RKCSI Student Fellow: Zoran Mitrovic
Zoran Mitrovic has extensive managerial (general and IT/IS) and consulting experience gained both in an international corporate and academic environment. His corporate practice and research include organisational information competencies, and IS/IT strategic and project management. Being involved in the developmental activities of many small and medium enterprises (SME), he realised that their advancement often depends on the support they receive from the government and civil society, i.e. their immediate communities. As this is particularly true for small businesses, Zoran became extensively involved in research regarding ICT-based government (electronic government) and community-based (community informatics) support for these kinds of enterprises. He is also interested in the broader notion of social appropriation of ICTs for local benefits, which is the domain of the so called “community informatics” (as defined by Taylor and Gurstein) and one of the aspects of “social informatics” (as defined by Kling et al.).
Zoran has a Masters degree in Information management from the University of the Western Cape (South Africa) and is currently undertaking his doctoral research at the e-Innovation Academy (Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa) on the topic of community wealth creation through ICT-enabled (electronic government and community informatics) sustainable development of small businesses. He is presently also participating in the Western Cape government “Electronic service delivery” programme and in the evaluation of the “Information for All” UNESCO Programme.
Zoran is a committee member of the international conferences: CIDC2006 (Community Informatics for Developing Countries, Cape Town, South Africa), ECEI2006 (European Conference on Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Paris, France), and InSITE 2007 (Information Science + Information Technology Education Joint Conference, Ljubljana, Slovenia). He is also a member of the Community Informatics Research Network (CIRN) and an associated member of The Information Society Institute. He acts as a journal reviewer (Journal of Community Informatics, International Journal of Education and Development using ICT) and writes articles for professional magazines.
Among other works, those associated with community informatics and electronic government include:
- “Community Informatics research and practice: A discussion of the status quo and the use of grounded theory”,CIDC2006, 31st August - 2nd September 2006, Cape Town, South Africa
- “Serbia in Light of European Electronic Integrations: Electronic Government - Contemporary State and Challenges”; A policy advisory study for a Serbian parliamentary political party
- “The establishment of a Community Information Business Centre” – Municipality of Kosjeric Town (Serbia)
