focus_on_informatics

2.Match the following words to make complete expressions from the article. Referringback tothe article will help you:

3. Answer thequestions:

1)What is the main objective of ICT4D projects?

2)What is the precondition for ICT4D tools to be effective?

3)What is e-readiness?

4)Why is it difficult to implement ICT4D projects in developing countries?

5)What examples of the impact of ICTs ondevelopment can yougive?

6)What kind of organisations can initiate ICT4D projects?

7)When did the history of ICT4D start?

8)Is the disadvantaged population viewed as just consumers of ICTbased information?

4. Whichof the statements are true? Correct the falseones:

1)ICT4D is a term referring to applying Information and Communications Technologies to business worldwide.

2)The concept of ICT4D implies, primarily, dealing with disadvantaged populations of the developing countries.

3)ICT4D projects serve to provide accurate and comprehensive information on current events all over the world, but they can not actually contribute to poverty reduction.

4)It was not before the beginning of the 21st century that computer technologies were applied even by the governments or large business organizations in developing countries.

5)Television used to be the major source of information on development issues in poor communities but nowadays the leading role has been passed to the mobilephone.

Text 28. Extending ICT Benefits to All

Part 2

ICT4D projects focus on multiple issues.Among them are:

affordability of software and hardware for the developing countries, the ability to share software (as echoed in the Free Software movement), and the ability to sustainably connect to the internet.

installing, maintaining, and developing hardware and software, digital literacy (technological literacy and informational literacy) and e-awareness.

e-services (e-learning, e-health, e-business/e-commerce, e-Governance/e-Government), including concerns related to locallanguagesolutions in computing, and theOpen Access agenda.

Intellectual Property Rights, privacy, security, and digital identity.

increasing competitiveness and job creation in developing countries by building local capacity for ICT-enabled innovation and entrepreneurship, in particular through the development of business incubators and innovation centers.

exploring the role that ICTs can play in climate change monitoring and adaptation.

ICTs play a key role in improving the availability of agricultural production and market information in developing countries. ICT-based market information systems have a proven track record for improving rural livelihoods in middle income developing countries where they have been introduced. Although these systems are generally limited in scale and have not been effectively replicated beyond the local level, the current mobile revolution in Africa offers real hope for a different outcome now. The rapid spread of mobile phones in Africa has transformed the continent, with mobile ownership now exceeding one-quarter of the African population at the end of 2007.

Projects in marginalised rural areas face the most significant hurdles. Since people in marginalised rural areas are at the verybottom of the pyramid, development efforts should make the most difference in this sector. ICTs have the potential to multiply development effects and are thus also meaningful in the rural arena. However introducing ICTs in these areas is also most costly due to lack of infrastructure, lack of employment, illiteracy, hunger, lack of health services, lack ofsupport from thelocal government and corruption.

The World Bank runs Information for Development Program (infoDev), whose Rural ICT Toolkit analyses the costs and possible profits involved in such a venture and shows that there is more potential in developing areas than many might assume. The potential for profit arsises from two sourcesre- source sharing across large numbers of users as well as from remittances. Remittances are estimated to have a volume of upward of 250 billion USD and websites have been established to take advantage of this fact (e.g. Aryty, Philippines; Mukuru.com, Zimbabwe).

Anriette Esterhuysen, an advocate for ICT4D and human rights in South Africa, pointed out that some ICT4D projects often give more impetus to how ICT can help its beneficiaries economically rather than helping them gain a society wheresocial justice and equal rights prevail. She believes that sustainable development can only be achieved if there are human rights and people can speak freely.

ICT4D projects needs to be properly monitored and implemented; the system’s design and user interface should be suitable to the target users. ICT4D projects installed without proper coordination with its beneficiary community has a tendency to fall shortof its main objectives. For example, the use of ICT4D projects in farming sector in third world countries, where a majority of the population are considered to be technologically illiterate, projects lay idle and sometimes get damaged orbecome obsolete.

Glossary

advocate – защитник, сторонник

beneficiary – лицо, пользующееся пожертвованиями или благодеяниями

echoed – отраженный

fall short – не хватать, не соответствовать, являться недостаточным (также comeshort)

governance – власть, управление, руководство hurdle – преграда, помеха, барьер, препятствие illiteracy – неграмотность

impetus – стимул, импульс, побуждение, движущая сила

IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) – права на интеллектуальную соб-

ственность

lay idle – простаивать, бездействовать livelihood – средства к существованию make difference –менять дело objective – цель, стремление

obsolete – устаревший remittance – денежныйперевод rural – сельский

scale – масштаб, охват, размах sustainable – устойчивый

take advantage – использовать (удобную возможность) toolkit – инструментарий, набор инструментальных средств track record – достижения, послужной список

Exercises:

1. Can youexplain the meaning of the following terms in English?

a.digital literacy

b.digital identity

c.intellectual property rights

d.e-awareness

2.What is the difference between digital literacy and technological literacy?

3.Match each of the words in the first column with the word from the second column to make six word partnerships from the article:

1)Can you enumerate the multiple objectives of ICT4D projects in the developing countries?

2)How many Africans have now got mobile phones?

3)Which areas present the most significant difficulties for implementing ICT4D projects? Why?

4)Why is the World Bank interested in investing in ICT4D ventures?

5)Why is propercoordination a key to success of an ICT4D project?

5. Whichof the following statements are true? Correct the false ones:

1)Sustainable internet-connection for the developing countries is something ICT4D projects should focus on inthe first line.

2)E-services should be provided to the disadvantaged population in the local language.

3)Unemployment is one of the issues that don’t depend onICTs.

4) While ICT4D projects have proved to be very effective in the city environments, they are useless in the ruralareas.

5) According to Anriette Esterhuysen, ICT4D projects shoul lay more emphasis on promoting social justice and equal rights in the developing countries.

6. Topic fordiscussion:

Do you think that ICT4D projects are also necessary for the remote areas of the Russian Federation? What objectives might they have? Should they be organized and financed by the government or by the private sector? How could business companies benefit fromparticipating in such a project?

Text 29. ‘Never Start IT Initiatives for the Sake of IT’

Even the largest companies are being forced to look outside their firewalls for assistance with information technology as intense competition and the need to globalise take their toll of corporate resources.

Eight years ago, the mighty Royal Dutch/Shell embarked on an ambitious project to streamline and standardise its sprawling information technology infrastructure deciding, in the process, against the outsourcing option.

Late this March, however, the petrochemicals giant announced a $4bn, five-year deal through which its network and telecommunications will be managed by AT&T, its hosting and storage will become the responsibility of Deutsche Telekom’s T-Systems enterprise customer unit, while Electronic Data System will integrate its infrastructure and run end user computing services.

Some 3,000 Shell IT staff will be transferred to the newly appointed service providers leaving about 600 specialists to work on key strategic, architectural and standardisation issues. It is one of the largest outsourcing deals of recent years and innovative in its use ofmultiple suppliers.

Alan Matula, Shell’s chief information officer since 2006, explains that changing circumstances have forced a change in IT strategy: “Uniquely in the past 12 to 24 months, I have had to juggle three balls at the same time: to support the growth projects, to remain operationally excellent and costefficient, and keep the business running from day to day. I don’t think I’ve had to do all three at the same time before.

“We did think about outsourcing the infrastructure in 2001. But we made absolutely the right call not to outsource the problem, but to consolidate it, rationalise it, get it into the next generation of technology and then reopen the conversation about whether we should outsource the things that are more ‘commodity’-oriented, that we can get from the market place, and keep internal the things that are ofcompetitive value.”

You can almostsense the quotation marks when he says “commodity” or “utility” computing, arguing that such terms poorly reflect the nature of the systems on which Shell’s day-to-day performance depends. The staff on Shell’s trading floors, he says, are unlikely to regard the tools of their trade – the network, the computers and the resilience of the overall system – as mere commodities: “They view all that as core and essential to their business.”

But he continues: “Because of the environment we are in, because of the huge demand for IT to underpin our businesses and functions, we need to focus our critical resources on the most important things, while outsourcing the skills and agility we can leverage. It is clear to us that, given the amount of work and the scarcity of resources, we are going to have to rely on partners both for infrastructure and applications if we are going to make headway.”

Mr Matula, 48, has spent his entire working lifeat Shell and taken a leading role in shaping the company’s IT operations both at the business (divisional) and international level. Born in Chicago, he graduated from Indiana University in Quantitative Business Analysis – a degree with a special focus on mathematics and statistics – and earned an Executive MBA from Houston Baptist University.

A corporate planning assignment working for the board of the Shell oil company set the scene for his return to IT in his first CIO role: as CIO of Shell

Chemicals, one of the four principal business classes which comprise the Shell group (Upstream, the search for oil and gas reserves, Downstream, the refining and delivery of products tocustomers, Chemicals, andTrading).

“That was right at the beginning of the globalisation of Royal Dutch/Shell,” he recalls. “Chemicals was the first business that we decided to take global and to try to understand what this meant.” He was CIO first for North America and then for Chemicals worldwide. It took five years and paved the way for his contributions to the transformation of IT in the Shell group from 2000 onwards. “If you were to look at my curriculum vitae, you would see me closely connected to a number of our big global transformations,” he says.

Essentially, Mr Matula has extended his experience of transforming Shell Chemicals to the rest of the group: “The first problem was the infrastructure. In the 1990s we did not have a connected, consistent, standardised computing infrastructure for thegroup.

“Out of the Chemicals experience we standardised our global desktops, our global networks, our ability to share and collaborate globally. That led to virtual teams working across the globe and set the stage for what needed to be done for the group as a whole.”

Standardising all the group’s business processes proved a second challenge, solved by installing a global enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, from the German company SAP, and tightly coupling it to some of the other critical applications across the functions and the businesses.

The third core challenge, however, was the human dimension: “The mindsets, behaviours and cultures thatyou have to pull together when you are taking a group of federated entities and trying to get them to work as one”, is how he describes it.

“You should never start an IT initiative for the sake of IT. Whether it’s a project or a transformation such as Shell Chemicals or Downstream, you have to start with the business at the centre. You have to understand the business model and create a strategy that underpins that model with technology.”

Mr Matula will remain answerable to Shell’s executive committee for all the company’s IT, but the responsibility for meeting the service level agreements will lie, fromJuly this year, withAT&T, DeutscheTelekomandEDS.

Mr Matula is confident the deal will provide the anticipated benefits: “That is not to say that it is notachallenge. Before this deal we outsourced a lot