Description
Technology has always played a decisive role in humanity's progress, although the positive impacts technology has on human development may become tainted by the risks it entails. Information Communication Technologies and Human Development: Opportunities and Challenges emphasizes the need to consider the geographic, historic, and cultural context of an information communication technology (ICT) for development initiative, and includes several real examples that show some of the key success factors that have to be taken into consideration when using ICTs for development.
Information Communication Technologies and Human Development: Opportunities and Challenges is a tool for practitioners, providing a wide knowledge of several important ICTs for development experiences that have been conducted all over the developing world.
Reviews and Testimonials
"Information Communication Technologies and Human Development is a tool for practitioners, providing a wide knowledge of several important ICTs for development experiences that have been conducted all over the developing world. The book compiles international experiences from which to draw lessons that can be used by those interested in how ICT can make a difference in human development. With the follow-up to the World Summit on the Information Society creating renewed expectations for real change, the book becomes essential reading for all those involved in making choices about how best to deploy ICTs."
– www.SirReadaLot.org, January 2007
Designed for professionals in the field, this details the equity and poverty addressed by digital technologies in Latin America, the challenging process of building ICTs into African development program, the digtal divide" between those who have access and those who do not, expanding microfinance through ICT, human rights movements and the Internet, ICT-enabled education, applications to health care and health management, and political uses of ICT."
– Book News Inc., August 2007
Author's/Editor's Biography
Mila Gascó-Hernandez (Ed.)
Mila Gascó-Hernández holds a MBA and a PhD in public policy evaluation (Award Enric Prat de la Riba granted to the best PhD thesis on public management and administration, given by the Escola d’Administració Pública de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain). She is co-founder of Estratic as well as an associate professor at both the Open University of Catalonia and the Pompeu Fabra University, both in Spain. For seven years, she was a senior analyst at the International Institute on Governance of Catalonia. She has a wide teaching experience (she worked as a full professor in the Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona, Spain) as well as a broad researching experience. She has taken part in numerous national and international seminars, she has published both in Spanish and English and she has supervised some Ph. D thesis. She has collaborated with several institutions such as both the provincial and city government of Barcelona, the World Bank Development Gateway, the United Nations Development Program, the University of Hull in United Kingdom, the Mayor’s Office in Valencia (Venezuela) or the Governments of Brazil and Dominican Republic. Her main interests are related to public policies that allow the transition of a society to the so-called knowledge era (in particular she is interested in e-government and e-governance), to the use of ICTs for human development and to public policy evaluation.
Fran Equiza-Lopez (Ed.)
Fran Equiza is the Director of International Cooperation of Intermón-Oxfam, the biggest Spanish NGO for development. He holds a MBA (Escuela Superior de Administración y Dirección de Empresas – ESADE), a Master in Applied Economics Analysis (Pompeu Fabra University), a Master in Information and Knowledge Society Studies (Open University of Catalonia), and an Advanced Studies Diploma in Political Science (Open University of Catalonia). He has been the Vice-President of the Society for International Development in Catalonia, the Director of Educación sin Fronteras (Education without Borders) and the Director of the International Institute on Governance as well as the Director of Human Resources and Internal Organization of Intermón-Oxfam and the Executive Assistant to the General Director of the latter. He has a vast consulting, teaching and writing experience on issues such as Sen’s human development concept, poverty and alleviation strategies, NGOs management, ICTs for development, and institutional building.
Manuel Acevedo-Ruiz (Ed.)
Manuel Acevedo holds a Master of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering and a Master in Information and Knowledge Society Studies. Currently, he is a Ph. D. candidate in the International and Interdisciplinary Ph. D. Program in the Information and Knowledge Society (Open University of Catalonia) focusing on ICT mainstreaming in cooperation agencies. Mr. Acevedo has been involved in ICT for human development since 1994, when he joined the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Mr. Acevedo served as co-chair of the UN ICT Task Force’s Capacity Building Committee (2002-3), and represented the UN Volunteers programme during the first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). Living in Madrid now, he is an independent consultant on ICT4D. He is also introducing ICT4D into the curricula of some university programmes on International Development, and helping the Spanish Government to integrate ICT into Spanish international cooperation policies and practicesManuel Acevedo-Ruiz.