ICT for Development

Greetings from day two of the University of NSW Canberra, where I am attending the ICT for Development Symposium. This started with a video about the "eGovernment for Bangladesh" project by ANU and UNSW Canberra. This trained Bangladesh civil servants in how to use ICT for better administration. One frustration with this is while there are some academic papers produced from the project and a book (eGovernment for Bangladesh: a strategic pathway to success / Ahmed Imran, Tim Turner and Shirley Gregor, 2008), these are very difficult to access.

The first speaker is Professor Robert M Davison, City University of Hong Kong and Editor in Chief of the Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries (EJISDC). He explained the difficulties which researchers in developing countries have in having their work published in "international" journals. The researchers may not having training in the terminology used by journals and the journals are not so much "international" as "western". The theories which the journals require the authors to mention are not really "universal" but are developed by western researchers  in a western context. Non-western forms of thinking are relegated to being "indigenous knowledge".

Professor Davison estimated that 99% of papers from developing nation authors are screened out at the pre-review stage, as not being relevant. He admitted that editors have biases, but that papers have to be relevant to the journal they are submitted to. I have had to face this myself as a conference paper reviewer, with some papers not being on the topic of the conference and so being rejected (about 20% in my case).

Professor Davison commented that many researchers in developing nations do not study their own country and so may be missing opportunities. He also questioned the value of studies which just take an existing methodology from a western study and replying it in a developing country. He also criticised studies of intentions, such as if studies where favourably disposed to e-learning. I don't agree with these criticisms, as something useful can be learned from such studies, even if they are not ground-breaking.

Professor Davison called for the development of new theories in ICT, rather than borrowing them from other disciplines. He also criticised studies which claim to be using "Grounded Theory" but are just presenting data with no theory to make sense of it.

Professor Davison  pointed out that ICT4D researchers are by their nature interested in practical outcomes to help development, rather than theoretical considerations and this view might be shared by the editors and reviewers.

This was an excellent presentation and worth attending the whole two day symposium for.  It highlights the important role which editors of journals play in academia. This role is not often mentioned in discussions of the quality of universities and education. Apart from academia, Professor Davison comments have great relevance to business, discussion for example, "Why eBay Lost to TaoBao in China".

I noticed that the the Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries uses the Open Journal System (OJS) free open source software and provides its papers free online. It can be very frustrating when learning of an interesting paper and then finding it is hidden behind a pay-wall and so inaccessible. The OJS based free journals have made a significant contribution to academia by making papers freely available.

ps:  Professor Davison mentioned that City University of Hong Kong uses my ICT Sustainability course materials. I hadn't realized this, but then found it mentioned in Global Information Systems (IS5600), Green IT (IS6600 - 11)

Where Does Information Systems in the University?

Greetings from the the University of NSW Canberra, where I am attending the ICT for Development Symposium. I thought this was going to be about how ICT could be used to help developing nations. However, so far it seems to be about where Information Systems (IS) fits as a discipline within academia and what forms of research are acceptable in the discipline.

At ANU Information Systems is within the College of Business & Economics, and at University of Canberra the School of Information Systems & Accounting is within the Faculty of Business, Government & Law. These are separate from the computer science and engineering faculties. Being a computer science practitioner, who deals with some governance, environmental and development issues, I don't see how academia could be divided up into neat unchanging atomic units. There needs to be overlap and change.

The question of what forms of research are acceptable seems a curious choice of topic for an event attended by experienced researchers. I can understand that new graduate students need training in different approaches to research, but this is a topic for a compulsory graduate course (such as "Research Methods in Distance Education" at Athabasca University), not a symposium.

At the end of the day I asked if the last speaker thought that interpretive research had particular benefits for ICT for development. They seemed to be reluctant to say it was relevant, which seemed odd, as they were speaking at a conference on ICT for Development, so why were they there?

ICT for Development Symposium

Greetings from the the University of NSW Canberra, where I am attending the ICT for Development Symposium. This is being held in the Australian Defence Force Academy's expanded teaching building. Rice Daubney Architects have playfully decorated the glass curtain wall of the building with the ADF Disruptive Pattern Camouflage. Inside the building has multi-purpose teaching rooms, equipped with projectors and whiteboard walls. One problem I have noticed in what is otherwise a workable building is that the air-conditioning is very loud.

The symposium is on the topic of "ICT for Development Symposium" but so far none of the speakers has addressed this topic. The morning has been devoted to the issues of forms of research and the relationship between research and industry. Curiously ISO/IEC 38500 Corporate governance of information technology Standard, which was also mentioned during the Australian Government Chief Technology Officer's talk, at the ACS Canberra Conference, yesterday.

ps: The morning session ended on a slightly surreal note, with an officer cadent from ADFA, in camouflage uniform, playing a classical tune on a cello.