IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Aber das sind nur Durchschnittszeiten in den Cybercafes zwischen Addis Abeba und Kinshasa. Im Büro verlangsamt sich der Datenverkehr des überteuerten Breitbandanschlusses plötzlich auf Dial-up-Niveau. Da hilft nur abwarten, es wird schon irgendwann wieder schneller gehen. Und auch wenn das Modem nach sekundenlangem nervösen Flackern den Geist aufgibt oder ein Stromausfall den frustrierten Nutzer stundenlang "offline" zwingt, ist das eben afrikanischer Internet-Alltag.

The Government Assisted Technology Endeavour (GATE) was unveiled and the programme is being hailed as a major development for the island.

Only the ICT Cadet programme, which is the first component of GATE, was introduced and officials are confident that when the remaining modules are executed, Antigua & Barbuda will be taken to the next level of technological advancement.

“We are very excited about finally getting the government to back a number of proposals we have been making to them for years,” said former ministry IT specialist Ibrahim Abouezzine. He added that within the ministry, there were “too many worries over the emergency laws and how this would affect security. But that is all over now, supposedly.”

According to the newspaper, a major initiative is the “One computer per family” that will target schools and introducing computers and Internet education into the system.

The government of Alassane Ouattara, whose priority is to build a digital economy, plans to develop and restructure the ICT sector, which appears to have seriously suffered from years of political squabbles, war, underinvestment and dubious policies.

The Government-Assisted Technology Endeavour is a partnership between Antigua and Barbuda and regional telecom firm Digicel.

The project will focus on improving Antigua’s broadband internet connectivity, along with a focus on stimulating growth in innovation, entrepreneurship, job creation and sustainability.

The recommendation is contained in the meeting's final communiqué that reached Angop on Saturday.

Addressing the closing of the event, minister José Carvalho da Rocha urged the participants to fulfil the conclusions and recommendations from the Consultative Council.

At the end of the session, chaired by the Vice - President of the Republic, Manuel Vicente, the State secretary for Information Technology, Pedro Teta, told the press that, among other issues, was made the assessment of the National Plan for the Information Society.

The development of stronger, more integrated digital economies in the Asia-Pacific region will be the focus of the APEC Ministerial Meeting on Telecommunications and Information (TEL) on 7-8 August 2012 in St Petersburg, Russia.

APEC Ministers will consider actions and proposals put forward by APEC senior telecommunications officials who concluded their strategic and technical meeting here on Monday. The goal is to advance practical policies that improve confidence in information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure across APEC economies.

Ministers of Telecommunications and Information Technology from ASEAN countries agreed to give top priority to co-operation and development in a five-year road map to 2020, Minister of Viet Nam's Information and Communications, Nguyen Bac Son said in a press conference at the closing ceremony of the 15th ASEAN Telecommunications and Information Technology Ministers Meeting (ASEAN TELMIN 2015).

"We all agreed to develop a sustainable and secure ASEAN community based on a digital and comprehensive community," Son said.

Speaking to FutureGov, Singapore’s Minister for Communications and Information, Yaacob Ibrahim, shared, “Application of ICT in public sector is one of the key initiatives of the ASEAN ICT Masterplan 2015. But recognising that different states have different levels of development, ASEAN has left the implementation of these initiatives to the various states.”

In back-to-back summits over five days, they will seek ways and means of mobilising human, technical and financial resources needed to deploy ICT to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empowerment of women, reduce child mortality, combat malaria, HIV/AIDS and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability, public safety, and development of global partnerships for sustainable development.

Emeritus Professor Jonathan Anderson, Flinders University of South Australia, predicts that knowledge in the form of books and printed matter will rapidly become digitised. Today, full text of over seven million books can be accessed through Google Books. This number is growing quickly as Google expands its digitisation effort with international associations, publishers and authors. Companies such as Amazon.com and Sony are also contributing to this development.

Research has shown that projects to promote life-long learning through technology within illiterate communities can strengthen inequalities rather than reduce them. The people who benefit from computers and internet access are generally younger people, instead of the intended people who are older, disabled or unemployed.

Asia’s biggest information technology and communications (ITC), the Infocomm Media Business Exchange (imbx), event began with the opening of eGov Global Exchange with a keynote address by Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Tharman Shanmugaratnam here at Marina Bay Sands yesterday.

The first in a series of e-events hosted by the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) of Singapore that will feature some of the leading experts in the field with some 50,000 participants from 100 countries taking part in the 5-day event that concludes on June 21.

Shadow communications minister Malcolm Turnbull and shadow finance minister Andrew Robb joined forces in Melbourne to launch the policy for e-government and the digital economy, which they described was part of an "aggressive reform agenda."

The Australian Computer Society said its latest annual statistics for the sector showed that demand for jobs in communications and technology would hit 12,300 by early next year.

However, the number of domestic students completing ICT courses is still struggling to recover from a decline that began in 2009.

A key intent of the strategy is to break down the departmental silos that presently hold government information and services used by the public and present these in ways that match how the public uses them.

National Information and Communications Technology Australia (NICTA) will receive an additional $42 million in 2015-16 in an effort to support Australia’s digital economy and help continue Australia’s economic strength beyond the mining boom, according to the government.

• Good news: the local ICT sector is "poised for a period of rapid expansion".
• Bad news: "the domestic supply of ICT skills has not kept pace with demand".
• Worse news: plans to improve supply are not completely convincing and so we may see yet more offshoring and 457 workers.

The Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency (AWPA) has forecasted total ICT workforce growth of approximately 33,200 workers or 7.1% between now and 2016-17, but "The reality is that the domestic supply of ICT skills has not kept pace with demand, and this will need to change if we are to move confidently into the digital century," said its CEO Robin Shreeve.