Full Coverage: ICT

26.12.2006 Universalisation of Elementary Education is a national goal for which Distance Education Programme is a national resource and major support for distance learning programme.

26.12.2006 A dozen village information centres functioning in the tsunami-hit coastal villages of Tamil Nadu get Internet connectivity. This facility would provides the fishermen have access to video conferencing, weather reports, local market network on fishing trade in these villages.

21.12.2006 A five-day training programme on computer applications and its effective usage in advocacy and communications at rural level was organised for the field functionaries of the Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan (NYKS) at New Delhi from 18 – 22 December, 2006.

20.12.2006 The UN will hold an inter-agency meet on communication for development at Addis Ababa on 12-14 February, 2007 to develop a UN-based common approach to C4D in the context of achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The meet will be hosted by UNESCO.

20.12.2006 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), IBM and Oracle today announced a joint research initiative to help Asia-Pacific countries share and create strategies, blueprints and policies for adopting the right blend of open standards and technology services. The goal will be for more countries to develop universally compatible applications and networks to make internal and external government services and transactions more automatic, affordable and efficient.

20.12.2006 Telemedicine, modern communications technology, is raising hopes in healthcare and ability to monitor patients at a distance means they can leave the hospital earlier and avoid unnecessary visits to the doctor, which also saves money

19.12.2006 RED POP, SciDev.Net, SOMEDICYT, CENAT, CIENTEC Costa Rica and the Costa Rican Ministry for Science and Technology are holding the Science, communication and society workshop in San José, Costa Rica from 9 - 11 May 2007. The event will be held in English, Spanish and Portuguese.

19.12.2006 Farmers in Raigad district, in the west Indian state of Maharashtra, use satellite imagery to prove that their lands are fertile, thus thwarting the government's move to acquire their lands for the development of a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) at cheap rates by claiming it was not productive land.

19.12.2006 With the governmentÂ’s clearance of support from USO fund for mobile operators, a unique opportunity is emerging to connect rural areas and to help them expand their stake in the emerging knowledge economy says Mahesh Uppal.

19.12.2006 The Digital Divide Report presents the information and communication technology diffusion index (ICTDI) for 2004.
There is an immense information and communication technology (ICT) gap, a “digital divide”, between developed and developing countries. A person in a high-income country is over 22 times more likely to be an Internet user than someone in a low-income country.

15.12.2006 The CitizensÂ’ Pact for SEE launched the Guide to Visas website, dedicated to all people who need information on travel to most European Countries.

15.12.2006 The Stockholm Challenge GKP Awards 2007 is a new prize, launched by Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) and the Stockholm Challenge. It is designed as an integral part of the Stockholm Challenge 2008 and will open in four of the ordinary six ICT4D categories: Culture, Economic Development, Education and Public Administration. The Stockholm Challenge GKP Awards 2007 opens on 1 January 2007 and will be accessible both from the Stockholm Challenge website and from the GKP portal.

15.12.2006 The British and the Americans are engaged in an online competition over www.geographycup.com to find out who emerges as a victor in a battle of knowledge and understanding on geography. This transatlantic challenge was conceived by Roger Andreson - founder of a company dedicated to promoting geographical awareness through games - of Atlanta, the US and Daniel Raven-Ellison - a secondary school teacher - of Reading, England.

15.12.2006 The World Social Forum (WSF) has come a long way from its modest origins in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 2001. In January 2007 Nairobi, Kenya, which will host the 7th edition of the WSF, will bring the world to Africa as activists, social movements, networks, coalitions and others desend on the continent from across the world.

15.12.2006 A growing number of journalists are being imprisoned around the world for publishing their work on the Internet, with one in three cases made up of individuals whose work appeared primarily on the web or by e-mail, a new report by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has found.

13.12.2006 The Nepal Government has prepared e-Government master plan to create effective and productive e-Government through the application of information and communication technologies (ICTs).
The plan will take place in 3 stages of ICT development by 2011.

13.12.2006 To get an insight of Kosovo telecommunications situation, owpsee interviewed Anton K. Berisha, Chairman of KosovoÂ’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority.

12.12.2006 Trade losses to software manufacturers due to piracy are as high as $125 billion. We need to interrogate why piracy of software, books, music etc exists as a market phenomenon. Could it be an organic market reaction to the exclusion of consumers by copyright industries? Lawrence Liang and Achal Prabhala take an indepth look into the prevailing market trends and consumer behaviour.

12.12.2006 Chair of the GKP Executive Committee and Director-General of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) Walter Fust tells Justine Chew of the Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) that it is vital to gather all stakeholders - the government, the private sector, the civil society and the media - to find better and quicker solutions to address issues in global policy.

12.12.2006 Dr. Abhay Kumar from Indian organisation Toxics Link interviews the guru of free and open software Richard Stallman who says that free software is software that respects the freedom of users and allows people to help their neighbours and their communities. Proprietary software is one which has power over its users and keeps them in a state of helplessness. Follow the interview with Stallman.