Abstract

The lack of youth employment opportunities in South Africa is exacerbated by inadequacies in governmental institutions, policies and access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). These inadequacies can result in information deficiencies such as, unawareness of employment opportunities and employment requirements. Open government data (OGD) and ICT’s are potential enablers in meeting some of the information needs related to finding employment opportunities but there is little theorization on the application of OGD. Therefore, this study aims to investigate how the role of ICT and OGD in creating awareness of youth employment opportunities can be understood better by the application of the Choice Framework. The Choice Framework (CF) is Kleine’s analytical tool for investigating ICTs for development towards a contextualised understanding of the relationships among the framework’s elements namely structure, agency, the dimension of choice and development outcomes. The research design is a single, exploratory case study; the data capturing was conducted in the Alexandra Township of the Gauteng Province in South Africa using semi-structured interviews. Data was collected from 34 participants (between the ages of 18 and 35) who are currently looking for employment. The data was analysed thematically using Atlas.ti V8 and then unpacked in terms of the constructors of the CF. The findings show most participants had access to ICT but limited awareness on OGD and several challenges in using OGD for finding employment related information were identified. The findings provide a theory based contextual understanding of the research problem including the challenges and recommendations towards overcoming said challenges of finding information on employment opportunities.

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