Bridging the digital divide
How governments ‘gather the herds’ by adopting an all-stakeholders approach to bring ICT to their nations.
If rumours last year were correct, self-enclosed international outcast North Korea looked set to connect its network to the global Internet. While Internet content viewed by citizens would be filtered stringently by the government’s Korea Computer Centre, many have viewed this as promising baby steps by the nation, to join the global community.
There is no denying the economics of the situation. It is no secret that wireless , mobile, and other new technologies have continually enabled millions worldwide to gain a slice of the global economic pie.
Yet a growing realisation and concern has surfaced—the greater the benefits from ICT, the sharper the disparities between those who reap the gains and those who do not. Government Insights, a leading market research firm specialising in public sector analysis, notes that multiple factors across various stakeholders are driving interests in digital inclusion issues today.
For governments, the irresistible economic value generated by ICT is blatantly hard to ignore. With increasing globalisation and cross-border collaborations, ICT is setting the pace as a key engine of national growth and sustainability.
Increasing social costs
Unfortunately, government obstacles such as increasing social costs are worsening with the high start-up and maintenance expenses of acquiring ICT access. These lead to a further reinforcement of pre-existing social and economic inequalities where the economically well endowed gain access to be wealthier, and the poor are excluded from any ICT opportunities.
And when the poor get poorer, and ultimately angrier, governments may face doubled political pressures to alleviate poverty, which will run contrary to its original intention for adopting ICT strategies—to empower all citizens with economic ICT avenues.
With this digital divide exacerbated through unaffordable costs, governments need to rethink efficient strategies and policies to drive a sustainable ICT model which is available and affordable for all.
Analysts from Government Insights note that in many emerging countries, from India to Indonesia, the public sector is actively seeking out loans and investments, from multilateral lending agencies such as the Asian Development Bank and World Bank, to fund projects that broaden digital connectivity and access.
Profit motive
Understandably, stakeholders from the private sector are inevitably tuned to the profit motive. While many ICT vendors have adopted digital inclusion initiatives under the banner of corporate social responsibility, capturing market share and longer-term profitability are likely stronger complementary motivators.
The following details the likely underlying motivations of participating private sector vendors in digital divide initiatives:
- Personal computing vendors view those on the wrong side of the digital divide as the next market for selling PCs and servers.
- Software vendors view this market as the next threshold of system and application software adoption.
- Chip and equipment vendors view this as the opportunity to sell more microprocessors through PCs and Communications Devices.
- Even telecommunications companies have a stake—this market presents an untapped opportunity to gain new subscribers.
Nonetheless, addressing the digital divide will be recognised as a distinct and critical factor in the successful implementation of any national public sector strategy towards ubiquitous computing. Government Insights notes an increasing number of collaborations and interests between governments and the vendor community in innovative partnerships to bring ICT the underserved citizens in many nations.
Digital inclusion efforts will most likely be spearheaded by a shared industry-wide agenda with multi-stakeholder collaborations driven by the combined efforts and resources of public, private, and civil society stakeholders.
Fiona Kanagasingam is a senior market analyst and Raphael Phang is director at Government
Insights, an IDC company.
