The Economic Convenience in Accessing the Internet - Essay Example

6.6 Short run policy recommendation: learning form Korea experience The needs of Iraq with respect to Internet policy at the present time are important, to address concerns, such as: important immediate actions and policies to be put in place, what is needed to be built in the future in order to produce the desired long run effect. Today Iraq needs computer and Internet literacy workshops to develop some capacity building expertise within the country as much as it needs policy attention. E-Commerce and e-Government will come later; they will grow in parallel with the natural build up of a critical mass of Internet users within Iraq. However Short run policy recommendations for the Iraq Government can be suggested in order to promote the Internet usage in Iraq. For advanced country, the successful case of Korea is considered to analyze the universal service policy affecting the Internet diffusion in Iraq. The Korean Government has followed a policy which promoted the interactive nature of public internet centres which made users to feel highly convenient and confident about the internet use and information collection (International Telecommunication Union, 2003). The Korean government has taken initiatives for reducing the internet access price considerably by mass expansion and broadband connectivity. This has significantly resulted in enhancement of internet users and internet diffusion. At he same time, it has also concentrated on the programmes that generated interest and awareness among the people towards the internet use through series of user friendly comprehensive IT training programs (Wu, 2004). In addition, the Iraq government must enhance the internet backbone investment through promotion of foreign direct investments in internet sector. The main reason for the success of internet policy in South Korea is due to its nature of social construction i.e. responding to social demands on correcting internet related problems (Kim, 2006). In addition, the conducive political environment facilitated implementation of liberal user friendly internet policy in South Korea which was reverse in North Korea where several restrictions on internet access were imposed due to political compulsions (Ko et al., 2009). The economic convenience in accessing the internet by the people through out the nation was also facilitated by liberalization policy which reduced the government control significantly. Moreover, the strong collaboration between the private and government agencies in encouraging the internet use through establishment good number of private Internet café and free community access centers led to easy access of internet by the poor and the middle class. It was well established that the Iraqi society has significant differences among the people in terms of their income and hence the government should make incessant efforts for promoting the internet access by the poor sections through provision of subsidy to these specific groups. MoC should be implementing a number of programs to promote computer literacy and encourage increased public use of ICT. In order to guarantee universal, easy, affordable and rapid access to ICT for all Iraqi citizens, and stimulate awareness of the potential uses and benefits of this technology. The Iraq government must make sincere efforts to promote the internet access and ICT in the nation through implementation of the following short term policy changes keeping the Korean example in consideration. First: Programs to support PC for Every household which aims to increase PC penetration within low-Income households and the academic sector (distributing low price computers to allow more people to gain access to the Internet). These programs could have been successful in increasing PC penetration in Iraq. Second: Facilitate the emergence of IT Club networks across Iraq providing citizens with access to IT, with the focus on rural and underprivileged areas. Third: Iraqi Free Internet initiative and broadband connectivity programs could help increased accessibility to the Internet and made connectivity affordable to most citizens. Fourth: The Iraqi government should support the increase of ICT skills across Iraq via Basic ICT literacy training courses, they are expected to address fully the needs of adults lacking ICT skills (The success factor is the Internet training program has provided to eliminate the digital divide between the socio-economic classes and regions. Such training of the general population is extremely valuable as it creates the market) Fifth: Korea has taken the promotion of broadband policy as very serious issue and accordingly invested considerably in broadband for the future. Hence, Iraq must make strong efforts for promotion of broadband connectivity in all the regions of the nation and the strengthening of National committee for infrastructure development through allocation of more budget would be welcome in this direction. Sixth: The Korean experience clearly illustrated that the promotion of education and English language have direct proportionate effect on the internet diffusion. Hence, Iraq should follow necessary measures for encouraging the English language and computer friendly education prohrammes at school level. Seventh: The efforts must be made on development of basic infrastructure like electricity which is vital for the uninterrupted internet service through out the nation. Hence, the power supply must be continuous with out any interruption for smooth internet connectivity and diffusion. Eighth: The new government policies of Iraq must utilize the advanced electronics technology for fast and easy internet penetration in to the remote and rural areas. The utilization of wimax and wifi would be of prime importance for higher internet access in rural areas of Iraq. Ninth: It was well proven that the economic convenience of the customers increase with the operation of element of competition. Hence, the positive competion must be promoted by the short term policies of Iraq in future for providing internet to the common people at most affordable rates. Tenth : The economic inequalities among different sections of the people in Iraq society make the internet access difficult for poorer sections and hence the short term policy in future must aim at subsidy provision and tax relaxation to some most eligible sections of the society. This would certainly enhance the internet penetration rate in Iraq. Eleventh: Iraq should also concentrate on establishment of ICT centers through out the nation in large scale and efforts must be made to provide the services to the people on low and affordable rates in the beginning years. Twelth: The government of Iraq must try to develop the public internet centres which must be interactive in nature with users so that the internet penetration would be very fast as it was witnessed in South Korea. Thirteenth : The government of Iraq must also have some regulation on access of specific internet programmes by the children and youth as it the internet addiction for games was observed in these sections in South Korea (Ahn, 2007; Block, 2008 ; Choi, 2007). 6.7 Long run policy implications and recommendations The short term policies must facilitate conducive environment to initiate the long term policies for bringing easy and fast internet access in Iraq. The fields of education and employment are highly interrelated and they get further influenced by the technological advancement in any sector including Internet use. In this study, it was revealed that the education, employment and broadband connectivity emerged as the positive determinants of Internet use and hence the future government policies must include some incentives for the promotion of the connectivity in Iraq. For achieving considerable growth rate in internet connectivity, the development of infrastructure is very important, Iraq as a developing country need to invest more in its national network in addition to the international interconnection backbones. The policies should focus on enhancing the national information infrastructure networks, by setting specific targets in terms of telephone density and/or Internet penetration. The empirical result of this study implies investment in broadband and high speed network connections is a significant and key issue for rising Internet diffusion in Iraq. The positive relation between the broadband connectivity and internet diffusion was also revealed by Preston et al., (2007). Hence building the broadband infrastructure must be in the agenda of the Iraqi policy makers by the successful installation of broadband and wireless towers all over the country and promotion of e-commerce across the nation, regardless of age, sex, location and education. As indicated by the findings of this research there is no difference in terms of locations effect, which can be attributed to the generally poor status of communications infrastructure in Iraq. The allocation of higher budgets to telecommunication and basic computer facilities in the schools and colleges is highly essential for enhancing the Internet in Iraq. Experiences can be drawn from the early stages of Korean internet infrastructure development. According to Lallana (2004), the Korean government placed a great emphasis on creating Internet-friendly classrooms at every level of school by connecting to the broadband Internet service free of charge. At the same time, the successful Internet penetration in Iraq would be possible by strict monitoring and regulation policy of the government which will positively affect the mindset of the parents to allow their children to view internet at home. For bringing higher number of people to have access to Internet, the government of Iraq must include poverty eradication programs and literacy mission in its future policy guidelines. Unfortunately the previous efforts taken by the Iraq government for promoting Internet use were severely affected due to a prolonged war which destroyed the infrastructure including telecommunications. This necessitates the government to develop telecommunication sector on priority basis. Moreover, the promotion of the Internet use in productive activities like e-government, education and e-commerce should be facilitated by the future government policy recommendations. Hence the one of the most important factors is the development of a human Pool and core information and communication technologies, Korea made investment not only in technological development but also in human development to prepare for Future ICT growth (Watson, 2007). The future policies of Iraq must emphasize on increased efforts for enhancing human development indices and human capital which would enhance the rate of Internet accessibility in Iraq. The existing status of ICT technologies in Iraq is very poor, therefore the future government policy must stress on conducting ICT based training programs with an aim to increase awareness among the people which in turn would bring higher utilization rate in Iraq. At the same time, e-governance has to be promoted all over the nation for facilitating better governance, transparency, accountability and more cost effective utilization of government budget (USAID, 2005). The government alone may not be able to penetrate deeply into all the regions for Internet spread and hence the policy recommendation has to integrate the e-commerce technology with all the development functionaries and private agencies so that the people would be more interested to use at higher frequency. It is strongly believed that the private sector not the government should lead to extensive adoption of Internet services, especially to fulfill business and government need. However government will play a leading role in facilitating this role and supporting its progress. The opening up of telecommunication sector by privatization would make more affordable by reducing the Internet prices and hence it must be included in the government policy guidelines. Therefore government needs to create laws and regulations that sustain this development and protect the public interest. Efforts must be made towards improving the status of ICT in the line of the nation like South Korea. In South Korea, the government took notable initiatives to attract higher foreign and domestic investment and to create a friendlier environment within the nation for the development of ICT. Iraq must follow the model of South Korea in terms of ICT master plans. South Korea has come up with four important ICT master plans and third and fourth plans form the main core component of ICT development (Lallana, 2004). The third ICT master plan of South Korea i.e. e-Korea vision 2006 emphasized that the development of informatization in all aspects would lead to higher socio-economic development of rural and urban people and higher national productivity. Iraq has not developed such strategies which led to poor ICT development. Hence the Korean experience should be very useful for the nations in the process of informatization, Iraq has to follow the model of South Korea by bringing more transparency in government administration, strengthening global competiveness by informatization in all industries, enhancing the ability of the rural citizens to participate in ICT development and by playing vital role in promoting IT industry and IT infrastructure in rural villages. The fourth ICT master plan of South Korea i.e. Broadband IT Korea Vision 2007 made it more advanced in ICT and internet technology and hence Iraq should take this as an example for improving ICT. It emphasized much on enhancing the national productivity and upgrading the individual quality of life through informatization. It aimed at doubling of Korea’s exports from US$46.3 billion in 2003 to US$100 billion in 2007 by commercialization of telematics, next generation computers and sophisticated service robots. Hence, Iraq must take this as an inspiration in formulation of future government policies for promoting Internet and ICT. These above mentioned initiatives would significantly improve the internet connectivity and diffusion rate in Iraq along with the positive effects on educational quality, infrastructure development and human development index. Overall, Iraq government should try to remove or reduce the barriers of connectivity like lower income levels of the people, poor education level and employment status. For achieving this, the policy recommendations must include educational promotion schemes and people’s awareness campaigns with a final aim of bridging the digital divide and this will certainly help Iraq in achieving the Millennium Development Goals. References: Ahn D.H. (2007). Korean policy on treatment and rehabilitation for adolescents’ Internet addiction. In International Symposium on the Counseling and Treatment of Youth Internet Addiction. Seoul, Korea, National Youth Commission, 2007, p 49. Block, J.J. (2008). Issues for DSM-V : Internet addiction. American Journal of Psychiatry 165:306-307. Choi Y.H. (2007). Advancement of IT and seriousness of youth Internet addiction. In International Symposium on the Counseling and Treatment of Youth Internet Addiction. Seoul, Korea, National Youth Commission, 2007, p 20. International Telecommunication Union. (2003). Broadband Korea : Internet Case study. P: 77. March, 2003. http://www. Itu.int./ITU-D/ict/cs/. Kim, G.T. (2006). Socially shaped internet technology system: Internet policy and development in South Korea. The International Journal of Technology, Knowledge and Societ. 5(1): 1-12. Ko, K., Lee, H. and Jang, S. (2009). The internet dilemma and control policy : political and economic implications of the internet in North Korea. Korean Journal of Defense Analysis. 21(3): 279-295. Preston, P., Cawley, A., Metykova, M. (2007), "Broadband and rural areas in the EU: from technology to applications and use", Telecommunications Policy, 31 (10-11) : 389-400. Wu, I. (2004), "Canada, South Korea, Netherlands and Sweden: regulatory implications of the convergence of telecommunications and Internet services", Telecommunications Policy, 28 (1): 79-96. Read More