Lessons for Other Developing Countries

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The factors addressed earlier were based mainly on the experiences of professionals working with government organisations in Oman. However, the comparative literature on IT in the developing world that has been reviewed indicates that the findings and suggested solutions would apply in government departments of similar economical and social cultures. In particular, Palvia and Palvia (1996) have found that organisations in the developing world face similar IT issues, and Heeks (1998b) believes lessons from Brunei, the Middle East and other small mineral-rich countries have resonance from one to another. Therefore, the outcome of this research may be of particular interest to GCC countries that have many political, economical, cultural and social characteristics in common. To summarise, the following strategies would benefit developing countries in minimising the risks of deploying IT:

• Create a national IT strategy and implement it: Developing countries need to set up a vision of where the country is heading in the information age and the role IT should play in the country's future economical environment. This vision should be translated into working strategies that can be implemented. One way to expedite implementation of IT strategies is to set up a single government agency responsible for setting guidelines and standards for IT acquisition at the national level. It is important that this agency plays a consultative role and avoids being a bottleneck or hindrance to IT acquisition by government departments. One of its objectives is to oversee a task force to network government Information Systems such as health organisations, educational institutes, libraries, and public service organisations. Networking means sharing information, linking databases, and establishing information channels. This should translate into better planning, less data redundancies, and improved efficiency in the public sector (Bahtnagar & Patel, 1988).

• Create a powerful and modern IT infrastructure: The weak IT and telecommunications infrastructure of developing countries within the global economy is too obvious (Avgerou, 1996). Governments in developing countries should influence the creation of a strong information highway in which services are widely available and at the same time cost effective for the local users and industry. This means the creation of a sophisticated deregulated environment in which public inefficiencies are not substituted by private monopolies.

• Improve IT education and awareness: Educational policy-making bodies in developing countries may consider improvement in four issues in this regard. First, increase in the quantity of IT graduates. Second improve the quality of IT education in the country. Third, improve in IT literacy and awareness in the society as a whole and in government organisations in particular. Increasing IT awareness among public sectors' management is essential in reducing their IT risk-averseness and understanding the role of IT in improving the decision-making process. Fourth, the development of a plan to train the local people; an efficient training program should be developed to improve the technical skills of the local people in order to be able to develop applications, manage computer networks, and maintain systems and networks (Avgerou 1996). This effort would help prepare future high skilled IT technical management, and should be in concert with the actual demands for IT professionals of the private and public sectors.

• Reform the public sector management: Developing countries public organisations should take a fresh look at their business process; successful IT applications should be implemented in relation to transformation of organisational structures, ways of working, and decision making. Promote popular management practices; using formal planning techniques, decisions should be made based on merit and validity, empowerment and initiatives. Emerging techniques such as e-business and e-government are gaining popular support and are a serious threat to the old way of delivering governments services. These initiatives should be seriously evaluated by developing countries in order be able to benefit from the information age.

• Promote research and development in IT issues: Avgerou (1996) argues that the objective of research and development for developing countries is to address exploitations of IT to meet their needs rather than discovery of new technology. Development and implementation techniques were created by western industrial societies, and instead of taking them for granted and applying them in developing countries' societies, national and organisational cultural issues should be considered. For example, Arabic-speaking countries should promote investments in IT systems' Arabisation. Research and development is part of a wider collaboration and communication between business, academia and government.

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