Egypt's Information Society Strategy: A Critical Lexicography.
The development of ICT policies within developing countries in the past ten years has opened up a new area for study. These documents chart the ambitions of the countries for the use of ICT to promote rapid development. As such they are intercultural documents, developing at the interface between the culture of the country and western economic culture. This paper develops a critical approach to understanding these documents and studying their message. The approach involves the preparation of a critical dictionary which identifies relevant terms within the ICT policy document and reflects on their multiple meanings. The approach was applied to an Egyptian ICT policy document, Building Digital Bridges. A dictionary of thirty seven entries was developed. The dictionary, presented in full in an appendix, was used to identify critical themes in the document. INTRODUCTION Developing countries place a high premium on the potential of ICT to enable their development. National ICT policies, information and communication ministry websites, and speeches by presidents, ministers, and western institutions (Thompson, 2005) all extol the value of ICT in triggering markets, empowering citizens and moving their countries away from poverty towards the knowledge based economies they see modeled in the West. However, such lofty visions of an ICT enabled economy seem far removed from the situationon the ground, where a majority of the population may live in rural poverty, dependent on subsistence agriculture and without the basic infrastructure of roads, electricity and telecommunications. In Mozambique, for example, 71% live rurally with no infrastructure, in a country devastated by years of independence war and civil war, crippled by floods and droughts, and inhibited by bureaucratic structures from its socialist past. Despite of this, Mozambican ICT policy aims to guarantee citizens access to the benefits of global knowledge and make Mozambique a competitive partner in the global information society (Eesselar et al. 2001) The Zimbabwean National ICT Policy Framework calls for the use of ICT to support sustainable socio economic growth (Zimbabwe, 2005) in a country with soaring inflation and basic food shortages. N. McBride B. C. Stahl 2009 Volume 18, Number 1 2 Indeed, for a majority of African states, there is a significant gap between the ideals of the policy makers and the reality of everyday life and communication. The same may be true for western industrialized countries. However, the rhetoric of ICT in developing countries, as expressed in ICT policy documents, may be written with the help of Western IT consultants, or at least with an eye on a Western audience. As such, ICT policy documents are intercultural, expressing the western oriented aspirations of the country under the influence of a developing country's social, economic and political landscape. Studies are needed which expose the intercultural elements of such key ICT policy documents, to bring into relief the contrast between the meaning of such documents to the developing country and the implied or explicit western oriented meaning. This paper seeks to do that for one key document, an information society strategy document for Egypt, published in 2003. To achieve this, we apply a critical approach which seeks to tease out underlying meaning and reflect on themes within a critical framework which considers issues of empowerment, emancipation and control, and references ideas enunciated by Habermas (1987) The authors evolve a critical approach which involves extracting key terms and phrases in the document and investigating the meaning which can be derived internally from the document and comparing this meaning with ones which are generally accepted. We call this approach critical lexicography because the output is a dictionary of terms which can be used to sensitize the reader to the possible meanings and implications of the studied document and can provide a means of interpreting other documents. The authors make no attempt to examine any changes that might have occurred on the ground in the country as a result of the strategy, although we do reflect on the relationship of the studied document to the current (2007 2010) ICT strategy for the country. Rather we provide a critically interpreted reading of the document which could be used in studying changes in the field as well as being applied to other documents. The paper is structured in four sections. Firstly, we focus on the target document, 'Bridging the Digital Divide, Egypt's Information Society Strategy' The reasons for selecting this document are discussed. Egypt was selected because its policies are quite advanced and Egypt's ICT policy is used as a model by other countries such as Mozambique and Rwanda. There is a small but significant IS literature concerning Egypt (Shoib Jones, 2003) and an implementation of an information system derived from government policy has been studied over a number of years (Nidumolu et al. 1996; Elbeltagi et al. 2005) The discussion requires an overview of relevance of national ICT policies, a focus on Egypt's ICT history, which sets the context for the document and an overview of the structure of the document. Next, the process of developing a critical dictionary is discussed. That process is set in the context of the critical research paradigm. Thirdly, the resulting critical dictionary is examined. Some sample entries are discussed, and the entire dictionary of 39 terms is presented as an appendix. Finally, themes and conclusions are drawn from the dictionary and the process of creating the dictionary. Egypt's Information Society Strategy Journal of International Technology and Information Management 3 NATIONAL ICT POLICIES National ICT policies are developed by a majority of developing countries. According to the Economic Commission for Africa, in September 2005, 30 African countries had national ICT policies, 11 were developing them and only 6 countries had not started a development process (Economic Commission for Africa, 2005) The production of ICT policies is a recent initiative. Zambia's draft policy was launched in December 2003, Tanzania's dates from March 2003, Madagascar's dates from January 2004 and Zimbabwe's appeared in December 2005. ICT Policy is seen as a key initiative at the highest level of many African governments. Coming out of science and technology or communications and transport ministries, the policies represent the country's ambitions in using ICT to catalyze development. They indicate, at least, a knowledge of concepts such as digital divides and some understanding of the barriers to ICT spread represented by large rural populations living in dire poverty. They express the vision that the usage and spread of ICT will enable a shift from a predominately agricultural economy to a knowledge intensive economy. The Rwandan ICT policy, for example, identifies ICT as an engine for accelerated development and economic growth, national prosperity and global competitiveness (Rwanda, 2006) These documents are targeted at a wide audience. Although often focused on informing the higher ministers of government, they are generally made available through the Internet and sometimes publicized at a national level. THE BUILDING DIGITAL BRIDGES DOCUMENT The Egyptian ICT manifesto, 'Building Digital Bridges: Egypt's Vision of the Information Society' (MCIT, 2003) which is the subject of analysis in this paper, is one of many African ICT policies documents. Containing 90 pages, it was produced by the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in 2003 and is the central document for analysis in this study. Following a brief introduction, which sets the scene and justifies the document's approach through statements concerning the critical nature of ICT, the document seeks to connect the information society and goals of Egyptian development through a listing of the strategic challenges. These lead to seven sections, one on each of seven bridges. In each bridge, the objectives are stated and the challenges explored. A statement of the current position regarding each bridge, with examples, leads to a statement of the way forward. The strategy ends with a statement of Egypt's position in relation to the global information society. As such, the document provides a rich source of ideas and comments which highlight significant areas of concern in ICT usage in developing countries, and are reflected across Africa. The document provides a snapshot in time. It represents not only the views of the politicians and external consultants, but also the view expected to be promulgated at an international level. It is Egypt's ambition as to what the international view should be. As such it should not be taken as an objective reality, but a text which should be subjected to hermeneutical analysis which takes into account the context and history. N. McBride B. C. Stahl 2009 Volume 18, Number 1 4 It stands out because of its influence on the ICT policy of other African countries and its role in the development of the World Summits on the Information Society. The document highlights the digital divide and then charts seven bridges Egypt is building to cross the digital divide. The bridges are: E Readiness Equal access for all; E Learning Nurturing Human Capital; E Government Government Now Delivers; E Business A New Way of Doing Business; E Health Increasing Health Services Availability; E Culture Promoting Egyptian Culture; ICT Export Initiative Industry Development. These are documented with policy guidelines, challenges, proposed solutions, current position (where we are today) and future plans (the way ahead) For example, E readiness highlights the need for awareness of ICT and affordability. It charts a free Internet initiative, started in 2002, the provision of PCs at low cost (A Computer for Every Home) describes the formation of