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Pastimes : Let's Build a School to Start the New Year! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E who wrote (157)	1/28/2001 9:41:37 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 198

‘Digital divide a feared issue in SA’ By Ram Sharan Sedhai KATHMANDU, Jan 27 - The two-day information technology (IT) conference, dubbed as the first-ever international standard IT meet in Nepal, is counted upon making deliberations on capitalizing the opportunities offered by information and communications technology (ICT). Besides exploring new avenues for soft- and hardware exports and investments in the IT industry, IT pundits are of the opinion that having access to global information and using the tools like tele-medicine, e-governance, e-commerce can help improve the quality of the life of the people. It is not only likely to benefit business wizards in urban areas but also the rural poor. Farmers in Sri Lanka are using community radio with Internet and getting information on virtually any subject they want. So can IT do the same for the common man in Nepal in foreseeable future. In Bangladesh, farmers plan their crops by reading weather patterns via satellite and get better prices for their produces putting the products on-line. Similarly, IT-enabled services like medical transcription, preparing the prescription dictated by doctors abroad, is already offering white collar jobs on a global scale which also stems brain-drain, a serious problem with the developing economies. One does not have to be in Europe to work in some world-class European firm as call centres and GIS data conversion are in operation here helping reduce the mounting unemployment in the developing nations, they said. However, experts also warn that in the race to make the best of the rapidly-growing ITC industry, ordinary people tend to be forgotten. It may further exacerbate inequality and widen the gaps between the haves and have nots. Professor Kenneth Keniston, Director of the MIT-India Program points towards developing local content in local language and standardizing the language used in software in order for Nepal to benefit from the IT industry. To avoid the digital divide, the gap between the people having access to information and those having no access to it, necessary infrastructures have to be developed and literacy rate increased. Digital inequality is a much-feared issue in South Asia as about 80 per cent of websites are in English and the number of English-speaking people is very low. Participants laid emphasis on creating an ambience conducive to the growth of the industry by the public and the private sector too should not be only focused on profit making. They said that the challenge for South Asia, in reality, is to adopt and adapt IT to enhance the quality of life of all South Asians. They also said that application of IT brings transparency in government offices by helping encourage good governance, which plays a significant role in strengthening the democratic system. Technology has become the driving force behind globalization which has given decision-makers unprecedented tools for development. The conference is a major forum for discussing the emergence and the current trends of ICT and its applications, in which participants said IT investment potential galore in Nepal but lack of law has hindered it. Organized in conjunction with the on-going CAN Info Tech 2001, by the Computer Association of Nepal (CAN) the conference is being participated in by 300 plus IT professionals, technologists, businessmen and academics from Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Japan, Thailand, Australia and the United States.