The Mediating Role of Voice and Accountability in the Relationship Between Internet Diffusion and Government Corruption in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa

We examine relationships among Internet diffusion, voice and accountability, and government corruption based on data from 24 Latin American and 23 sub-Saharan African countries from 2006 to 2010. Our study suggests that greater levels of Internet diffusion are associated with greater levels of voice and accountability and that greater levels of voice and accountability are associated with lower levels of government corruption. Also, there seems to be an overall relationship between Internet diffusion and government corruption, which is primarily indirect and mediated by voice and accountability. Our study builds on modernization theory, and employs the method of robust path analysis, implemented through the software WarpPLS. Policy-makers in developing countries aiming at increasing voice and accountability at the national level, and thus the degree to which their citizens participate in the country's governance, should strongly consider initiatives that broaden Internet access in their countries.     

Architecture for Managing Knowledge on Cybersecurity in Sub-Saharan Africa

In this paper, we present architecture for managing knowledge on cybersecurity in Sub-Saharan Africa. This architecture captures the critical contextual factors in the Sub-Saharan African region. The architecture enables the creation, storage/retrieval, transfer and application of knowledge on cybersecurity especially for home users while providing awareness and enforcement mechanisms to help home users protect themselves against cyber threats. The architecture can facilitate the building of expertise on cybersecurity among the stakeholders. The implications of the proposed architecture are presented.     

E-government and e-democracy in Latin America

Implementing governmental and democratic processes using electronic systems is the subject of much debate around the world. Electronic voting has grabbed the headlines, but in reality, this constitutes just a small part of the effort to establish electronic communication between citizens and governmental functions (G2C and C2G). The goal is to provide access to information and to open up decision-making processes to citizens (e-participation) to encourage a grass-roots engagement of citizens with democratic processes.     

Human computer-interaction in Latin America

Personal and Ubiquitous Computing -     

Integrating market,technology, and policy opportunities in e-business strategy

This article is a call to arms for electronic business managers and researchers to increase their attention to the emerging “policy” frontiers and employ theories and methods integrating policy with market and technology issues. The e-business environment is growing more complex—not just economically, but socially, politically, and legally—and firms must manage this complexity with strategies that match the amount and variety of complexity in their environment. In many e-business firms, there is a notable disdain toward emerging policy developments or even a mind set that e-business is beyond emerging social conventions, politics and the law (or at least beyond the reach of regulators). In the emerging global policy landscape, few firms can afford this hands-off attitude toward policy and maintain their chance of survival. E-business firms must integrate their policy strategies with their technology and market strategies. We outline five broad questions for researchers to help e-business firms address the interdependent challenges of market, technology and policy environments.     

Optimization model for urban air quality policy design: A case study in Latin America

Air pollution is a major problem caused by urban growth and poses a high risk to human health. To mitigate the negative impact of pollution, some cities have implemented air quality strategies that regulate emissions from multiple sources. However, when such strategies are applied in isolation they may fail to comply with stringent environmental goals. To support the development of comprehensive urban air quality policy, we propose an optimization model that suggests a portfolio of mitigation actions that captures realistic aspects of air quality policy-making such as implementation cost, pollution goals, interdependencies between alternatives, and managerial and regulatory constraints. We illustrate the advantages of our model with a real case study in Bogotá, Colombia's capital and one of the largest cities of Latin America, where new legislation established a PM₁₀ air quality standard. To achieve the environmental goal, our model suggests an optimal portfolio consisting of six mitigation actions targeting mobile and stationary sources. Interventions in the transport sector alone generate 70% of the emissions reduction. The PM₁₀ goal is achieved with a net incremental cost of US$1 billion with respect to the no-intervention scenario. The optimization model and results presented in this article were formally adopted as the official air quality policy in the city.     

Linguistic diversity and information poverty in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa

This communication starts with a fundamental question that drives the actions of most local and global policy-makers: out of two categories of people (not mutually exclusive), the ‘have nots’ and the ‘know nots’, which one is more difficult to eradicate (one may pose the question differently—solving which of these two problems is likely to solve the other). A lot of attention and resources have been deployed and are committed on the challenge of uplifting the ‘have nots’ to the section of bare minimum ‘haves’ category. A cause and effect study between these two sections of people essentially show a mutual dependency that eventually leads to a vicious cycle of poverty to information poverty to back again poverty which has historically been difficult to eradicate, and studies have often established education and access to timely information to be a long term sustainable remedy to both these perpetual problems. The role that the Internet can play in this background towards empowering the billions of impoverished across two of the most underdeveloped regions, namely South Asia (SA) and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), home to world’s largest number of illiterates and poor people (70% or even more together) is immense. With anywhere, anytime accessibility of rich Internet content, aided by its falling prices and increased connectivity and easy to use features, to parts of rural and even to inaccessible remote areas, online content can effectively act as a low-cost feasible solution not only to provide basic education, but also to deliver meaningful information and content to the millions of primary-level educated people within the underprivileged sections of SA & SSA, thereby enabling them to integrate and exploit various socio-economic opportunities arising from growth in global economies. However, rich linguistic diversity, both in SA and SSA, poses a challenge to that opportunity. Content development to information access to literacy, all leading to socio-economic developments, do face additional difficulties arising from linguistic diversity for SA and SSA, regions already plagued with low level of content generation and access in local languages. A closer examination of the ‘sea’ of online content reveals that SA scores poorly in local language content development, whereas English is primarily used for Internet usage, though nearly 90% of people of India do not use English as a 2nd or 3rd languages. For SSA, a study reported here qualitatively examines whether linguistic diversity indeed has any negative correlations with gross national income and Internet penetration, and finds that they indeed are inversely related in 80% or more cases. One case-effort is also examined to develop local language content, critical to reap benefits from content for development for SA and SSA, in South Asia, but it was found to be inadequate in proportion to the severity and scale of the problem. It is alarmingly concluded that unless war-footing action is adopted to generate relevant local language content (or effectively supported by software like Google Translation) in the linguistically diverse backward regions of the world, much of the benefits that could have been derived from increased reach of freely available online content would be lost, causing an escalation of information poverty to the ‘bottom of the pyramid’ section of people in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Ranjit Goswami is also a faculty member with Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Kolkata, India.     

AI's geographic-outreach: Mexico and Latin America

AI in Latin America is healthy and growing in at least five countries and expanding to other nations. For instance, ITESM's AI graduate programs have graduated students from Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador, who are returning to their countries to work in universities and companies. AI is a young scientific discipline compared to other sciences. Since its creation in the mid-twentieth century by Alan Turing and various American researchers, it has grown steadily and spread across the world, including LA. This has been facilitated by the sharing of a common type of language and the same culture, but most importantly, by the great scientific challenges posed by AI objectives.     

网络空间公共基础设施体系及安全策略研究

以物理空间与网络空间的映射关系为研究思路,面向网络空间的对象、资源、活动等关键要素,综合考虑了网络空间设备、系统、数据及环境等方面的发展需求,构建了一种科学的网络空间公共基础设施体系,并从管理认证和应用认证的双重认证角度出发,针对用户/设备认证和访问控制等方面给出了一些相应的安全策略和实施建议.     

Interplay of cost and adoption of tele-medicine in Sub-Saharan Africa: The case of tele-cardiology in Ethiopia

...the barriers to diffusion of Tele-Medicine are not entirely technical. Cost has to simultaneously satisfy a number of stakeholders... (Anderson, Aydin and Jay, et al., 1994). Rising costs of the provision of healthcare have been a major issue for debate in both developing and developed countries. This is especially true of very capitalistic societies such as the United States where privatization of the healthcare sector has left many with little or no affordable healthcare. The situation is even worse in developing economies. Developing countries deal with various problems in the provision of health services and healthcare Tan et al. (E-medicine diffusion: E-medicine in Developed and Developing countries. Chapter 8 in E-health paradigm shift: Perspectives, domains and challenges. In Tan J. (Ed.), Imprint of Wiley, New York, Jossey-Bass, 2005). Some of these problems include acute shortages of healthcare professionals and medical facilities Mbarika et al. (Journal of the Association for Information Systems (JAIS) 2005;6(5):130–170). Such shortages have resulted in growing numbers of middle to upper-class citizens of developing countries traveling abroad to seek necessary health services. Using a multi-method case study research, this paper examines the role of Tele-Medicine in the healthcare system and analyzes the costs and benefits of introducing Tele-Cardiology services in Ethiopia (a Sub-Saharan African country). This is a cost comparison study for the treatment of cardiac patients traveling abroad versus patients treated via Tele-Cardiology. Our findings show that Tele-Cardiology is clinically more feasible and more cost effective compared to patients traveling abroad for treatment. Mengistu Kifle is a Ph.D. candidate at University of Stockholm/KTH DSV. He holds MSc. in Computer Science. His research interest includes telemedicine and healthcare informatics in developing countries with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa. His work has appeared (or forthcoming) in the form of book chapter, journals and international conference publications. Victor W. A. Mbarika received his Bachelor of Science in Management Information Science (MIS) in 1995 from United States International University, Nairobi and San Diego, CA, Masters in MIS from University of Illinois at Chicago, IL in 1997, and PHD in MIS from Auburn University, Auburn, AL in 2000. Dr. Victor W. A. Mbarika is on faculty in the College of Business at Southern University and A&M College. His research in Multimedia Learning and Telecommunications Diffusion in Developing Countries has been published (or are forthcoming) in 29 academic journals, four book chapters, and over 45 national and international conferences publications on Information Systems. Dr. Mbarika is Founder and President of Cameroon Computer and Network Center (CCNC). He has received several instructional and research awards and has published two academic books. (Website: http://www.mbarika.com.) Dr. Pratim Datta is an Assistant Professor of Information Systems at Washington State University. His research interests include IT infrastructure design and productivity, Virtual reality, Knowledge Management, and Global IT. He has published in AIS and ACM journals and international conferences such as the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) and the Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences (HICSS).     

Linking Ageing to Development Agendas in Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges and Approaches

International calls and frameworks for policies on ageing in sub-Saharan African countries, encapsulated in the UN Madrid Plan of Action on Ageing (2002) and the African Union Policy Framework and Plan of Action on Ageing (2003), have resulted in little concrete policy action. The lack of progress calls for critical reflection on the status of policy debates and arguments on ageing in the sub-region. In a context of acute development challenges and resource constraints, the paper links the impasse in policy action to a fundamental lack of clarity about how rationales and approaches for policy on ageing relate to core national development agendas. It then explicates four steps required to elucidate these connections, namely: (a) A full appreciation of key aspects of mainstream development agendas; (b) identification of ambiguities in calls for policy on ageing; (c) pinpointing of key perspectives, arguments and queries for redressing the ambiguities; and (d) addressing ensuing information needs. We argue that advocacy and research on ageing in sub-Saharan Africa need to consider the framework proposed in the paper urgently, in order to advance policy and debate on ageing in the region.     

A Survey of Computer Education in Latin America*

This paper surveys computer education in Latin America today, and briefly analyzes its trends and orientation. The sources of data for this work have come primarily from interviews and documents at the many educational institutions visited or contacted during field research in the region. These are listed by country in Appendix A.