Community informatics

"Community Informatics" (CI) is the study of the application of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) to the social, economic, political or cultural goals of communities. Much of the research and development work in the area of Information Systems and Technology has been concerned with pushing the frontiers of hardware or software to make it faster, smaller, cheaper and more functional. There remain a wide variety of applications and application areas that are not accommodated within this schema. Indeed, there are also many people for whom "access" to such applications may be unavailable for any of a variety of reasons, such as cost, infrastructure, literacy, and attitudes, among others. CI takes into account the design of the social system within which the technology resides, as well as the technology system with which the social system interacts. Community Informatics (CI) as an approach begins with the perspective ICT can provide a set of resources and tools that individuals and communities can use, initially to provide "access" to information management and processing and thus with "access", to pursue their goals in such areas as local economic development, cultural affairs, civic activism, and community based health and environmental initiatives. Thus, a CI approach is concerned with both the technology and the "user" (and the "uses"); and with community processes, user access and technology usability as well as systems analysis and hardware or software design. In many respects CI is an extension of the "socio-technical" approach to systems design but shifting attention from the "organization" to the "community", and thus reflecting the increasingly widespread distribution of ICT access (PC's and Internet) and their use from organizations to individual end users and communities. The papers in this mini-track examine various aspects of Community Informatics as can be seen from the titles and authors: