Learning and Developing With Each Other

ICT is a powerful tool which can be used by both India and Canada to harness the growth and development in the respective regions. Researchers and practitioners can come together from Indo-Canadian communities and take the association to a more meaningful level. The current research discusses the ICT tools that can be adopted from Canada by India to improve the education quality and knowledge transmission. On the other hand, Canada government can make efforts to enhance knowledge transfer and translation through ICT by adopting tools like best practices repository, communities of practice, corporate intranet/extranet, corporate yellow pages, expertise locator, online chat/instant messaging, knowledge portals, groupware-workflow and tracking system, and document/content management that are already used in India. ICT has the potential to develop the country politically, socially, and economically.

Digital-Locker Services in India

On 1st July 2015, Government of India launched a Digital India campaign which is a flagship program of the government with an objective to transform India into a digitally empowered society. One key initiative of the program is digital locker service which aims at sharing and storing of electronic documents at one place in a digital locker. A study was undertaken to assess the awareness level of citizens regarding this service, to identify the problems and challenges associated with its implementation, to identify factors that affect adoption of such initiatives, and to make recommendations to various stake holders. The data analysis revealed that main concerns associated with the service include security, confidentiality, and ease of use. The survey data also revealed that the behavioral intention regarding adoption of this service is mainly determined by the user innovativeness and ease of use, usefulness, and compatibility do not seem to have an impact on the behavioral intention to adopt the service.

Participatory Mapping, E-Participation, and E-Governance

This chapter focuses on participatory mapping as an e-governance tool to facilitate public participation. Public participation is a key component of democratic governance, and there is a growing reliance on digital government tools such as the internet and social networking sites and geographic information systems (GIS). This chapter focuses on public engagement using information and communication technology, namely participatory mapping, known by a variety of terms such as participatory GIS (PGIS), public participation GIS (PPGIS), and voluntary GIS. While the analysis involves use of participatory mapping related to environmental issues, the chapter brings together seminal work from various fields of citizen engagement and participatory mapping. The idea is to create one common narrative for scholars and practitioners, bringing together various terminologies, practices, and studies in participatory mapping in the environmental arena that offers a beginner's frame of reference.

Digital Divide and Its Dimensions

Information communication and technology (ICT) has brought about revolutionary change in the life style of common man. Usage of technology is now mandatory for every transaction made by two or more persons staying in distant places. Mobile number and e-mail ID are believed to be the genuine identities of any person or institution in the contemporary world. However, spread of ICT and its applications is uneven in developing countries with particular reference to India. While the rich and influential people make use of latest technology and its related applications, others are unable to do so. They suffer from stale and outdated technology and many more do not have access to ICT on account of their geographical position, illiteracy ignorance, and the like reasons. This gap between haves and have-nots of ICT is termed as “digital divide.” While high income countries, over 90% of the population is using internet, and in lower income countries, less than 10% of the population uses it.

Coupling of Economic Development and Technology Diffusion for Inclusive Growth to Meet the Challenge of Technology Implementation in Perspective

The chapter is devoted to clearly analyze economic development in the country that will usher economic growth in all goods and services to benefit all people for inclusive growth. The discussion justifies the concept by logical reasonings that technology acts as catalyst in accelerating economic development. A model has been shown to link technology, infrastructural development, and economic development with a mathematical model that establish a relationship between per capita income, capital investment, labor, and economic growth. For this purpose, economic resources and infrastructure development have been discussed with logical sequence by exemplifying the economic status of different states in respect of energy sector which is the main driving force of the economic development. Finally, strategy for implementation of technology diffusion in the system has been developed to meet the challenge of coupling technology with economic development.

Data Analytics for Better Branding of E-Governance and E-Business Systems

Efficient e-governance leads to stronger democracy which can be achieved through higher trust, visibility, and transparency in the system, which can be acquired through effective branding. Various techniques of data analytics can help in achieving trust and transparency in the system. The objective of the study is to resolve various issues in the public sector through analytics-based improvement of different parameters of branding, namely, communication, consistency, clarity, and competition. The research design of the study is a combination of both qualitative and quantitative techniques like descriptive statistics. The main techniques emerged for data analysis includes rating and ranking analysis of government apps, social media analytics, text and speech analytics, media analytics, statistical analytics and data mining, telecom analytics, and people demographics for government programs. It was found that the “Digital India” campaign under e-governance initiative was highly successful based on different kinds of analytical methods found in the study.

A Framework for Longitudinal Analysis of University Spin-Offs

The creation of university spin-offs plays a fundamental role in the technology transfer process between universities and the business field. Universities have developed for themselves internal processes within their technology transfer offices in order to collect this information. However, this data is only available locally and often outdated. Furthermore, the number of frameworks that allow the study and simultaneously access to this data in an integrated way is still small on a global scale, and in Portugal, there isn't a repository which contains this information. This study proposes the establishment of a framework for longitudinal analysis that could identify and characterize the evolution and performance of Portuguese university spin-offs. The repository is built exclusively in open source technologies and offers the potential to characterize and analyze the evolution and performance of university spin-offs in different perspectives, such as individual factors; organizational factors; institutional factors; and scientific, educational, and commercial outputs.