CICT Chairman Virgilio Peña said the agency has proposed at least two e-government projects for funding under the US government program. "One is on the development of a revised Government Information Systems Strategic Plan. We do need to revise this plan every five years. So we intend to identify what are the critical projects we need to focus on in the next few years. I also proposed capacity building programs for project managers in government," Peña said.
According to the USTDA website, this agency is an independent, commercially oriented foreign assistance agency of the US government.
It promotes economic development and trade in developing and middle income countries by funding feasibility studies, consultancies, training programs and other project planning services.
In Asia, it aims to create export opportunities for US firms by identifying major development projects with large export potential.
It gives out grants to host country project sponsors that enable US engineers and consultants to contribute their expertise to the project-planning phase, and give US suppliers of goods and services a better opportunity to compete for contracts when the project is implemented.
"I'm not really familiar on the how funding is appropriated. But I suppose it depends on the requirements of an Asian country. All I know right now is that we need to submit proposals and they in turn evaluate it. What we're proposing is for our ICT capacity building project. So this grants are not in the millions of dollars," the ICT official added.
In 2002, for instance, the USTDA funded the Broadband Network Buildout Project in Bangladesh, India. USTDA provided a 220,000 dollars in grant to Access Telecom, Ltd. Of Bangladesh to partially fund a feasibility study on the project. Another firm, Pulse Inc., was selected to conduct the study aimed at evaluation of alternative network deployment options and designs.
The Philippines’ Bureau of Internal Revenue was also a beneficiary of the USTDA grant in 2002. This funded the agency's Computerization and Outsourcing project worth 584,100 dollars. The grant went to a feasibility study on a Tax Computerization Project, which identified outsourcing options for the agency's information technology functions, as well as solutions for the organization's infrastructure.
Autor: Erwin Lemuel Oliva
Quelle: INQ7, 04.05.2005
