Azerbaijan, Baku, August 6 /Trend, H.Veliyev/
Azerbaijan will consider methods to improve the level of readiness of the Regional Commonwealth in the field of Communications (RCC) countries to establish the Information Society, head of the information society department of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies of Azerbaijan Rufat Gulmammadov told Trend.
According to Gulmammadov, the question will be considered during the second meeting of the RCC working group on information society to be held on August 17 in Moscow.
The meeting will also cover urgent issues related to building the information society in RCC member countries and guidelines for their formation. The position of the working group on this issue will be presented at the next meeting of the Council of Heads of Communications Administrations of the RCC, which will be held in November in Baku.
In May the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) issued a report on the development of 2010, which tasked the members of the organization to identify 50 indicators for monitoring purposes in establishing the global information society within the next five years.
The report provides a mid-term review of the progress made in creating a global information society by 2015.
The report points to the tremendous growth and evolution in the area of mobile cellular technology, which has led to connecting many previously unconnected areas. "Today, nearly 90 per cent of the world's population is covered by a mobile cellular network and even people in rural and remote areas now have the means to access the global information society". In many developing countries, fixed telephone lines are largely limited to urban areas. But today, more than half the rural households have a mobile telephone," the report says.
Overall, the report concludes that while major achievements have been made over the past five years, substantial efforts are required in developing countries to achieve the goals and targets by 2015. The report makes three main recommendations on the policies and measures needed to help achieve the targets: ensure that half the world population has access to broadband by 2015; build an ICT-literate society globally; develop online content and applications. To this end, governments can take a number of concrete steps, such as licensing mobile broadband operators and ensuring that broadband infrastructure is accessible to all citizens. Policy-makers in developing countries, in partnership with the international community, should continue to commit resources to connecting educational institutions to ICTs and to adapt the curriculum. The development of online content and applications in local languages should be promoted, for example, through the digitization of books and documents to create an e-culture.