Thursday, 11 August 2011

Building ICT in rural domains


LAUNCHED last week in Putrajaya, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Asia Pacific Centre of Excellence (ITU ASP-CoE) for Rural ICT Development Programme led by Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) is one of the six Regional CoE Networks established by the ITU that is part of a regional mechanism that had been previously established since January 1999. ROZANA SANI talks to UUM's Information Technology Faculty dean Associate Professor Dr Suhaidi Hassan to find out more.
Q: Could you please give a brief overview on the ITU-UUM Asia Pacific Center of Excellence (CoE) for Rural Development?
A: The CoE concept was established by the ITU with the aim to develop and strengthen the effort to produce experts in the fields of advanced policy, regulation, management and advanced policy related to telecommunications/information and communications technology networks and services.
The CoE initiative is coherent with the increased usage of latest technologies, efforts towards corporatisation and global competition as well as clear separation of the regulatory functions from operation services in the ICT industry, especially in the telecommunications industry in many developing nations including Malaysia. Hence, a CoE is needed to meet the demand for human resource expertise in helping the transition towards the latest ICT and services.
There are five other CoE established by the ITU around the world, namely one in an Arab speaking country, French-speaking Africa, English-speaking Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe/former USSR State. Since 2003, more than 13,000 telecommunications/ICT professionals and executives have received technical training under CoE programmes around the world.

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