Arab eGovernment will benefit from the speed up global telecom infrastructures
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| ITU’s deputy secretary general presenting a memento to Dr Hessa al-Jaber, chairperson of ictQatar, organisers of the conference in the presence of Toure |
THE World Telecommunica-tions Development Conference that ended yesterday gave a call to member nations of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to step up their pace towards the creation of a truly global information society so that it could help bring opportunities to all.
Giving the details of the eight-day long deliberations of the event, spread out in many plenary sessions, Hamadoun I Toure, telecommunications bureau director of the ITU said the Doha plan has identified six areas where there should be more attention from members, namely further building up of telecom infrastructure, focus on e-government, e-commerce, statistical data, a development programme for least developed countries (LDCs) and importance of human resources in telecommunications development.
“A strategic plan having a bearing on global, regional, and national issues have been put in the place to reduce the digital divide and this is how Doha conference was different from the three conferences held earlier,” said the ITU official.
The plan provides the tools as well as clear guidance for achieving universal access, he said. The action plan is built on the outcome of the World Summit on the Information Society held in November 2005 in Tunis as well as the experience of implementing ICT development plans adopted at previous meetings.
Elaborating the Doha plan from the prepared draft, Toure said the conference underlined the considerable efforts of the members themselves and by the catalytic inputs of their developing partners, including public, private and inter-governmental forums to implement previous action plans aimed at promoting universal access.
The ITU official called upon the members for facilitating conditions so that maximum benefits could be derived from the implementation of news services and applications.
“New and emerging technologies along with conducive environment and entrepreneurial approaches have the potential to bridge the gap between not only developed and developing countries, but also between urban, rural, and remote areas and between well-served and underserved areas within a country.
The ITU official said the Global Information Society should be responsive to the interests of all nations, especially developing countries, and in particular LDCs, countries with economies in transition and small island developing states (Sids). “Opportunities offered by new information and communication technologies (ICTs) should be fully exploited for fostering sustainable development, better quality of life and higher standards of living,” said Toure quoting the draft.
The draft specifically drew the attention of the member countries to the roles played by ICTs in alleviating poverty, creating jobs, in protecting the environment and in preventing and mitigating natural and other disasters.
Among the essential prerequisites to achieve the goals set by the Doha Action Plan were telecom reforms that could lead to greater participation of the private sector and competition, creation of an enabling environment to promote reasonable and affordable access to basic telecommunications for all for a stable and transparent framework for fair competition while protecting network integrity and the rights of users, operators and investors, policies and strategies for the development of telecommunications that reflect the trend towards multi-services using a common infrastructure platform. The plan also called for a leading role for ITU and development sector in co-ordinating the activities of all stakeholders engaged in the development of ICT and related services, and the development of strategies that can facilitate the use of ICTs in disaster prevention, preparedness and relief as well as the development and deployment of low-cost and user-friendly technologies for disaster risk reduction.
The regional initiatives consist of many innovative aspects, the draft states. Until now, the action plan focused only on programmes that represented the key building blocks for bringing cohesion among the activities arising from the different programmes.
Under this, while the Arab states initiatives centre on establishing ICT indicators and capacity building among others, the Americas outline priority areas in improving connectivity in rural, isolated and marginal urban areas, inter-connection of information networks for disaster prevention, improve spectrum management in the Caribbean and establishing a virtual web-based centre for excellence.
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