ICT For Women

Information communication and Technology (ICT) is very important tools of development. ICT disseminates the message to one another and it can create an informed society. ICT can play a vital role to change social infrastructure. Since Nepali society is dominated by male, women have less access and influence to basic needs including ICT. Women's numerical position is much higher than male but social position is very low. Socially women are highly deprived therefore we should change our social structure through ICT. In rural areas mostly female are engaged in agriculture and only household activities. They have very little access to information and education. Only 25% female are literate in Nepal. ICT can give real message which is happening here and there but female are isolated from those means of communication. In rural area illiteracy rate is much than urban area. ICT is the means of social changes but these means can't be used by the rural people as they cannot get easy access and opportunity.

ICT For Marginalized Community

Programs focused on women and marginalized community because they are much excluded groups of Nepalese society. In rural areas of Nepal the economic status of local communities is very low so they cannot afford ICT tools by own self. The telecenters can be established in rural areas by the initiation of local communities are helping rural people organized through ICT tools. The focal programs for marginalized community to rise awareness, build capacity and generate income through using means of ICT is encouraging them on actively participation in each programs conducted by telecenter and gradually mainstreaming them in the VDC level programs.

E-Governance

e-Government (from electronic government, also known as e-gov, digital government, online government or in a certain context transformational government) refers to the use of internet technology as a platform for exchanging information, providing services and transacting with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government. e-Government may be applied by the legislature, judiciary, or administration, in order to improve internal efficiency, the delivery of public services, or processes of democratic governance. The primary delivery models are Government-to-Citizen or Government-to-Customer (G2C), Government-to-Business (G2B) and Government-to-Government (G2G) & Government-to-Employees (G2E). The most important anticipated benefits of e-government include more efficiency, improved services, better accessibility of public services, and more transparency and accountability. There are many considerations and potential implications of implementing and designing e-government, including disintermediation of the government and its citizens, impacts on economic, social, and political factors, and disturbances to the status quo in these areas.

Content Development and Gender Advocacy

Local content development is closely tied to human development, and the ultimate aim is the empowerment of local communities. This actively played role in the local content creation, development and packaging and which collects shares and disseminates local knowledge and is supported by flexible technical solutions. Recently some organizations have been continuously working on the documentation and dissemination of local content among grassroots communities in education, health, information and communication sector.Male and female are each wheels of a cycle. Revolution in the society is impossible without the changes in the attitude of both male and female. In the modern age technology women are highly marginalized and far from using ICT services available in the communities and even in their home. To change the conservative thoughts and stop violence against women it is necessary to launch the number of gender advocacy programs in rural village taking male as active collaborating partner .ICT is very good tool for the advocacy and socio-economic empowerment of the rural women.

Computer Training and E-Learning

Along with ICT awareness campaigns and focal program on computer technology and its associated applications, Capacity Building Programs are regularly conducted through the telecenters. Trainings on computer hardware and software applications for the rural students, unemployed youths, teachers, women groups is becoming a great opportunity in their career development as well as improving livelihoods. A trained teacher can use his skill to teach the student, it will be better performance than earlier pencil-paper-blackboard system. A business man can use his computer skill to manage his business tips, and account. Computerized business recording system gives higher efficiency and effectiveness in accounting.This low-cost, low-maintenance model is highly suitable for rural Nepal. The e-Library will allow beneficiaries to leverage modern information and communication technology (ICT) to enhance learning, build computer skills and narrow the digital divide. It's strong enthusiasm to make it real is in fact to full fill the shortage of qualified teachers and improve the quality of education in the rural schools .Students are getting wide platform to do extra curriculum activities, general knowledge and more importantly acquire and exchange tips on text books and solutions of many subject related problems. Most of the rural area of Nepal is very much far from urban area. It is very difficult to take books from one place to one place to another place,we can use computerized library system in all the socio-government school so that student can be able to read e-books.

E-Commerce and Tele-Medicine

e-business of local products via internet and intra network has greatly encouraged rural villagers to do organic cheese, honey and ghee production, open Nepali paper and handicrafts based small enterprises and online marketing the local products. VOIP phone and opening cyber cafes along the tourist trail is also an opportunity to earn money. Due to easy access of information, many small scale income generating activities are doing by the villagers in the individual basis as well as being organized in group. In rural area there is a problem of market to reach the product such as honey, ghee, sugarcane, vegetables and other else. By using technology like E-commerce system, a farmer can share his product on line. Similarly someone can demand or order his needs in the common block or blog or in website.In Nepal, there is acute shortage of doctors in the rural villages. There is even no health post in remote rural villages. Majority of rural villagers depend on the traditional health care system which is entirely based on herbal constituents or spiritual offerings (shamanisms). To take basic facilities of quality health services in rural areas, pilot tele-medicine project is running in different centers. These rural centers are connected with the well equipped and facilitated hospital. In the absence of specialists in rural area, a doctor can use video tutorial system, live treatment system.

Communication

Due to having viable and eco friendly wi-fi technology, the rural villages (2 hours to more than one day apart in walking distance) are easily communicating through internet and intranet service available within a network. This network is substituting time and money for communication and sharing information. Email/internet is a low cost technology which is affordable and adoptable to rural area in a sustainable manner for communication and social service delivery. Instead of classical communication system such as letter system, ICT provides a lots of facilities. It saves money, motion, manpower for same type of work. A farmer can use telephone for voice communication from one place to another place, A student can use computer with wi-fi to update newly emerging technologies as well as to update and submit their homework. FM radios are available in the village area of Nepal .which facilitate people to update various national and international news with in time.

Facilities providing by ICT

ICT is providing the different types facilities like e-commerce ,tele-medicine ,computer training ,e-learning ,gender advocacy , content development etc. It is found that private ICT organizations are more active than governmental organizations .So it is not only the time for giving the political speech from the media because the people have been suffering from that types of speech from the last few years .Therefore it is the time to do something on behalf of the people and the country. It is very very easy to say something and write something but it is very hard to convince the people by implementing the plans and speeches. So it is the time to revolutionize the people from the ICT point of view. To make "NEW NEPAL" and to complete the grand project "ECONOMIC REVOLUTION", it is necessary to have not only positive response with formality but also it needs to have a number of interactions, discussions, executable plans and policies with sufficient amount of budget for the ICT. As we know that, we are having more than 40 ICT colleges in Nepal but it is impossible to mobilize them throughout the country without good policies and plans with very good positive thought. Without mobilizing the technical man powers from the efficient way it is almost impossible to develop the country according as the government has said, because every development projects are fully dependable with the engineering technology. The biggest challenge for this project is to find ways to work in the absence of flexible government law. It is necessary to have the flexible government laws and new thinking towards the private organizations to motivate them on their ways even more. With the good monitoring from the side of government and mainly from the Information and Communication Ministry will make the governmental organizations (NITC & HLCIT ) more "fair" and active. As the Free Student Union (FSU) of the Tribhuvan University (TU), the governmental ICT related organizations are being suffered from the rough politics and are becoming the political stage and so it is the time for good monitoring. Finally, it is essential to have coordination between government, different types of organizations and the people. We believe that this is the right way to go.

SUITATION AND ICT DEVELOPMENT

There is neither sufficient facility available in the country for advance research and development in ICT and in other important subjects nor any formal research and education network exists in the country so that available resources in the globe can be access efficiently. Due to the lack of research infrastructure people are compelled to go abroad for research work and significant numbers of people are flying day to day. Government, non-government, private organizations and individuals have been spending huge budget for research and higher education. Moreover, majority of such people never come back to the country. It has great impact in country's economy as well as human resource development for country's overall development? The targets of the ICT projects are the people living in a Himalayan region of Nepal where there is almost no chance of getting the modern means of communication in near future. It has introducing the information technology to villagers, most of whom had never seen computers until a few years ago. Most of the villagers still have no idea as what the uses of the computers are. For the villagers, a computer is no more than a "mysterious box". Moreover, they have no idea what Internet is. Its initial goal is to introduce the "mysterious box" to the remote villages and show its real uses to the villagers. It is only after the villagers see what a computer does will they be motivated to learn about it and use it by themselves step by step. Each step they will take will be a step forward to bring the digitally divided countries closer.

Role of NGO and INGO in ICT development

The number of governmental and private organizations are playing important role in the development of ICT .For example E-Network Research and Development (ENRD) has been conducting the huge number of ICT based projects and programs in the rural areas of Nepal by taking itself as the number of technicians, man powers and experts in the related fields and ENRD is the non-profitable private organization. Its concept is to establish the internet facility by bringing the computers with in the reach of the poor people. ENRD had started the Nepal Wireless Networking Project as a pilot project from a small and remote area of Nepal with the help of foreign supporters and volunteers. Similarly NITC(National Information Technology Center) and HLCIT(High Level Commission for Information Technology) are the governmental organizations working on the field of ICT .But governmental organizations like NITC and HLCIT are not working efficiently because of the absence of good monitoring from the side of government .As a result , they could not reach to the rural areas of Nepal and could not implement their plans and visions as they had made and thought .So it is necessary to have a very good policy and good monitoring to develop the ICT in the rural areas of Nepal. Another non-profitable private organization is HELP NEPAL and is working to establish the e-libraries in the governmental schools of rural areas of Nepal effectively. Help Nepal has already established two e-libraries, in Dang and Bhaktapur, and two new e-libraries will soon be set up in Kavre and Morang districts. The next six districts targeted are: Banke ,Bhojpur , Chitwan, Sunsari, Rautahat, and Rupandehi. Each e-library will cost approximately US$2,800 .