Article Abstract

	Title:	Bridging the digital divide: some initiatives in Brazil
	Author:	Luiz Antonio Joi
	Address:	Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration, Getulio Vargas Foundation, Rua Presidente Carlos de Campos 115/503, BL 02, Laranjeiras, Rio de Janeiro, RJ 22231-080, Brazil
	Journal:	Electronic Government, an International Journal 2004 - Vol. 1, No.3  pp. 300 - 315
	Abstract:	In the Information Society, information is naturally the most fundamental productive resource, and the total amount of information-based goods consumed by human society appears to be boundless. In many developing countries, there are social groups whose members aspire to a way of life that has been developed in the modern societies of industrialised countries, but for them, the information, knowledge and technologies enabled by the initiatives of the Information Society have little relevance to the way they live their lives. Hence, based on a heuristic frame developed to understand and define infoexclusion, namely the exclusion of people from the Information Society, some initiatives that are already in the implementation phase or are currently being elaborated by the Brazilian government are presented. Finally, some conclusions and challenges involving ways of bridging the digital divide in countries with longstanding social and economic inequalities are presented, as well as stressing the importance of people's awareness in their own infoinclusion process.
	Keywords:	digital divide; digital gap; infoexclusion; information society; IT equity; developing countries; Brazil; infoinclusion; e-government; electronic government.
	DOI:	10.1504/EG.2004.005554
		Purchase this Paper         Comment on the Paper