Tuesday, 7 September 2010
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Digital Inclusion
How ICT is helping to feed Indonesia
Indonesia’s Ministry of Agriculture has the task of feeding a population that is expected to grow from 238 million in 2010 to 288 million within the decade. The Ministry’s IT division head told FutureGov how an annual budget of four billion rupiah (US$444,000) is being spent on ICTs to better equip farmers with information they can use to boost productivity.
Digital Inclusion
Local govts focus on digital inclusion
Since January 2004, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology ...
Digital Inclusion
3 August 2010 | News
Email with a pen, paper and a mobile phone?
Citizens in India will soon be able to send emails using a pen, paper and mobile phone camera. HP Labs based in Bangalore are in the final stages of developing new technology that would enable any mobile phone with a camera to become an emailing device.
22 July 2010 | News
Social networks: Indonesia's fifth estate?
Social networks in Indonesia have become the country’s “fifth estate” - they are shaping democracy and policymaking. So says the commissioner of the Indonesian Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (BRTI), Heru Sutardi, who points to recent cases of where Indonesians have used social networks to amass public support and pressure governments.
20 July 2010 | News
IT literacy tackled in Indian state
With less than two months to go, time is running out to show results from a key digital inclusion project in the Indian State of Kerala. Dr Rathan Kelkar, Director of the Kerala State IT Mission, spoke to FutureGov to highlight the achievements of Project Sameeksha.
13 July 2010 | News
Sabah government’s first major digital inclusion project
Malaysia’s second largest state, Sabah, announced its first major investment – worth a total of RM383 million (US$119 million) – to bridge the digital divide.
6 July 2010 | News
Should internet access be a basic human right?
How valuable to human life is information? Well, in Finland it is now a basic human right - like food, shelter or clean water. Every citizen and business in the home of Nokia should - by law – be granted access to broadband internet services, the government decreed on July 1st 2010. Should Asia follow suit?
13 May 2010 | News
Indonesia reveals plans to bridge digital divide
In an interview with FutureGov, the Indonesian Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (BRTI) has shared its plans to connect half of Asia’s third largest population to the internet by 2015.
11 May 2010 | News
World Bank opens up development data
The World Bank is the latest information-rich organisation to free up its data for public consumption. The portal data.worldbank.org will give policymakers access to more than 2000 financial, business, health, economic and human development statistics, information that was previously exclusive to paying subscribers.
10 May 2010 | News
Indian state reaches poor via mobile phone
The state of Rajasthan in northern India has launched an e-governance initiative that aims to communicate essential information to the underprivileged via mobile phones. The system incorporates data migration, text-to-speech conversion in local languages, automatic dialing, and voice message transmission.
5 May 2010 | Interview
India: role model for govt transformation
India’s government is transforming apace. Since the introduction of the National e-Governance Plan in 2006 it has leapfrogged into a new era of governance. The world’s largest democracy still faces many challenges, but great opportunities lie ahead.
4 May 2010 | News
ADB urges developing govts to engage private sector
The Asian Development Bank has called on governments in developing countries to create more opportunities for the private sector to “turn the digital divide into a digital opportunity” to aid the fight against poverty.
27 April 2010 | Feature
Can mobiles close the digital divide?
Everyone in the world above the age of five is expected to own a mobile phone within the next decade. So how can and will governments in Asia use these ubiquitous devices to deliver services to its poorest citizens?
1 March 2010 | News
UN defends relevance of e-government rankings
The United Nations has refuted suggestions that its E-government Survey has lost relevance in an era of increasingly diverse e-government ecosystems. The survey’s director, Haiyan Qian, told FutureGov that the rankings continue to serve as a guide to more efficient, open and transparent governance, and help public sector modernisers “put money in the right places” and avoid commonly made mistakes.
25 January 2010 | News
Appeal for billion-dollar e-governance project in India
A development programme director for India’s poorest regions has called on foreign and domestic service-providers to help with a local government capacity building exercise for an area that covers 40 per cent of the country. Sudhir Krishna, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Panchayati Raj, Government of India, told FutureGov that the 1000 crore rupees (US$217 million) project needed best-of-breed providers to ensure its success. Another project, known as e-Panchayat, will see around 4500 crore rupees (US$978 million) spent on improving service delivery at the village level.
5 January 2010 | News
How to make ICT-enabled education succeed
ICT lies at the heart of modernising Asia’s education systems. However, technology alone will not be enough to bridge the digital divide, says Anita Dighe, Director, Directorate of Distance Learning, India. She went on to stress areas which governments need to focus on in order to deliver positive outcomes.
16 December 2009 | News
Sri Lanka introduces ICT to dairy farmers
Web and mobile technologies have been introduced such that Sri Lanka’s dairy farmers can achieve self-sufficiency in milk production.
11 December 2009 | News
Chinese prefecture pushes for rural services
Since the launch of the pilots of “Rural Information 121” （“農信121”）project, the eastern Chinese prefecture of Wenzhou has successfully implemented it in more than 11 townships.
10 December 2009 | News
Mobile phones close literacy gap in Pakistan
A literacy programme delivered through the mobile phone to disadvantaged female learners in Punjab showed improved literacy skills.
23 November 2009 | News
Singapore accelerates digital inclusion for seniors
The government will set up 100 hot spots with computers and Internet services for senior citizens to use for free.
13 October 2009 | News
Standards up at Government Technology Awards 2009
Winners at the Government Technology Awards 2009 have received praised for the “very high quality” of entries, particularly from developing countries in the region. However, there is still room for improvement in the Green Government category, noted Laurence Millar, former Government Chief Information Officer of…
12 October 2009 | News
Asian govts mix carrot and stick approach to e-services
Asian governments revealed their differences on how to boost the uptake of e-services in a rambunctious discussion at last week’s FutureGov Summit in Bali, Indonesia.
5 October 2009 | News
Chinese province builds information highway
The eastern Chinese province of Anhui is investing more than RMB 80 billion (US$11.5 billion) to modernise its infrastructure, including a project known as ‘Digital Anhui’ that aims to make the internet more widely available and improve data transfer between urban and rural areas.
30 September 2009 | News
Kerala bridges digital gap with village IT centres
The Indian state of Kerala has opened its first community computing centre in an effort to close the digital divide, its state IT Director told FutureGov.
22 September 2009 | News
Chinese rural ICT project hits US$18 million mark
A two-year project to bridge the urban-rural digital divide in Yunnan Province in southern China has seen RMB 124 million (US$18 million) spent so far in the creation of the ‘Yunnan Digital Village’, an integrated information network that will serve as a ‘living dictionary’ for the area’s 44 million residents.
20 September 2009 | News
China extends rural land registration pilot
After the successful completion of the first phase of the pilot GIS-based land registration project covering two villager groups, China has signed a contract for a second phase, involving two to three counties in the eastern Anhui province.
4 August 2009 | News
India pushes to close rural digital divide
The government of India has plans to make IT accessible to the masses in remote villages.
28 July 2009 | News
Bangladeshi Minister pushes importance of IT
AMA Muhith, the Finance Minister of Bangladesh, has highlighted the role of ICT in creating jobs, skilling the workforce and curbing corruption, and the danger of falling behind other countries as they move towards a knowledge-base economy.
27 July 2009 | News
Philippines launches study on internet use
The World Bank is funding a comprehensive study that will measure PC and internet penetration in the Philippines in partnership with the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT).
23 June 2009 | News
Thailand plans ICT community centre roll-out
Thailand’s Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MICT) has announced plans to build community ICT centres in all districts across the country, pending budget approval of 400 million baht (US$11.7 million) from central government.
23 June 2009 | News
Compulsory ICT education for Punjabi students
The Indian state government of Punjab will make computer education a compulsory subject come this October with a view to make all 1.35 million students digitally literate by next year.
16 June 2009 | News
Plan unveiled for a digital Bangladesh
Bangladeshi Finance Minister AMA Muhith has unveiled a nationwide information and communication technology (ICT) strategy aimed at making technology accessible to all.
26 May 2009 | News
Bahrain e-government services now on mobiles
The government of Bahrain is the latest country to introduce e-government services that can be accessed through mobile phones.
18 May 2009 | News
South Korea to diversify e-gov web site access
Korea’s e-government services will be made available for those logging on from FireFox or Safari, web browsers that are gaining more popularity worldwide as an alternative to Internet Explorer.
5 May 2009 | News
Asian silver surfers surge online
Internet use among Asia’s older generations rose by 35 per cent last year, according to data from online measurement company Comscore.
7 April 2009 | Interview
What women bring to government: academic
If there were more women in government in Asia, more attention would be paid to family and social issues and the welfare of children, a leading academic on Southeast Asian gender issues has told FutureGov.
31 March 2009 | News
Technology unites domestic workers in tough times
Information communications technology (ICT) is helping to keep family ties strong for Southeast Asia’s overseas domestic workers, who face increasing pressure as their job prospects shrink. So says Dr Theresa Devasahayam, Gender Studies Programme Coordinator at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
31 March 2009 | Research
Asia’s public sector boosts spend in networking
Research expects more than 40 per cent growth in enterprise networking spending over the next four years
23 March 2009 | News
IT chief: e-gov in South Africa has a long way to go
The development of e-government in South Africa still has a long way to go to catch up with the rest of the world, the country’s State IT Agency Chief of Strategic Services Moses Mtimunye has warned.
23 March 2009 | News
Poverty holds back e-gov services in the UK
A survey by UK government telecoms regulator Ofcom has found that e-government services are becoming increasingly popular - but are held back by the digital divide.
18 March 2009 | News
India’s low-cost laptop: still too pricey
The cost of the controversial low-cost laptop is not yet low enough for ordinary Indians, a prominent e-governance expert admitted in an interview with FutureGov.
17 March 2009 | News
Pressure grows on India’s e-governance mandate
India’s government has come under increasing pressure to “reach out” to its citizens as elections grip the world’s largest democracy.
10 March 2009 | News
Malaysia to speed up digital inclusion
All ongoing programmes on closing the digital divide in Malaysia need to be completed by 2010, according to Datuk Joseph Salang Gandum, Deputy Minister of Malaysia’s Energy, Water and Communications Ministry.
10 March 2009 | News
The Philippines links with UN for ICT training
The Philippines, known as the “SMS capital of the world,” has received a boost to its information and technology (ICT) capabilities with the introduction of a special UN training programme for forty chief information officers (CIOs) from the country’s central government agencies.
18 February 2009 | News
World’s largest virtualised desktop deployment in Brazil’s schools
Brazil is to install 356,800 virtualised desktops to schools in all of the country’s 5560 municipalities, allowing millions of schoolchildren to access information technology across the country.
16 January 2009 | News
“There is room for both”
Both WiMAX & LTE will thrive, according to Ben Cardwell, Vice President of Andrew
13 January 2009 | News
OLPC cuts staff but promotes free laptops
The ambitious One Laptop Per Child programme has announced huge staff cutting measures. OLPC’s founder, Nicholas Negroponte, has called the process “streamlining” and “refocusing on our mission.”
23 December 2008 | News
More Arabic web sites in the Middle East
A new project to digitise approximately 18,000 books in Arabic has been implemented in Qatar and the Gulf.
11 December 2008 | News
Vietnam’s online ministerial e-govt dialogue
Deputy Ministry for Information and Communications affirms government’s strong pushes of e-govt in an online dialogue session.
4 December 2008 | News
Indian school goes wireless
The students of Manipal University in India will be able to access the internet from the classroom to even the parking areas, having migrated to an all-wireless network infrastructure.
1 December 2008 | News
Indian state to deploy WiMAX for e-govt
Chhattisgarh state government will modernise its communication infrastructure to connect all its departments with a new, high bandwidth State Wide Area Network.
1 December 2008 | Research
Mobile phone growth fails to bridge digital divide
Despite significant progress Asia and the Pacific has made in using information and communication technology, disparity still remains in access to the internet between high-income and low-income countries.
26 November 2008 | News
The region’s significant disparity in internet access remains
The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific said that despite significant progress that Asia and the Pacific had made in using ICT, a significant disparity in internet access remained within the region.
25 November 2008 | News
Enhancing ICT capacity at Uzbek ministry
A training course on the role of ICT in public administration was organised by the Ministry of Economy of Uzbekistan and the UNDP.
25 November 2008 | News
Shanghai university receives UNESCO prize for ICT
The Director-General of UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura, has named the laureates of the 2008 UNESCO King Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa Prize for the Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Education.
24 November 2008 | News
Digital inclusion a main strategy for rural development
The State of Sarawak has listed narrowing the digital divide between urban and rural communities as one of the main rural development strategies for 2009.
24 November 2008 | News
Satellite connectivity for Indian villages
India is developing an “unconventional” satellite which would provide internet connectivity to the rural folks and render timely advice on various aspects of agriculture.
24 November 2008 | News
New IT learning centres for seniors in Singapore
Two new IT learning hubs termed as the Silver Infocomm Junctions, have been established to promote IT literacy among senior citizens.
19 November 2008 | News
ICT for education in rural Malaysia
A school in a remote part of Sabah state boasts a wireless connection and computer-aided programmes for its students to keep pace with the rest of Malaysia.
19 November 2008 | News
Filipino govt backs high school internet plans
To enhance the IT skills of high school students, the Department of Education Secretary Jesli Lapus recently announced plans to sustain the internet connection previously provided under the Gearing up Internet Literacy and Access for Students programme.
12 November 2008 | News
Pupils in Malaysian state to get laptops
Each of Terengganu’s 25,000 pupils will receive one laptop from the state government next year.
10 November 2008 | News
Low Cost Computers for Ugandan Schools
After two years of waiting, primary, secondary and tertiary institutions can now acquire low cost computers. The Uganda Ministry of Information and Communication Technology launched the Computers for Schools Uganda, a project aimed at bridging the digital-divide in the country.
23 October 2008 | News
Fast wireless services set for rural areas in Japan
The Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry has established a panel to promote next-generation fast wireless Internet communication services for rural areas.
23 October 2008 | News
China approves pilot project to service rural areas with wireless
China’s Ministry of Commerce has approved MediaG3’s pilot project for implementing mg3 wireless broadband service to over 900 million people in rural China.
22 October 2008 | News
Uganda's education needs internet subsidy
High internet connectivity costs remain a major handicap to the widespread integration of IT in teaching and research at Ugandan educational institutions.
20 October 2008 | News
Malaysia builds 165 village IT centres
In Kuala Lumpur, a total of 165 Medan Infodesa centres, also known as IT centres, have been set up in villages to equip the rural folk with the necessary IT tools, facilities and training, in a bid to bridge the digital divide in the country.
14 October 2008 | News
All Korean adults under 40 connected
Internet penetration young Koreans is almost 100 percent, according to the Korea Communications Commission (KCC).
13 October 2008 | News
Malaysia launches high speed broadband deployment
The Malaysian government will invest RM2.4 billion (US$ 680 million) for the country’s national High Speed Broadband project, according to Deputy Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak.
10 October 2008 | News
‘Internet for Everyone’ campaign launched in Canada
Telecommunities Canada (TC), a national coalition of groups that promote and support community technology initiatives, has launched the “Internet for Everyone” campaign that seeks to put a national ICT strategy back on the federal agenda.
10 October 2008 | News
Indian state to replace telegram with e-post
E-post will replace old system of telegram service across the Indian state of Kerala, according to the state’s Chief Post Master General (CPMG), Dr Udaya Balakrishnan.
7 October 2008 | News
ICT initiative for African villages
The Imo State Government—a provincial government in oil-rich Nigeria—has plans to embark on an e-village project that would create a sustainable Information Communication Technology (ICT) foundation in the local government areas of the state.
29 September 2008 | News
Singapore’s Next-Gen broadband network nationwide by 2012
All homes and businesses in Singapore are to be connected to the country’s 1Gbps all-fibre National Broadband Network by 2012. The Singapore Government has selected a consortium to design, build and operate the passive infrastructure, in a move seen as world’s most radical structural separation of fixed telecoms.
23 September 2008 | News
Malaysian City to introduce free Wi-Fi
Free wireless internet access will be offered to the residents of Penang, a densely populated urban centre in northern Malaysia.
11 September 2008 | Research
Poverty rate in Asia to be halved by 2015
The region is on track to halve the poverty rate by 2015 and achieve the number one target of the Millennium Development Goals, largely due to progress made in East Asia, particularly China, according to the United Nations’ latest report.
18 August 2008 | News
Public call offices to become info kiosks in Karnataka
Public call offices (PCOs) in the Indian state of Karnataka will be converted into electronic information and transaction kiosks with free broadband connectivity (ePCOs).
13 August 2008 | News
India to account for one-fifth of world’s WiMAX subscribers
A recent study puts the number of WiMAX subscribers in India at more than 27.5 million by 2012, around 20 per cent of the global figure.
12 August 2008 | News
Bangladesh boosts digital inclusion with mobile broadband pilot
A three month trial aims to demonstrate the value of high-speed internet access for the provision of a range of advanced services – including mobile health and mobile learning – in the country’s capital, Dhaka.
12 August 2008 | Feature
Setting state government IT policy in India
R S Sharma, Principal Secretary in the Information Technology Department of the State Government of Jharkhand, India, is responsible for formulation of State policies in the IT and e-governance area. He shares his perspectives on the implementation of various IT projects in all the Departments of the State Government.
11 August 2008 | News
Hong Kong establishes task force on digital inclusion
The Government announced at the end of July the setting up of a Task Force on Digital Inclusion.
7 August 2008 | News
Remote Thai province to deploy WiMAX
WiMAX wireless broadband network will be deployed in Mae Hong Son, a mountainous province in Thailand’s northwest, bordering Myanmar.
6 August 2008 | News
Indian high court installs Wi-Fi
In India, the Delhi High Court has plans to install Wi-Fi connection in the court premises to promote e-Filing of cases.
3 May 2008 | Feature
Sri Lanka's citizen services call centre
Sri Lanka demonstrates that developing nations can harness call centres to bridge the digital divide and deliver new levels of citizen service.
28 September 2007 | News
Monitoring rural projects online in Malaysia
A new web portal will enable residents to access and monitor the status of rural development projects within their area
3 September 2007 | Interview
How e-exams help provide speed and security
A school in one of India’s smallest states is pioneering the use of e-exams to help create a consistentcy, security and ease of use in its examinations system.
29 August 2007 | News
Villages in Myanmar get connected
Myanmar government plans to wire villages
26 July 2007 | News
Indian city development depends on e-governance
India’s Prime Minister has undelined the importance of e-government as part of the country’s roadmap for urban development.
8 July 2007 | News
UNESCO launches ICT-in-Education online community
In July 2007, as part of the new “Knowledge Communities” project, UNESCO Bangkok launched an online ICT-in-Education community: an interactive forum which welcomes educators, teachers, administrators and policy makers and others to share their ideas and opinions on topics relating to the use of ICT in education.
3 August 2004 | Feature
Mobile feedback in the Philippines
In the Philippines up to 150 million text messages are sent each day. By contrast there are only 3.2 million internet users in the country. So when the Civil Service Commission examined creating new channels for citizen feedback, it realised that the wireless channel was the way to go.
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