Curtis Otiende

HDB212-D1-0001/2020
MAY-AUGUST SEMESTER 2020
FIRST YEAR SECOND SEMESTER
ICT AND THE SOCIETY
ASSIGNMENT 1

QUESTION: Discuss, Social economic and legal impacts of ICT

ICT has more of positive impacts on growth in developing countries, both socially, economically and
legally. However, in order for such benefits to follow from ICT, developing nations have to invest in both
education and infrastructure. Without such investment ICT will not have the benefits it or even the
potential to deliver them to such countries.

ICT has social and economic impacts in the following areas from the cases of South America, Sub-Sahara
Africa and South/East Asia:

Business Models, Commerce and Market Structure: ICT reduces the significance of distance in the
business environment. Some firms have taken advantages of this to overcome the tight local market for
software engineers by sending projects across the borders where the wages are comparatively lower.
Additionally, this brings up the advantages of time differences so that projects are worked on day and
night. Firms can also outsource manufacturing, and rely on telecommunication to keep marketing,
research and development and distribution teams in close contact with these manufacturing teams. ICT
therefore enables better division of labour and this positively affects the demand for various skills in
nations globally. Firms relying on ICT can therefore have the freedom to locate their economic activities,
creating greater competition among regions in infrastructure, labour, capital and other resource
markets. It also enables regulatory arbitrage such as giving firms freedom to choose which tax authority
and other regulations to apply.

ICT also promotes a more market-like form of production and distribution. An ICT infrastructure,
providing day and night access at reduced cost to nearly any kind of product and price information
desired by buyers will leverage barriers to information for efficient market operation. Such
infrastructure can also positively influence real-time transactions and make intermediaries such as sales
clerks, stock brokers and travel agents, whose function is to provide an essential link between buyers
and sellers. Removal of intermediaries is of an advantage as it reduces the production and distribution
costs.

E-commerce: Physical establishment, order placement and execution, customer support, staffing,
inventory carrying, and distribution are some of the activities which increase the costs of doing business.
Setting up and maintaining an e-commerce store could be expensive but not as much as a physical store.
An e-commerce store helps access the global market and saves on the costs of inventories involved in
setting up many duplicate stores, marketing, paper receipting and accounting, fewer but high skilled
employees, faster orders and delivery and many more.
Work place and labour market: ICT enables collaborative work models involving distributed communities
of actors who seldom meet physically. This is enabled by the use of communication models which are
always up and global and so enable 24 hours of activity and this communication can be both
synchronous and asynchronous among individuals, groups and organization-wide. Social interaction is
affected in such set ups. Peer-to-peer relations are enhanced through sharing of information and
coordination of activities. Interaction between superiors and subordinates becomes more tense due to
social control issues caused by computerized monitoring systems.

ICT is also important as it comes with the advantage of telecommuting. People are able to work from
home and can therefore live in places of their own choice as they work. People will shift from the
suburbs to remote areas and property values in the more favoured areas will rise. The rural, historical
and attractive aspects of life in such areas will be threatened. Also, such areas will experience more
businesses such as restaurants and canteens and other services thus expanding employment
opportunities even more.

Telecommuting also makes people to work with flexible schedules, part time or even share jobs or even
do more jobs at a time. It also enhances job mobility and career development as changing of a work
place would not mean changing residential places. It may also enhance job satisfaction as people may
have a large job spectrum to choose from.

In the book keeping and accounting departments, computers may replace employees as these activities
will be automated. However, this would still create more opportunities for computer professionals and
accountants and book keepers need to be dynamic such that they get to learn skills such as business
information technology which makes them able to blend in both environments.

The demand for education and training largely concerns the full range of modern technology. ICT has
unique ways of meeting these demands. Online training and learning ranges from accessing self-paced,
self-study courses to complete to complete electronic courses with virtual classrooms. These provide
flexibility in learning skills and are more affordable and relevant than more traditional seminars and
courses.

Legal Impacts of ICT

ICT also provides cheaper and easier means for distribution of information. However, on one hand, it is
cost effective. On the other, it poses a threat to intellectual property and can greatly reduce the
incentives of the content creators. This therefore reduces their ability to produce more information. ICT
also has challenges in providing for ways to control what kind of information can be publicized. Any
mechanisms for controlling indecent information can also control access to political information which
again makes it not a good idea.

ICT has also raised a lot of concern about public and privacy sectors’ information. Currently, it is not easy
to know who collects whose data, for what purposes, and how it is shared. These in turn lower ICT users’
trust in online institutions and communication. This hinders e-commerce which needs a lot of such data
for business purposes such as marketing. Cryptography can be used to curb this but it causes barrier to
criminal investigations when necessary.

The government has had trouble for some time since the advent of online work. People evade tax
payment as it is not easy to know what they do online. For instance in Kenya, recently, there is this
implementation of online work tax payment plans which is at the good faith of the workers. The
government let online workers voluntarily pay taxes out of their online revenue subject to their own
calculations as it is not easy to track who works online and who does not. Guidelines on the rates
specific for online work are also not yet outlined as it is still not yet known how many people do how
much work and how much do they earn online.

Additionally, it is so easy today to find any legal information that may be required by lawyers on any
legal matters. For instance, someone may need to know what the law says on federal taxes in the United
States. Such information is important for business people who want to outsource labour, capital and
other resources.