In this paper, we report on a qualitative exploratory case study of a national-level government-led digital transformation. We depart from most studies on government digital transformation that largely focus on improving existing services, bureaucratic processes, or adopting emerging digital technologies. Instead, we analyze the process of a government-led digital transformation aimed at addressing significant institutional voids within a resource-constrained context. Drawing from 60 interviews with stakeholders in the Ghanaian FinTech ecosystem, we theorize the concept of digital branching strategy as an alternative lens to envisage government-led digital transformation that considers the resource-constrained context and characteristics of governments. Our findings show that governments, especially those in resource-constrained contexts pursue digital transformation through exploring frugal innovations and leveraging established resources, structures, and relationships within an ecosystem. We subsequently develop a process model to explain the mechanisms of a national-level government-led digital transformation. Based on the findings and the model, our study offers critical insights to re-imagine government-led digital transformation in resource-constrained contexts by demonstrating how pursuing a digital branching strategy leads to planned and emergent outcomes because of the generative nature of the transformation.

Current industry trends demand automation in every aspect, where machines could replace humans. Recent advancements in conversational agents have grabbed a lot of attention from industries, markets, and businesses. Building conversational agents that exhibit human communication characteristics is a need in today's marketplace. Thus, by accumulating emotions, we can build emotionally aware conversational agents. Emotion detection in text-based dialogues has turned into a pivotal component of conversational agents, enhancing their ability to understand and respond to users’ emotional states. This article extensively compares various artificial intelligence techniques adapted to text-based emotion detection for conversational agents. The study covers a wide range of methods, from machine learning models to cutting-edge pre-trained models and deep learning models. We evaluate the performance of these techniques on the benchmark unbalanced Topical-Chat and balanced Empathetic Dialogue datasets. This article offers an overview of the practical implications of emotion detection techniques in conversational systems and their impact on user response. The outcomes of this work contribute to the ongoing development of empathetic conversational agents, emphasizing natural human-machine interactions.

This paper aims to identify and understand whether national policy initiatives, regulatory measures, or governance practices increase a developing nation's mobile broadband affordability. For this purpose, a cross-national multiple regression analysis of non-OECD countries is used. The results revealed that when controlling for wealth, education and other factors, competition to provide mobile services, financial investment in ICTs, and income inequality are all important variables for determining mobile broadband affordability. Findings suggest that service providers and other stakeholders are still recouping the cost of deploying the infrastructure necessary to provide mobile services, and have not yet achieved the economies of scale required for the price of mobile broadband to begin to fall, at least in the developing world. This paper provides contributions to academia, industry, and policymakers.

Governments around the globe are striving to provide e-government, online products and services to all the citizens of their respective countries. This has meant that there is a shift in the conventional mode of public service delivery from a face-to-face and telephone mode to electronic means. However, not all the citizens are making use of these changes and one demographic citizens group that is currently attracting immense interest related to their welfare, health and other such issues is the older people group. Using this as reasoning, the aim of this exploratory and explanatory research is to understand the e-government initiatives in the UK, more specifically London. To conduct this research, a mixed qualitative and quantitative research approach was pursued. It was concluded that the benefits of the Internet to many of the users is relative, depending on the age, perceptions and level of innovativeness of the user. It was learnt that in relation to quality, the local authority websites do contain useful and relevant information for the elderly. However, this information is difficult to access, mainly due to the lack of knowledge, or skills in the use of computers, or Internet. From this research it is expected that a contribution to academia will emerge in the form of a better understanding of issues related to e-government, the digital divide and older citizens. For industry, the contributions of this research is the identification and understanding of issues related with online products and services and the older citizen. For policymakers, this research proffers an understanding of issues related with demand and supply of online products and services that governments are currently providing.

This paper is about the broadband development in South Korea (henceforth Korea). Korea is considered to be a world leader in this field. Based on various sources including a study trip to Seoul that took place in July 2002, the reasons for this success are offered in this paper. The purpose of the study trip was to investigate how Korea achieved such a relatively fast penetration rate in a time span of approximately 4 years. Using documentary secondary data such as, written documents published materials, and primary data, such as interviews, the paper explores and presents the factors contributing to this development. The factors covered include government leadership, fierce competition, low prices due to the competition, cultural aspects, and geographic and demographic aspects. Although some strategies and success factors are Korea specific, there are general lessons that can be drawn. Anyone considering the deployment of broadband and other future innovations will benefit from this investigation into the successful strategies undertaken in Korea.