ICTlogy

Abstract:

The Information Age is increasing the gap between the rich and poor, developed and developing countries and creating a society of information haves and have-nots.

Countries with greater powers of acquisition have easier access to new technologies and take greater advantage of them. Given this situation, it is imperative that developing countries redouble their efforts to prepare themselves to successfully meet the challenge and maximize the opportunities that the Information-Based Economy offers. This is not an easy job – there are many dimensions and factors associated with what it means to achieve a level of preparedness in the modern interconnected or digital world. This paper discusses those dimensions in details in the following pages.

In the Information Age countries without high levels of resources can hope to accelerate development if they are able to develop knowledge, which, combined with adequate ICT-related infrastructure, can allow successful integration into knowledge-based economies. But before discussing how we can accelerate development in those areas we need to identify those elements of success.

Department of IT has initiated the process of assessing various States and Central Ministries / Departments across the country to identify the bottlenecks and opportunities w.r.t. the usage of ICT and come out with a National Action Plan. This paper is an effort to share our experience on aspects related to the Methodology, Modeling and other issues related to e-readiness assessment.

Observations:

A paper presented by Renu Budhiraja, Addl. Director, Department of IT & Sameer Sachdeva at International Conference on Building Effective e-Governance, 21-22 Nov 2002, organised by Mahatma Gandhi State Institute of Public Administration, Punjab, Chandigarh