Readily Available Digital Technologies in the Age of Pandemics

Digital technologies and information systems have played a pivotal role during the past SARS pandemic and continue to assist with the recovery process during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Nonetheless, the technologies themselves have advanced significantly and allow ready access and ease of use to individuals, organizations, and communities. We focus on a set of such technologies – Readily Available Digital Technologies (RADT) – and show how they assist during various phases of management of the ongoing crisis. We utilize an existing crisis management framework and emphasize the role and impact of RADTs. Furthermore, we extend the crisis management framework to include a resilience phase and explore examples from extant academic and practitioner literature to demonstrate its applicability in the current context. We invite future researchers to build further on our exploratory framework and highlight its potential contributions.

Ethics in Social Design: Definitions, Models, and Perspectives

We are witnessing a proliferation of design, collaborative technological platforms, websites, and networks dedicated to exchanging information of all kinds. These technologies have a positive role and promote social justice, equity, and the rapprochement of cultures. However, several researchers and civil community members wonder about the use of these technologies, the reasons beyond their emergence, and their designers. While technologies are at the forefront of global development, any system to function well needs a framework to support the experiences that would flow from their environment. In all human progress, some voices urge us to be cautious. Given the preponderance of technologies in our environment, what are the principles to regulate these ecosystems? Many studies have highlighted the moral and ethical issues related to the social use of information technology. There have been previous attempts towards finding ways to create suitable rules for these systems. This paper presumes that many of these conduct codes are more user-oriented, and very few are issued to regulate information technology professionals and designers. Therefore, it is urgent to find a way to design socio systems where several entities (organizations and individuals) can collaborate independently and responsibly on-site in their respective spheres on social projects. In this paper, we are trying to provide different perspectives and lines of thought for responsible and safe use of socio systems and collaborative technology platforms.

‘It is unbelievable how many come to us’:

In advanced, digitalized democratic communities the demands for literacy are a prerequisite for engagement and inclusion, at the same time different forms of divides are omnipresent. By providing access and qualified support to all citizens, public libraries play a central function in the building of democratic and inclusive local communities, being increasingly relied upon by governments to deliver access and support for e-services. Based on a case study of community library services in Sweden, Östergötland, this paper aims to study digital inclusion as reflected in daily practices through the perspective of librarians. In this paper we argue that while advancing digitalisation involves opening of new access and engagement opportunities through empowering digital tools and Internet, it also involves different challenges of exclusion for those who cannot use, choose not to use or have other needs

Planning to maintain the status quo? A comparative study of digital equity plans of four large US cities

The term digital equity is at the forefront of municipal government planning to mitigate digital equity. Digital equity signifies a desired future to be achieved, yet its meaning is not well-established. As such, planning for digital equity offers an opportunity for new discursive construction. This study examines how municipal governments have constructed the concept of digital equity through textual evidence, the digital equity plans of Kansas City, MO, Portland, OR, San Francisco, CA, and Seattle, WA. Adopting an approach from critical discourse studies, comparative analysis of the texts demonstrates how digital equity plans conceive of digital equity, characterize current problematic circumstances, and prescribe actions to make change. The plans have strikingly little to say about why digital inequality has emerged, yet they prescribe actions that indicate a more complex understanding of the problem than they articulate. The dynamics of policy diffusion suggest that the work of early adopters will influence other municipalities to create similar plans. Thus, the current moment is ripe for scholars to influence municipal planning for digital equity and participate in its discursive construction in both academic research and policymaking circles.

An analysis of the policies of Information and Communication Technologies for Agriculture in Mali

To harness the potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), developing countries need to develop national ICT policies that will serve as a framework for integrating ICTs at all levels of society. In the absence of that, different actors often engage in various actions for the same beneficiaries and in pursuit of the same objectives. That raises the need to define a national framework for the promotion and application of ICTs in the various production areas, particularly agricultural ones. It is for that reason that this study examined through qualitative methods (policy documents and semi-structured interviews) the national policy of Mali on the use of ICTs in agriculture. Data was analysed using the Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) method with the aid of NVIVO 12 software. The results showed that the country has two policy documents that articulate the country’s strategy towards the use of ICTs in the agricultural sector, that is, the Agricultural Orientation Law and the National Strategy for the Development of the Digital Economy. Further examination revealed that that these two policy documents are neither appropriate nor coherent in today's Malian landscape. This has resulted in an underutilisation of digital tools by agricultural extension officers which led to the low agricultural productivity in the country. This study recommended therefore the recasting of both documents to take into account the reported observations

ICT Framework to Support a Patient-Centric approach in Public Healthcare

Although Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the healthcare sector are extensively deployed globally, they are not used effectively in developing countries. Many resource poor countries face numerous challenges in implementing the ICT interventions. For instance, many health applications that have been deployed are not user-centric. As a result, such ICT interventions do not benefit many health consumers. The lack of an ICT framework to support patient-centric healthcare services in Malawi renders the e-health and mhealth interventions less sustainable and less cost effective. The aim of the study was therefore to develop an ICT Framework that could support patient-centric healthcare services in the public health sector in Malawi. The comprehensive literature review and semi-structured interviews highlighted many challenges underlying ICT development in Malawi. An ICT framework for patient-centric healthcare services is therefore proposed to ensure that eHealth and mobile health interventions are more sustainable and cost effective. The framework was validated by five experts selected from different areas of expertise including mhealth application developers, ICT policy makers and public health practitioners. Results show that the framework is relevant, useful and applicable within the setting of Malawi. The framework can also be implemented in various countries with similar settings.

Refugees and social media in a digital society

The proliferation of social media-based initiatives aimed at asylum seekers and refugees in recent years is evidence of growing interest in the potential of social media for delivering interventions and messages to refugee populations in host countries. However, surprisingly little is currently known about how refugees routinely use and incorporate social media into their everyday lives in host countries, and their motivations for doing so. The aim of the study reported in this paper was to explore how and why young refugees living in Norway use social media in their everyday lives, to identify capabilities associated with this use, and to make connections with well- being. The researchers adopted a qualitative approach, undertaking in-depth interviews with eight young refugees and two key informants involved in running social media sites aimed at refugees. Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach (1987) was used to frame the study and guide the analysis of findings. Findings indicated that participants’ main motivations for using social media were communication, access to information, and learning. Analysis of their reported achievements suggested that social media offered five related capabilities which could have an important role in advancing well-being: effective communication; social connectedness; participation in learning opportunities; access to information; and expression of self. Other findings, such as differences in approach to using social media (‘active’ and ‘passive’ use) are discussed. Although all participants used social media and recognised its importance to their lives, variations in the way they approached and valued it suggest that providers need to consider these factors when using it as a tool to engage refugees.

Bridging Digital Divide in a Remote Elementary School

This case study is a teacher’s reflection of invisible work when I initiated an instructional technology project that aimed to close digital inequality in a remote elementary school in Taiwan. 13 One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO laptops were deployed to 2nd and 5th grade children and I taught their science classes during June 2011 to January 2012. My field reflections revealed that invisible work was necessary in order to sustain, protect, and expand students’ opportunity to use their XO laptops in the school. In conclusion, public awareness about teachers’ invisible work is critical and should be studied, reported, and recognized by the field of educational research.