But today ICT can also play an essential role in promoting sustainable development, said Peter Haddawy, director of the United Nations University International Institute for Software Technology (UNU-IIST), which is based in Macau.
UNU-IIST is a branch of the United Nations University, founded as the academic arm of the UN. The UNU-IIST is based here because Macau “stepped up” some 20 years ago and put up the funding to establish the institute.
Next year, in January, the institute is going to launch its first degree programme. “It will be a PhD in Information and Communication Technology for sustainable development,” Haddawy said on yesterday’s TDM Talk Show.
The expert is confident that the institute “can help with the internationalisation of research in Macau” and the application of ICT in traditional Chinese medicine – which is being fostered by the SAR Government – “is an area that has not been explored nearly so much and we see a big opportunity”.
However, Haddawy said Macau “could be doing quite a bit more” in this field. Initial figures from a recent study “show about 0.4 percent of GDP [Gross Domestic Product] being invested in research,” he said.
“That is quite a small fraction. I think Macau has a lot of potential to develop high-tech industry, but of course the investment needs to be there.”
Getting online
The Macau Government is trying to promote a major e-governance initiative in collaboration with the UNU-IIST, which aims at building a sustainable foundation for the effective use of ICT by government agencies.
“We’ve been working with the government for about six years now to realise this programme. And it’s extremely comprehensive – it’s not just about developing the technology – it involves training, understanding the organisation and looking at how technology can support that,” UNU-IIST’s director explained.
“It involves not only the efficiency of the government internally, but also to help the government reach out,” he added.
“I think Macau has [been taking advantage of the e-governance],” said Haddawy, adding that the city was ranked 33 in the world by the Waseda University in Japan, which produces one of the most well known worldwide rankings.
The UNU-IIST director believes Macau is becoming a smart city due to the rapid development in the use of information technologies. “There are things that you see, like the electronic signature that has been implemented, which is quite advanced and you don’t see that in so many countries,” he said.
The meaning of smart city, however, involves much more than small applications and it aims at making the city more efficient. The goal, Haddawy said, is to find “how can we use information technology to support planning and decision making”.
New direction
According to experts, ICTs have a catalytic impact in three key areas, including productivity and innovation, modernisation of public services and advances in science and technology.
Last year, recognising that the world of information and communication technology had changed immensely over the decades, the UNU-IIST decided to focus on the new computing environment and its potential to serve the cause of sustainable development.
“Twenty years ago there was a real need for an institute that would help build capacity in traditional computer science […] but science and technology develop very rapidly,” Haddawy said. According to Haddawy, information technology is transformative, “in the sense of giving citizens more of a voice, giving them more political power”.
“What is very interesting and that you see happening – and this is very, very recent – is the development of an information technology infrastructure in some of the least developed countries,” said the expert, adding that “you’ve got people who can be surfing the web in places that you can’t even get to because the roads are washed out”.
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Quelle/Source: Macau Daily Times, 14.10.2011
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