Interview with Ake Gronlund
Bimal Shah
Dear Members (Revolutionaries)
New School of Thought is an interview series where we bring you interviews with digital domain's researchers and practioners. Mostly importantly, the section is dedicated to digital domain's upcoming as well as established stars who have shown leadership and innovation by challenging conventional thinking in the area of digital domain (specially ICT 4 D and E-government).
This month we bring you Åke Grönlund who is (full) Professor of Informatics at Örebro University (Sweden), also affiliated to the Dept of Informatics at Umeå University (Sweden) and Agder University (Norway). Åke has been doing research in the field of Electronic Government since the early 1990s as an important specialization of a more general concern with information systems: coordination of organizations and networks using ICT, including electronic service delivery, organizational redesign, electronic information infrastructures, and ICT-enabled coordination of work. A particular focus is developing countries, "ICT4D" which currently includes efforts to use mobile technology for different purposes, with a particular focus on the "D", development, meaning changes to people's lives. Other keywords that reflect projects undertaken past and present include e-Participation and eLearning. Åke is chair of SIG e-Government within the Association of Information Systems (sigegov.org)
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What are the change management issues in implementing e-Government projects in developing countries? How can they be overcome?
Perhaps somewhat paradoxically in view of what I said above, I think developing countries also have to develop some economic thinking about their systems. They must start thinking in terms of not donations but sustainably improved processes, and to do that some measurement is necessary. This is what we have done here in, for example, Sweden. Government agencies calculate investments in IT against gains as expressed both in terms of internal efficiency and national goals, such as access for all, time for delivery, administrative burden, etc. For real, sustainable change I think something similar is necessary in developing countries. It is not enough to look to "Implementation of a system". Even if measures are incomplete they are necessary.
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To read the full interview please visit New Digital South's Website http://www.newdigitalsouth.org
Best Regards
Digital Shaman (Bimal)
New Digital South
http://www.newdigitalsouth.org
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