Untapped potential for software engineering in an emerging society: The case of Papua New Guinea
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Technological advancement is a main driver for societal change. The Papua New Guinean (PNG) society is currently undergoing technological, economic, and social transformations, with first signs indicating the development of a local software engineering community. To characterise challenges and opportunities associated with a country's progress toward becoming a member of the global software engineering community, we set out to explore the situation in PNG. To this end, we organised a local software engineering workshop and invited students, educators and industry experts to participate. Besides collecting data by distributing a questionnaire (n=52) and by recording talks (n=3) during the workshop, we conducted an in-depth focus group session with local actors (n=5). Based on a thematic analysis of the resulting qualitative data, we present five themes that capture challenges and opportunities for PNG software engineers. We further discuss local implications for emerging societies such as PNG and global implications for software engineering in general.
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