Dear Colleagues, Further to what Rhianna has mentioned about the government support for the ICT sector, I feel the government by itself need to function as an ICT model and propagate its use among all its activities and services. The problem with governance mechanisms is often that of "Optimal Ignorance" where policy makers may refuse to take action based on information sets known to them. ICT could partially improve this situation by making similar sets of information available to both policy makers and the civil society. In this way the civil society at large would be more aware of the rationality/ irrationality of the decisions or judgements made. The use of ICT will certainly increase with an ICT-based governance mechanism due to strong forward and backward linkages associated with the governmental sector- namely government led education and health services, banking, transport etc. Malaysia is one example of a country where the government is taking up some of the lead role in the ICT sector with the inception of digital signature acts etc. You may find more information about how some of the national governments are incorporating ICT in their functioning at the site of Digital Governance at http://www.digitalgovernance.org or at http://www.cddc.vt.edu/digitalgov Warm Regards, Vikas Nath On 13 March Rhianna Tyson wrote: > >Government support, indeed, is a vital element to the success of ICTs as a >tool for development and empowerment. However, in much of my reading on >the use of technology as such a tool, privatization is continuously being >trumpeted as the savior to those on the "have not" side of the "digital >divide." I am having a hard time trying to find opposing views to these >privatization cheerleaders... does anybody know of reports or studies or >even opinions on the effect of privatization in the ICT sector? > ----------------------------------------------------- Inlaks Fellow, 2000-1, London School of Economics, UK Innovator, KnowNet Initiative, http://www.knownet.org and www.Digitalgovernance.org Conceiver, DevNet Jobs, http://www.devnetjobs.org HomePage: http://www.vikasnath.org Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +44 (0) 7887 92 0080 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------ ***GKD is an initiative of the Global Knowledge Partnership*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.globalknowledge.org>
