Ict policies in Developing Countries: An Evaluation with the Extended Design‐Actuality Gaps Framework

 
Keywords: Design-actuality gaps, policy evaluation, developing countries, ICT for 
development.
 
1. I
NTRODUCTION
 
Information and communication technologies (ICT) are often represented as a factor in global 
economic growth and social development. To take advantage of ICT for the socio-economic 
growth and development of their citizens, developing countries are designing and adopting 
ICT growth policies and these have been analyzed in the literature (e.g., Cordell and Iannacci, 
2010). However, developing policies alone is not enough; the evaluation of the success and 
failure of these policies is vital for a meaningful impact on ICT growth in a country. The 
issue of gaps between ICT policy design and their outcomes is the subject of debate in 
academic research on information systems in many developing countries (Ngololo et al., 
2012; Phang and Kankanhalli, 2008). 
Several developing nations are dealing with typical ICT issues such as lack of 
appropriate products, cost of ICT devices, education, local language content, human 
resources and robust regulatory framework for ICT growth (Touray et al., 2013; Grazzi and 
Verfara, 2012). In order to overcome these challenges, governments are designing and 
adopting ICT policies and action plans. The policies and action plans are important tools for 
governments in attracting foreign investments (Bannister and Connolly, 2014; UNCTAD, 
2006). The lack of a theoretical foundation in making and adopting these policies often 
results in gaps among policy design and actual outcomes and effectiveness of policy 

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EJISDC (2015) 71, 1, 1-34 
The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries 
www.ejisdc.org
2 
implementation. The challenge of a theoretical basis hinders developing countries in learning 
from gaps between policy design objectives and actual outcomes.
Building on the design-actuality gaps framework (Heeks, 2002), this study develops a 
theoretical foundation for the evaluation and analyses of the gaps between government policy 
design and actual outcomes of the implementation of these policies. In this research, we 
present an extended design-actuality framework. We use this framework to conduct a 
qualitative empirical evaluation within the context of evaluating government policies for ICT 
growth in a developing country.
While there are alternative lenses to examine government policies, the design-
actuality framework is especially relevant and applicable in the case of ICT policies 
evaluation. It has been used in a number of research studies related to information systems 
development projects in developing countries (Diniz et al., 2013; Bass and Heeks, 2011; 
Pozzebon and Heck, 2006; Gerhan and Mutula, 2007; Best and Kumar, 2008). The 
framework has also been used to explain success and failure of specific government ICT 
projects (Gichoya et al., 2006). Furthermore, our research extends the framework to develop 
a theoretical foundation for the evaluation and analysis of government ICT policies.
Pakistan represents the developing country in this research. Pakistan has had several 
ICT successes and failures, as ICT policies were developed, adopted and implemented during 
the last several years. There are several reasons for selecting Pakistan for this research. First, 
Pakistan is the seventh largest populated country with a population of over 170 million and 
has the highest one year growth rate of ICT industry (147%) in the world, followed by 
Bangladesh (135%), and India (97%) (Willing, 2007). Second, a large portion of its 
population lacks access to basic ICT needs such as reliable electric power, and infrastructure. 
The cost of traditional ICT infrastructure, devices and services is significantly high and, 
therefore, the government has pushed deregulation policy with enabling legislation to 
facilitate wireless ICT access (to avoid laying costly cables based infrastructure). As a result, 
the telecommunication sector has made significant progress in the last decade. Its subscriber 
base has climbed sharply reaching 137.7 million in 2014, from only about 0.3 million in 2000 
and 34.5 million in 2006 (Imtiaz et al., 2015). The cellular teledensity has jumped to 76% 
from that of 22% in 2005–06 (Imtiaz et al., 2015). Third, a large segment of Pakistani society 
suffers from the lack of basic resources, illiteracy, and low income. Even if ICT access was 
made possible to this segment, it would still be difficult to sustain meaningful impact on their 
lives. Finally, Pakistan is experiencing an evolving regulatory framework with changes in 
government ICT policies since the early 1990s (Baqir and Pervez, 2000; Mujahid, 2002; Gao 
and Rafiq, 2009). Pakistan has continuously experimented with and adopted policies to 
increase ICT access and strived to create an enabling environment for the growth of the ICT 
sector. It is our expectation that lessons learned from Pakistan would be valuable and 
significant for other developing countries experiencing similar ICT growth issues.
The paper is organized in several sections. The next section describes the theoretical 
background. The research design and the methodology are described in the third section. The 
fourth section presents dimensions and elements of “design” that are derived from the review 
and analysis of government’s ICT policies and action plans. It also presents “actuality” and 
its elements derived from the citizens’ perspective. The fifth section discusses the design-
actuality gaps and offers analysis of the causes behind these gaps. Insights are derived from 
ICT policy making and influencing officials. The last few sections evaluate the validity and 
trustworthiness of this study as plausible grounded theory research, highlight implications for 
developing countries, and discuss contributions to the literature on design-actuality gaps, ICT 
for development, ICT in developing countries, and government policy evaluation.

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EJISDC (2015) 71, 1, 1-34 
The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries 
www.ejisdc.org
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