Access
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Access (general)
In general the term access stands for the degree of opportunity for an individual or group to make unimpeded use of a certain means, good or service. (Compare 'freely accessible' to 'limited access only'.) In the setting of the information society, ICT is an essential means of social interaction. This makes the question of access to ICT of utmost relevance to e-government. A useful practical approach to accessibility issues is identifying (possible) impediments (barriers) to the free use of the object in question. Perceived structural lack of access is a source of relative deprivation of groups, and increases the risk of social exclusion
Besides the sociological meaning, 'access' also encompasses a wide range of technical subjects within the ICT domain.
Access to ICT
Access to ICT is a politically important subject. Regularly described as a possible reason for social segregation, it often leads to programs or subsidies that try to remedy the perceived situation. But access is a complex subject. It has physical, economic, cultural, psyschological and social aspects. Physical aspects comprise the avaibility of information technology and networks. Economic availability means the business models for services of the supply side, and the prices and available means of users on the demand side. ... ... ...
With respect to ICT, different access problems (barriers) varying among different members of society lead to the so-called digital divide.
The Dutch researcher Jan Steyaert distinguishes tree levels of 'skills':
- operational skills, the ability to use the technology, start applications and operate those.
- tactical skills, the ability to use applications and search the internet
- strategic skills, the ability to better one's life with the results of the use of information technology.
Some of the skills development programs have seen citizen's develop along these lines: after the initial programs teaching operational skills, such as ooperating system, browser, wordprocessing an powerpoint citizen's wanted to proceed to more extensive programs teaching more advanced skills such as audio, photo and video editing, creating websites and usign the web for spcific purposes such as banking or health.
Access (technical)
Access in telecommunications is the process by which an effort to communicate through an electronic communications system is carried out. The process begins with an access attempt, in which one or more users interact with a communications system to enable initiation of user information transfer. An access attempt itself begins with an issuance of an access request by an access originator. An access attempt ends either in successful access or in access failure. Access denial (system blocking) can include:
- Access failure caused by the issuing of a system blocking signal by a communications system that does not have a call-originator camp-on feature.
- Access failure caused by exceeding the maximum access time and nominal system access time fraction during an access attempt.
For more information see Wikipedia.
In depth, relevance to eGovernment
The access to information and electronic services in eGovernment is provided mainly by Internet applications specially developed for the front office. A user can access the information and make use of the services via Internet either by his personal computer or by PIAP (Public Internet Access Point) - a device for common use arranged in a public place (post office, library, mall, or any public building).
