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Mr. Chairperson,
Excellencies,
UNESCAP Officials,
Participating foreign delegates
Ladies and Gentlemen
I feel immense pleasure for having this opportunity to address this conference on “South and Southwest Asia Conference on Follow up to the First Phase and Preparation for the Second Phase of World summit on the Information Society held here in Kathmandu, Nepal.  I am hopeful that the conference will be able to achieve its objectives by providing perspective of South and Southwest Asian Countries for the reflection in the regional action plan and inputs from this sub region to the global forum at WSIS on Internet Governance and Financial Mechanisms for ICT for Development. I understand that there has been several conference, meetings and interactions to prepare the regional plan towards the information society in Asia and Pacific but I believe that conference here will focus more on your added issue of knowledge based disaster management which may include knowledge-based terrorism management and conflict management together with exclusive financial mechanism /model to really avail the benefits of information Society to unreached rural poor of this sub region.
Nepal was the part of the declaration of principles, Geneva phase December 2003 on our common vision of the information Society, and its key principles and committed towards information Society for all based on shared knowledge. The progress on our common adopted plan of action needs serious review on the results delivered for building information society. Creation of information Society is a challenge in itself, as it requires multistakholders voice and actions in uniformity. Government, private sector, International agencies and civil society are the main pillars having equal roles and responsibilities.
His Majesty’s Government of Nepal through specially co organizers of this event Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Information and Communications and High Level Commission for Information Technology have taken several initiatives to implement the action plan adopted in the first phase of WSIS. We have related the objectives and goals of WSIS with our ICT related national policy, plan and programs. We have taken initiative with timeline on connectivity, be it connecting village or connecting government offices or public schools or universities. Ministry of Information and Communication has revised and implemented Communication policy to promote communication infrastructure which is the foundation to build information Society. Ministry of Science and Technology has prepared and implemented Science and Technology Policy to promote Science education, research and promote indigenous technology and is in the process of revising IT policy to reflect the goals of WSIS action plan. High Level Commission for Information Technology has made some progress on local language computing to have the access by its citizen in its own language giving more emphasis on content Development and establishing information centers in rural area for access of information and communication Technology. Media has been very instrumental and effective towards creating information society and government will encourage them to do so.
We understand that ICT is not a tool to solve all the problems. We are striving for quality and market based public administration and we have realized that information and communication Technology might be an effective tool to transform from governance to good, transparent and quality e-governance.
Despite the difficult situation in the country, the government has not stopped implementing the ICT development programs, which are the parts of building information Society in the country. The government with its related agencies will act with extra effort to enhance the capacity of government to do things that public want in one hand and to create information society for the socio-economic change using ICT.
I thank UNESCAP for choosing Nepal as its venue for this forum. I thank the organizers for giving me this opportunity to meet you all here. I wish the conference a grand success and wish to our foreign delegates a pleasant stay in Nepal.
Thank you
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