There is a growing interest in how the digital divide affects the operations of SMEs. The digital divide among businesses is defined as the disparity between the effective use of ICT for gains in productivity (Wielicki, 2008). Often, SMEs are found to be on the wrong side of this divide, with insufficient funds and/or access to ICT as the most cited reasons for falling behind big corporations. ...

The extent to which people living in developing countries have access to scholarly literature has historically been severely constrained. The constraints in part are created and enforced by academic publishers, primarily for reasons of finance, and in part are a result of the digital divide: the glaring inequality of access to the Internet that pervades the developing world. In this article, we...

The global economy is increasingly becoming dependent on ICT systems, while developing countries are critically operating under lack of e-readiness, newly evolved constraints, open competition, and unsteady sustainability policies. Infrastructure, content and human capacity are rapidly expanding through increased participation of private sector investment, though not with enough benefits to the...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this article is to explore the relationship between local health departments' (LHDs') governance structures and their use of information systems (IS) and information technologies (IT). As the US health system moves toward more integrated models of delivering care, LHDs have been identified as key nexus for information exchange. Therefore, understanding how LHDs' governa...

The authors implemented an electronic medical record system in a rural Kenyan health center. Visit data are recorded on a paper encounter form, eliminating duplicate documentation in multiple clinic logbooks. Data are entered into an MS-Access database supported by redundant power systems. The system was initiated in February 2001, and 10,000 visit records were entered for 6,190 patients in six...

Although much digital divide research focuses on access to technology, another cause of the divide is the lack of information awareness that we call information asymmetry. Information asymmetry often stems from inadequate information sharing and can result in negative consequences for both the information poor and the information rich. Information asymmetry has been insufficiently studied as a ...

Despite the availability of information and communication technologies (ICT’s) infrastructure in central government in Botswana, there is evidence of lack of exploitation of the technology. There are several factors that hinder exploitation of information technology in Botswana. Botswana is classified as an upper medium income country because of the country’s high GDP. However, such wealth is d...

Use of cell phones has grown dramatically. By the turn of this century, cell phone use had reached a majority of the populations in Canada, the United States, Australia, Germany, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Italy. However, a digital divide exists between people with and without disabilities in their use of mobile phones. Gaps in usage occur across all age groups. In a study by Bryen, Car...

The most common measures so far to reduce the digital divide has been the development of telecentres (Internet public access points) that provide Internet access and specific training. However, the extremely poor very rarely enter the telecentres. In this paper, we propose a more specific approach suited to this population. We first describe the social-digital exclusion process facing the extre...

In discussing and planning interventions around the “digital divide” people tend to think in terms of the binary oppositions of “digital-haves” and “digital-have-nots”. Information and communications technologies (ICT) programs sponsored by governments and other agencies to address the “digital divide” also tend to be “topdown” initiatives that focus on the provision of institutional aid and th...