PAN ASIA ICT R&D Grants Programme - UTM

The projects that have been funded by the Grants Programme
are principally aimed at capacity building, which is the core
value of the Programme. The dissemination aspect of the
project includes sharing ideas, tools, techniques, and results of
projects with other researchers and communities. This sharing
of information between researchers and the public will
hopefully prevent and duplication of efforts, and will help to
ensure the partners in Asia and the rest of the world learn from
the outcomes and synergize their future efforts.
The Asia-Pacific region has enormous diversity in ICT usage.
In additon to funding innovative development work by
applying new ICTs, the Programme also targets the least
developing countries and marginalised societies in the region.
These projects allow people in local communities to access
information and gain expertise in the use of ICTs. Access to
information empowers these communities, notably through
helping them make more them to make more informed
decisions as well as to become more competitive. Moreover,
project personnel are able to network with other local, national,
and international researchers, civil society institutions and local
governments to share their findings.
Role of the Grants Programme
Some identified goals among others which drive the ICT R&D
Grants Programme are:
� Accessing and disseminating information.
� Seeding innovation and providing a test bed to reveal
the issues that need to be addressed in order to overcome
the adverse effects of the digital divide.
� Creating networking opportunities across borders.
� Assisting in building capacity through building skills
and expertise from the projects; such as: research-relevant
skills, skills to develop a networking-based application,
multimedia and Internet technology, teamwork, project
management, etc.
� Funding applied research and on-going projects in ICTs.
� Identifying new research partners.
� Increasing the Programme’s outreach to marginalized
communities.
� Producing high-quality R&D outputs which contribute to
the development of the Internet in the region.
� Supporting the use of the Internet at the grass-root level.
Lessons Learnt
Learning from our partners
Benefits, roles, and lessons from the Programme
The overall lessons that have emerged from the projects funded
so far have helped to foster an environment of innovation as
well to promote an active research and development environment
for ICT application systems and policy research in the
region.
Some of the researchers and practitioners surveyed contributed
the following thoughts on the uses and importance of ICT
for development:
“Information is the way to empower people”.
“ICT represents the powerful tools for accessing and disseminating
knowledge”.
“Problems in health, education, human and women’s rights, etc
can be solved by ICT. But to implement ICT we have to find the
right regional technology that can be accessed by our people.
They are facing a digital divide, lack of information access,
computer illiteracy, etc. The solution of ICT should consider
these matters”.
“ICTs are a vital component in the attempt to narrow the
knowledge gap regarding development issues. ICTs assist in
the timely delivery of urgent social economic and health
messages”.
Such emerging trends are not immune to potential pitfalls.
For example, most communities in developing countries have
limited knowledge of, or skills in, ICTs.
To address this challenge, the development of human resource
capacity in ICTs, needs to be identified as a priority. Thus,
capacity building is the primary objective of the Programme.
Capacity Building
The Programme seeks to understand the positive and negative
impacts of ICTs on people, culture, the economy, and society,
so as to strengthen ICT uses that promote sustainable
development in the region. some of the grant recipients had
the following comments to make on that topic:
“The Programme is really helpful for our digital library and
community development”.
“By providing a means to provide universal access to information,
that could be “just” information or high quality and state
of art learning material on a continuous basis that can keep us
updated with development and advances”.
“Tremendous impact to facilitate adaption of e-commerce in
places where English is not wide-spread use among the
population”.
“The project helped to research technologies that would enable
rural women cooperatives”.
“The project has helped to improve employment opportunities of
underpriviledged Filipino youth through establishing Computer
Livelihood Training Centers”.
“Methodologies for conducting ICT sphere research where
studied and adopted to local enviroment”.
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