CONNECTING THE SENIOR CITIZENS WITH ICT: THE DEVELOPMENT OF PORTAL KOMUNITI KITA

Abstract

The rapid growth of ICT experienced by many developed countries has brought about challenges to these governments to narrow the digital divide that exists between citizens of the country. The challenges faced by these governments reflect those faced by Malaysia.  In  embracing  these  challenges,  the  Malaysian  government  has  put  in  tremendous  effort  towards  building  a development-oriented information society for all to enable Malaysian to access, utilize and share information and knowledge. This can be seen in the remarkable progress made towards a developed nation through the informatization strategy. However, certain groups of the population, in particular, the senior citizens are left behind in ICT, due to fear of technology, low or zero ICT literacy,  lack  of supporting  infra  and info-structures  and  community readiness.  This  paper  reports  on  the  process  of developing a portal, aptly named Portal Komuniti Kita, focusing on the senior citizens. The study will also report on feedback received from a group of senior citizens who participated in the User Acceptance Test which was conducted in 2012. The development of Portal Komuniti Kita has been commissioned by the government with the aim of developing a portal for various groups of Malaysian citizens: children, teenagers, youth, women, senior citizens, people with special needs, small medium entrepreneur,   and the indigenous people.