History of ICT (Information and communications technology)

John Eckert and Mauchly developed UNIVAC I in 1951 which was the first commercial
computer. The computer was used to determine the results of the 1952 presidential election by
the Census Bureau. After that, the mainframe computers were used to do data manipulation and
large amounts of calculations. The mainframe computers were used for a long time of twenty-
five years. Furthermore, supercomputers were used in advanced works like designing aircraft,
estimating weather, developing nuclear reactors, in science and engineering. After that, in 1975,
the MIT designed the microcomputer. Next, in line were the Apple microcomputer and Radio
Shack Microcomputer developed by Tandy Corporation. Similarly, for small business and
manufacturing plants, minicomputers were used since the 1980s. Microcomputer demand
increased after fall 1981 when IBM developed the personal computer. At present the personal
computer we use is the advanced version of the old ones as there has been a drastic improvement
in the components as well as the manufacturing process. Likewise, speed is very much faster but
the cost is reduced by about a thousandth. In the present context, we have four types of
computers that are, the supercomputer, mainframe, minicomputer, and microcomputer that are
divided based on size. The microcomputer is a personal computer that can be further divided into
a laptop, notebook, desktop, and handheld.

The word Information Technology was used for the first time in the 1970s. However, the concept
started during the World War during where the military and technology industry formed a joint
venture to develop computers and other electronic devices. After 1940, the military provided
research funding to transition from human to automation. After the 1950s, four generations of
computers are developed where there was a decrease in size but an increase in performance.
Vacuum tubes, transistors, integrated circuits, integrated circuits with a single chip, were used as
a major component in the first generation, second generation, third generation, and fourth-
generation respectively. Moreover, in the coming years, there will be the development of
computers with artificial intelligence so there will be no need for complex programming but it is
just in the experimental stage.
IT stands for information technology which consists of studying, designing, developing, support,
or maintenance of a computer system. It uses computer hardware and software to develop,
defend, renovate, and broadcast information. Information technology has a wide scope where the
IT professionals perform different types of responsibilities ranging from application design,
installing applications, designing complex computer networks, database management, hardware
design along managing and administer the whole system. IT is combined with information and
technology to manufacture, manipulate along with broadcasting and communicating information.
In the present context, the term has been expanded to ICT which stands for Information and
Communication Technology to accommodate the field of electronic communication.

ICT in business

Computers are mostly used to perform financial calculations along with storing and managing
business and financial records. Most big organizations use computer software to store and update
employment records. Likewise, computers can be used to prepare bills, tracking inventory,
tracking payments due and payments to be needed along with items which are needed to be
produced, delivered, stored, and sold. All the information needed by the companies to run our

business is stored using a computer application and the secondary information is searched using
the internet. Furthermore, even in a smaller organization, the cash receipts and registers have
been replaced with the Point of Sale (POS system). The POS system is used to print out the sales
receipt along with feeding information to the computer database to maintain the inventory
records. Moreover, in modern factories robots are used to pick up and transfer heavy, hazardous,
and hot items. They are mostly used to maintain good quality work in routine and repetitive tasks
which causes boredom or fatigue to humans.
The main purpose of businesses to use ICT is to take advantage of the decreased cost, improved
performance, improved decision making, and competitiveness.

Better Decision-Making

Generally, the ICT system is used by businesses to store, analyze, and process huge amounts of
data. These huge amounts of data allow employees and managers to make a fast decision with
low chances of errors cause increase operational efficiency so that the business can give a fast
response to threats or opportunities. Moreover, communication networks help effective working
from remote locations and taking joint decisions by team members from dispersed locations.

Increased Manufacturing Productivity

By making the business processes automatic and providing ICT tools to the employees, the
businesses can improve overall performance and that of a single unit. For instance, in the
production unit, software like Autocad helps in computer-aided design to decrease the setup time
and improve accuracy in manufacturing. Due to this reason, the employees do not have to spend
more time on a reworking. Moreover, getting access to manufacturing data will allow managers
to plan effective production, decrease lead times, and make effective use of resources.

Improved Customer Service

Good quality customer service is very important for the business. Through the use of ICT
solutions, businesses can offer top-notch customer service and quick responses to customer
queries. For instance, in a call center, the agents can use the database to access customer
information like product preference, buying history, etc. Doing it will help them to react faster
and efficiently to customer queries and complaints along with enhancing customer satisfaction.
Moreover, the people working can get access to customer information, product databases simply
from the touch of their smartphones having secure Internet connections. It will help them to
correct errors quickly in an efficient way and enhance customer satisfaction.

Greater and Virtual Collaboration

Moreover, the communication networks help the exam members to make an effective
collaboration on projects. One can use video conferencing to hold virtual team meetings with
members from different locations or another organization like suppliers, distributors, or business
partners. The trend helps to enhance the strength of project teams, maintain progress on
important projects without increasing project times by waiting for a physical meeting to take
place. In the product development program use of a virtual team leads to a decrease in overall
project time and getting products at a faster rate to the market which allows the company to get a
strong competitive edge.

Improved Financial Performance

The solutions of ICT can help the organization in cost reduction along with an increase in
revenue and profitability. Likewise, travel cost is reduced by doing video-conferencing for the
team members who are located in far locations. Similarly, the production data will help to detect
quality problems, decrease waste, and reworking costs. In all centers, there is information
available regarding the customer databases which helps to enhance revenue by detecting
opportunities for the sale of extra products or services. Moreover, a decrease in cost and increase
in revenue leads to an increase in overall profitability.

ICT in the BI system

Business Intelligence means using tools and techniques of information technology to convert raw
data into useful information. The technique uses a large amount of unstructured data and
processes it to detect and create new business opportunities. Business intelligence aims to make
the data structured so that users can easily understand it. Moreover, the insights of business
intelligence help the organization to get a competitive advantage and stability. When
unstructured or raw data is converted into value-added information so that the knowledge of the
business that the individual gets is increased. The meaningful data are used by decision-makers
to implement the appropriate business strategy according to the economic theory. Hence, to cater
to the needs of the customer the resources can be easily managed by using business intelligence.

The functions of Business Intelligence are as follows:

1. Reporting of information

2. Online analysis of data

3. Analyze data using different software to gain meaningful information

4. Data mining is identifying hidden information from the data

5. Process mining is identifying which business process is efficient and effective

6. Performance management of business

7. Predictive analysis means identifying future trends using past information

8. Prescriptive analysis

The ICT Intelligence provides a business analytics solution to provide value to the data which
provides businesses to access this information and deliver top-notch performance. Hence, the
business analytics solution provides a promise to fulfill providing value to the data and
information to the business. Hence, allowing the business to access the valuable performance
data which is present in any platform leads to delivering relevant information and analysis to all
relevant users regardless of their geographic location.

Simply speaking, business analytics opens windows for all corporate systems and data. All of the
professionals like system managers, business analysts, authors, IT technicians, business
managers, executives, customers, etc. can view, work with the same data simultaneously and
even find useful information through the data. The organization can even deliver value to the
customers with the use of an enterprise analytics visualization platform by making the data
simple, quick, and easy to manage.

ICT Intelligence helps the organization to advance from primitive Business Intelligence (BI)
practices to more sophisticated predictive and prescriptive analytics by use of Artificial
Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning. One can enhance the capacity by the
integration of different sources of data by the use of data science methods to increase business
value.

Survey
A survey can be defined as “a systematic method for gathering information from (a sample of)
entities to construct quantitative descriptors of the attributes of the larger population of which
the entities are members” (Groves et al., 2009). A survey can be used as a means for gathering
data over which statistical analysis is applied to test and validate various items and
relationships among items asked. The outcome of the analysis may support the generalizations
of the results.

Since errors may occur at each stage of a quantitative approach, a survey must be
designed to decrease and calculate different types of errors that may influence its results (Lohr,
2008). The total errors of a survey can be estimated by quantifying the sum of coverage errors,
nonresponse errors, measurement errors, and sampling errors (Groves et al., 2009). Coverage
errors arise when the sampling frame does not represent the population under study.

Computer-Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis (CAQDA)

Qualitative Data Analysis Involves division and interpretation of visual or audio materials to
generate statements about dimensions and structures of meaningful information in the
materials. The data analysis process can be divided into three different groups which include an
illustration of a process in detail, explaining the conditions which result in different
phenomenon to occur and formulating a theory based on the phenomena. However, the main
aim of Qualitative Data Analysis is to get generalized descriptions by comparison of various
materials, texts, or cases.

This research will employ CAQDA for analyzing the qualitative data collected from the
multiple-case study method through interviews and documents. The interview data are recorded
in audio files, while the documents are in text files. The analysis will be conducted separately
for individual cases to provide a cross-comparison among cases. However, the analysis will
also be performed at the study level, accumulating data from all cases, to provide a
generalization of the findings. We will use CAQDA software to support the conduct of
qualitative analysis. Qualitative data collected from the case study will be coded based on the
extraction of the interviewee’s core message against the preliminary model resulted from the
However, the qualitative method will still be accessible for new or additional factors not
included in the model. A CAQDA cannot automatically analyze qualitative data. Therefore, it
is only used for supporting the processes within the analysis and not for producing the analysis.
It is the researcher’s main task to conduct the actual analysis based on the CAQDA-coded data.
The computers are quite good at discovering strings of characters or coded data segments in
different types of combinations. However, the research needs to feed the computer the
information related to the way of coding, which data segment has what kind of meaning, and so
on.

Due to the enhancement of technology, one can do tasks like retrieving and storing data,
manipulating data, searching words, integrating different information into one efficiently by
using a computer. For instance, NVIVO is a recent CAQDA software that can integrate
different media types along with large data to structured information. When a person performs
CAQDA attentively, the data quality is enhanced along with the validity and reliability of the
research at the conceptual analysis stage. The research will be using CAQDA factors to analyze
the research questions from the study.

Multivariate Analysis
The multivariate analysis is used to analyze multiple independent variables at once to identify
the relationship with a single dependent variable. However, the analysis provides different
techniques that can be used to analyze our data. The selection of technology that is suitable to
be used to analyze quantitative data collected from a survey depends primarily on the research
objective and the nature of the data. This research aims at identifying factors that influence the
engagement in which some characteristics may emerge. First, some of the factors may be latent
(e.g., psychological state of citizens) while others may be observable (e.g., activities performed
by citizens). Second, multiple Independent Variables (IVs) (i.e., the factors) and one or more
Dependent Variables (DVs) (e.g., types of engagement) are involved. Third, performing
predictive or causal relationships analysis among many variables involved is required in
developing the model representing the research objective. Fourth, the nature of the data
collected in this study is likely to be continuous data.

According to the characters used in this study, the Structural Equation Modelling
(SEM) can be used for data analysis gathered from the survey. The SEM can be used to analyze
either continuous data or a mixture of multiple regression, correlation, and canonical analysis.
These techniques are concerned with the first three characteristics of this study respectively.
Factor analysis can be used for analyzing both latent and observed variables. Canonical
correlation concerns multiple IVs and multiple DVs. Multiple regression addresses the
relationships among many variables. SEM is “a statistical technique for testing and estimating
… causal relationships between variables … based on statistical data and qualitative causal
assumptions” (Urbach & Ahlemann, 2010, p. 9). SEM allows researchers to concurrently
examine relationships among multiple IVs and DVs (Urbach & Ahlemann, 2010). Hence, such
simultaneous modeling in SEM enables researchers to answer a set of interrelated research
questions in a single, systematic, and comprehensive analysis (Gefen, Straub, & Boudreau,
2000). These advantages have led to the widespread use of SEM in various fields of study. For
example, psychology research (MacCallum & Austin, 2000), management study (Shook,
Ketchen, Hult, & Kacmar, 2004), and e-government (Bélanger & Carter, 2008).

By using SEM, the model developed in this study can be tested in answering the last
research question, explaining the relationships of its constructs, and predicting the causal path
between variables. We take into account guidelines for using SEM proposed by Gefen et al.
(2000) and Gefen, Rigdon, and Straub (2011).