Wal Taylor, Rod Jewell, Central Queensland University
Community Informatics projects often fit between the boundaries of existing government, educational and private sector organizational service delivery functions at the community level. Increasing accountability for targeted outcomes within existing service organizations increases the difficulty in establishing collaborative projects with community to address emerging use of technology in innovative ways. When combined with a lack of operational money, poor project management infrastructure in community, short funding horizons and competing agenda within community, this situation exposes serious issues for sustainability of Community Informatics projects.
This paper examines the delivery of funding for community informatics projects in two regional locations in Queensland Australia. It identifies practical impediments and their theoretical implications for the successful establishment and delivery of CI projects in this setting and draws lessons for future CI projects. The paper draws on the body of experience in the international CI literature and concludes that social capital, local leadership and autonomy are important components in mitigating unreasonable and often insular demands from resource providers in the public and private sectors.
This work supports Claude Fischer's view in describing the adoption of the telephone that in promoting a technology, vendors are constrained not only by its technical and economic attributes but also by an interpretation of its uses shaped by its and their histories, a cultural constraint that can persist for many years.