Digital Divide

Digital Divide

ICT has created a different lifestyle for peoples in their professional, social, personal and everyday life. Technological changes and a rapid expansion of information and knowledge are affecting all economic, social and societal facets of daily work and life.

But this technology is advancing unevenly in countries, cities or villages. This causing some countries, cities and villages to fall behind in technology, education, labor, democracy, or tourism, and others are developing and getting advantages in those sectors. This imbalance and gaps between individuals, households, businesses and geographic areas at different socio-economic levels with regard to their opportunities to access information and communication technologies (ICTs) and their use of the Internet is known as “Digital Divide”. Digital divides are based on:

• Access of ICT
• Usage of ICT
• Usage quality of ICT

At the beginning, digital divide basically referred to connectivity problems. Later, it began to introduce the concern for the development of capacities and skills required to use ICTs (capacity-building and education), and finally, there is also reference to the use of integrated resources in the technology. Thus, the concept of the digital divide basically incorporates the following focuses:

a) Focus on infrastructure:

b) Focus on capacity-building:

c) Focus on resource usage:

Race, culture, economic, martial status, and government are all deciding factors in the Digital Divide. Developing countries have less technology, not only because it is largely unavailable to them, but also because very few of the population can afford the technology or have the resources to use it. The factors that help the divide to grow even bigger are numerous including economic, cultural, age, religion, infrastructure, educational etc.

In this e-portfolio I have divided this section into the following parts:

*** The factors causing the divide

*** Impact

* **Bridging the gap

*** Conclusion

Impact of Digital Divide

• Peoples living in technologically developed areas, information technology affords many conveniences, such as eliminating the need for travel to complete errands (bill paying, shopping etc.); providing opportunities for e-commerce (exporting wines, wool etc); monitoring weather patterns; contacting family, friends and community groups via email; providing access to news and information from various viewpoints; and enabling communication with people from all over the world via virtual communities. Those living in less technology infrastructure provided area, don’t have better access in those above conveniences.
• Wealthy countries can afford better telecommunications as a result can conduct business better with the rest of the world, thus contributing to the country’s GDP. Areas without access to telephones and the internet have substantially less entrepreneurial activity, so countries with poor access to ICT becomes much more poorer in turn as a result
• The digital divide, represented by uneven access to ICT inputs and outputs such as scientists, IT specialist or computers and mobile phones could lead to a widening economic divide between developed and developing countries
• The digital divide allows those who have access to the internet more opportunities to be involved in social and civic issues. On the other hand, lack of access to ICT resources due to factors such as cost and infrastructure prohibit the people ability to participate in a social institution
• Students without access to the Internet at home and in school do not develop the skills needed to compete for high-skill, information-technology, or IT, which makes them difficult to find a good job.
• Technologically declined communities suffer from having unfilled jobs and an under skilled pool of potential employees.
• Low income households that are not online cannot benefit from job opportunities, social-service information and lifelong learning opportunities.
• Information technology has had a significant impact on the market for labor. the fastest growing occupations will include software engineers, computer support specialists, desktop publishers and database, network and systems administrators In the new economy, workplaces have become increasingly computerized. Technology skills are now a prerequisite for most jobs, a lack of access to technology for those with limited education could render their skills obsolete.
• In schools where the technology is outdated, students often spends large amount of time in the preparation stage of the project, detracts the student from their original learning goal. Meanwhile a student in schools where technology is constantly upgraded often spends little time on the technology itself and thus performs better in meeting their original learning goal.
• Teachers working in schools equipped with better and more reliable equipment are less often faced with additional workload caused by unreliable machines. Therefore, they can spend more time using the technology to aid their teaching, instead of rectifying problems caused by the lack of technology

Impact of the Digital Divide in education in detail:

Technology advancement has the potential to alleviate the digital divide especially in education sector. Education is crucial so that people are prepared to meet global needs so that well paying jobs are not outsourced. Lack of Education and slows down progress within a country. The most sever consequences of the digital divide are the long term effects it will have on children that do not have access to education. Lacking access and computer skills, a whole generation will be missing out on realizing their full potential in an information and communication technology world

Today, over one billion adults, many of them illiterate, have never had the benefit of an education. There are roughly 135 million children worldwide who do not have access to a primary education; even those who do have such access are often educated in ill-equipped schools by poorly-trained teachers.

Performativity is focused on the students’ ability to complete a technology task without making a connection to the original learning outcome . In schools where the technology is outdated, students often spends large amount of time in the preparation stage of the project, detracts the student from their original learning goal. Meanwhile a student in schools where technology is constantly upgraded often spends little time on the technology itself and thus performs better in meeting their original learning goal.

Teachers working in schools equipped with better and more reliable equipment are less often faced with additional workload caused by unreliable machines. Therefore, they can spend more time using the technology to aid their teaching, instead of rectifying problems caused by the lack of technology

The 'complexity' issue in education using ICT often overlaps with the issue of 'workability' . Difficulty in assigning technology- related projects because they need to consider the varying levels of home computer access. In America for example, the Pew Internet Project conducted in 2004 found that 83% of online teens access the internet primarily from home, compared to 11% who go online most often at school A separate survey conducted earlier in 2003 by U. S. Department of Education found that 52% of student who access the internet from only one location comes from low income families. Students whose household have good access to the internet tend to be more productive in completing projects because they can work on them from home. Whereas student who lack this access have to be contented with traveling to school within the time frame when the computers are available to work on their projects.

Bridging The Gap

International organizations, governments and private institutions are just starting to take action to cut down the digital divide. Some initiatives have been set up, to take on projects with the intent and vision of closing the digital divide. Some of the projects are very effective while others might have less impact. Digital Divide is not same everywhere, it varies in different areas, so the problem is different and as a result solution should be different too. Some may have infrastructure while others may have economic problem. In this section, bridging the gap, I would discuss how causing factors of digital divide are slowly being overcome to benefit the less fortunate and how, where and by whom its being done.

The digital divide is usually measured in terms of people’s access to ICTs. Penetration levels of mobile telephones, fixed telephone lines, internet and personal computers are popular measures that are being used to identify the difference. However, a specific country may excel in one factor but lack behind in others and this doesn’t lead the country to improve on an overall basis. It is also to be mentioned that, improvement in one specific factor can imply that the country has possibilities to develop on the other factors, hence bridging the gap between her and the developed world.

Measures taken locally (In Bangladesh):

• Immense increment in usage of mobile telephone (which is one of the major components of ICT development) has been seen in the past few years, which indicates the possibility for Bangladesh to lay the foundation of the bridge to reduce the digital divide.

• Proportion of households with computers has increased from 0.8 in 2002 to 1.9 in 2007 and proportion of households with internet has increased from 0.1 in 2002 to 1.3 in 2007. It is also to be mentioned that, International Internet bandwidth per internet user has increased from 211 bit/s to 1,284 bit/sec in these five years.
• Recently WiMax technology has been introduced in the country which will enable fast, secure and dedicated internet connection for all and will also break the barrier of not reaching the unreached. So, it can be said that the infrastructural issues to spread connectivity is restructured in the country .
• In Bangladesh, initiatives for establishing telecentres have already been taken and a number of institutions have established their network to work on that. Gonokendra: Centre for Community Development, Internet Learning Centre: School Based Telecentre, Youth Community Multimedia Centre (YCMC), GHAT: Rural ICT centre (RIC), Community Information Centre (CIC), ‘Pallitathya Kendra’ are few examples of telecentre initiatives. According to Bangladesh Telecentre Network (BTN), the number of telecentre in Bangladesh as of 12th May 2009 is 2068. These initiatives indicate an increment of the usage of ICT Services in Bangladesh, hence decreasing the digital divide.
• Providing microfinance to eliminate entry-cost barrier has been a novel mechanism in bringing cellular connectivity to rural Bangladesh. The Village Phone (VP) concept of Grameen Telecom is such a venture under which women borrowers take loan for the phone equipment and repay it back slowly with the revenue they earn from charging villagers for phone services. Highly successful initiatives, the VPs now provide access to telecommunications facilities to more than 60 million people living in rural areas of Bangladesh.
• Emerging Market Handset (EMH) Program. The EMH program, an initiative launched in February 2005 by GSM Association to provide low cost handsets, will be another driver to increasing access in the emerging economies.
• Bangladesh government also thinking deeply about this IT sector as a ‘thrust’ sector, a larger portion of budget is allocated in developing this sector rapidly. One of the initiatives the government has taken is to develop an IT village, where many software firms may offer their software tools in one location. This promotes the usage of software and related tools in the corporate sector of the country.

Measures taken Globally

· The Teens Teaching Internet Skills (TTIS) Pilot Project. TTIS is a national, intergenerational partnership sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture 4-H Youth Technology Leadership Team and the Health Care Financing Administration, was established for national effort to engage youth in teaching senior citizens computer and Internet skills to navigate and obtain needed information from the Medicare web site.

· Digital tax to aid poor nations. The Idea behind this is that the more developed countries that are able to spare some money will be charged 1% from their public technology projects and so this 1% of money will go towards getting these undeveloped nations a higher level of technology. This tax is voluntary and so far only Geneva has agreed to it but is hoped that with time other countries will come to follow their example.

· INDIA, West Godavari district (Andhra Pradesh state): Over the space of a few years, every village in this rural district has been connected to the Internet, 47 access and service centers were established as a joint initiative between the local and national governments.

· Asia IT&C began in late 1999. Its purpose is to address not only the ‘digital divide’ between rich and poor nations, but also between knowledge-rich and knowledge-poor members of the same society. It does this by co-financing co-operation between Asia and Europe.

· ‘Digital Divide Data(DDD) is a company that concentrates on teaching the disabled how to use technology. Most of the times resulting in them going to university and getting a higher education.

· TOPAZ project (Telecommunications Open Partnerships of Arizona), Arizona in the US., is aimed at providing broadband access rural communities. Over the next 5 years Arizona expects to spend $100 million supporting local public agencies in purchasing broadband telecoms services, via a statewide carrier service.

Trends of the digital divide worldwide

It has been seen that after the year 2000, an overall strong movement has started among the countries of the world to become an information society. Policy makers, think tanks even general people of the world have, to some extent, realized the importance of information and communication technology and started taking initiatives for enhancing the movement. The bigger, well developed economies as well as many donor agencies have extended their hands with monetary and logistic support to ensure that the developing countries can also participate in the movement of becoming a global information society, as well as reduce poverty, illiteracy and information lack, through it.