Community Informatics in Perspective

Abstract

This chapter provides a reflection on Community Informatics (CI) practice as a means of contextualising its role in emerging civil society and its governance at the local or regional level. CI is more than electronically enabled interpersonal communication; it has a pluralistic potential, it is ubiquitous and it comes bundled with paradoxes. It does not sit easily with the existing forms of governance and service provision and it does not have existing structures or accepted descriptive models that easily allow it to be contextualised within itself or alongside more well-understood models of commerce, public administration or governance. Yet its potential has been grasped by community-based organisations (CBOs) all over the world as they come face to face with the centralising potential of IT to impact regional economic, social and cultural sustainability. The chapter proposes a taxonomic framework for CI policy development, practice and research.