Ms. Suchitra Pyarelal, Technical Director, e-Governance Standards Division was recently invited to speak at a conference on ‘Open Standards: the key to Open ICT Ecosystem’ held in Bangkok from 2nd – 4th May 2006. The Conference was organized by the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (NECTEC), a semi government agency in Thailand. Ms. Suchitra also participated in policy dialogue organized by the United Nation’s Development Programme’s Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (UNDP-APDIP) on the way forward to open technology environment. The purpose of the dialogue session was to explore policy issues affecting open standards and discuss and share practices, to come to a common understanding for future collaboration. 54 participants representing 13 countries from government, private sector, academia and civil society attended the conference.