ABSTRACT This paper examines how digital public goods foster digital innovation. DPGs are understood as open digital technologies designed to contribute to sustainable development goals, which indicates a potential for enabling resource-scarce countries to innovate without the constraints of proprietary technologies. However, little is known about how DPGs foster innovation. We draw on a case study of digital innovation during the COVID-19 pandemic with the software platform, District Health Information Software 2 (DHIS2), considered a DPG. We use the concept of generativity to examine how DHIS2’s architecture, governance, and community shaped the case. We found that DHIS2 fostered innovation in a distributed and recursive way. This insight implies that DPGs with generative capacities realize their value through recurring sharing of benefits from their distributed utilization. This research contributes to the ICT4D literature on DPGs by conceptualizing the generativity of DPGs and positioning the study in a digital-for-development paradigm.

ABSTRACT This study assesses the impact of Digital Financial Services (DFS) on poverty reduction in selected areas of Bangladesh, particularly in marginalized communities, in alignment with the Government of Bangladesh’s efforts to promote IT and develop DFS infrastructure. The study follows international frameworks like ICT4D, emphasizing technology's role in development. Data was collected from 798 DFS users through cluster sampling and semi-structured questionnaires. The analysis employed descriptive statistics, IV logistic regression, factor analysis, and the one proportion Z-Test. Results indicate that higher DFS usage is associated with a reduction in poverty, particularly in terms of non-food expenditure and income earning, though its effect on education was less pronounced. These findings demonstrate how DFS can empower economically marginalized individuals, contributing to SDGs such as #SDG1 (No Poverty), #SDG10 (Reduced Inequalities), and #SDG17 (Partnerships for the Goals). The study highlights the importance of ICT tools like DFS in fostering economic inclusion and guiding policy for sustainable development.

ABSTRACT Using a two-period panel comprising firm-level data from the 2007 and 2013 World Bank Enterprise Surveys, this paper exploits the launch of mobile money services in 2007 to investigate the impact of mobile money adoption on petty corruption in Kenya. Results based on a matched difference-in-differences estimator demonstrate that adopting mobile money for financial transactions led to a 4.4 percentage point reduction in bribe payments. This can be explained considering that mobile money transactions leave behind a detailed trail of digital records. Of the potential impact mechanisms tested, I find that the adoption of mobile money reduces the time spent on government regulations. This diminishes the opportunity space for petty corruption, which may curb acts of bribery. These findings suggest that official mobile money payments services can be a practical and effective anti-corruption intervention given the dominance of mobile money in Kenya and sub-Saharan Africa at large.

ABSTRACT Like many countries, the UK has been exploring digital technologies to address grand challenges. In this paper, we study UK policy-generated narratives of the past 10 years to explore the role of digital inequalities within the UK policy rhetoric on the benefits of digital technologies. We combine topic modeling and qualitative analysis to analyse 227 policy documents. Our findings indicate that policy frames digital technologies as able to support efficiencies and innovation. Policy proposes that regional initiatives are needed to incentivise businesses, through funding, and to support citizens, primarily through digital skills training. We argue that, in this discourse, digital technologies are framed as the panacea for addressing challenges, without sufficiently recognizing that techno-centric solutions, considering digital inequalities, can instead exacerbate existing divides. In this respect, our study contributes by showcasing the need for policy framing being aligned and consistent with the prioritization of digital inequalities for constructive digital transformations.

ABSTRACT This study investigates the factors influencing school principals’ continued use of a newly launched e-procurement system in Indonesia, employing an extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). Based on a national survey of 3,110 middle schools and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), the findings reveal that e-procurement quality dimensions – processing, content, usability, and professionalism – significantly enhance principals’ perceptions of usefulness and ease of use, which drive continued system use. The study highlights the critical role of digital leadership capability (DLC) and school digital capacity (SDC) in shaping technology acceptance in schools, offering a novel extension to the TAM. Emphasizing human and infrastructural digital readiness, this study offers practical recommendations for improving digital governance, such as enhancing digital leadership, targeting training at procurement personnel, and strengthening school ICT infrastructure. In doing so, it contributes to ICT4D debates by providing context-specific evidence on sustaining digital public service platforms in education.

ABSTRACT Information technology for the digitalization of health records (i.e. EMR) has been researched extensively for the past three decades. Our review revealed that patients play an important role in EMR use but their experiences are rarely problematized. We conducted an eight-month long ethnography involving 52 patient interviews and 31 direct observations of ambulatory consultation sessions within OB/GYN departments across four healthcare organizations. We find that women patients’ experiences with EMRs cannot be solely explained by biomedical concepts; they are intertwined with their everyday mundane experiences of living besides managing health needs. Findings reveal that current EMR design-in-use removes patients from the context of their everyday lives and communities, resulting in adverse digitalization. We labelled these everyday experiences using indigenous term ‘Jeevan Yapan’, which encapsulates lived realities, mundane activities, and mechanisms employed by individuals in navigating their daily lives. We conclude by calling on digital health researchers and practitioners to be sensitive to the ‘Jeevan Yapan’ of patients and create situated mechanisms of accountability to patient community while working in non-western contexts. We also provide design principles aligning with the ethos of Jeevan Yapan relevant to the design-in-use paradigm.

ABSTRACT Digital technology development (DTD) serves as a crucial instrument to enhance the productivity of regional green economy. Utilizing panel data encompassing Chinese cities, the research studies the impact of DTD on urban green total factor productivity (GTFP). The findings reveal that DTD notably boosts urban GTFP, attributed to the concurrent elevation in green technology efficiency (GEC) and green technology progress (GTC). Industrial structure optimization, green technology innovation and public environmental concern are crucial pathways which DTD facilitates GTFP. While digital technology enhances local GTFP, it also diminishes GTFP of neighboring areas due to the ‘siphon effect.’ Notably, digital technology will exert a more pronounced advantageous consequence on GTFP in central and non-resource-based cities. The research offers valuable insights into the influence mechanism and spatial effects of digital technology empowering sustainable urban development, thus guiding policy-making to promote the development of information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) research.

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the effects of information and communication technology (ICT) and greenfield foreign direct investment (GFDI) on poverty reduction in Africa. The study employed the two-step system generalized method of moments (two-step system GMM) on panel data of 46 African countries between 2003 and 2020 and found that GFDI contributes significantly to poverty reduction in Africa. The study's empirical findings also show that ICT itself does not directly engender poverty reduction; however, the study observes that ICT only promotes poverty reduction in the presence of greenfield FDI. This presupposes that the positive spillover effect of ICT on poverty reduction in Africa is modulated by the inflows of greenfield FDI. From a policy perspective, policymakers in Africa need to enact a policy framework to enhance the inflows of greenfield FDI to strengthen its ICT base and ultimately achieve the SDG goal of zero poverty by 2030.

ABSTRACT Current literature on the social impact of Information Technology (IT) is predominantly from an organizational perspective, aimed at improving IT use in workplace settings, which often fails to capture the overall experience of using IT through lived experiences. A systematic review was conducted to identify the existing frameworks that attempted to measure the social impact of IT. The inclusion criteria were (a) studies that conceptualized the social impact of IT and (b) studies with frameworks that measure the social impact of IT. Four theoretical and methodological approaches were chosen for critical analysis. While these frameworks offer rich insight into social impact assessment, each has its limitations and, thus, is not comprehensive enough to cover the phenomena holistically. Hence, this paper proposes a broad framework to measure the social impact of IT through integrating multiple approaches. Practical implications include guiding policymakers and practitioners in formulating bottom-up IT-related policies and interventions.