Information Communication Technologies and Human Development

Technology has always played a decisive role in humanity's progress, although the positive impacts technology has on human development may become tainted by the risks it entails. Information Communication Technologies and Human Development: Opportunities and Challenges emphasizes the need to consider the geographic, historic, and cultural context of an information communication technology (ICT) for development initiative, and includes several real examples that show some of the key success factors that have to be taken into consideration when using ICTs for development. Information Communication Technologies and Human Development: Opportunities and Challenges is a tool for practitioners, providing a wide knowledge of several important ICTs for development experiences that have been conducted all over the developing world.

Mila Gascó holds a MBA (Escuela Superior de Administración y Dirección de Empresas ESADE) and a Ph. D. in public policy evaluation (Award Enric Prat de la Riba granted to the best Ph. D. thesis on public management and administration, given by the Escola d Administració Pública de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain). She is a senior analyst at the International Institute on Governance of Catalonia and an associate professor at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia). Dr. Gascó has also collaborated with several institutions such as the provincial government of Barcelona (Diputació de Barcelona), the World Bank Development Gateway, the United Nations Program for Development, the University of Hull in United Kingdom, the Mayor s Office in Valencia (Venezuela) or the Governments of Brazil and Dominican Republic. Her main interests are related to public policies that allow the transition of a society to the so-called knowledge era (in particular she is interested in e-government and e-governance), to the use of ICTs for human development and to public policy evaluation. Fran Equiza is the Director of International Cooperation of Intermón-Oxfam, the biggest Spanish NGO for development. He holds a MBA (Escuela Superior de Administración y Dirección de Empresas ESADE), a Master in Applied Economics Analysis (Pompeu Fabra University), a Master in Information and Knowledge Society Studies (Open University of Catalonia), and an Advanced Studies Diploma in Political Science (Open University of Catalonia). He has been the Vice-President of the Society for International Development in Catalonia, the Director of Educación sin Fronteras (Education without Borders) and the Director of the International Institute on Governance as well as the Director of Human Resources and Internal Organization of Intermón-Oxfam and the Executive Assistant to the General Director of the latter. He has a vast consulting, teaching and writing experience on iss