Six country level initiatives will be presented in this session. Cases from India, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Malaysia are up for panel presentation and discussions. Format is a panel discussion session.
The most important initiative in Asia is that of the Common Services Centres drawn up by the Government of India, and is slated to be based on a public-private partnership model, wherein the Government is committed to develop the necessary infrastructure and plans to partner with key stakeholders, including the civil society organisations, state level agencies, and private sector to install, operate and manage the telecentres for e-Governance services delivery. There have been many impediments in the roll out, setting up and service delivery of the rural ICT knowledge centers. Three of the most striking impediments are Energy, Financing and rural entrepreneurship.
In Sri Lanka, a high level National Information and Communications Technology Agency (ICTA) was set up to respond to a collective action for the through alliance building between social sector investors at the bilateral and international levels. The various programmes got up to an innovative speed with the multi-stakeholder partnerships and involvement of several leading civil society organisations like Sarvodaya. Important lessons from the ICTA experience are available for sharing.
In Malaysia, several innovative policy and strategies have been put in place, making it a country with the foresight on emerging convergence of broadcasting and IT/ Internet technologies. Creating a multi-media corridor and specialized institutional mechanism for e-governance, learning and applications of ICTs for development has been the hallmark of the initiatives in Malaysia. The panel will showcase the Agribazaar initiative of MIMOS. Dubbed as the AgriTIGeR initiative, it will boost the Malaysian agriculture by enabling farmers, producers, retailers and exporters to conduct their daily agriculture production trading online. MIMOS Bhd and the Agriculture Department have jointly undertaken the program, which will focus on bridging the digital divide, enhancing productivity and competitiveness in the agriculture sector. For AgriTIGeR, MIMOS developed cost-effective e-commerce B2B Supply Chain Management (SCM) application and also a portal named AgriBazaar for the agriculture industry. AgriBazaar will be the gateway and exchange centre for agriculture communities and all players in the industry, including retailers, to carry out food production trading online. The portal will serve as a platform for technology providers, industry players and government agencies to create an "e-economy" revolution in the agriculture industry.
In the Philippines, the National Government has taken the leadership to set up telecentres and has embarked to bridge the digital divide. The Development Academy of Philippines is a premier government institution focusing on the upcoming and future development needs of the Filipino people. The telecentre-focussed work emphasizes on learning and building capacity of the citizens and public administrators on knowledge management, governance etc., both urban and rural, to gear up to information driven economy. ICTs and computer learning are the primary focus of the efforts in this programme, with the rigour of academic research institutions.
In Bangladesh, the Bangladesh Telecentre Network (BTN) has been launched on January 13, 2007 - Towards Mission- 2011, enabling building of the telecentre Family in Bangladesh. The primary agenda of BTN is to launch Mission 2011 under which telecentres will be set up all across Bangladesh by the 40th anniversary Bangladesh’s independence so that every villager can have access to livelihood services through ICTs. A total of 20 organizations, which include research institutions, NGOs, private sector enterprises, development partners would participate to form the network. Current practitioners would also share their knowledge about their own telecentre models and develop ideas about the roadmap to achieve Mission 2011. Bangladesh telecentre Network will be an open platform of partner organizations.
In Pakistan, currently there are few Rural Service Providers with the coverage of about 12% of the rural population in Pakistan; this may go up to 50% since the government has taken the initiative to ramp up the growth of telecentres through the country to bring ICTs within the reach of all. Several e-Governance projects have been proposed and are being implemented currently.
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Chair:
R. Chandrashekhar
Additional Secretary, DIT, Govt of India
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Speakers
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Mr. Salman Malik
Ministry of IT, Government of Pakistan
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 Mr. Allen Bailochan Tuladhar FIT, Nepal
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Aruna Sundararajan IL &FS/Government of India/ DIT
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Dr. Tim Rivera, Director General, National Computer Centre and Commission on Information and Communiciations Technology, Philippines
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 Dr. V.K. SamaranayakeICTA, Sri Lanka
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 Dr. Ananya RaihanD-Net, Bangladesh
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 Norlidza Mohd.YassinManager, MIMOS, Malaysia
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Tarun Malik
Group Head-Rural Computing and Public Sector Strategy, Microsoft Corp India Pvt. Ltd. India
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