These days there are a lot of methodologies which can be used for IS/ICT implementation projects. Apart from traditional rigorous methodologies such as Rational Unified Process (RUP), there are also agile methodologies, which are characterized by positive approach to change and iterative development with very short iterations. One of these methodologies is OpenUP, which combines both agile and rigorous principles. OpenUP covers the most important factors necessary to focus on during software development, but on the other hand it also respects the fact that each project is unique. That is why it offers the possibility to extend or customize its content for specific requirements. The main objective of this diploma is to localize and customize OpenUP methodology for the projects which are running within the courses of software engineering at the University of Economics in Prague. The result if this customization and localization is a methodology suitable for small software projects called MMSP. This diploma also pursues other objectives like to find and characterize tools suitable for administration and customization of the methodology. These objectives were achieved by deep analysis of various sources about OpenUP methodology, information system development projects and methodologies of IS/ICT development. The resulting methodology was not only based on these information but it also results from experiences and best practices from the projects at the University of Economics in Prague and from consultations with experts in practice. The key benefit of this diploma is a complete Czech localized methodology MMSP which can be used both for school and real projects of IS/ICT development. MMSP is available in a form that can be easily embraced, further customized and administrated.

Technological initiatives should be contextualized in the social, cultural and economic sectors. As information and communications technologies (ICT) have evolved with the process of globalization, ICT has played a significant role in supporting the development for both the marginal group and developing countries. In spite of the increasing numbers of ICT development projects, there is a lack of the robust research and evaluation regarding to ICT project outcomes. This study attempts to examine the ICT projects carried out in the Aboriginals community in Taiwan. Drawing the attention to the issues of power, identity, culture, and society, the postcolonial perspective is adopted. As the nature of the problem and the lack of previous understanding of the phenomenon, the interpretive ethnographic method is deployed in order to explore the cultural and social issues involved. During the two-year research, three ICT projects are examined through participate observation, interviews and related data retrieve. From the reviews of these ICT projects, the findings present in three themes: ¡§Technological Utopianism¡¨; ¡§Power Struggle¡¨ and ¡§Polarization¡¨. Although project Principal-initiator, teachers-project members and Parents- the community agree on the potential of ICT, they approach and expect ICT differently as their disparities in their position in the ICT projects, ICT literacy, and limitation from their social/economic reality. Each stakeholder has faced different context and carried different perception and vision toward ICT and ICT projects. After the ICT projects are carried out, the unanticipated and hidden gap of perception results in dissatisfied stakeholders. Although the media cover the project outcomes with positive tone, and both TY School and Principal obtains the reputation in ICT education, teachers are reluctant to execute ICT project and parents are disappointed and think the projects don¡¦t really help them. In order to accomplish these ICT projects under the disharmony, Principal takes advantage of his power from administration of school, knowledge legitimacy, and the control over resources. The power-laden process occurs and the communication gap is unable to close. Moreover, the relationships between stakeholders are eventually polarized. As failing to taking account of the dynamic context difference and lacking of communication, ICT projects in this study fail to deliver its promise to the people they intended to serve.

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The increasing body of literature in the field of development theory holds that information and communications technologies (ICTs) are essential for improving the living conditions in developing countries. Since this view is shared by many governments and international organizations it is also a foundation for policy making. In this thesis I examine the role of ICTbased entrepreneurship in Cameroon and how such entrepreneurs can improve the economic conditions in the developing world. Using a qualitative approach I do a case study by mapping small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in Cameroon's ICT industry and identify the key drivers and barriers for the entrepreneurial process of ICT development. The data is mainly collected from field work in Cameroon during two months in 2010. The method is influenced by ethnography and apart from observations, includes semi structured interviews with 14 contributors and a survey of 20 Internet cafés. The empirical material analyzed in a development context based on a research model using theories of ICT development, institutional economics and entrepreneurship. Weak institutions are often theorized to be the main reasons why sub-Saharan Africa is behind in the economic progress and the study gives many examples of how ICT-based entrepreneurship can overcome weak institutions in Cameroon. Conversely, it also demonstrates that ICT-based entrepreneurship can create lock-ins and reinforce bad structures. In the context of this study the entrepreneurial process was found to be characterized by a strong commitment to the community, social groups and family. The most common perceived barriers among the entrepreneurs are governmental centralization, bureaucracy and corruption. The difficulty in getting funding is also a common obstacle. The study further shows that ICT entrepreneurs have an important role for increasing the level of ICT awareness. Internet cafés have many important functions in the society and serve many other purposes than just providing Internet. Private education centers are common and very important since they can make up for the malfunctions of the national education system. However, many education centers might have a wrong focus and could be made more efficient.

During the last decade, anticipated and realized benefits of mobile and wireless information and communication technology (ICT) for different business purposes have been widely explored and evaluated. Also, the significance of ‘user acceptance’ mechanisms through ‘perceived usefulness’ of ICT applications has gained broad recognition among business organizations in developing and adopting new ICT capabilities. However, even though technology usefulness is regularly highlighted as an important factor in ICT projects, there is often a lack of understanding of what the concept involves in the practical work context of the actual users, and how to deal with the issues of usefulness in organizational ICT development processes. This doctoral thesis covers a 1,5 year case study of a mobile computing development project at a Swedish international construction enterprise. The company’s mobile ICT venture addressed the deficient ICT use situation of management practitioners in construction site operations. The study portrays the overall socially shaped development process of the chosen technology and its evolving issues of usefulness for existing construction site management practice. The perceived usefulness of mobile computing tools among the ‘user-practitioners’ is described as emergence of ‘meaningful use’ based on initial expectations and actual experiences of the technology in their situated fieldwork context. The studied case depicts the ongoing and open-ended conversational nature of understanding adequate ICT requirements in work practice, and the negotiation of mobile computing technology design properties between users and developers over time towards the alignment of diverse personal, professional and organizational needs and purposes of ICT use. The studied introduction of mobile computing technology in construction site management fieldwork practice serves as an illustrative actual example of how to interpret, understand and approach issues of usefulness and user acceptance of ICT resources in operative work contexts when managing ICT development processes in organizations. / QC 20100825

Les pays africains font, depuis près de deux décennies, l’expérience des technologies de l’information et de la communication. L’entrée dans la société de l’information est vue par plusieurs chercheurs comme étant une chance pour développer l’Afrique. Mais, pour l’instant, des difficultés socio-économiques freinent les politiques et les actions initiées pour mettre les systèmes d’information au service du développement. La situation varie d’un pays à un autre. Un constat est toutefois évident, l’Afrique du Sud et le Maroc ont pris de l’avance sur les pays situés au sud du Sahara dans l'industrialisation de leur tourisme en lien avec une utilisation efficace des technologies de l'information. Le Bénin est l'un des premiers pays de l’Afrique de l’Ouest francophone à être connecté à Internet. Il peine pourtant aujourd'hui à entrer totalement dans l’ère du numérique. La défectuosité et l’absence d’infrastructures de télécommunications, l'absence d'un cadre règlementaire et juridique cohérent, l’incapacité des populations à accéder aux équipements informatiques et aux services, le manque d’experts locaux… expliquent ce retard. Mettre Internet au service de ses richesses culturelles et touristiques est pourtant un créneau porteur et un nouveau défi de développement pour ce pays. Le tourisme y est en effet la deuxième source de revenus et contribue pour 2% au PIB du Bénin. La présente étude propose un état des lieux du secteur touristique béninois et de sa présence sur le web. Elle s'est particulièrement intéressée à la meilleure façon de transformer les innombrables attraits du pays en véritables atouts. Ce travail comprend deux parties. La première fait le point de la situation du tourisme dans le monde et en Afrique et pose les contours de la problématique des TIC vues comme tremplin de son développement. La seconde partie axée sur le Bénin, invite à une lecture descriptive et analytique du pays, en partant de ses données générales pour évaluer sa politique touristique, ses résultats / Tourism-focused web sites in French-speaking Western Africa, a case study of Benin. For nearly two decades now, African countries have been experimenting with information technology and communication. This entry into the information society is seen by many researchers as an opportunity to develop Africa. But, for now, socio-economic difficulties are hindering policies and actions conducted to use information systems for development purposes. The situation varies from one country to another. South Africa and Morocco, for example, have been clearly more successful than countries south of the Sahara in their tourism industrialization policies, putting information technology to good use. Benin is one of the first countries in French-speaking West Africa to be connected to the Internet. It is, however, struggling to get more of a foothold into the digital age. The defective and lacking telecommunications infrastructure, the lack of a coherent legal and regulatory framework, people’s inability to access computer equipment and services, the lack of local experts ... are all reasons for the delay. Internet could be a catalyst to promote culture and tourism in Benin and is one of the country’s development challenges today. Tourism is in fact the second largest source of income and contributes to 2% of Benin’s GDP.This study is an inventory of Benin’s tourism industry and its presence on the Web. It focuses in particular on the best way to turn the country’s countless attractions into real assets. This work is made up of two sections. The first provides an overview of the situation of tourism in the world and in Africa. It develops the topic and the issues of ICTs, seen as a springboard for development in Africa. The second part focuses on Benin. It provides descriptions and an analysis of the country, using as a starting point its general data to assess its tourism policy, its results and its outlook for growth, mainly through Internet. The methodological basis of this research includes a literature review, observations, field surveys and Web mapping.

IBM Rational Requirements Composer (RRC) is a tool for software requirements engineering that supports requirements development and requirements management in the proces of software development. IBM RRC is a part of Collaborative Lifecycle Management (CLM) using the Jazz platform. In cooperation with other tools of this solution, especially with IBM Rational Team Concert (RTC), it advances the management of projects with large scope and extended teams. These tools have been developed for agile methodologies. This diploma uses the methodology for small software projects called MMSP for the analysis of IBM RRC's features. The main objective of this diploma thesis is the analysis of IBM RRC's features usable for software requirements engineering and demonstrates how to elevate the software requirements activities for school projects using the methodology MMSP. This diploma also pursues the objective of finding best practices and MMSP tasks to improve the requirements engineering proces. These objectives were achieved by deep analysis of various sources about software tools for requirements management, methodologies of IS/ICT development and information system development projects at the University of Economics in Prague and on using the IBM RRC. The key benefit of this diploma thesis is in raising the number of software tools which can be used for school projects of IS/ICT development using the MMSP methodology.

The purpose of the thesis is to analyze the Information Policy of the Republic of Uzbekistan, focused primarily on the mid. 90s up to nowadays. The focus is mainly given on to the ICT development and its support by the Republic of Uzbekistan. It covers the analysis and descriptions on access to information, restriction problems of the press and censorship. Theoretical knowledge has been supported with practical analysis gained during the study tour to Uzbekistan. During the study tour has been accomplished a small exploratory study conduct a survey of how the Internet and the mass media is accepted and used by the population of Uzbekistan. The case study, at the end of the thesis, tries to approach the use of the Internet and particularly the so-called new media by independent journalists from Radio Ozodlik, an Uzbek department of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

This is an interdiscliplinary qualitative study which uses an exploratory research design and builds on Fariclough's Critical Discourse Analysis methodology to analyze the discourses surrounding an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for livelihood development project in Jamaica, introduced by the United Nations Development Programme - the Jamaica Sustainable Development Networking Programme (JSDNP). The primary objective of this project is to provide the poor in Jamaican communities with access to, and training in ICTs. In this research, I specifically focus on the discourses surrounding the JSDNP Cybercentre Project for a group of microenterprise entrepreneurs in the Jamaican tourism industry to access the epistemological assumptions of this project. From the data collected it was found that at one level, the JSDNP Cybercentre Project encouraged specific ways of acting and organizing congruent with the configurations, processes and structures of corporate firms of industrialized countries, by representing the achievement of livelihood expansion through the use of specific ICTs in a particular way which excluded other discourses. The particular ways of acting and organizing promoted by the Cybercentre encouraged the use of non-indigenous technologies, undervalued indigenous technologies and excluded the indigenization of non-indigenous technologies. These discourses were incompatible with the operational and structural configurations of trans-temporal poor entrepretrepreneurs interviewed and were more favourable to the non-poor and spatio-temporal ones. One of the wider implications of the discourse therefore was that they play a fundamental role in perpetuating entrenched inequalities through the preservation of social practices, along with their associated systems and structures. It was also found that these modalities limited the operational processes of all microenterprise entrepreneurs who were exposed to the Cybercentre Project. These entrepreneurs have limited control over the configuration of non-indigenous technologies; their technological and creative capabilities are restricted; their ability to indigenize non-indigenous technologies impaired; and they are highly dependent on non-indigenous technologies (which themselves have a number of limitations).