Introduction

Chapters 1 and 2 described how the three dimensions of sustainability – economic, environmental and social sustainability – are inter-related and to some extent interdependent. Chapter 2 looked at a variety of social sustainability indicators for sustainable development and noted that easy access to and use of relevant information is a prerequisite for sustainable development in any sector.

By its very nature, information services play a key role in providing easy access to information as a shared resource, and hence promote the concept of equity of access to information. The advent and proliferation of the web, social networking and mobile technologies have significantly facilitated access to knowledge in a number of ways, for example through a large number of digital libraries and web resources, a variety of search engine services, and so on. All these new technologies in some way promote the social sustainability of information because in principle they provide wider access to information for every sphere of life and activity. However, it may be argued that these technologies also create some inequalities. Many researchers have discussed different socio-political implications of modern ICT, web and mobile technologies in the context of information systems and services (for a critical review of such works see Feather, 2013), but the social sustainability of information systems and services has not been researched well, so indicators for social sustainability of information systems and services have not been developed. Nevertheless, some valuable lessons may be learnt from related studies. For example, while assessing the social sustainability of a telecentre in Malaysia, Badsar et al. (2011), identified three sets of parameters:

• • specific characteristics of individual users, such as computer skills and Innovativeness

• • specific characteristics of telecentres, such as location, infrastructure and type and quality of telecentre services

• • information characteristics of telecentres, such as access to local content and relevance of content for the local community.

Some of these parameters apply to any information system or service. Similarly researchers in a variety of fields in information studies including human information behaviour, information seeking and retrieval, usability and accessibility of information have developed models, tools, techniques and indicators that can contribute to the social sustainability of information systems and services.