rural ict
www.cict.gov.ph
ICT-Related Initiatives in the Philippines Ivan John Uy, Chairman of the Commission on Information and Communications Technology, Philippines
T
he Philippines has 7100 scattered islands and obviously in such a situation, connectivity is a difficult issue because of the challenges in providing submarine connectivity for cross the seas in Broadband and reliable networks. Give the island’s remoteness, isolation and lack of electricity, we need to move into many other alternatives using satellite communication, solar power, wind energy and
many other forms of renewable energy in order to sustain. In the Philippines we have sponsored several Bills to promote ICT. One such Bill is concerned with the creation of a separate Department of ICT to guide the entire ICT strategy plan for the Philippines. This Bill has been passed by the Congress and it needs to be passed by the Upper House. We are also planning to form a pool of Government CIOs in form of an association or a council so that the ICT programmes of every department are shared. The standards, strategies and projects will be shared and con-
verged. This is a challenge in e-Governance, addressing not only the different pillars or silos of information systems but at the same time overcoming the turf issues to facilitate information sharing. By forming the CIO community we are hoping to bridge many of these gaps.
www.tcs.com
ICT and Rural Development: Challenges and Opportunities
I
Tanmoy Chakrabarty, Vice President & Head, Government Industry Solutions Unit (ISU), TCS
nformation and Communication Technology (ICT) has emerged as a powerful tool in bringing about transformation for the rural population of India. Presently, one does witness ICT proliferation in urban areas in India. Internet penetration and other e-services are showing an upward trend. But the real challenge is to bring the enablement of the ICT to masses and impact the society at large where 75 percent of the population resides in rural India. The issue is how best can we transfer eGovernance to the rural mass to bring in
transparency and accountability to the functioning of government at various levels? There is a need to share the example of good practices that are available with the common mass so that these practices are emulated and get replicated and digital parity is established little sooner across the society. In India, we have an extreme dichotomy. While on the one hand, India is a country with $80 million dollars IT exports, the rural population still forms the non privileged section of the digital divide. The challenge before us is to bring the economically deprived section to the other side of digital divide. September 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov
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