Mr. Hopmann's comments on the CID E-Readiness Guide are most useful. A number of other caveats can be added, e.g. about the thresholds for the successive levels, the relative emphasis on E-Business and E-Gov at the expense of human resources, social capital, learning, etc., the lack of clear links with priority needs of the respective countries, etc.
We are again dealing with a "fit all" approach which implicitly compares a particular country with the "more advanced" one. While such instruments are certainly useful, all depends on the way they are used. If they are a tool for helping the formation of a clearer understanding of the situation among all stakeholders and an aid for their collective analysis and formulation of hypotheses fine. If they are used as a straight basis for decision-making in a technocratic process, they are more likely to facilitate failure. Another basic weakness lies in the notion, or actual practice, that such assessments are one time exercises rather than a continuing process. The ease with which the CID E-readiness guide has imposed itself, or has been imposed, as a de facto standard, is worth reflection. In any case the issue of indicators and assesment tools and practices for the "information society" or whatever one wishes to call it, is far from being resolved. Hopeflly the debate will soon widen. A panel is for instance planned at the forthcoming conference of the Association of Internet Researchers <www.aoir.org> Michel Menou Cornelio Hopmann wrote: > I accepted to do an e-Readiness evaluation of Nicaragua based on the > Harvard Evaluation-guide (which by the way is the almost the same as the > Worldbank and the GDG-Foundation use). > The more I get into it, the more I feel that this approach does not fit > to the specific situation of developing (hopefully) countries. > Reason: the guide concentrates only of available infrastructure & it's > usage producing the indirect impression the higher the scores, the more > effectively (and appropriate) you are using ICT. > As it concentrates only on supply and usage of ICT leaving out basic > economic and social data, the final results are simply incorrect. ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, an NGO that is a GKP member*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
