Information communication technologies as enabler for rural development
2017
Meijere, S., Riga Technical Univ. (Latvia) | Tambovceva, T., Riga Technical Univ. (Latvia)
Many researches show that there exit both – economic and digital divide among cities and rural areas that leads even to higher extent disadvantages of the population living in rural areas. A lot of research has been done in the field of Information Communication Technologies (ICT) as a tool to reduce / eliminate the differences among cities and rural areas. The goal of this paper is to show successful implementations of ICT solutions to enable rural area development. The paper is based on the extensive literature and case study review, a survey conducted among Small Business (SB) representatives in rural areas of Latvia, interviews with key stakeholders and author`s own experience in working in ICT sector for 15 years. Results of the research done by the authors show that ICT can be very beneficial and powerful tool for facilitating development of rural areas, particularly in the sectors of e commerce, e health, e government services and the most important – (distant/remote) education, training, information and expertise exchange, experience sharing, communication and society engagement. Nevertheless, important are the lessons learned from the case studies what obstacles can be taken into consideration to avoid poor implementation of ICT projects and solutions that won`t help to reach the desired goal.
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