Digital Reach

Equally important are digital inclusion strategies that promote

the use of ICT by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

These businesses are the cornerstone of most economies. They

typically provide 50 per cent of a country’s gross domestic

product (GDP) and employ on average 90 per cent of a country’s

workforce. Yet these small businesses often lack access, funding

and education for technology that enables them to be successful

and grow. Policies that enable easier funding for PCs, servers,

networks and other ICT infrastructure for these businesses are

another effective way to ensure their efficiency, encourage worker

productivity and promote economic growth.

Finally, people are much more likely to embrace technology if

they see compelling benefits in the content and services it offers.

It is important to promote the development of content and

services that are directly relevant to the people, culture and indus-

tries of a nation. For example, South Korea’s Information Network

Village (INV) project is promoting digital inclusion by supplying

PCs and high-speed Internet access to residents of rural villages.

The project paid considerable attention to creating a user-friendly

interface and compelling, content that included a system for

remote medical diagnosis, a village portal and sites for local

schools and businesses. Local farming cooperatives in the INVs

now use the Internet to find new markets for their produce, and

average incomes have increased.

Innovative services: transforming education, healthcare,

government

Twenty-first century digital infrastructure provides opportunities

to deliver innovative services to citizens and businesses in ways

that promote economic improvement and opportunity. Examples

of how technology is transforming education, healthcare and

government services abound.

In the global market place, education is the core of a knowl-

edge-based economy and the skills of the workforce play a large

role in a nation’s economic growth. Increasingly, nations and

regions are recognizing this, educating their children and training

or retraining their adults to compete effectively in a technology-

based information economy. Success in the knowledge economy

depends upon the ability to adapt and innovate quickly and

continuously, through the use of 21st century skills. To build these

skills, governments are moving away from education targeted at

knowledge acquisition and teaching their students how to create

knowledge through lifelong learning.

In addition to policies that encourage 21st century skills devel-

opment, efforts to promote digital inclusion can also be a

powerful force for educational progress. With widespread broad-

band connectivity and PCs available through community centres

and home/SMB programmes, people in underserved regions can

advance their education through interactive e-Learning modules

that use video streaming and other visual technologies to make

complex concepts easy to grasp. Schools, libraries, homes and

community centres can easily share information and resources.

Students in small, remote schools can see and hear the same high-

quality lessons presented at the prestigious urban schools.

Empowered with lightweight mobile computers, teachers can

work more productively and collaborate more effectively. Students

can undertake personalized learning and collaborative research

projects – the very types of projects that equip them to succeed

in the digital economy.

In addition to the role that technology can play in transforming

educational opportunities, the 21st century digital infrastructure

provides tremendous opportunities to deliver state-of-the-art

healthcare to impoverished regions. Patients in remote villages can

access online health services and information, and consult with a

physician thousands of miles away through telemedicine. In the

longer term, emerging digital ICT solutions promise new ways to

prevent, detect, diagnose and treat disease, as well as more proac-

tive ways to manage our personal health.

Finally, in the global economy, forward-thinking governments the

world over are using ICT to transform services to citizens. The same

broadband infrastructure that supports home access to the Internet

can be coupled with mobile PCs and tablet computers to enable

[

] 127

Working together with governments, the Intel(r) Innovation in Education initiative has trained more than 3 million teachers, allowing young

people to learn key 21st century skills