Cyber city Hyderabad was recently a witness to a high level seminar and exhibition, bringing together the IT Ministers of Asian countries. They had assembled to utilize this unique forum to exchange their experiences on the quiet ICT revolution sweeping their homelands and in fact the entire world. They also attempted to evolve methodologies to use these experiences for cross-country technology and application exchanges to take Asia to the very pinnacle of development.
A Unique Event This international forum was the 2nd Asia IT Ministers’ Summit held during 12-13 January, 2004 at the Taj Krishna hotel in Hyderabad, the capital city of the state of Andhra Pradesh. Hyderabad was a befitting choice as it is a city that represents successful government initiatives to use ICT to boost socio-economic development. The Summit was a result of the recognition by governments of Asian countries that there is an urgent need to undertake definitive and firm steps to spread the benefits of ICT widely and equitably, through increased cooperation at a regional level.
The Indian delegation constituted teams from the Deptt of IT and organisations under its aegis including NIC, CDAC, Media Labs Asia etc. along with some private organizations. The delegation was led by Sh. Arun Shourie, Hon’ble Minister of Communications and Information Technology and Shri Chandrababu Naidu, Hon’ble Chief Minister, Andhra Pradesh. The event saw a spate of informative presentations from delegates from thirty-one Asian countries, lively debates and discussions and also a high-tech exhibition of ICT Applications, in both rural and urban sectors implemented by the government and private organizations.
ICT Applications showcased by NIC at the Exhibition: Rural: Land Records Computerisation (Bhulekh Soft; Bhoomi; Tamil Nilam) Property Registration Smart Village (e-Panchayat) Community Information Centres (CICs) Rural Bazar DRDA/Panchayat Computerisation (RuralSoft & PriaSoft) eNRICH – Framework for development of portals AGMARKNET Old Age Pension & Insurance Schemes for Rural Women, Widows and Handicapped E-Gram Suvidha Urban: Passport Court MIS Less Paper Office in DGFT Sarathi – Smart Card based Driving License Issuance and Management System Nagar Palika Computerisation Commercial Taxes (STAMINA) Koshwahini (Treasuries) System
Web casting infrastructure was set up by NIC at the venue and the entire event was web cast for the benefit of the ICT community in general and the interested people all over the world (refer box). NIC also established Internet connectivity using Wi Fi network. Plasma display screens at strategic locations, outside the seminar hall, were set up to display short films on some of the significant projects being showcased.
A Book entitled ‘ICT Solutions for Good Governance’ was prepared, published and distributed by NIC at the Summit. It showcases NIC’s contribution to E-Governance initiatives through software applications/packages and also contains a CD-ROM containing NIC’s Treasure Chest of such applications.
Webcast of the Event…. NIC provided Live webcast of the complete event at the second Summit of Asian IT Ministers in Hyderabad. A special webcast control room was setup at the venue of Summit. High speed connectivity was established between the webcast control room and the Internet Data Centre at NIC Headquarters. Apart from the inaugural ceremony, ten plenary sessions were covered through the webcast. A CD-ROM containing the various session proceedings and the background papers was then compiled and distributed at the end of each day. The final version of the CD was also prepared with the presentations of the respective speakers. To make the live webcast available to Internet surfers all over the world, a website at URL http://asiaitsummit.nic.in was setup. Now the sessions are available as video on-demand on the same website along with the copies of the presentations of the various speakers.
A Historic Declaration At the conclusion of the event, the participants reiterated their resolve to work together on initiatives to promote and strengthen ICT in the region by formulating and adopting the Hyderabad Declaration. The salient aspects of the Hyderabad Declaration are described below.
- Bridging the Digital Divide
Governments need to identify the right applications in tune with their national priorities, leverage their existing non-IT infrastructure for proliferating ICT, ensure multi sector partnerships and help evolve sustainable business models that attract non-Government funds, trigger entrepreneurship and generate employment.
- Standardization for ICT Development in Asia
It is important to promote standards of ICT for inter-operability and for optimization of cost and effort in the development of applications. Standardization efforts have to address areas relating to data, metadata and information interchange besides the business processes that underlie the services.
- Digitization of Culture
Taking into consideration the fact that traditional expressions of culture are being obscured, diluted and transformed, the Summit proposed to develop an Asia Digital Culture Community for developing regional cooperation, coordinating international collaboration and catalyzing knowledge preservation in member countries.
- Construction of Broadband Network Environment in Asia
It was noted that broadband network infrastructure as well as IT services, products, applications and content have been deployed rather unevenly across the region. Asian countries, which have modest preparation even in respect of narrow band Internet, can benefit from the experience of the leaders. Different technologies for Broadband Infrastructure, wire line and wireless, are growing in different countries and new ones are being added. These will have to be exploited appropriately depending on the situations in these countries.
- Internet Affordability, Management and Security
Initiatives undertaken by the member countries should address issues relating to technology options for access in the last mile, the cost, availability and quality of access and explore the alternative approaches to creating affordable access. The Internet Infrastructure will have the desired beneficial effect on the masses only if appropriate citizen-centric services are provided through it. It was recognized that well-architected e-Government initiatives can play a vital role in promoting the development of the region through the use of ICT. The need for creating an environment for promoting compliance to international standards on information security was recognised. A special session on Integration of Physically challenged with the Digital World was also held during the summit.
All Good Things … The release of the declaration marked a fitting finale to the historic event and its implementation is envisaged to have a profound outcome in terms of benefits of ICT being carried from affluent urban dwellers to the poorest of the poor in Asia. For more information, please mail to dash@hub.nic.in