Creating a Development Dynamic: Final Report of the Digital Opportunity Initiative

While the influx of digital innovation and new ICTs have allowed for unprecedented human development in the past few decades, it has also widened the digital divide between technologically advanced nations and impoverished nations. The development debate regarding ICTs has shifted from focusing on trade-offs to complementary. The Digital Opportunity Initiative (DOI) is a partnership focusing on harnessing ICTs to reduce inequality and encourage development for all. ICTs not only benefit development, but also help countries reach goals in other sectors such as political stability, infrastructure, literacy, employment, education, and health care by improving social and economic networks through faster communication and information exchange. The role of ICT in development has shown that export focuses do not automatically translate into broader development progress, building domestic ICT production capacity can restrict countries' competitive advantage in the global economy, using ICT for a developing country's competitive advantage can ignore local markets, and that successful national ICT strategies rely on global, local, and national coordination. Examines the use of ICT for development in the following fields: health, education, economic opportunity, empowerment and participation, and environment. Also examines lessons learned from particular interventions and various national ICT approaches. Considers the following components of a development dynamic: infrastructure, human capacity, policy, enterprise, and content and applications.