Digital inclusion through localism

The evolution to a global information society will require the federation of innumerable technologies and social systems. The resulting increase in flexibility, diversity, and complexity is both an opportunity and challenge for ICT practitioners to shape this evolution for the benefit of developing countries and marginalised communities. A conceptual framework is developed to describe the weaknesses of a centralised, top-down approach to ICT development in being able to leverage flexibility and manage complexity towards a more inclusive information society. We extend the framework by proposing an alternative approach based on a pragmatic form of localism, involving decentralised participation with national and global linkages. Following an application of the framework in a case study on a developing country's ICT development, we use it to argue for the adoption of localism principles in the ongoing development of the Next Generation Network (NGN).