Creating a Development Dynamic: Final Report of the Digital Opportunity Initiative
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Type of work: Report
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ICT4DAbstract:
The DOI report examines the experiences in the deployment of ICT to meet specific development imperatives as well as national ICT strategies in countries ranging from Tanzania, Estonia, India, and Bangladesh to Costa Rica and South Africa.
It acknowledges that although, there is no ’one size fits all’ approach, the experience of successful developing countries points to the need to avoid over-ambitious top-down approaches and stresses the virtues of multi-stakeholder involvement. It outlines the following principles and strategic areas of action:
- Adoption of policies, actions and partnerships to leverage global opportunities
- Formation of strategic compacts and partnerships to create consensus, undertake joint actions and address market failures.
- Adoption of multi-dimensional and multi-sectoral approaches to tackle critical bottlenecks, move discussions about policy and institutional change out of the narrow confines of particular sectors to the public realm.
A key finding is that when strategically deployed, ICT can trigger a "development dynamic", one that gains momentum as targeted steps are taken in such key areas such as policy, infrastructure, human capacity, entrepreneurship, and development of locally relevant content and applications.
