1. Overview
As 2nd-year project following the 1st-year one, entitled, "Study on APEC ICT Human Capacity Building and Facilitation of Human Resources Exchanges", this study aims to provide implementation strategies toward establishing national government officials-targeted IT training center with Vietnam as well as directions for designing national master plan on ICT with Indonesia.
To meet the purposes, the researcher in charge of this study organized two seminars: one in Jakarta on July 14-15 with Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration (MMT), Indonesia and the other one in Hanoi on July 17-18 with Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Vietnam, with invited participation of experts from Australia, Canada, Peoples of Republic of China, Republic of Korea and Singapore.
Throughout the courses of the two seminars, experts reached a consensus in saying that both countries require IT policy and implementation-related human capacity building, the first priority of which be given to governmental officials. They all agreed with the prerequisite that top government officials even including Presidents and Ministers raise awareness of importance of IT or ICT training policies. To help close the digital divide syndrome overriding in the world today, both the projects, master plan in Indonesia and IT training center building up project in Vietnam, were urged to be designed and implemented in line with the general framework formulated by this study.
2. Implementation
Seminars held in Jakarta and Hanoi were attended by 50-100 audiences mostly from governments and universities. In indonesia, government was strongly recommended to emphasize private-driven ICT master plan from the beginning. Both Minister of Communication and Information and Minister of MMT stated in their speeches that Terms of Reference (TOR) would ensure it. Experts also urged awareness of challenges in formulating ICT master plan by stressing both alliance forming among government, industry and academia and inter-governmental coordination.
Vietnam was advised to adopt ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implement, and Evaluation) in developing curricula. Also, combined efforts by both universities and government were urged to implement both on-line and off-line merged and module-based way of instrumental mechanism. The finance-shortage problem was advised by Australian expert to be tackled by following dual approaches: successfully locating right funding international organization and drafting professionalized documents urging importance of fund raising for governmental official-targeted IT training center.
3. Recommendation
Indonesian Government (MMT) was recommended to draft TOR to be trcognized as official master plan. Recently, MMT submitted a proposal for ICT training center building in Indonesia to APEC, following the suggestion by the Seminar in July this year.
Vietnam has initiated the project of e-Government earlier. The Seminar in Hanoi stressed importance of fusion between suggestions by this study and the e-Government project. So far no progress has been informed of yet.
The issue of digital divide in APEC is now getting to be worthy of international notice. Successful implementation as well as substantial progress require excellence in direction following up and stock-taking mechanism which is now in need of international cooperation and coordination.