Potential Challenges of ICT Implementations in Sri Lanka

Abstract

This chapter offers a state-of-the-art review of the implementation of ICTs strategies in a developing country with special reference to Sri Lanka as a case study. This chapter is based on primary and secondary sources (books, articles, Web sites, white papers, and grey literature). It also brings in a small number of empirical studies that serve to illustrate the practical use of the ICT to support arguments. Traditionally, access to ICTs and information has not been viewed as basic a need. However, if needs are interpreted as being dynamic and changing over time and culture (Max-Neef, 1986), access to information and knowledge could be treated as a basic need. Information and knowledge have become increasingly important in the contemporary globalized economy, as advancement in ICTs has enabled larger amounts of information to circulate at a much higher speed and at lower cost. This is partly due to the balance between knowledge and natural resources, but with regard to being the most important factor in determining the standard of living in a country, it is said to have shifted in favor of knowledge. This has led many authors to claim that the people are now living in an information society or a knowledge-based economy (Drucker, 1993). Nowadays, it is a country’s ability to assimilate, use, and diffuse knowledge that will essentially determine its chances of uplift in the new economy.