Chin Saik Yoon
Chief Editor

Innovative and key initiatives

Asia Pacific is replete with a wide range of ICT initiatives led by the public and private sectors as well as civil society. One of the most extensive public sector initiatives can be found in China’s e-government programme. It comprises “12 golden projects” which touch most aspects of high-level decision making. The projects bear ambitious goals, including the refining of the whole structure of its e-government and strengthening the competitiveness of industries as well as their capacity to innovate. The Chinese government has invested an estimated RMB 60 billion in the programme in 2001–2002. Further investments, projected at RMB 200 billion, are planned for the following five years (p. 77).

  Australia’s government initiative, Creative Nation, goes back to 1994. The project was backed by generous government grants to mobilise the private sector to produce CD-ROMs using national cultural material for Australian schools. Film agencies were also encouraged to adopt new ICTs. Multimedia forums were established to provide practitioners with space to debate issues. The initiative succeeded in encouraging the formation of alliances among content providers, ICT specialists and government (p. 36).

Malaysia’s Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) initiative was launched in 1996. It was conceptualised as a very large experiment, within an area of 750 square kilometres, encompassing the new national administrative centre as well as a new industrial zone dedicated to the ICT industry. MSC is served by state-of-the-art infrastructure and secured by legislative and contractual guarantees to companies setting up shop in the zone. The initiative succeeded in capturing the imagination of Malaysians about the potential offered by ICTs and it inspired several state governments to launch copy-cat corridors of their own (p. 192).

The E-Taiwan initiative is aimed at transforming Taiwan into one of the most e-oriented economies in the region. The vision driving the initiative is of a “green silicon island” powered by environmentally friendly wireless technologies. The initiative is funded with a budget of US$1 billion and a further US$3 billion in business opportunities. One of its aims is to connect six million households to broadband services by 2008. Small and medium companies will also be provided with assistance to use the Internet to develop their businesses (p. 288).

Civil society’s initiatives are infinitely modest when compared with governments’, but they sometimes demonstrate more vividly the development potential of ICTs. In the Solomon Islands, people in some of the most remote areas of the Pacific Islands are provided with e-mail access to help them keep in touch with civil society in the face of widespread disruption of public administrative services following the civil unrest which took place in mid-2000. E-mail is South Pacific’s most important Internet application. The People First Network provides low-tech e-mail service to users living in remote islands. Members of the network make use of simple PCs connected to short-wave radio transmitters, which are widely used across the Pacific Islands, to connect to a hub at Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands. During these connections, incoming and outgoing e-mail is automatically exchanged. The hub acts as the Internet gateway for the rest of the network. Network members also assist rural islanders, who do not know how to use a computer, to send and retrieve their e-mail and to access news and government information (p. 313).

In Sri Lanka, a private company MediaSolv has developed the village personal digital assistant (PDA), a handheld device which can be used to access the Internet. Each unit of the PDA will cost US$25–$40. The device is equipped with wireless Bluetooth technology and an ETHERchip which enables it to log on to the Internet at special locations equipped for the purpose. Seven village PDA users can share a telephone line and a single Internet connection at these locations. The device has already been field-tested in Sri Lanka and Kenya. MediaSolv is encouraging global electronic companies to adopt the village PDA for large-scale production (p. 165).

Content
Online services
Innovative and key initiatives
Enabling policies
Some trends and concerns