IT and Human Development: Opportunities and Challenges

1. Poverty
- IT can help poor people in two ways:
a .) by enhancing their access to education, health, and government services
b.) by improving their access to markets and the labor force

2. Health Management
- The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as a state of complete physical, mental and
social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity
- four domains of health management: research, education, health-care delivery, and disease surveillance
- poor infrastructure, lack of health systems, lack of access to medical care and medical goods, and
financing are major barriers to improving population-wide health and national development
- designing ICT for health applications in developing countries requires a deep understanding of various
contextual factors, such as health and ICT infrastructure, disease burden, and sociocultural issues

3. Environment
- information technology contributes to toxins, chemicals, contaminants, and hazardous wastes leak to
the environment through the irresponsible manufacturing and dumping of old computers into areas of
the world that are poverty-stricken
- Furthermore, people (children and adults alike) perform extractions on components dumped in these
areas that release even more chemicals, and intensify the damage through the pollution of soil and water
- ICT manufacturers call for environmental sustainability by a.) producing chemical-free or less toxic
products, and b.) recycling

4. Human Rights
- technology is a useful tool in nongovernmental efforts toward worldwide compliance with human
rights norms
- forums and discussions on the internet about human rights help in having a worlwide betwork of
human rights advocates
- censorship, surveillance and privacy, are the challenges IT pose for human rights activists operating in
a digital environment
- new forms of sexual abuse are emerging due to the internet

5. Politics and Government

- usually, political parties develop ICT strategies only for electoral campaigning
- today, local and national governments make much more use of ICT tools for participatory and
deliberative purposes
- participation in government affairs is now easily doen with the presence of cellphones and the internet,
particularly social networking sites

6. Digital Divide
- an economic inequality between groups, broadly construed, in terms of access to, use of, or knowledge
of information and communication technologies
- types of digital divide are as follows:
a.) Subjects of connectivity, or who connects: individuals, organizations, enterprises, schools, hospitals,
countries, etc.
b.) Characteristics of connectivity, or which attributes: demographic and socio-economic variables, such
as income, education, age, geographic location, etc.

Val. Ed. 12 Information Technology and Human Development

 c.) Means of connectivity, or connectivity to what: fixed or mobile, Internet or telephony, digital TV,
etc.
d.) Intensity of connectivity, or how sophisticated the usage: mere access, retrieval, interactivity,
innovative contributions.
e.) Purpose of connectivity, or why individuals and their cohorts are (not) connecting: reasons
individuals are and are not online and uses of the Internet and information and communications
technologies ("ICTs").
f.) Dynamics of evolution, or whether the gap of concern would increase or decrease in the future, when
the gap of concern would be maximized.

7. Education
- ICTs offer the potential for substantial improvement in education access and delivery, particularly in a
developing-economy context
- Technology is used to enhance learning, therefore it is important for educators to be comfortable using
it to ensure that students get the full advantages of educational technology
- Teaching with technology is different from teaching in a typical classroom. It requires a different
pedagogical approach
- teachers learn about cool stuff, but they still have difficulty applying it for their students
learning
- ease-of-access to information also creates a culture of minimalism among students
- internet-dependent students
- plagiarisms newest form today is called copy-paste

Val. Ed. 12 Information Technology and Human Development