[DDN] Journal of Community Informatics: Community Informatics and National ICT Policies/Programmes

[mgurst at vcn.bc.ca]

I've been noticing an interesting trend recently which is the increasing

inclusion of bottom up, often community or telecentre (and by inference
Community Informatics (CI))
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_informatics>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_informatics
based strategies and approaches being included as part of national ICT
policies.

In many cases these are part of an overall inclusion of ICT for 
Development (ICT4D) elements in the respective national policies while
in other cases they are linked to national commitments concerning
e-government/e-participation or local economic development or other
special thematic areas. 

Among the countries where such developments seem to be occurring are
Brazil, India, Hungary, Jordan, New Zealand, Nepal, South Africa, and
I'm sure there are many many others.

In this context the Journal of Community Informatics (JoCI)  
 <http://ci-journal.net> http://ci-journal.net has received interesting
papers documenting CI
developments in several of these countries.

My thought is that it would be very useful to have a wider collection of

this information compiled in one place as for example, in a special
issue of JoCI.

So what I'm looking for at the moment are indications of interest in
preparing papers for publication in JoCI looking at the implementation 
of Community Informatics or Community Informatics friendly national
policies/programmes or alternatively assessments of national
programs/policies from a CI perspective.  As well if there are specific
documents or reports that deal with these issues (hopefully not more 
than one or two years old) perhaps it would be possible to link to these
along with commentaries from CI folks with experience in those
countries. 
 
Just to be clear, the intention here is not to publish a compilation of
national Digital Divide assessments however useful that might be...
There are a lot of such resources around.  Rather, the intention is to
pull together information/analyses on national
approaches/policies/programs to how to use ICT access to support the
range of community based applications that can further local empowerment
and local social and economic development.  

Also, critiques of national programmes/policies from a CI perspective 
would be useful in this context (anyone in Australia, Canada or the US
want to do a paper talking about the retreat from community friendly
national ICT support programmes or anyone want to do CI based critiques 
of any of the top down national ICT4D strategies that the "e-readiness
movement" has spawned)?

I'm seeing that the papers could be formally academic ones (for peer
review) or structured as more practice oriented Notes from the Field or 
even Points of View.  Since JoCI is an electronic journal there is no
length or number restriction, so the more the merrier.

Let me know privately off list if this is of interest to you and feel
free to pass this along as well. 

Best,

MG

Michael Gurstein, Ph.D.
Editor in Chief: Journal of Community Informatics
 <http://ci-journal.net> http://ci-journal.net