Investigating information and communication technology‐enabled national development as a multi‐level social process

Abstract

AbstractAre centralised or decentralised strategies more suitable to address a developing nation's socio‐economic challenges through information and communication technology (ICT)? We respond to this long‐standing question by conceptualising ICT‐enabled national development as a multi‐level social process and by drawing on empirical findings from a natural experiment set in the context of health information system projects in Indonesia. Our study demonstrates that successful ICT‐enabled national development is not contingent on pursuing one strategy or the other but on how micro‐level actors interpret, and subsequently respond to, these strategies and the local changes they trigger. Our findings indicate that centralisation and decentralisation are complementary rather than competing strategies to ICT‐enabled national development because, if integrated into a hybrid strategy, decentralisation enables local communities to achieve national development outcomes commonly attributed to centralisation. As such, our work provides empirical evidence, explanations and new theoretical insight into the wider ‘centralisation versus decentralisation’ debate, while also outlining avenues for future research and guidelines for policymakers.