A Cost Maturity Model for Community Informatics Projects in the Developing World

Community informatics projects are instituted to achieve global equity in the distribution of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and attendant socioeconomic benefits. Technology disciplines and financial disciplines, specifically management and cost accounting, have no history of goal congruence, and many ICTbased community informatics projects fail, because of a lack of knowledge and insight about their life-cycle costs. This paper introduces a model for systematic measurement and benchmarking of the life-cycle costs of community informatics projects; and invites debate about its bona fides, so that it can be refined and applied to the benefit of communities in the Developing World.