The Nu 2.04B Chiphel Rigpel project to “enable a society and empower the nation” through information and communications technology switched on yesterday, with 18 leaders, including the heads of the executive, judiciary, the legislature, the army and cabinet ministers, attending a two-day course to understand what ICT can do for a society and e-governance.
Despite the prime minister, Lyonchhoen Jigmi Y Thinley, the chief operations officer of the royal Bhutan army, Major General Batoo Tshering, the supreme court chief justice, Lyonpo Sonam Tobgye, in attendance, the opening was kept a low key affair.
The course, conducted by the national institute of information technology (NIIT), from India, aims to make leaders efficiently envision, design and implement initiatives and understand e-governance. The leaders were also introduced to i-pads, which were taken inside the convention centre by IT officials. On August 18 and 19, a similar course will be conducted for the secretaries to the government.
In the next three and half years, project officials said that the Chiphel Rigpel project to build IT capacity will train 7,000 leaders in all sections of Bhutanese society, including those in the civil service, private sector, corporations, security and the monastic body. “It's not teaching them skills to use computers, but to make them understand ICT and e-governance and what ICT can do to their sectors,” an official said.
Minister for information and communications, Lyonpo Nandalal Rai, said the course was about understanding the value of ICT. “It’ll explain how ICT can empower the leaders,” said the minister. “Things might get impersonalised with ICT, but it would help ease work and service delivery will be much faster.”
Around 35 people from NIIT are involved in the project, according to an official from the NIIT. “ICT is the future and making policy makers aware about how ICT can help is important, because they make the decisions,” an NIIT official said.
Since its launch on April 30 by the prime ministers of Bhutan and India, NIIT officials have “interacted” with more then 300 people to get a “feel” of ICT awareness in the country. By October this year, they said, there would be about 300 NIIT officials working with the project.
Chiphel Rigpel, which would “ICTise” Bhutan in the next five years aims to train 8,400 youth, 5,000 teachers, 7,000 civil servants and 200 leaders. Trainings for each target group are customised, with ICT officers learning the use of specialised softwares, while teachers would use ICT for teaching.
Project director Tandi Wangchuk said that 1,000 teachers every winter vacation would be trained, so that they are able to integrate ICT in their teaching process. “Under this, we’ve computer aided education and computer aided learning, where students would be encouraged to learn by themselves,” he said.
The project will take ICT to 100,000 students in 168 schools, and also educate trainees in vocational training institutes, to produce 10,000 IT professionals and 1,600 enterprises.
With 131 computer learning stations to be opened across the country, the project wants to bring the 100,000 rural population into the ICT fold. “Our aim is to educate 25 percent of the Bhutanese population on ICT by the end of five years,” said Tandi Wangchuk.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Sonam Pelden
Quelle/Source: Kuensel, Buhutan's National Newspaper, 17.08.2010
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