Saturday, September 16, 2006

The 3C Approach in Community Computing

Malaysia's National Information Technology Council (NITC) has formulated the National Information Technology Agenda (NITA) for the nation's development in the use of ICTs. The NITA promotes development based on a traingular approach called the National Information Technology Framework (NITF) as illustrated in the attached diagram. It consists of an interconnected triangle illustrating an integrated development of the 3Cs, i.e. Community, Connectivity and Content. The community or people dimension concerns building capacity through education, skills, creativity and innovation all with the aim to enhance human development. The connectivity or infostructure dimension aims at providing the hard and soft infrastructure needed to create the foundation for an information age society, telecommunications and terminal equipment, and the soft infrastructure of data, laws and regulations. The third element, content and applications consists of local content and and application development referred to as solutions for the information age in work and life in areas of infotainment, edutainment and info-communication. (References: NITA, Malaysia; Study on National Strategic Framework on Bridging the Digital Divide, Malaysia 2006).

In applying ICT4D the abovesaid NITF can be adopted as the 3C Approach in community computing. A holistic and integrated development of the 3Cs leads to development of access and equity, qualitative transformation and values creation, and in all form the basis of developing a Values and Knowledge Based Community.