CHS: Large: Collaborative Research: Achieving Development Goals with Information Technology

本研究旨在发现能够预测项目成功的因素，并指导有关资助、设计和实施旨在利用信息和通信技术促进社会经济发展的重大项目的决策。在过去的五年里，超过100亿美元的美国和国际政府资金已经投入到这些项目中，私人技术资金大大增加了这一数字。然而，许多这样的项目都失败了。现有理论强调发达国家的技术设计者无法理解发展中国家用户的需求和背景。但是这种方法充其量是不完整的，因为它只关注技术，而忽略了技术与发展成果之间的联系。这项研究将超越严格的技术焦点，探索技术计划和发展目标之间的相互作用。该项目将采用多种研究方法组织成一系列步骤，这些步骤在逻辑上相互建立。对四个现有资讯科技发展项目进行个案研究，包括面谈和广泛观察，将为后续工作提供深刻的概念基础。根据对观察和访谈数据的分析，将编制一份问卷调查，并对大约60个其他可比较的项目进行管理。在对调查进行分析之后，一组10到12个较短的案例研究将探索各种项目及其背景，以扩展分析的理论体系，并确定在前四个案例研究中不明显的问题。由此产生的广泛的、混合方法的数据基础将允许识别影响项目成功或失败的因素，以及建立和测试新出现的假设，以便研究团队可以构建强有力的理论。由此产生的理论将为未来的研究提供基础，并以目前缺乏的发展学术和敏感性来加强现有的关于这一问题的科学文献。这种更好地理解和预测项目成功与失败的努力，将有可能为这些项目的目标人群、发展近在眼前的国家、提供资金的实体以及与那些寻求改善生活的人有着共同愿望的实体带来重大利益。

This research seeks to discover the factors that can predict project success and guide decisions about funding, designing, and implementing major projects intended to use information and communication technology for socio-economic development. In the past five years, over ten billion dollars of US and international government funding have been invested in such projects, with private technology funding adding substantially to that figure. Yet, many of these projects fail. Existing theories emphasize the inability of technology designers in developed countries to understand the needs and context of users in developing countries. But that approach is at best incomplete because it focuses on the technology while ignoring the link between the technology and development outcomes. This research will go beyond a strict technology focus by exploring the interplay between technology plans and development goals. The project will be organized in a series of steps employing multiple research methodologies, that logically build on each other. Case studies of four existing information technology development projects, including interviews and extended observation, will provide a deep conceptual basis for the subsequent work. Based on analysis of the observational and interview data, a questionnaire survey will be developed and administered to about sixty other comparable projects. Following analysis of the survey, a set of ten to twelve shorter case studies will then explore a diversity of projects and their contexts, to expand the theoretical system of analysis and identify issues that were not apparent in the first four case studies. The resulting extensive, mixed-methods base of data will allow identification of the factors that shape project success or failure, as well as building and testing of emerging hypotheses so that the research team can construct strong theory. The resulting theory will provide the groundwork for future research, and enhance the existing scientific literature on this problem with the development scholarship and sensibility that currently is missing from it. This effort to better understand and predict project success and failure will have the potential to reap significant benefits for the populations that these projects target, for the nations whose development is at hand, and for the entities who provide the funding and who share the aspirations of those who seek to see life improved.