ICT

Information Technology (IT) describes technologies and equipment that

can be used to store, retrieve, transmit and manipulate data.
Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is a specialist
application of Information Technology that has some aspect of
communication. It includes areas such as; software development, mobile
devices, cloud computing, data centers, cyber security, research networks,
support, broad casting technologies (radio and television), and telephony
and so on.

Applications of ICT
These days we have lots of essential things in our lives & to get in
touch with these things we need ICT. With the advances in technology in
recent years ICT is applicable in our homes, offices, education system,
medical services, factories etc.

Home
In modern society ICT is ever-present, with over three
having access to the Internet. With approximately 8 out of 10
owning a smartphone, information and data are increasing
bounds. This rapid growth, especially in developing countries,
become a keystone of everyday life.

billion people
Internet users
by leaps and
has led ICT to

This obviously makes ICT essential in our homes both for adults or
children. We need access to the internet, access to computers, access to
banking, access to entertainment etc. We basically need ICT to get in touch
with the outside world.
Access to computers & the Internet is extremely helpful either to read
different books, watch videos, chat with friends, play games or do researches
etc.
ICT is also essential for children because as children get older, they will
spend an increasing amount of time using a computer, whether doing
research for homework tasks, chatting with friends or playing games. For a
lot of parents, computers, and especially the Internet, can seem a little
daunting. However, whilst your child may understand computers, and
especially the Internet, better than you, they will still benefit from your help
and guidance.

Office
Every modern organization is required to have an office. Whether it is a
Government department, business firm, school, hospital, or a voluntary
organization, the existence of an office is a must to enable necessary clerical
and administrative tasks to be performed properly.
Basic office activities include receiving and sending letters, typing,
photocopying, word-processing, telephoning, faxing and computer aided
work etc. Its observed that ICT has improved this activities.
Some of the improvements include;

Better customer service

Greater product/service variety

Shorter response time

Enhanced product/service quality

Better customization of products and services.

Basically, information & Communication Technology (ICT) is used to

refer to infrastructure and product development that facilitate the collecting,
storing and analysis of information that may be transmitted electronically, it
includes equipment like telephones, computers, printers, scanners, routers,
modems, communication lines used to enhance communication between
employers and employees, businesses and customers, and inter-business
communications across physical boundaries. Presently, almost every primary
and secondary functions of the office are carried out with the aid of ICT
infrastructure. Virtually all aspect of information management is now
intertwined with ICT and this trend has continued to ascend in an improved
mesh, gradually resulting in a fully digitalized information management
system as time passes.

Manufacturing
Human-robot interaction Information and communications technology
(ICT) is the bedrock of the manufacturing process. It improves the efficiency,
adaptability and sustainability of production systems and allows these to be
incorporated into flexible business models and agile manufacturing
processes. In addition, it enables industry to adapt to an increasingly
globalized market which requires constant innovation in terms of production,

process and output.

Smart Factories
Smart factories use simpler and more streamlined ICT for energyefficient, reliable and cost-effective production. Future production sites for a
large variety of sophisticated products will offer shorter cycle times and the
ability to control variables in the manufacturing process. Owing to the
increasing convergence of machine control and personal computer
technology, important developments in robotics, automation, planning,
simulation and optimization technologies are also foreseen.

Digital Factories
Digital factories help to reduce the need for physical prototyping and
the construction of pilot plants when designing future factories. Specialists in
fields such as mechanical, software and materials engineering will use
digitalized factories to enhance simulation, modelling and knowledge
management. Research in this area will also cover the life-cycle
management of products, from the design phase all the way through to
production, maintenance, disassembly and recycling.

Virtual Factories
Virtual factories support the management of ever more complex supply
chains between manufacturing plants around the world. They include a
network of devices, such as, for example, the Radio Frequency Identification
(RFID) of work in progress, wireless sensor networks and machine-tomachine communication. These will contribute to the real-time monitoring of
complex material flows and the more efficient use of resources. In addition,
they will give rise to further services, such as advanced maintenance
technologies for assets used in the manufacturing process.

Transport
The world has adopted various initiatives that have now enhance
travelers experience & safety through ICT. Some of the ways how this
redefining has come into effect is illustrated below.
While GPS trackers were initially used in the military and adventure
sports, they have become common place in many metropolitan cities to
enhance the user experiences in public transport. Real time information
about timings and schedules are updated stop by stop to reduce user
frustration and also bring in transparency.
Another vast area of Real time information flow in transportation is
1

available through updates given to avoid traffic jams and navigation routing.
We know that real time traffic flows obtained through GPS and electronic
displays provide enhanced user experience and travel convenience to
passengers.
And to realize the reality, many automotive companies are already
using advances in ICT to come up with great innovative ICT integrated
systems. High end cars that have safety and navigation communications
integrated within their cabin, like during accidents, lives are lost due to the
delay in calling the police or the ambulance. But with an intelligent ICT
system inside a car, things can drastically change. Whenever the airbags get
activated during a crash, and if there is an ICT system that detects the
airbag activation and dials 911 to transmit its GPS coordinates of the car in
distress, many a time, timely rescues can be planned and lives could be saved.
Advances in technology can now make it possible to respond to specific
needs, and for transport users - particularly vulnerable groups such as
women, people with limited mobility, and people with disabilities - this could
mean benefiting from new opportunities through safer and easier transport
access

Communication
Good communication is essential to every organization: communication
between organizations, and communication between parts of a single
organization (e.g. between offices in different countries).
Before the Internet, most business communication was via telephone,
fax, telex, mail - the old-fashioned paper version that costs time & money
but with the advances in ICT we have come up with great innovative ICT
integrated communication systems like; E-mail, video-conferencing, mobile
telephones, internet telephony, fax etc.

E-Mail
E-mail is a system that allows messages to be sent and received using
computers. E-mail is the most common form of electronic communication.
E-mail messages are text-based, but other types of file can also be
sent as attachments.
E-mails that are received wait in a user's inbox until the user is ready
to read them. (Unlike a telephone call, the user is free to ignore e-mails until
they have time to deal with them.)

Teleconferencing
Teleconferencing refers to interactive electronic communication
among people located at two or more different places. There are four types
of teleconferencing based on the nature and extent of interactivity and the
sophistication of the technology: 1) audio conferencing; 2) audio-graphic
conferencing, 3) videoconferencing; and 4) Web-based conferencing.
Audio conferencing involves the live (real-time) exchange of voice
messages over a telephone network. When low-bandwidth text and still
images such as graphs, diagrams or pictures can also be exchanged along
with voice messages, then this type of conferencing is called Audio graphic.
Non-moving visuals are added using a computer keyboard or by
drawing/writing on a graphics tablet or whiteboard.
Videoconferencing allows the exchange not just of voice and
graphics but also of moving images. Videoconferencing technology does not
use telephone lines but either a satellite link or television network
(broadcast/cable). Web-based conferencing, as the name implies, involves
the transmission of text, and graphic, audio and visual media via the
Internet; it requires the use of a computer with a browser and
communication can be both synchronous and asynchronous.

Mobile Telephones
Mobile telephones allow people to be away from their workplace, yet
still be contactable. This means that people can still work, even when out of
the office.
Modern smart-phones can perform a wide variety of tasks:

Make and receive telephone calls just about anywhere

Send a receive SMS (short message service) messages

Send and receive e-mail

Send and receive files such as images, text documents, etc.

Edit documents

Internet Telephony / Voice over IP (VOIP)

Internet telephony, or 'VOIP', is becoming very popular both for
personal use, and within the workplace.

Instead of using the normal telephone network (designed to carry

voices using analogue signals), VOIP systems send voices through the
Internet as digital data, just like any other Internet data (e.g. e-mails, files,
webpages, etc.)
In other words, VOIP systems use your Internet connection to send and
receive phone calls.
'Internet Telephony' means a telephone system that uses the Internet.
'VOIP' means Voice over IP, where IP means Internet Protocol - the
system that the Internet uses to transfer all data.

Fax
Fax is short for facsimile which means copy. A fax machine is a device that
can send a copy of a paper document over the telephone network.
The sending fax converts the light/dark areas of the printed document into
noises. These noises travel through the phone system and are received by
another fax machine. The receiving fax machine converts the noises into
printed marks on a piece of paper - making a copy of the original document.
Faxes are:

Low quality - images are especially poor

Slow to send (compared to e-mail)

Education
ICT is applicable in education through devices that deliver text, audio,
images, animation, and streaming video, and includes technology
applications and processes such as audio or video tape, satellite TV, CDROM, as well as local intranet/extranet and web-based learning. It's the
easiest way of learning and teaching for both students and the teachers.
We can use computers for Presentation, demonstration, manipulation
of data using productivity tools or Use of curriculum-specific applications
types such as educational games, drill and practice, simulations, tutorials,
virtual laboratories, visualizations and graphical representations of abstract
concepts, musical composition, and expert systems.
We can use internet everywhere to read different books and also we
can watch videos on the internet to get more ideas about the topic that we

want to research on. We can also get ideas by reading blogs about different
things and also discuss each others view about some topics that is related to
the education using blogs. We can also ask our teachers questions by using
emails while we are at home which could be very important especially before
the exam day or we can also research on the internet rather than having to
look at our books and find the right pages.
We
can
use
teleconferencing, radio :

broadcasting

technologies

like

televisions,

Television consists of a broad range of programs like; documentary

programs, quiz shows, educational cartoons, etc. Some notable examples
that have a global reach include the Sesame Street, the all-information
television channels National Geographic and Discovery Channel etc.
Teleconferencing refers to interactive electronic communication
among people located at two or more different places. There are four types
of teleconferencing: 1) audio conferencing; involves the live (real-time)
exchange of voice messages over a telephone network 2) audio-graphic
conferencing; When low-bandwidth text and still images such as graphs,
diagrams or pictures are exchanged along with voice messages 3)
videoconferencing; allows the exchange not just of voice and graphics but
also of moving images and 4) Web-based conferencing.
Radio lessons, developed around specific learning objectives at
particular levels of mathematics, science, health and languages in national
curricula, are intended to improve the quality of classroom teaching and to
act as a regular, structured aid to poorly trained classroom teachers in underresourced schools.

Health
When we get sick, we don't want to go to anywhere instead of staying
at home. But we had to move on from that point and we had to forcefully
take ourselves to the doctors. Taking appointment, talking to the
receptionist, describing the problem we have and then then waiting for it,
increases our illness. This is when ICT comes to help us. Now a days we don't
need to go to the doctor and describe our problems, we can use Internet to
contact with our doctor. We can use also use ICT to do face to face
communication with our doctor even though we are at home. We can also
frequently ask question to our doctors and they can also answer us using Emails.

We doesn't have to even take appointment to contact with our doctors

and we can contact with our doctor whenever we want. We can also use this
facility to learn about our disease and how to cure ourselves. We can search
on the internet to research about the disease and the medicine we have to
use to get better. It is also very helpful for those students who are studying
to become doctors and also who like to know more about different kind of
medicines.

Information System
An information system is any organized system for the collection,
organization, storage and communication of information.
A computer Information System (IS) is a system composed of people
and computers that processes or interprets information. The term is also
sometimes used in more restricted senses to refer to only the software used
to run a computerized database or to refer to only a computer system.

Types of Information System

1. Executive information system: An executive information system (EIS),
also known as an executive support system (ESS), is a type of
management information system that facilitates and supports senior
executive information and decision-making needs. It provides easy access
to internal and external information relevant to organizational goals. It is
commonly considered a specialized form of decision support system
(DSS).
EIS emphasizes graphical displays and easy-to-use user interfaces. They
offer strong reporting and drill-down capabilities. In general, EIS are
enterprise-wide DSS that help top-level executives analyze, compare, and
highlight trends in important variables so that they can monitor
performance and identify opportunities and problems. EIS and data
warehousing technologies are converging in the marketplace.
EIS helps executives find data according to user-defined criteria and
promote information-based insight and understanding. Unlike a traditional
management information system presentation, EIS can distinguish
between vital and seldom-used data, and track different key critical
activities for executives, both which are helpful in evaluating if the
company is meeting its corporate objectives. After realizing its
advantages, people have applied EIS in many areas, especially, in
manufacturing, marketing, and finance areas.

2. Decision support system: is a computer-based information system that

supports business or organizational decision-making activities. DSSs serve
the management, operations, and planning levels of an organization
(usually mid and higher management) and help people make decisions
about problems that may be rapidly changing and not easily specified in
advance that is Unstructured and Semi-Structured decision problems.
Decision support systems can be either fully computerized, humanpowered or a combination of both.
3. A global information system: is an information system which is
developed and / or used in a global context. This means that it highly
relates to distributed systems or distributed computing where the
distribution is global. The term also incorporates aspects of global
software development and there outsourcing (when the outsourcing
locations are globally distributed) and offshoring aspects. A specific
aspect of global information systems is the case (domain) of global
software development. A main research aspect in this field concerns the
coordination of and collaboration between virtual teams. Further
important aspects are the internationalization and language localization of
system components.
4. Enterprise systems (ES): are large-scale application software packages
that support business processes, information flows, reporting, and data
analytics in complex organizations. While ES are generally packaged
enterprise application software (PEAS) systems they can also be bespoke,
custom developed systems created to support a specific organization's
needs.
Types of enterprise systems include:

enterprise resources planning (ERP) systems,

enterprise planning systems, and

Customer relationship management software.

From a hardware perspective, enterprise systems are the servers,

storage and associated software that large businesses use as the
foundation for their ICT infrastructure. These systems are designed to
manage large volumes of critical data. These systems are typically
designed to provide high levels of transaction performance and data
security. Vendors in this space include IBM, Oracle, HP and more.

5. Geographic information system (GIS): is a system designed to

capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present all types of
spatial or geographical data. The acronym GIS is sometimes used for
geographic information science (GI Science) to refer to the academic
discipline that studies geographic information systems and is a large
domain within the broader academic discipline of Geo-informatics. What
goes beyond a GIS is a spatial data infrastructure, a concept that has no
such restrictive boundaries.
6. Transaction processing system: is a style of computing that divides
work into individual, indivisible operations, called transactions. A
transaction processing system (TPS) or transaction server is a software
system, or software/hardware combination, that supports transaction
processing.

Impact of ICT in everyday life

In modern society ICT is ever-present, with over three billion people
having access to the Internet. With approximately 8 out of 10 Internet users
owning a smartphone, information and data are increasing by leaps and
bounds. This rapid growth, especially in developing countries, has led ICT to
become a keystone of everyday life, in which life without some facet of
technology renders most of clerical, work and routine tasks dysfunctional.
However, hurdles are still at large. "Of the 4.3 billion people not yet
using the Internet, 90% live in developing countries. In the worlds 42 Least
Connected Countries (LCCs), which are home to 2.5 billion people, access to
ICTs remains largely out of reach, particularly for these countries large rural
populations." ICT has yet to penetrate the remote areas of some countries,
with many developing countries dearth of any type of Internet. This also
includes the availability of telephone lines, particularly the availability of
cellular coverage, and other forms of electronic transmission of data. The
latest "Measuring the Information Society Report" cautiously stated that the
increase in the aforementioned cellular data coverage is ostensible, as
"many users have multiple subscriptions, with global growth figures
sometimes translating into little real improvement in the level of connectivity
of those at the very bottom of the pyramid; an estimated 450 million people
worldwide live in places which are still out of reach of mobile cellular
service."
Favorably, the gap between the access to the Internet and mobile
coverage has decreased substantially in the last fifteen years, in which "2015

is the deadline for achievements of the UN Millennium Development Goals

(MDGs), which global leaders agreed upon in the year 2000, and the new
data show ICT progress and highlight remaining gaps deadline for
achievements of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which global
leaders agreed upon in the year 2000, and the new data show ICT progress
and highlight remaining gaps." ICT continues to take on new form, with
nanotechnology set to usher in a new wave of ICT electronics and gadgets.
ICT newest editions into the modern electronic world include smart watches,
such as the Apple Watch, smart wristbands such as the Nike+ FuelBand, and
smart TVs such as Google TV. With desktops soon becoming part of a bygone
era, and laptops becoming the preferred method of computing, ICT continues
to insinuate and alter itself in the ever-changing globe.

Benefits of ICT
As human being we are always attach with lot of essential things in our
life. Jobs, education, entertainment, banking these are few compulsory things
in our life. It was very hard to get in touch with these before technology
changed our life and made it easier for us. It has contributed a lot to
exchange our life from writing a letter which could take one month to arrive
to the receiver to writing an e-mail which can be received by the receiver in
just one minute, from going to the shop to choose and buy things to choose
and buy using E-commerce and no one even needs to go to the shop to
collect their goods. Sticking with the book for whole day can be very amusing
for the students. Thanks to IT which introduced us to an innovative way of
studying. Some of the topics are described in more details below which are
changed because of IT.
Using technology is a part of our everyday lives. Whether it is
computers in the office or the internet, databases, customer relations
programs, or systems to manage operations, it is hard to function without
information and communications technology (ICT).
ICT is a tool that can be used as part of your strategy to improve how
you work. Technology can transform your efficiency and enable you to raise
your profile.