GLOBAL CONTEXT

I. Introduction

Information and communication technologies (ICT) have tremendous potential to enhance the lives of people in general and, particularly, those in developing countries. Use of ICT can boost business, support education and healthcare systems and also enhance all levels of government in their development processes worldwide. Currently, it is difficult to imagine our lives without computers. They exist in cars, phones, aircrafts, banks, schools, etc. Technology-mediated applications are increasingly popular and have become part of our daily lives. Examples of such applications include, but are not limited to:

• Appliances (coffee makers, microwave ovens, toasters, etc. – for instance, a toaster uses an internal program to determine when the bread will pop up);

• In-car automated surveillance, which is used to monitor driving behaviors and to promote driving and traffic safety;

• Text messaging to arrange meetings and appointments;

• Car equipment such as mobile/smart phones, GPS localization/driving services, laptops/notebooks to carry out daytime work and portable printers to prepare handouts;

• PDAs or fitness watches (equipped with fitness software) to monitor one's workout program and track fitness targets (heart rate, weight loss, etc.);

• The internet, which can be used to communicate with friends and family members, or even for mass communication to engage in forms of activism; and

• Distance learning programs to pursue an academic degree to further advance career opportunities.

One defining feature of our time, in developed countries (DC), is the omnipresence of technology and the related prevalence of internet access.

The increase of technology-mediated activities is an uncontested trend. Such activities are found in almost every domain conceivable, and usage is continuously increasing at home, in the workplace and in the leisure domain.

Several factors contributed to this growth, which has transformed the computer into an essential tool – not only to do business but also to support and boost the social or personal activities of individuals. These factors include the appearance of the internet, the integration of informatics devices and telecom infrastructures, the miniaturization of devices and the considerable decrease of acquisition costs. Gradually, in developed countries, society's perception of computers has progressively shifted from considering them as purely technical devices to "all-in-one" support tools for almost all human activities. The term "ICT" has appeared in order to accompany this shift and is defined as the set of facilities/features (inherent in the combination of computing machinery, the internet and the telecom devices/tools) that support typical societal activities such as learning (e-learning), health (e-health) and government (e-government).

In contrast to the exciting and promising opportunities that ICT offers to DC, in general developing and less developed countries (D/LDC) have not yet fully arrived in the digital era. Most have not yet developed their back office components (i.e., records related to the civil state, to education, to health, etc.), which are a fundamental prerequisite to any e-application. In many situations, e-government systems have been adopted just for appearances' sake, since it is the current standard to have a web portal, an email address and/or social media accounts for governmental agencies. When assessed, it appears that these web portals are ill-equipped for general use (no online services, no localization capabilities, no local/appropriate content, no e-engagement, no precisions, no updates, etc.).

Because of the contrast between DC and D/LDC in terms of ICT's exploitation and proliferation, an important phenomenon has appeared: the digital divide. The digital divide refers to the gap existing between people with effective access to digital and information technology and those with very limited or no access at all.Since the 1990s, many D/LDC have been expressing their intentions to facilitate ICT diffusion in order to contribute to meeting the challenges that their countries face and to fight against the aggravation of the digital divide. These challenges mainly fall into two categories: the need, at the international level, to make the transition toward an information society and its related knowledge-based economy; and the intention, at the national level, to foster human and/or economic development and to improve governance quality to achieve good governance.

Acting on their intentions, many developing countries around the world have established international organizations for the promotion of ICT, focused on assisting technologically struggling nations in catching up, and, as such, preventing the duplication of the already existing economic gap in the area of technology (the digital divide).

Many D/LDC started by modernizing and liberalizing their telecommunications sector in the middle of the 1990s and then proceeded to establish the necessary structures, institutions, policies and strategies to facilitate ICT diffusion in the public sector via e-government projects. These countries adopted national ICT strategies developed by international consultancies, often with the financial support of international donors such as the World Bank and/or the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Unfortunately, most of these strategies were simply duplicated from one country to another with no particular attention paid to the local context and associated constraints. The result was of little reward for D/LDC, with very few concrete changes implemented in the field. Many e-government projects that were introduced ended mainly in either partial or total failure. In the few successful cases, e-government projects' deployment remained concentrated at the central government level with a primary focus on government-to-government (G2G) interactions, instead of government-to-citizen (G2C) interactions which did not derive any benefits. Until now, there has been no concrete impact on the daily lives of ordinary citizens in these countries, as evidenced by the almost complete absence of e-government systems at the central and local government level. Most citizen-oriented services, such as medical care, justice, education, safety and municipal services, are still processed and delivered manually without the use of ICT. Citizens need to physically interact with government employees to obtain requested information or services. Government offices still keep data in...