Internet use taking root in ASEAN countries

Internet use taking root in ASEAN countries

Martin Abbugao, Agence France-Presse, Bandar Seri Begawan

Internet use is taking root in governments, schools and with the public in Southeast Asia despite impediments such as poor infrastructure and the need for more training, the head of the e- ASEAN Task Force said.

From depressed Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia to high-tech Singapore and Malaysia, progress has been achieved since the private sector-led task force was formed in 1999 and an e-ASEAN Agreement was signed the following year, Roberto Romulo said in an interview with AFP.

Speaking on the fringes of the ASEAN economic ministers meeting here, Romulo recalled that during a summit in Manila in 1999 some ASEAN leaders were "puzzled" when he made a presentation on the use of information and communications technology (ICT).

Since then, Myanmar has inaugurated an information technology park, Vietnam's Communist Party Congress has recognized ICT as a driving force for economic progress, bureaucracies have taken steps to computerize operations and Internet cafes have sprung even in ASEAN's poorer members.

Other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are Brunei, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

This year, the task force's pilot projects have been geared toward helping government bureaucracies computerize operations in state-owned banks as well as in processing passports and drivers' licenses, he said.

Middle-level managers from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam were brought to tech-savvy Singapore for training, he said.

"Have we moved forward? Yes, we have moved forward," said Romulo, a former Philippine foreign minister and now one of Manila's top corporate executives.

"We have progressed, but if you are saying 'is the infrastructure there in every country?' well the answer is no. "If you go to Siem Reap (Cambodia), the only way I can get an e- mail is at an Internet cafe, something like 12 bps or even slower. But you got it, slow but you got it.

"You go to Singapore and you name it, you can get any speed you want. So it varies but there is access to the Internet. That's the beginning," he said.

The business sector-led task force will be dissolved this year and Romulo suggested to the ministers during a presentation this week that his group's work should be made an integral part of ASEAN where the ministers in charge of ICT or telecoms should take the lead.

He recommended the formation of an e-ASEAN Council composed of telecom or ICT ministers to act as the collective executive body, supported by a coordinating committee of senior officials.

An e-ASEAN Center -- similar to the Jakarta-based ASEAN Center for Energy -- should act as a think tank for the body.

With a tight budget, boosted by grants from the business community and multilateral institutions like the World Bank, teams from the task force's secretariat preached the Internet gospel in seminars to schools and governments and started pilot projects.

The task force also gave policy advice on how to proceed with "model laws" on the ICT sector, as well as on intellectual property rights, cyber laws and online security.

Poor telecommunications infrastructure, high telecommunications costs and lack of skills remain key challenges.

"But every year there is movement forward. And now I think the leaders of each country are starting to understand how important this is," he said.

Romulo, a former top executive at IBM, said the Internet is a key tool in ASEAN's dream of regional economic integration and in the regional bloc's competition with China.

"Malaysia went out of the way to help Yangon to get its IT park. Malaysia has been going to Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam trying to upgrade them. Singapore is the same story," he said.

"We must move on, especially if we want to take on our friends in China. That's the political imperative."

Romulo identified human resource development as the main challenge, saying that "to get to the knowledge based society, you have to start from primary school all the way up."