Social Implications of Information and communication technology in developing countries: lessons from Asian success stories

Abstract

The Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) and the World Bank had organised a workshop titled: Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for Rural Development to bring together case studies of various applications of ICT that have been demonstrated to make a difference in the delivery of services or products in rural areas. The cases presented illustrate both the opportunities and challenges in the diffusion of ICT within India and for other developing countries. ICT applications can be classified as those that provided decision support to public administrators for improving planning and monitoring of developmental programs, those that improved services to citizens and brought in transparency, and those that empowered citizens through access to information and knowledge. This paper presents successful examples of each type of application of and discusses one application in detail to draws lessons for what needs to be done to promote ICT for rural development.