eAsia 2007 February 6, 2007

Dear Friends,
It is our pleasure to inform you that Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS), India is organising its 2nd Annual Asian ICT conference and exhibition in February 2007 at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
This unique event titled - 'eAsia 2007' (www.csdms.in/eAsia) will host five different but interrelated conferences, focusing on five emerging application domains of ICTs, such as, e-Government, ICT and Education, ICT and Rural Development, ICT-based Health services and Mobile application and services.
Introduction and Background:
Improved communication and information services are directly related to social and economic development of nations. In the emerging global knowledge economy, it is imperative for countries, communities and enterprises to strategise their approach towards adoption and use of information and communication technologies for enhancing their overall capacity.
Internet and modern communication platforms offer immense potential as multipurpose tools through which information and services can be delivered anytime and anywhere. However, upon delivery, the uptake of information and online services much depends on the capacity of people and organisations. Asian countries are increasingly realising these critical factors of success and becoming procative in improving existing conditions. A lot of collaborative effort is required between governments, industry, academia and civil society across nations to materialise these objectives . Of these, prime importance being on service access points such as telecentres and mobile technology as an approach to rural development.
Many, developing countries of Asian region face the challenge of optimum utilisation of ICT in reaching out to people in rural areas. Several challenges that they face includes, lack of proper and wide-spread ICT infrastructure, high cost of technology deployment, IT illiteracy, social / cultural factors and so forth.In spite of all these limitations, alongwith the issues of digital divide and experimental nature of many of the applications, the way forward is to support growth initiatives in terms of policy and technology development and facilitate the spread of ICT, by steering it in the direction of human development.
The Event

eAsia 2006 aims to offer an open ICT co-operation platform for Asian countries for consultative dialoguing, strategic planning, knowledge networking and business partnering, alongwith discussing opportunities and challenges for promoting growth of ICT in Asia, through its five seminal conferences, namely -
· egov Asia 2007 (http://www.egovonline.net/egovasia/)
· Digital Learning Asia 2007 (http://www.digitallearning.in/dlasia/)
· Asian Telecentre Forum 2007 (http://www.i4donline.net/ATF/)
· eHealth Asia 2007 (http://www.csdms.in/eHealth/)
· mServe Asia 2007 (http://www.csdms.in/MServe/)
We would like to invite you to participate actively in this event and submit relevant papers for presentation in the respective conferences mentioned above. The last date for abstract submission is 25th November 2006.

Official Website: http://www.csdms.in/easia