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Right: Dr. Ramesh Ananda Vaidya,
Honourable Member of National Planning Commision
(for information & communication technology),
His Majesty's Government of Nepal

The Government of Nepal recently opened the floor to the public to debate the country's proposed national Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Policy and Strategy. Led by the National Planning Commission (NPC), a public consultative process addressed the use of ICTs specific to the Nepalese context.

The ICT policy consultation wrapped up on August 24th, 2000 with a National Stakeholders Workshop. Approximately 150 people were in attendance from government and private sector organizations to ICT policy experts and international NGOs.

Dr. Rameshananda Vaidya, member of NPC stated "the principal objective of [ICT] development is to ensure peoples' universal access to information and to contribute to the national economy, to good governance and to make social services easily available to the general public" (as quoted by the Kathmandu Post).

Six background papers on various themes addressed by the National ICT Policy and Strategy are available at http://www.PanAsia.org.sg/grants/awards/99153fr.pdf. The topics covered by the papers are specific to Nepal and focus on the following: E-Commerce/E-services; E-Governance; Software Production; Human Resource Development; Universal Access to Information; and, Information and Communication Infrastructure. NPC extended the public consultative process online, with suggestions and comments submitted via e-mail. The online consultation ended on 1st September 2000.

After incorporating the public's findings, the Ministry for Science and Technology will officially release Nepal's National ICT Policy.

Nepal's ICT policy work was assisted with a grant from IDRC's Pan Asia Networking program.

For more information, please go to:

Nepal National Planning Commission

"NPC to make ICT Policy and Strategy Public"

"IT Most important sector for development"

"IT Policy to be announced soon"

2001-02-02

News 47 of 50