Responsible Design, Implementation and Use of Information and Communication Technology

Enterprise Architecture (EA) is an important tool when developing e-governments and smart cities as it can help improve the alignment between business goals and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) implementations. Although some studies have been performed to study the applications of EA in public sectors, governments, and cities, most of such studies are scattered and there is no strong research stream. As a result, it is difficult to effectively accumulate relevant knowledge and experiences. In this research, we attempt to explore research streams and trends by analyzing why existing studies were conducted, what outcomes were produced, and what methods were used in these studies. Starting from these three questions, a thematic framework was developed, and a literature synthesis was presented. The result shows the complexity of this area, the importance of balancing technical factors and non-technical factors, the challenges brought by non-functional requirements. Despite the importance of EA frameworks, few studies have been found in which government or city relevant requirements were addressed in a general way. Such findings are expected to provide useful insights for possible future research in this area.

The implementation of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is seen globally as a means to efficient and effective delivery of business and organisational mandates. Governments, in their quest to serve citizens, harness ICT to streamline their service delivery processes. e-Government transforms administrations into “smart governments” enhancing the social, political and economic inclusion and the quality of life of its citizens. However, the governments of developing countries are still facing challenges regarding transformation due to a myriad of obstacles, which include the lack of interoperability of e-government, lack of resources and lack of management commitment. Therefore, the aim of this study is to define an e-government implementation framework for developing countries. The 12 critical success factors identified for developing countries were mapped to the variables of Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) Theory in order to create the proposed implementation framework. The framework was then applied in a single case study at a government department in South Africa (SA) where the opinions of 110 managers were collected through an on-line questionnaire. By considering the e-government implementation framework, government departments are guided and enabled to prioritise specific elements in their implementation plan focusing on improved e-government delivery.

The purpose of this study is to understand institutional effects on digital platform development and use for national health insurance in a developing country. Information systems research on digital platforms for the health sector has focused more on healthcare. Less research exists on health insurance. This study, therefore, addresses the research gap by focusing on digital platform for national health insurance service in a developing country. The study employs qualitative, interpretive case study as methodology and institutional theory as analytical lens to investigate regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive institutional effects on digital platform development and use for national health insurance in Ghana. The findings show the institutional enablers as: (1) health-seeking culture; (2) mobile network penetration and use; and (3) appropriate laws and regulations. Conversely, the constraints are (1) Unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) functionality; and (2) extended family system.

Innovation is important for development in the private sector, but inevitably public sector also needs innovation to enhance services and processes, with research on employee-driven digital innovation in public organizations being limited. We propose a study in a public organization based on action design research (ADR) methodology to enhance theoretical knowledge and develop practice in relation to employee-driven digital innovation. This research-in-progress study follows the divided stages of ADR, where the stage of problem formulation is to be conducted through semi-structured interviews. Findings from stage 1 will provide knowledge about the phenomenon with a public organization as a context and make up the problem definition within ADR. The stage of building, interventions and evaluation is to be conducted with interventions in focus groups where we will investigate how to increase adoption of employee-driven digital innovation and how introducing digital tools can support employee-driven digital innovation as an innovation practice. The study aims to contribute by creating general solution concepts about employee-driven digital innovation.

Challenges faced in public e-procurement implementation are not well understood despite past studies focusing on the phenomenon. This paper, which is based on a systematic literature review of academic papers, seeks to synthesize and examine the key challenges impeding public e-procurement implementation. These challenges are categorized using the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework as follows (1) Technological challenges: e-procurement acceptance and usage, disruptive innovation characteristic of e-procurement, use of digital signatures, security and privacy of technology and technical aspects of e-procurement (2) Organizational challenges: stakeholders’ behavior, leaders’ behavior, shortcomings in leadership, lack of training and skilled personnel, resistance to change, organizational power and politics and the creation of public value underlying e-procurement (3) Environmental/Contextual challenges: regulatory framework for public procurement, Small-and-Medium-Size Enterprise issues, and context of the country. Key e-procurement implementation challenges are grounded in human and contextual issues. So we recommend more case studies on public e-procurement implementation in the future.

The literature illustrates that technology will widen health disparity if its use is restricted to patients who are already motivated and demonstrate good self-management behaviours. Additionally, despite the availability of free mobile health (m-health) applications for diabetes self-management, usage is low. There are also limited studies of m-health acceptance in South Africa. This research is delineated to the Western Cape, South Africa. The populace suffers from increasing numbers of diabetic patients. Segments of the population also suffer from technological forms of exclusion, such as limited internet access. Therefore, the objective of this study was to identify challenges for user acceptance that discourages the use of m-health applications. This study analysed 130 semi-structured interviews, using thematic content analysis. Respondents were predominantly female with type 2 diabetes, older than 50, residing in the Western Cape. It used key constructs from the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model. The results confirmed that all four UTAUT constructs; performance expectancy (“the degree to which an individual believes that using the system will help him or her to attain gains in performance”), effort expectancy (“the degree of ease associated with the use of the system”, social influence (“the degree to which an individual perceives that important others believe he or she should use the new system”) and facilitating conditions (“the degree to which an individual believes that an organisational and technical infrastructure exists to support the use of the system”), explains the challenges for m-health acceptance in low socio-economic areas. Factors such as technology anxiety, resistance to change and a lack of trust in the use of devices for self-management need to be considered when implementing future interventions.

This research investigates the impact of socio-demographic factors such as age, gender, income and location on ICT acceptance for diabetes self-care. The investigation is due to the increasing number of diabetic patients in South Africa, where large segments of the population experience technological forms of exclusions. The context warrants research in geographical areas where ICT use is not pervasive yet. This research, used the UTAUT model with purposive sampling for 497 diabetic respondents, residing in low socio-economic communities. It analysed survey data using linear regression. It found that age had a strong moderating effect on all four UTAUT constructs. Gender only had a moderating effect on performance expectancy and social influence. In contrast to findings in the extant literature, income and location had no significant moderating effect in this context.

In low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs), community health workers (CHWs) are often seen as a connecting bridge between two dynamic and overlapping systems- the community and formal health systems. Although the importance of CHWs is acknowledged, there is minimal aggregated evidence contributing towards understanding their position, technological capabilities, barriers and facilitators of their effectiveness in the South African context. Despite the widespread enthusiasm around the potential that mobile health (mHealth) technology holds in extending healthcare through CHW to underserved communities, an understanding of mHealth’s various implications in a developing world context is imperative to appreciate both the community and health systems context. The CHWs within this context need to assume multiple roles as they work and live amongst and in the community. The study argues that by examining their multiple roles as part of the healthcare continuum and from within the community setting, appropriating technological solutions can be conceptualized to facilitate and enhance their impact and visibility. This research article then aims to articulate the key conceptual factors which should be considered when implementing technological solutions for CHWs within the South African context. The aim is operationalized by means of the best-fit framework synthesis method to explore the body of knowledge towards presenting a conceptual understanding through a categorization of Factors Influencing Community Health Workers from a Socio-Technical Systems Perspective.

The use of consumer wearable health device (CWHD) for fitness tracing has seen an upward trend worldwide. CWHDs support individuals in taking ownership of their personal well-being and keeping track of their fitness goals. However, there are genuine concerns over the accuracy of the data collected by these devices. In this study, we investigated the factors that influence the accuracy of the data collected by CWHDs for heart rate measurement, physical activity (PA), and sleep monitoring using a systematic literature review. Forty-seven papers were analyzed from five electronic databases based on specific inclusion and exclusion criteria. All 47 papers that we analyzed were published by authors from developed countries. Using thematic analysis, we classified the factors that influence the accuracy of the data collected by CWHDs into three main groups, namely (i) the tracker and sensor type, (ii) the algorithm used in the device, and (iii) the limitation in the design, energy consumption, and processing capability of the device. The research results point to a dearth of studies that focus on the accuracy of the data collected by CWHDs by researchers from developing countries.

Studies have shown that daily exercise has a positive effect on the prevention of heart disease. However, many South Africans do not have a healthy lifestyle. Some forms of gamification have been applied in health-related programmes in South Africa such as Multiply’s Active Dayz™ and Discovery’s Active rewards. This study looks at the motivational aspects of gamification in healthcare. It investigates the impact of gamification on clients’ use of activity rewards programmes, and aims to identify the core motivational factors that would drive people in South Africa to improve their health through exercise. We use Yu-Kai Chou’s Octalysis framework of motivation in gamification as guide. The results show that time is a barrier for engaging in exercise, rewards programmes lead to more health check-ups, knowing the benefits of exercise not enough motivation to engage in exercise, and members of rewards programmes have different motivational factors for their behaviour than non-members.

The process of extricating relationships and interchanges via visual mapping refers to Social Network Analysis (SNA). Through social network and graph theory lenses, this study explore Twitter data shortly after the announcement of the National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill to the South African parliament. An instrumental, single case study design and SNA secured contextual and timely Twitter interchanges of 4 112 tweets of the hashtag “NHI”. Given the growing call for the comprehension of social media network interactions in different contexts, this paper use the underutilized tool for social media analytics, ‘Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel Pro’ (NodeXL Pro) to extract and visually present knowledge from pairwise relations between actors in the #NHI social media network. The findings explain the data dispersion and network structure of the #NHI case. The results clearly identifies the influencers – mostly the South African government, specific Twitter users and gatekeepers in the announcement of a highly controversial healthcare bill that will affect all South African citizens. The paper contributes theoretically by adding graph theory to the social media research field and to a less studied social media research cluster, namely social media during critical events. The practical contribution of the study is the use of NodeXL Pro, a unique SNA tool for advanced social media crawling, SNA and advanced network metric analysis.

Cyber-harassment victimization is one of today’s major problems affecting the wellbeing of youth, particularly those that identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, intersex, asexual and gender non-conforming (LGBTQIA+). This exploratory study aims to determine the nature of cyber-harassment victimization, its enablers, and the coping mechanisms that online platforms provide to prevent or stop cyber-harassment. An online survey of ninety (n = 90) LGBTQIA+ young adults of ages between 18 and 34 from South Africa reveals a high incidence of exclusion, outing and harassment, covering a wide variety of types, duration and experienced severity, taking place through text messaging and social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Most LGBTQIA+ youth resort to measures such as blocking, deleting offensive content and adjusting privacy settings to cope with cyber-victimization. Worryingly, the most severe effects of harassment such as depression, drug abuse, self-harm and suicide contemplation, have significant correlations with the harassment type used, harassment duration and harassment frequency. The paper discusses the implications for educational and social practice and future studies.

This study measures the influence of fear of financial loss (FOFL), fear of reputational damage (FORD), with the mediating effect of online security and privacy concern (OSPCON) towards online purchase intentions in an emerging economy’s context. Data was conveniently collected from University students of four of the public higher institutions in Ghana. Out of the 201 questionnaires distributed, 179 were eligible for analysis. A Quantitative methodological approach was adopted which relied on the Partial Least Square approach to Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) for the statistical analysis. Seemingly, FOFL and FORD constructs were not seen to be a significant direct predictor of online purchase intention. However, the mediating effect of OSPCON for both FOFL and FORD towards online purchase intention in the Ghanaian context was found to be significant, hence the mediated-hypotheses were supported. Nonetheless, we have highlighted the need for additional and further research taking a cue from the study’s limitations. The study contributes to our knowledge of how online identity theft practices lead to the unwillingness of online customers to embark on online transactions in an emerging economy, given the rampant outburst of online transactions in the developed world. The originality of this study is in the fact that it focuses on an emerging economy, which is under-researched.

Publicly-available mobile data can be used to derive fine grain commuting and travel patterns. These types of data include geocoded or geotagged discrete units of communication: messages, posts, tweets, status updates, check-ins, images and the like on a variety of social networking services. Clearly, there are ethical issues concerning the use of such data, particularly the invasion of privacy. A review of the literature has been done to explore these issues.

In an increasingly digitally connected world researchers have sought to understand behaviour associated with digital communications media. We argue that a more consistent conceptualisation of media use behaviour and its etiological foundations is a necessary basis for research in this regard to progress. To this end, through the adoption of an affordances approach, we propose the Media Use Behaviour Conceptual Framework to describe the reciprocal relations between users (described in relation to personal characteristics and cognitive factors), the situations (consisting of social, physical, and technological dimensions) in which they use media, their media use behaviour, and the outcomes (both realised and expected) of this behaviour. This framework seeks to integrate the behaviourist and cognitivist approaches to action and, additionally, acknowledges the socially constructed and deterministic role of media in action. It is argued that such a framework will provide a useful basis upon which researchers can consider various individual differences in observed media use behaviours and associated outcomes and, importantly, understand why particular media use behaviours occur.

In this paper we explore the use of four metaphors as a means to illuminate particular dimensions of social media logic—the norms, strategies, and economics underpinning its dynamics. Our objective is to utilise metaphor to instigate critical reflection about the nature of social media use behaviour and the role of habitual social media use in our experiences of reality. The first metaphor, social media as a town square, draws attention to the centrality of social media platforms in their users’ lives, fear of missing out, augmented reality and digital dualism. Through the second metaphor, social media as a beauty pageant, we explore self-presentation or image crafting, social comparison and self-evaluation. The third metaphor, social media as a parliament, emphasises the role of social media platforms as spaces for online deliberation and we consider social media capital, homophily and polarisation as themes. Finally, we explore anonymity, deindividuation and deceptive self-presentation through our fourth metaphor, social media as a masquerade ball. We argue that social media scholars can use these and other metaphors to enhance communication of their research findings. Additionally, we believe that social media metaphors can be powerful pedagogical and communication tools, particularly when working with students for whom high levels of social media use is the norm.

The prevalence of unverified information on the internet and the associated potential adverse effect on society led to the development of a number of models and theories to assess the credibility of online information. Existing research consists of two diverse approaches: the first consists of checklist approaches or normative guidelines on how to assess the information whereas the second provides descriptive models and theories of how users actually go about when assessing credibility. The above mentioned approaches consider aspects related to the presentation and content of the information. However, the reasoning in the content is not a concern that is covered in these approaches. Critical thinking is considered an increasingly important 21st century work place skill. This paper investigates the potential value of using critical thinking in assessing the credibility of online information. The paper commences with an overview of existing approaches for assessing the credibility of online information. It then argues that the presence of a well-developed argument in online information to be an indication of credibility. Critical thinking also helps to evaluate the credibility of evidence. These thinking skills can be developed through training. It is shown how a group of first year Information Systems students were able to more critically engage with the content of online news after a course on critical thinking. This paper contributes to the literature on the assessment of the credibility of online information.

Increasingly, research attention is being afforded to various forms of problematic media use. Despite ongoing conceptual, theoretical, and empirical debates, a large number of retrospective self-report scales have been produced to ostensibly measure various classes of such behaviour. These scales are typically based on a variety of theoretical and diagnostic frameworks. Given current conceptual ambiguities, building on previous studies, we evaluated the dimensional structure of 50 scales targeting the assessment of supposedly problematic behaviours in relation to four technologies: Internet, smartphones, video games, and social network sites. We find that two dimensions (‘compulsive use’ and ‘negative outcomes’) account for over 50% of all scale-items analysed. With a median of five dimensions, on average, scales have considered fewer dimensions than various proposed diagnostic criteria and models. No relationships were found between the number of items in a scale and the number of dimensions, or the technology category and the dimensional structure. The findings indicate, firstly, that a majority of scales place an inordinate emphasis on some dimensions over others and, secondly, that despite differences in the items presented, at a dimensional level, there exists a high degree of similarity between scales. These findings highlight shortcomings in existing scales and underscore the need to develop more sophisticated conceptions and empirical tools to understand possible problematic interactions with various digital technologies.

In this systematic literature review, a study of the factors involved in the spreading of fake news, have been provided. In this review, the root causes of the spreading of fake news are identified to reduce the encouraging of such false information. To combat the spreading of fake news on social media, the reasons behind the spreading of fake news must first be identified. Therefore, this literature review takes an early initiative to identify the possible reasons behind the spreading of fake news. The purpose of this literature review is to identify why individuals tend to share false information and to possibly help in detecting fake news before it spreads.

With the large amount of news currently being published online, the ability to evaluate the credibility of online news has become essential. While there are many studies involving fake news and tools on how to detect it, there is a limited amount of work that focuses on the use of information literacy to assist people to critically access online information and news. Critical thinking, as a form of information literacy, provides a means to critically engage with online content, for example by looking for evidence to support claims and by evaluating the plausibility of arguments. The purpose of this study is to investigate the current state of knowledge on the use of critical thinking to identify fake news. A systematic literature review (SLR) has been performed to identify previous studies on evaluating the credibility of news, and in particular to see what has been done in terms of the use of critical thinking to evaluate online news. During the SLR’s sifting process, 22 relevant studies were identified. Although some of these studies referred to information literacy, only three explicitly dealt with critical thinking as a means to identify fake news. The studies on critical thinking noted critical thinking as an essential skill for identifying fake news. The recommendation of these studies was that information literacy be included in academic institutions, specifically to encourage critical thinking.

The emergence of Citizen Relationship Management (CzRM) for government plays a central role in developing citizen relationships and e-participation. As such, the South African government has shown its commitment towards citizenry and the provision of effective service delivery. Social Media Analytics (SMA) has emerged as a potential new solution to support decision-making for service delivery in CzRM. It is believed that the demand for SMA adoption will increasingly rise. However, the reality of social media Big Data comes with the challenges of analysing it in a way that brings Big Value. The purpose of this paper is to identify the challenges of social media Big Data Analytics (BDA) and to incorporate these in a conceptual model that can be used by governments to support the e-participation of citizens. The model was developed through a systematic literature review (SLR). The findings revealed that data challenges relate to designing an optimal architecture for analysing data that caters for both historic data and real-time data at the same time. The paper highlight that process challenges relate to all the activities in the data lifecycle such as data acquisition and warehousing; data mining and cleaning; data aggregation and integration; analysis and modelling; and data interpretation. The paper also identifies six types of data management challenges: privacy, security, data governance, data and information sharing, cost/operational expenditures, and data ownership.

There is growing evidence that visualization aids knowledge transfer. However, the cases where learners have been actively involved as co-creators of knowledge visualization aids are limited. Furthermore, employing knowledge visualization for teaching and learning in high-school science have been proposed but empirical evidence of the effect on knowledge transfer is limited. The purpose of this study is to report on the knowledge transfer effect of applying usability-based knowledge visualization guidelines. A design-based research methodology guided by pragmatism was applied. The data capturing methods include a questionnaire-based survey, interviews and observations. The results suggest that the use of knowledge visualization can support knowledge transfer and the students’ learning experience in secondary school education, but more research is required to confirm this. The contribution of this paper is to add to the emerging discourse on the use of knowledge visualization for teaching and learning, and to report on how knowledge visualization guidelines can be used in practice.

Organisations are increasingly outsourcing information systems (IS) to external service providers. These IS outsourcing decisions are driven by multiple organisational factors such as outsource vendor expertise and knowledge, process performance improvement due to better IS, and enabling the organisation’s ability to focus on its core capabilities. In order to harnass such vendor knowledge to achieve business outcomes, the importance of a shared knowledge asset base, between the client organisation and outsource vendor, is emphasised. However, outcomes from IS outsourcing remain poor despite consideration of experience and research. Therefore, the aim of this study is to design and propose a knowledge asset management implementation framework that may be applied in IS outsourcing projects. The proposed framework was evaluated by an experienced programme director and its applicability was tested against a large scale IS outsourcing project. The purpose of such a framework is to enable organisations to manage and institutionalise knowledge assets that are created during the IS outsourcing project and to ensure that the organisation may gain the benefit from such knowledge assets as an outcome of the IS outsourcing arrangement.

Revolutionary advances in science and technology enables organisations to apply and optimise a world of visual and experiential learning in order to enhance the skills and knowledge of their employees. Furthermore, the volume and complexity of knowledge and information are such that unless a reporting structure is overlaid upon it, it may remain meaningless. Knowledge visualisation uses graphical representations to convey organisational knowledge, enabling employees to share and recall relevant knowledge. However, in order to assist organisations to create and transfer knowledge more effectively through knowledge visualisation, the aim of this study is to provide a conceptual knowledge visualisation framework for the transfer of knowledge for organisations. A conceptual knowledge visualisation framework was designed through a systematic literature review process where 15 organisational knowledge visualisation elements were identified. The 15 elements were grouped and presented in a 4-layered, embedded conceptual framework that organisations may apply to their knowledge visualisation efforts. By using such a framework, organisations may optimise learning and improve knowledge and skills of its employees.

Inequalities exist and persist in society in different forms and are often areas of prime concern for governments and policy makers around the globe. One such inequality that plagues societies is the rural-urban divide. Several social entrepreneurs are attempting to leverage technology to bridge this divide. In our research-in-progress paper, we describe the case of an Indian company, which is leveraging technology to create knowledge-based jobs for the rural Indian population. The approach adopted by the company in initiating and sustaining such an effort was an inside-out approach in contrast to the usual approach of focusing only on the internal resources within the company. Specifically, our research aims at abstracting the process mechanisms that enabled such an initiative. The unearthed mechanisms would inform future research on the modalities for orchestrating such an initiative. The findings would also help practitioners, especially social entrepreneurs, to think of innovative business models that would create value not only for the company but also for society as a whole. The delineated learnings would also help enthused social entrepreneurs to transplant such initiatives to other regions of the world.

The dearth of Information Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure in the Sub-Saharan Africa region underscores the argument that the spread of broadband infrastructure can foster internet adoption in the region. Consequently, the aim of this paper is to present results on the determinants of internet adoption in a sub-Saharan African country. Drawing on a dataset of households in Nigeria, this study presents findings on the demographic, socio-economic and infrastructure factors that predict internet usage in Nigeria. The novelty of our analysis stems from a unique dataset constructed by matching geo-referenced information from an inventory of network equipment to a nationally representative street-level survey of over 20,000 Nigerians, by far one of the largest technology adoption surveys in sub-Saharan Africa to date within the information systems literature. The results are discussed and concluding remarks highlighting next steps are made.

The rollout of mobile banking has taken over the traditional banking space in both developed and developing countries. Banking institutions are continuously seeking innovative digital solutions to stay ahead of competitors and be the first preference to consumers. Scholars have also shown some interest in investigating mobile commerce and banking implementation and adoption. However, research studies focusing on the elderly and mobile banking are scant. This paper seeks to understand the current state of knowledge regarding the enablers and barriers of mobile banking and commerce among the elderly by providing a systematic review of the existing literature on the phenomenon.The literature review showed that there is minimal research to date that has been conducted on this topic of interest. Consequently, issues of investigating enablers and barriers of mobile banking among the elderly have been fairly neglected. The main barriers noted in the literature include: security concerns, trust and privacy, a lack of personalization and limited technical knowledge of the elderly. Significant enablers that may be considered are: perceived ease of use of mobile banking applications, perceived value, convenience and consumer attitudes. Future directions for research and practice on mobile banking for the elderly are suggested.

In this article we describe a methodology, and its evaluation, for achieving technical competence through digital literacy training using self-learning training material. The key component is self-learning in the sense that the targeted population learns digital operational skills without the need of a teacher. This is achieved through the adaptation of the training material to the trained group. As training groups are diverse, e.g., including both populations in developing and developed countries, and varying in age aspects, gender, languages, literacy levels and technological literacy levels, materials and the speed which training takes place has to be adapted to take into account these differences. The methodology involves use of training videos, and use a dual screen approach where training material is shown on one screen and training takes place on a second screen (computer). The approach has been evaluated in both developing countries and developed countries, with training groups of different capabilities and backgrounds (in Kenya, El Salvador, Spain, France and The Netherlands), with promising results.

Foreign aid serves as an important source of capital for any developing or under-developed country. It is very important to see how the recipient country can utilize this aid in the economic upliftment of the nation. Taking a case of Nepalese economy, this paper investigates the effectiveness of foreign aid in developing countries. The result from Johansen’s cointegration test reveals that foreign aid independently is not adequate for the economic growth. Increased capital and technological infrastructures, improved skills on human capital, on the other hand, significantly changes the result for the positive aid impact on growth in the long run. Therefore, we can conclude that a good policy environment helps increase the aid effectiveness. However, the prevailing trade policy in the country is negatively affecting the aid effectiveness due to the extremely increased trade deficit. In the short-run, there is a negative impact of aid on growth.

Skilled Information Technology (IT) professionals are essential to support businesses and the economy. Businesses increasingly require more qualified IT professionals, be they male or female. In South Africa, the number of women professionals participating in the IT industry is less than 20%. A number of factors influence women’s IT career choices, such as previous programming exposure, parents, teachers and role models. Research suggests that there are gender differences in preferences and beliefs that may affect career choices, including cultural influences. The role of culture in women’s IT career decisions has not been extensively explored in South Africa. The aim of this exploratory study was to determine if the factor, Culture influences women’s IT career choices in South Africa. An on-line survey was conducted amongst women IT professionals in South Africa to determine the factors that influenced their IT career choices. The data from the survey were analysed using Exploratory Factor Analysis. The results, specifically relating to the factor Culture, are reported in this paper. The findings indicate that the factor Culture plays an important role when women make IT career choices as well as when females decide to remain in an IT career. The study found that culture does play a significant role in IT career decisions for different ethnic groups in South Africa. The findings suggest that efforts must be made to educate young women in computational thinking and expose them to the many career opportunities available for women in the IT industry.

Although young adults familiar with digital technology join the workforce and bring in more advanced digital competences, the demand for digital competences in many industries increases even faster. In this study, we place the focus on the banking industry in the United Kingdom and aim for exploring those digital competences that are required for junior financial analysts. For this purpose, we apply a qualitative research approach which consists of two steps. First, we analyze job advertisements and code the identified competences by using the DigComp 2.0 framework. Second, we conduct interviews to validate and discuss our findings from the previous step. Our analysis reveals that the most important required competence categories are information and data literacy, followed by digital content creation. This paper contributes to the research field of digital competences and provides relevant insights for, amongst others, applicants, HR professionals, and training and education providers.

There is diversity in understanding of electronic recruitment (e-recruitment) which results in confusion on the meaning and use of the term. The purpose of this paper is to bring conceptual clarity by investigating the alternative conceptualizations of e-recruitment in academic literature. Using Grounded Theory Methodology (GTM) techniques we analyzed literature to reveal five alternative conceptualizations; these being: (1) E-recruitment as a Technology Tool, (2) E-recruitment as a System, (3) E-recruitment as a Process, (4) E-recruitment as a Service, and (5) E-recruitment as a Proxy. The conceptualizations map to the scope of the definition and utilization of e-recruitment. Identifying conceptualizations of e-recruitment sets a platform for further research. Further research may include determining the relationships between the conceptualizations and determining conceptualizations in different settings among many other possible research focus topics.

This study aims to bridge the digital gender divide in information and communication technology (ICT) education and field by reflecting the alumni opinions on gender equality in the ICT context. The study aims to raise the awareness of gender equality issues through the work-life reflections. This is done to understand better the gender equality issue, and to give proposals to promoting equality also for the faculty members who teach ICT related subjects in the university. The data for the study was collected from 131 (n = 131) ICT alumni that represent 25 nationalities. Results reveal that men with 77% share dominate the closest supervisor positions and 14% of the previous ICT students in the university have felt some kind of gender-based discrimination in their work. The data-driven content analysis was used to analyze the data. In the analysis we found five main categories behind the gender-based discrimination: society, organizational; individual action; hard facts and zero. We argue, that society, organizational, and individual action proposals illustrate the digital transformation process.

This paper focuses on how populations by the use of technology, more specifically an app, can comprehend the enactment of ordinances (local laws) in an urban area along with their public reactions expressed as tweets. Furthermore, they can understand how well the area is developing and enhancing as a Smart City. The main goal of this research is to develop an Ordinance-Tweet Mining App that disseminates the results of analyzing ordinances and tweets about them, especially related to Smart City Characteristics such as Smart Environment, Smart Mobility etc. This app would be beneficial to various users such as environmental scientists, policy makers, city committees as well as the common public in becoming more aware of legislative bodies, and possibly contributing in different aspects to make the urban area improve as a Smart City. This work fits the realm of Smart Governance due to transparency via public involvement.

Good medication adherence is directly proportional to good health recovery and general improvement of a patient’s health condition. Although many good medication adherence monitoring methods/techniques exist, the level of medication adherence for some chronic diseases by patients in rural settings is still suboptimal. Hence, the need for healthcare organisations to devise viable governance frameworks that will facilitate effective medication adherence monitoring and improved adherence by patients. This paper presents the conceptual overview of a governance framework for medication adherence monitoring and improvement that enables the collaboration of multiple stakeholders and data analytics (MUCODAF) in support of the patient in the treatment journey. The framework allows relevant stakeholders such as Healthcare workers (HCW), family members, and close friends to collaborate in support of a patient through the engagement of critical human factors such as empathy, motivation, encouragement, flexibility, and negotiation. The use cases of the framework, its technical composition, and the implementation plan are discussed in this paper. A concrete example of the application of the governance framework for medication adherence monitoring and improvement for a Tuberculosis patient in the African Country of Lesotho is presented to highlight the plausibility of the framework.

An objectives of good governance is to increase capital base of small scale businesses (SSB) in order to encourage more investments and hence increase employment rate. Embracing good financial inclusion (FI) schemes in a country helps to ensure that entrepreneurs of SSB have access to financial services and hence meet their needs. In this paper we studied FI scheme in Kingdom of Eswatini with the view to establish the extent to which SSB have access to funds in running their businesses such that they could satisfy the target population and meet their desired goals. We got FI dataset for Eswatini for 2018 from Finscope database. Finscope 2018 dataset contains 1385 attributes with 2928 records. This study extracted attributes based on payment channel, registered/unregistered business, usage of commercial banks/insurance/mobile money and source of income for households from the Finscope database. We identified lot of missing data and hence replaced them using Mode method of preprocessing module in WEKA. We split the datasets and carried out cross validation on it. Training data is 80% of the datasets and 20% was used for testing. We carefully classified FI for selected parameters for Hhohho, Manzini, Shiselweni and Lubombo regions of Eswatini using Logistic regression with 80% for training and 10 fold cross-validation. The best 10 fold cross-validation recall rate for Manzini region using support vector machine (SVM) is 69.4% and 63.4% using logistic regression. These results show that veracity of FI dataset is weak and this is due to large number of missing data.

This study examines how quickly we can predict users’ ratings on visual aesthetics in terms of simplicity, diversity, colorfulness, craftsmanship. To predict users’ ratings, first we capture gaze behavior while looking at high, neutral, and low visually appealing websites, followed by a survey regarding user perceptions on visual aesthetics towards the same websites. We conduct an experiment with 23 experienced users in online shopping, capture gaze behavior and through employing machine learning we examine how fast we can accurately predict their ratings. The findings show that after 25 s we can predict ratings with an error rate ranging from 9% to 11% depending on which facet of visual aesthetic is examined. Furthermore, within the first 15 s we can have a good and sufficient prediction for simplicity and colorfulness, with error rates 11% and 12% respectively. For diversity and craftsmanship, 20 s are needed to get a good and sufficient prediction similar to the one from 25 s. The findings indicate that we need more than 10 s of viewing time to be able to accurately capture perceptions on visual aesthetics. The study contributes by offering new ways for designing systems that will take into account users’ gaze behavior in an unobtrusive manner and will be able inform researchers and designers about their perceptions of visual aesthetics.

In this study, 20 papers were reviewed to identify means, methods, techniques, tools or other interventions that practitioners may use to positively influence the affective state of users of digital interactive technologies. A systematic literature review was conducted in order to find such interventions. A literature background covering concepts from the fields of Human-computer interaction, as well as certain concepts from the field of psychology that is relevant to this study is provided. Search criteria were determined and used to identify research papers from various academic resources. Four categories of intervention categories were identified from the papers reviewed, which can be applied to interactive digital technologies by practitioners in order to evoke positive affect on users. These four categories were aesthetics, affective computing, need fulfilment and novel interaction techniques. The identified categories for practitioners were consolidated alongside metadata such as the types of publications of the reviewed papers, the regions the studies were conducted and the growth in the number of studies.

The usability of customer facing software interfaces is a source of competitive advantage for organisations. The usability of systems has also shown to encourage the effective and efficient completion of tasks and in consequence, operations. Furthermore, competitive analysis of the usability of software products has been shown to be a useful tool in the adoption of the user centred design philosophy within organisations. However, low adoption of usability evaluation is prevalent due to a lack of methodologies to support organisations in their endeavours to achieve better usability. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to present a methodology to compare the usability of information systems. By using such a methodology, organisations will be able to gauge the standard of the usability of their information systems, by comparing it to others.