of the political and legal framework — is a good thing to do, as it is far demonstrated that is one of the most important barriers or catalysts — depending on the sign — when fostering the Information Society.

Another comment on this change in the ranking methodology is that, by doing it, the EUI e-Readiness Raking comes closer to the World Economic Forum Networked Readiness Index. In other words: they seem to be explaining more and more the same thing. Strange as this statement might sound, the following graphic can shed some light on it:

R2 value of NRI vs. EUI regression

The figure shows the R² value to the regression NRI = C₀ + C₁*EUI + ?. We can read the R² value for 2006 — even if the report is issued in 2007, the ranking values are 2006’s — as EUI e-Readiness Ranking explains the 90.7% of the NRI Networked Readiness Index. This is far more than 2004’s value of 0.8235 (say, 82.3%). For those concerned in ICT and e-readiness measuring and indices, this is good news, as approaches seem to be getting closer. As can be seen in the next graphic , the value of the independent variable coefficient (X, in the graphic) seems to be (slowly) approaching the value of 1 while the constant is almost unchanged.

Constant and X-coefficient values of NRI vs. EUI regression

So far, the good news and/or comments. But the EUI also highlights the following findings:

• E-readiness goalposts for countries are shifting.
• The digital divide continues to narrow, even with the model changes.
• Broadband is increasingly affordable, and almost everywhere.

I mostly agree with giving more importance to online content and services. Actually, I fully agree: infrastructure makes poor sense if, because of i.e. low digital literacy levels, this infrastructure is underused and no content or no services are provided online. But, again, I cannot agree that the digital divide is narrowing. On one hand, this is something that The Millennium Development Goals Report 2006 and UNCTAD’s Information Economy Report 2006 already put under quarantine. On the other hand, the EUI just ranks 69 economies, which are, of course, the most developed ones. So, even if it is true that the distance between the highest and lowest scoring countries dropped from 6.08 points to 5.80 points this year it is not fair to generalize this statement for the whole world, leaving out of the analysis more than 120 countries, two thirds of the total. And same for broadband.

Summing up: a good tool that comes to its 8th edition, providing good information along years, and that seems to be showing good results. But an information that should be consumed with caution.

More info

• The 2007 e-readiness rankings page
• The 2007 e-readiness rankings report (1.44 Mb)
• A compilation of e-Readiness bibliography
• A compilation bibliography by the Economist Intelligence Unit
• A compilation bibliography by the World Economic Forum

As already advanced, my paper Online Volunteers: Knowledge Managers in Nonprofits has been already published in the first issue of the new Journal of Information Technology in Social Change.

Abstract

Online volunteering is as old as the World Wide Web… or as the Internet itself. It is, notwithstanding, with the growing use of the WWW circa end of 1994 that it starts to become popular. Nevertheless, we believe that neither the concept nor the tasks that can be carried along by online volunteers are clear at all or, in any case, are the result of a wide consensus.

The research we here present analyzed 17 websites devoted to fostering volunteering to find out (a) if there was a broadly accepted definition of the concept of online volunteering and (b) if there was a list of tasks thus designed as the core or ideal competences of online volunteers. According to our findings, in this paper we will, first of all, describe all the different denominations for online volunteers and, closely related to them, try and see what are the profiles and tasks that, tied to these denominations, are usually performed or asked for in those main 17 volunteering websites.

To end, we will take some distance from the object of research and, in a more theoretical level, we will then suggest what the online volunteer profile could be and the main tasks he or she could really carry on related to this profile, the nature of the Information Society and the possibilities of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs).

In this aspect, our thesis will be that, just like distance and/or online education changed formal education, ICTs are opening volunteering to some people usually excluded from nonprofits because of personal and professional obligations. On the other hand, it seems that these newcoming people enrolled through and thanks to ICTs do come with a brand new profile, a profile whose main added value is knowledge. It will be stated, then, that the online volunteer is a perfect knowledge management actor and that knowledge transmission seems to be is his or her main role in solidarity.

Citation and postprint download

Peña-López, I. (2007). “Online Volunteers: Knowledge Managers in Nonprofits”. In The Journal of Information Technology in Social Change, Spring Edition – April 2007, (1), 136-152. Vashon: The Gilbert Center.

Here comes the bibliography I’m using to teach my course Technological grounds of the e-Administration belonging to the Master in e-Administration at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.

Bibliography

Further information

This is not a evolving selection, though it might have slight changes. The up-to-date version of this list can always be consulted here: Fundamentos Técnicos de la Administración Electrónica. Feel free to write back to me with proposals for inclusion in the list and/or corrections for found errors.

It looks like ages since I ended my M.Phil.’s research project e-Learning for Development: a model. During last year (2006) I gave a conference about e-Learning and development based on open access and free software, and I also published a shortest Spanish version of the thesis in UPDATE – Dianova International e-magazine, again focusing on the “open” paradigm.

Even if the full digital version has been online for more than one year and a half, I’ve been having the uncomfortable sensation that — at least from my own point of view — my most important contribution in the paper has not had a lot of diffusion, exposure: provided there is really scarce literature on online volunteering, and most of it is from a practitioner’s approach, I thought my work on the taxonomy and typology of online volunteering provided some fresh air to the subject.

Now, it seems that the time for this issue to have an official coverage has come, and it will be, lucky me, in two ways at the same time.

First of all, my paper Online Volunteers: Knowledge Managers in Nonprofits has been accepted to be published in the first issue of the new Journal of Information Technology in Social Change, that is going to be presented at the 2007 Nonprofit Technology Conference by Michael Gilbert (along with the people at The Gilbert Center and NTEN, who have worked together to make it happen).

Second, a session devoted to the Journal will take place on Friday April 6th, 2007, at the conference, where some research gathered in this first issue will be presented to the attendants. As I cannot travel to Washington, DC, Michael Gilbert himself will be doing my speech for me using the material and notes I provided him with.

What is an online volunteer, what are the tasks that one would expect him to do, how are volunteering web portals treating the concept of online volunteering or how could this kind of contribution evolve in the future are questions that I try to answer in my paper and will be also shortly dealt with in the live presentation.

I really would like to sincerely thank Michael Gilbert, Katrin Verclas and Christine Dragonwyck for their help, patience and, over all, determination and drive to make things happen, even against all odds ;)

The World Economic Forum has released the Global Information Technology Report 2006-2007.

First conclusions at first glance:

• Scandinavian countries, Singapore, Iceland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the UK and the US and again on top 10
• India and China losing some positions in the overall ranking, but still and important ICT power in Asia
• Many Latin America and Caribbean countries scaling up, with important improvements in some cases (the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Guyana, Ecuador)
• Africa getting (even) worse

Jaume Albaigès moderated on Friday 23rd, 2007, the panel “New Technologies at the Social Third Sector”, in the framework of the 1st Catalan Congress on the Social Third Sector that took place in Barcelona, Spain.

He is now publishing the main conclusions (in Catalan and in Spanish) for the ICT panel, which in many ways are similar to the ones that came out from the e-Stas symposium on technologies for social action, alsn on Friday 23rd, 2007, but this time in Sevilla, Spain. Some of the points that where debated in Barcelona I freely translate from Jaume Albaigès’s site):

• Despite general consensus on the benefits of ICTs in many fields, nonprofits still do neither add them to their strategy nor to their day-to-day work, avoiding better performance, efficiency and goal achieving.
• The digital divide is not only a matter of individuals or social groups, but also affects organizations
• There is an evident and huge need in training investment. An organizational cultural change is also a must.
• The role of ICT professionals — specially the ones engaged in nonprofits — should be bridging this cultural divide among techies and non techies.
• ICTs increase NGOs’ transparency, participation and decision taking
• ICTs can ease or even increase NGOs’ revenues thanks to online donations and marketing
• It’s making less and less sense to talk about ICTs as both an external thing or a sector/section within nonprofits: ICTs should be treated as a transversal issue affecting the whole organization

See also:

• Presentations’ slides for the ICT panel (in Catalan) (1.58 Mb)