The Global Smart SOC Initiative 2010 is a collaborative sharing forum for improvement of government ICT strategies and projects. The forum sessions began in earnest today under the light of multiple MOU signings with the Korean government. Attendants included delegations from UAE (United Arab Emirates), Russia, Vietnam and Mozambique.
Korea, as hosts of the conference, had the opportunity to explain their ICT strategy. The strategy that has led to the current growth level and the stepping stones the government is taking towards a U-Korea.
The sharing of the ICT infrastructure plan by Seang-tae, Kim, President of the National Information Society Agency revealed key insights for product developers and service providers for aligning projects with key elements of the new digital strategy for Green Growth:
For social inclusion:
- U-health/welfare to be focused on narrowing the digital divide,
- e-government/cross government EA to be focused on future national managment structures,
- IPTV Education and Internets in schools to be focused towards distance learning.
To stimulate the economy:
- ERP, SCM and CRM to be focused on ICT based industrial innovation,
- U-IT, IPTV, U-city to be focused as a growth engine,
- Self employed to be focused on ICT based employment.
To foster Green Growth:
- Green offices, BEMS to be focused on distance work, video conferencing and efficient energy management,
- RFID, USN to be focused on realtime environment monitoring and efficient waste management,
- Environment modelling to be focused on climate change prediction and disaster management.
The conference boasted a series of afternoon sharing sessions, with highlighted projects from Europe, Asia and Africa explained in terms of their initiation, outcomes to date and planned directions. The afternoon sessions gave an opportunity to view healthcare cities, media projects and transit card systems in terms of their effectiveness in implementaation and outcomes.
The conference was valuable to attendees as lessons learned in some countries with ICT finance and ICT may be applicable to others. The forum wasn't an uncritical limelight festival or grandstand, many of the first speakers and session openers spoke of the woes of ICT actually worsening the digital divide and consumer, nigh voter, comment on the directions of some strategies, for example in the infrastructure, did not appear to go unacknowledged as factorial. The conference also facilitated meetings between buyers and companies for ICT projects.
