A Sustainable Rural Telecentre Concept on Sustainability Pillars

Over the years, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has become more relevant in today’s society. A telecentre is a community centre where people use, access and utilizes the benefits of the centre through the ICT-based services provided. This paper reviews rural telecentres in Malaysia. The roles and functions of telecentres are explained and discussed to analyze the question on sustainability. The ‘Just Transition’ is a recent and particular transition for rural telecentre to be sustained. Based on the qualitative analysis and review of telecentres’ sustainability, we found that some telecentres can be sustained while others could not. This is because of the impacts of economic, social, environmental and policy sustainability pillars on community telecentres in Malaysia. The review of this paper reveals findings obtained from in-depth interviews with telecentre managers and telecentres’ sustainability depends on natural resources, geographical location, social entrepreneurship, social capital, human resources (competency of leaders) and basic infrastructure. Therefore, future research should be focus on the roles of governance on resource utilization and implement effective public policy for telecentres’ sustainability.