Publication Type

Conference Proceeding Article

Version

acceptedVersion

Publication Date

5-2025

Abstract

Papua New Guinea (PNG) is an emerging tech society with an opportunity to overcome geographic and social boundaries, in order to engage with the global market. However, the current tech landscape, dominated by Big Tech in Silicon Valley and other multinational companies in the Global North, tends to overlook the requirements of emerging economies such as PNG. This is becoming more obvious as issues such as algorithmic bias (in tech product deployments) and the digital divide (as in the case of non-affordable commercial software) are affecting PNG users. The Open Source Software (OSS) movement, based on extant research, is seen as a way to level the playing field in the digitalization and adoption of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) in PNG. This perspectives paper documents the outcome of the second International Workshop on BRIdging the Divides with Globally Engineered Software} (BRIDGES2023) in the hopes of proposing ideas for future research into ICT education, uplifting software engineering (SE) capability, and OSS adoption in promoting a more equitable digital future for PNG.

Keywords

Papua New Guinea, digitalization, digital divide, software development, education, accessibility

Discipline

Software Engineering

Research Areas

Intelligent Systems and Optimization

Areas of Excellence

Digital transformation

Publication

Proceedings of the 2025 IEEE/ACM Symposium on Software Engineering in the Global South (SEiGS), Ottawa, Canada, May 3

First Page

35

Last Page

40

Identifier

10.1109/SEiGS66664.2025.00006

Publisher

IEEE Computer Society

City or Country

Los Alamitos, CA

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1109/SEiGS66664.2025.00006

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