Please join us tomorrow in CSE 203 for this week's Change seminar. Professor Sajda Qureshi from the University of Nebraska at Omaha will be talking about the role of ICT plays in development. She asks some fundamental questions such as: are we investigating ICT related questions that can enable a better world to be achieved? what is the role of ICTs in bringing about improvements in people’s lives?
Where: The Allen Center, 203 When: Tuesday October 13 at 12pm. *Abstract* There is evidence to suggest that use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) can play an important role on the growth of businesses, their communities and regions. These benefits range from giving small businesses the ability to access new markets, obtain knowledge and skills they need adopt more efficient cultivation of crops and increase their competitiveness by offering better goods and services. In this sense, ICTs can be employed to bring about increased competitiveness if it enables businesses to create new jobs, increase productivity and sales through access to new markets and administrative efficiencies. According to the World Bank there is up to a 750% growth in businesses that adopt ICTs compared to those that do not. The same study showed an increase in profitability by 113% and labour productivity of 56%. The global market for IT based services has been estimated to be approximately $800 billion. Only about a third of this potential has been realized (World Bank 2012, p.16). At the same time, the disparities in incomes continues to grow as does the use of ICTs. There is a sense that research and practice of ICTs in global development may not be helping achieve improvements in people’s lives. It has been suggested that development efforts may in fact hinder the use of ICTs to improve people’s lives. The issues being explored in this presentation are: are we investigating ICT related questions that can enable a better world to be achieved? what is the role of ICTs in bringing about improvements in people’s lives? And what are some of the outcomes that can be assessed through improvements in the lives of people living with limited resources to sustain themselves? *About The Speaker* Sajda Qureshi is Professor at the Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Department at the College of Information Science and Technology at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She holds a Ph.D. in Information Systems from the London School of Economics and Political Science at the University of London the United Kingdom. She has been coordinator of the Commonwealth Network of Information Technology for Development. She was at the Department of Decision and Information Sciences at the Faculty of Management at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
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