How ICT4D Research Fails the Poor

Research can improve development policies and practices and funders increasingly require evidence of such socioeconomic impact from their investments. This article questions whether information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) research conforms to the requirements for achieving socioeconomic impact. We report on a literature review of the impact of research in international development and a survey of ICT4D researchers who assessed the extent to which they follow practices for achieving socioeconomic impact. The findings suggest that while ICT4D researchers are interested in influencing both practice and policy, they are less inclined toward the activities that would make this happen, especially engaging with users of their research and communicating their findings to a wider audience. Their institutions do not provide incentives for researchers to adopt these practices. ICT4D researchers and their institutions should engage more closely with the users of their research through more and better communications with the public, especially through the use of information and communication technologies.     

An approach to evaluate large-scale ICT training interventions

Despite advances in the quality and availability of information and communication technologies (ICT), the level of access and skill in using these resources remains unequal. This is particularly evident in developing countries. To reduce the gap between these levels of ICT use, organizations (both public and private) invest in the expansion of infrastructure by providing ICT access and ICT training. In this study, we demonstrate that there is a gap in current approaches to monitor and evaluate large-scale ICT training interventions. Thus, we propose an approach based on social network analysis and data mining techniques, and apply it to an online training program conducted in different regions of Brazil. The results allow us to examine different aspects of the program, such as the region of participants, the institutions driving the intervention, local indicators of telecommunications infrastructure, and local socioeconomic conditions.     

The effects of infrastructure and policy on e-business in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa

This study investigates experts' assessments of the pertinent factors affecting e-business in developing countries from a theory-based national infrastructure perspective. We surveyed experts (business people, academicians, and officials of governmental and non-governmental organizations) in e-business in Latin America (LA) and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Our partial least squares analysis shows that experts believed that policies targeted specifically toward e-business are important in affecting e-business capabilities and in obtaining value from e-business, more so than non-specific general information and communication technologies (ICT) policies, which are not significantly influential. ICT infrastructure generally affects e-business capabilities, though this was not found to be the case in Brazil. Experts believed that national government institutions positively affect e-business value in SSA, but not in LA. Experts did not believe that commercial infrastructure significantly affects e-business value. This study theoretically and empirically distinguishes between two different dimensions of e-business outcomes: specific capabilities and value derived from e-business. It operationalizes the effects of national government institutions and commercial infrastructure on e-business outcomes and empirically tests for their effects. The study provides empirical support for conceptual arguments for the need of ICT policies specific to the needs of e-business.     

Portrayals of Information and Communication Technology on World Wide Web Sites for Girls

This study reports a content analysis of 35 World Wide Web sites that included in their mission the goal of engaging girls with information and communication technology (ICT). It finds that sites emphasize cultural and economic uses of ICT, doing little to foster civic applications that could empower girls as citizens of the information age. The study also finds that sites foster a narrow range of ICT proficiencies, focusing mostly on areas such as communication, in which girls have already achieved parity with boys. An examination of the role models portrayed in ICT occupations indicates that the sites show females mainly in elite technology jobs, reversing stereotypical mass media depictions of females in low-status roles in relation to ICT. Employing an original index of ICT knowledge and skills, the study finds that the sites that scored highest both on fostering comprehensive knowledge and skills as well as featuring civic content were general interest Web communities. Ownership (for-profit or not-for-profit) of sites was less important than editorial control: Sites that offered girls a place to contribute their own content were more likely to offer civic material and a broader range of ICT knowledge and skills. We conclude with recommendations for Web site designers to rethink their design strategies and their rationales for closing the gender gap in computing.     

Automated Semantic Analysis of Schematic Data

Content in numerous Web data sources, designed primarily for human consumption, are not directly amenable to machine processing. Automated semantic analysis of such content facilitates their transformation into machine-processable and richly structured semantically annotated data. This paper describes a learning-based technique for semantic analysis of schematic data which are characterized by being template-generated from backend databases. Starting with a seed set of hand-labeled instances of semantic concepts in a set of Web pages, the technique learns statistical models of these concepts using light-weight content features. These models direct the annotation of diverse Web pages possessing similar content semantics. The principles behind the technique find application in information retrieval and extraction problems. Focused Web browsing activities require only selective fragments of particular Web pages but are often performed using bookmarks which fetch the contents of the entire page. This results in information overload for users of constrained interaction modality devices such as small-screen handheld devices. Fine-grained information extraction from Web pages, which are typically performed using page specific and syntactic expressions known as wrappers, suffer from lack of scalability and robustness. We report on the application of our technique in developing semantic bookmarks for retrieving targeted browsing content and semantic wrappers for robust and scalable information extraction from Web pages sharing a semantic domain. This work has been conducted while the author was at Stony Brook University.     

A systematic review of tools,languages, and methodologies for mashup development

Web 2.0 has become a powerful means of transmitting information in a number of fields, such as communication, e‐commerce, and entertainment. Nowadays, companies and organizations transmit specific information through different mechanisms, such as Web feeds and Web services. These data sources enable third parties to incorporate data from service providers into their own applications. On the basis of this understanding, mashups have emerged as a new approach to develop applications and which combine data and resources from heterogeneous sources—such as internal data sources, Web feeds, screen scraping, and Web services—with the aim of solving specific needs. Mashup development involves activities such as accessing heterogeneous sources, combining data from different data sources, and building graphical interfaces. These activities restrict the development of these kinds of applications only to experienced computer users. Today, a number of tools and programming languages are used to help carry out some of the aforementioned activities. These tools and programming languages have features enabling the integration of different technologies in order to solve problems such as data management from different data sources and content publication. If this is taken into account, there is a growing need to learn about the features, advantages, and disadvantages of these tools and programming languages in order to select the tool or language that best fits a specific need and a specific level of knowledge and experience in terms of software development. This paper presents a systematic review and analysis of the tools, programming languages, and software development methodologies involved in mashup development in order to learn more about the features and services provided by mashups. Furthermore, this research also explains the qualitative and quantitative evaluation used for the mashup development tools. The evaluation was performed in order to measure not only the usability of these tools but also the support that they provide for standardized features of Web development that they provide. Finally, new trends in the development of mashups are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

利用虚拟站点定位技术的网络信息检索研究

虚拟组织是网格体系结构中的基本组织单元,借鉴网格研究中对虚拟组织的特性分析,可以在网络信息检索研究中定义虚拟站点的概念。实验发现,虚拟站点入口页面是网络信息环境中具有较高质量的一个网页集合:实验表明,仅为全部页面数量21 %的此类页面就涵盖了70 %以上的超链接,对这个集合进行的内容检索也比对网页全集的检索有超过60 %的性能提高。这提供了一种在减少索引规模前提下提高网络信息检索性能的解决方案。     

预警气象信息发布系统的网络设计与实现

预警气象信息发布平台网络系统是充分利用省级电子政务外网平台,建设一套面向省级-地市级-区县级的突发公共事件预警信息发布管理平台的网络系统。包括以电子政务外网为主干通信网络,连接省、市、县三级发布管理平台和预警信息发布单位;以气象业务网为系统备份网络,对省、市、县三级发布管理平台之间的通信链路进行备份,保证三级发布管理平台之间通信的可靠性,旨在将此设计提升为一种通用模型,提供业界借鉴与参考。     

The need for virtual information managers in education

In this paper, the authors analyse how educational institutions behave in relation with the contents available through the Web. They also reflect on the features of the currently available information managers, from an educational point of view. They found there is a lack of tools for information management at low scale when it has to be used as a resource for teaching and learning whether at secondary or university level. Finally, they propose a solution, which consists of naming a ‘small virtual educational library’ (SVEL), and they show how it works in Physics education context.     

Mapping the semantics of Web text and links

Search engines use content and links to search, rank, cluster, and classify Web pages. These information discovery applications use similarity measures derived from this data to estimate relatedness between pages. However, little research exists on the relationships between similarity measures or between such measures and semantic similarity. The author analyzes and visualizes similarity relationships in massive Web data sets to identify how to integrate content and link analysis for approximating relevance. He uses human-generated metadata from Web directories to estimate semantic similarity and semantic maps to visualize relationships between content and link cues and what these cues suggest about page meaning. Highly heterogeneous topical maps point to a critical dependence on search context.     

基于聚类算法的网页语义结构分析

随着语义网的不断发展,网页语义的研究也在不断的进步。但现阶段的网络结构中,非语义化网页仍旧占据了信息系统最主要的部分。信息系统在整合的过程中,也需要了解网页的语义结构以完成信息的获取和分析。提出一种基于视觉特征筛选的网页语义结构分析方法。该方法可以在忽略网页语义的情况下,通过网页结构的视觉特性和内容特性分析网页中不同结构的语义关系,使用聚类分析方法来推定网页中半结构化信息的语义结构,并通过该方法对一组随机网页进行了分析,结果证明该方法具有比较好的分析能力。     

Creating the Enabling Environment for More Transparent and Better-resourced Local Governments: A Case of E-taxation in the Philippines

This research joins the growing body of literature that advocates for the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in local governance more particularly in public financial management. Using a case study in Bohol, a province in the Philippines, this paper discusses the impact of ICT on local revenue generation by analyzing both quantitative and qualitative data from 15 municipalities which used e-taxation. This paper argues that the use of ICT can make possible more transparent and accountable revenue generation systems to benefit both government and taxpayers. However, these results are differentiated depending on the level of political leadership, the nature of articulation of the demand for ICT use, the ratio of benefit against cost, and the availability of technical skills and resources at the sub-national level. It is within this context that an eco-system analysis is argued to be useful in analyzing how ICT can be adopted, scaled, and used by sub-national governments to achieve better governance.     

基于正文特征及网页结构的主题网页信息抽取

Web正文信息抽取是信息检索、文本挖掘等Web信息处理工作的基础。在统计分析了主题网页的正文特征及结构特征的基础上,提出了一种结合网页正文信息特征及HTML标签特点的主题网页正文信息抽取方法。在将Web页面解析成DOM树的基础上,根据页面DOM树结构获取正文信息块,分析正文信息块块内噪音信息的特点,去除块内噪音信息。实验证明,这种方法具有很好的准确率及召回率。     

Piggy Bank: Experience the Semantic Web inside your web browser

The Semantic Web Initiative envisions a Web wherein information is offered free of presentation, allowing more effective exchange and mixing across web sites and across web pages. But without substantial Semantic Web content, few tools will be written to consume it; without many such tools, there is little appeal to publish Semantic Web content.To break this chicken-and-egg problem, thus enabling more flexible information access, we have created a web browser extension called Piggy Bank that lets users make use of Semantic Web content within Web content as users browse the Web. Wherever Semantic Web content is not available, Piggy Bank can invoke screenscrapers to re-structure information within web pages into Semantic Web format. Through the use of Semantic Web technologies, Piggy Bank provides direct, immediate benefits to users in their use of the existing Web. Thus, the existence of even just a few Semantic Web-enabled sites or a few scrapers already benefits users. Piggy Bank thereby offers an easy, incremental upgrade path to users without requiring a wholesale adoption of the Semantic Web's vision.To further improve this Semantic Web experience, we have created Semantic Bank, a web server application that lets Piggy Bank users share the Semantic Web information they have collected, enabling collaborative efforts to build sophisticated Semantic Web information repositories through simple, everyday's use of Piggy Bank.     

Carving a niche: ICT,social capital,and trust in the shift from personal to impersonal trading in Tanzania

Although the research community is now starting to provide a more detailed understanding of the magnitude and details of small businesses' greater access to information and communication technology (ICT), there is still a poor understanding of social capital and trust, two important (but not necessarily related) concepts that are largely missing from information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) scholarship. This article aims to fill the knowledge gap by profiling three Tanzanian businesswomen who have managed to enter the high-profit area of bulk exporting African blackwood (“ebony”) carvings. Their experience shows the successful use of a spread of ICT applications, and e-mail in particular, as crucial tools to build on existing networks and to maintain trust with wealthy foreign buyers. With the help of ICT to deal with these relationships, the women stay in touch by “keeping up appearances” at a social level, albeit at a distance. In doing so, they are managing to do what institutions are yet to achieve: the move from personal to impersonal exchange. Their experience has implications for how other entrepreneurs can use ICT to leverage resources, ideas, and information from contacts outside their own social milieu. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Component-based Web page management environment

In addition to conventional information media such as newspaper, radio, and television, modern network media such as e-mail and Web page has become popular means of proliferating information. However, the number of Web page is so large that they need to be managed systematically.Therefore, this work presents a component-based Web page management environment, which: (1) enables high-level modeling capability of Web pages through components, (2) improves maintenance of Web applications, and (3) facilitates the reuse of Web page components.     

Do HTML tags flag semantic content

HTML tags are designed to support only the display of Web page content, but the study quantifies their feasibility as proxies for semantic content as well. More specifically, the author examined a number of Web pages to try to quantify whether, consciously or otherwise, authors use headings or the highlighted text accompanying a link to indicate the subject matter of the corresponding page. The investigations focused on empirically evaluating the feasibility of using key Web page elements as proxies to indicate page contents. Additionally, the author compared text retrieval by keyword. The author describes the methods he used and summarizes results. The empirical results suggest that text in HTML headings and in anchor texts is useful for indicating Web page content for logic programming     

The information and communication society: how people will live and work in the new millennium

This paper analyses information and communication technology (ICT) and its relation to work organizations, human communication, stress, allocation issues, knowledge transfer and global villages. An interdisciplinary research programme on ‘Computer technology and work life’ was initiated and led by the author at Stockholm University in 1974, followed by many programmes in Sweden in the field. A theoretical framework was developed including two theoretical models, one more general, the other where the concepts and their interrelationships were specified. The models were tested empirically in three large work organizations in Sweden, representing three main historical periods of computer technology. It was also used as a model in discussing what might be desirable goals in the information society. The present fourth period, the ‘Network period’, is characterized by a convergence of three main technologies: computer, telecommunication and media. ICT is used in almost every activity and is embedded in many things. The author proposes a superimposed theoretical model reflecting ‘ICT and the psychosocial life environment’, a revised model of her initial models. Finally, future research is discussed with reference to theoretical models revised, and conclusions address major psychosocial processes, psychosocial life environments and a call for synthesis.     

‘You can't not go with the technological flow,can you?’ Constructing ‘ICT’ and ‘teaching and learning’

This paper seeks to show how ‘policy’, ‘management’ and ‘information and communications technology’ (ICT) were constructed for schools in England between 2000 and 2003 and to discuss some effects of these constructions on teaching and learning in the institutions involved in the InterActive Education Project. It argues that their contribution collectively constituted ‘ICT’ as a particular kind and form of challenge for schools, and that recognising the nature of this constitution is crucial to understanding the relationship between ICT and teaching and learning. Informed by an abductive methodology, this paper draws on analyses of policy documents and interviews with the head teachers of the educational institutions taking part in the InterActive Education Project to show how the possibilities and opportunities of using ICT were shaped by those constructions. It suggests that the main policy framing ICT in education over the period in question, the National Grid for Learning, had the provision of hardware and infrastructure as its main target, but offered little advice on how they might be used. This constituted the core of the management problem of ICT for schools. The final section of the paper outlines some of the mechanisms through which schools addressed these issues and discusses some possible implications for what counts as ‘teaching and learning’ with ‘ICT’.     

Web sites of the Fortune 500 companies: Facing customers through home pages

The growing popularity of the information superhighway has opened up exciting opportunities for companies looking to, not only maintain their current customer base, but also to reach new customers. One of the most popular methods to enter into cybermarketing has been to establish a home page or Web site on the Internet. Almost two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies currently maintain home pages on the Web. An analysis of the content of corporate home pages provides useful insights. Over four-fifths of the companies display products and services (93.2%) and company overview (86.1%) information. Roughly three-fourths of the companies present interactive feedback (79.3%) and what's new (71.1%). Less than one-third (26.2%) of Fortune 500 companies provide for online business. An analysis of the data also provides valuable insight into the future trends of home page usage by large business organizations.