ICT4D - bridging the gap between national policy and community practice

The objective of this research is to fill a gap in knowledge, in the field of information and communications technology for development (ICT4D), as to why some community based ICT4D programs are sustained by communities and some are not. The research examines the role and importance of social factors - specifically structure, agency and social capital - relative to economic and technical factors, the significance of targeting real capability expansion over simple access, and the value of a program approach which embeds programs within existing social structures of a community and which responds to community defined needs. In considering the importance of social factors in sustainability, the research adopts Archer’s (1995) morphogenetic approach to structure and agency. Sen’s (1999) capability approach (CA) to development is operationalised to evaluate the case studies in terms of the contribution of ICT4D programs to community defined concepts of well-being and expansion of constitutive capabilities. Finally, community informatics (CI) practice is used as a benchmark for evaluating program approach. The research adopts case study and qualitative methods (interviews and observation in the field). Four community case studies were selected from remote Indigenous Australian communities and four from remote, rural Sri Lankan village communities. Community case studies and corresponding national ICT policy are evaluated on the same three dimensions of social factors, capability expansion, and program approach. There is a tendency in the literature to talk about program sustainability as an outcome to be measured after the fact. This research shows that sustainability at a community level is a choice made and enacted by communities. More importantly, it is fundamentally a social process. Hence, policy makers must directly engage with this process, alongside their economic and technical program processes, if they truly intend to extend the benefits of ICT4D to the margins of society. The thesis provides guidance to governments and donors in the form of a conceptual model of active sustainability for each research location – Indigenous Australia and Sri Lanka - and a policy process for targeting well-being and capability expansion, as valued by communities themselves. The significance of this research is three-fold. First, it establishes a theoretically grounded link between policy and community sustainability of ICT4D. Second, it highlights the gap between provision of basic resources and targeting capability expansion, and the implications for program sustainability. Third, it adds to the emerging research into establishing a theoretical basis for community informatics