World Telecommunication and Information Society Day

Last Updated 13 years ago by Kenya Engineer

“ICTs and Improving Road Safety”

The World Telecommunication and Information Society Day, which marks the founding of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), is observed on May 17, since its inception in 1865. It draws attention to the work of ITU and the challenges of global communication. In March 2006, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed May 17 as World Information Society Day to recognize the efforts made to advance communication and ITU’s role in helping people connect around the world. The UN’s first World Information Society Day took place on Wednesday, 17 May 2006.

Prior to World Information Society Day, people and organizations such as ITU celebrated World Telecommunication Day, which was first held in 1969, on May 17. Many now refer to this day as World Telecommunication and Information Society Day, taking into account the UN’s observance of World Information Society Day on the same day.

World Information Society Day is celebrated each year to remind the world of the vision of the World Summit on the Information Society to build “a people-centered, inclusive and development-oriented information society” based on fundamental human rights. The purpose of this observance is to help raise awareness of the possibilities that the internet and other information and communication technologies could bring to societies and economies, as well as of ways to bridge the digital divide.

The Day is used also to promote people’s awareness of the power of information and communication to build societies in which they can create, access, use and share information and knowledge to achieve their full potential. Organizations such as UNESCO and CCK –Communications Commission of Kenya actively take part in the day by inviting people to engage in various activities to promote campaigns centered on this event like workshops.

Theme 2012: “Women and Girls in ICT”
In Kenya last year, World Telecommunications day was marked through a workshop dubbed ‘harnessing the potential for women and girls in ICT’. The workshop hosted by Communications Commission of Kenya at the Nairobi Safari Club was in line with the international theme for 2012 that was ‘women and girls in ICT’.

Women are the spine of our societies. Yet gender inequalities remain deeply entrenched. Women and girls are denied access to basic health care and education and to equal opportunities at work. They face segregation in economic, political and social decision-making and often suffer violence and discrimination. ICT must be used to improve the state of existence of the women in the society through improved service delivery and provision of information.

Theme 2013: ICTs and improving road safety
ITU Council adopted the theme “ICTs and improving road safety” for World Telecommunication and Information Society Day 2013, in accordance with Resolution 68 (Rev. Guadalajara, 2010). The theme is also in line with the UN General Assembly Resolution (A/RES/64/255) on improving global road safety, which proclaims the period 2011-2020 as the “Decade of Action for Road Safety”.

According to the Report of the United Nations Road Safety Collaboration (UNRSC) released by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, 1.3 million people die each year in traffic related accidents and another 20-50 million people are injured mainly in developing countries around the world. As a result, Governments and individuals suffer an estimated USD 518 billion in global economic loss. Road traffic safety is a global concern not only for public health and for injury prevention but also in improving efficiencies in traffic management.

ITU has been leading worldwide efforts in developing state-of-the-art ICT standards for Intelligent Transport Systems and driver safety that utilize a combination of computers, communications, positioning and automation technologies, including in-car radars for collision avoidance. ITU has also been developing standards for safe user interfaces and communication systems in vehicles as well as optimizing driving performance by eliminating unsafe technology-related distractions while driving.

Road safety a Global enterprise
On World Telecommunication and Information Society Day 2013, ITU calls upon all stakeholders that is policy makers, regulators, operators and industry in general to take practical steps to further national and domestic policies, programmes and educational initiatives in the use of ICTs to improve road safety. Taking into account the risks associated with the unreasonable use of ICTs and driver distraction, as well as the benefits of ICTs and vehicular safety technologies, in order to improve global road safety and traffic management.

Telecommunications impact on economies an Overview
Besides the ITU initiatives to mark the world telecommunications day, Telecommunications play a huge part in the global and national economies. The world is rapidly moving toward an economic system based on the continuous and ubiquitous availability of information. Recent advances in telecommunications technology have been an important vehicle in permitting information exchange to develop as a valuable commodity.

Countries and sectors equipped with the requisite telecommunications systems have been rapidly moving into post-industrial, information-based economy growth. For the developing world like Kenya, a modern telecommunications infrastructure is not only essential for domestic economic growth, but also a prerequisite for participation in increasingly competitive world markets and for attracting new investments. In the advanced industrial countries of Europe and North America, universal telecommunications services have penetrated every sector of society. In many developing countries, the limited availability of service is constraining economic growth.

Economic development policies in the industrial countries increasingly include telecommunications as an essential component of the economic infrastructure. This realization has been initiated by industry’s demand for advanced telecommunications equipment for competitive reasons.

The lesser developed countries have begun to recognize that inadequate telecommunications services will be a disincentive to new investment and place existing industry at a competitive disadvantage. This is valid for a range of activities including improved farm production, animal husbandry, export marketing for the mining industry, bank transfers and tourist arrangements, which all vital sectors for the developing countries like ours.

The primary economic benefit of improved telecommunications is improved efficiencies in other productive sectors. Over 80% of the telephones in the lesser developed countries are connected to businesses or government agencies. Few domestic businesses and no international activities could operate competitively without modern Telecommunications. Services like M-pesa and M-banking have become a driving force in our economy, improving and stimulating businesses in colossal ways besides creating employment directly to merchants and vendors/ attendants.

The primary benefits of telecommunications include reduced transport costs, reduced transaction costs, improved marketing information and increased efficiency of industrial production. In all economic sectors– agriculture, manufacturing and services–advanced telecommunications systems are becoming an integral part of business operations. The lesser developed countries must accelerate their application of telecommunications technology or fall further behind in economic competitiveness.

Telecommunications and the counties
As we embark on developing our 47 counties that resulted from the Kenya constitution 2010 the following points with regards to telecommunications must be taken into consideration:
–    A positive relationship exists between economic development and infrastructure investment, including telecommunications in particular.
–    Even with a strong positive correlation between telecommunications investment, it alone is not sufficient to ensure economic growth. However, lack of telecommunication investment can prohibit or significantly constrain economic development.
–   Investment in telecommunications infrastructure can not only increase general business efficiency but also increase the impact of other infrastructure investments in the counties.
–   Investments in new types of telecommunications infrastructure will result in greater benefits than marginal improvements to existing infrastructure.
–    Maintenance of the telecommunications infrastructure is necessary to obtain the full economic development benefits.
–    Lack of telecommunications infrastructure clearly inhibits economic development in the counties but other economic, political and social factors also inhibit economic development.

Some of the questions that pundits must seek to answer include; how do ICTs affect economic development in low-income counties? How do they affect poor people in these countries and in rural areas in particular? What policies and programs facilitate their potential to enhance development and the inclusion of poor constituents?

The authorities and researchers’ must also seek to present answers for the following five critical questions with respect to the newly created counties:-
•    What link exists between ICT growth and economic growth?
•    Do weak institutions block effective use of ICTs?
•    Have ICTs been adapted to low-income counties, and have they had an impact on SMEs?
•    Does household access to ICTs remain constrained?
•    Can ICTs play a role in providing pro-poor public goods and services?

The conclusion of specialists elsewhere and the global consensus is that yes, ICTs do have the potential to serve and empower the poor by linking them to commercial and social networks, cutting transaction costs, and making the delivery of public goods like education and healthcare more efficient. But these benefits can accrue only when the supporting infrastructure is in place and when ICT policies take into account not only questions of connectivity but also of capability (how to help poor people use the new tools) and of content (what is relevant and in what form). Without coherent strategies and the right regulatory policies there is the very real likelihood that scarce resources will be mis-allocated and that ICT-induced growth will remain elusive. But again with the current crop of leaders in the country like the president expressing their identity as the Digital team and bold initiatives like the provision of laptops by the government to all school going Kenyans put in place, Telecommunications and related infrastructure might just take the centre stage in economic planning where it belongs.

Telecommunications infrastructure investment can lead to economic growth in several ways. Most obviously, investing in telecommunications infrastructure does itself lead to growth because its products – cable, switches, etc. – lead to increases in the demand for the goods and services used in their production stimulating the various industries and providing employment let alone the revenue to the government. In addition, the economic returns to telecommunications infrastructure investment are much greater than the returns just on the telecommunication investment itself. Where the state of the telecommunications system is rudimentary, communications between firms is limited. The transactions costs of ordering, gathering information, searching for services are high. As the telecommunications, system improves, the costs of doing business fall, and output will increase for individual firms in individual sectors of the economy. Thus, telecommunications infrastructure investment and the derived services provide significant benefits; their presence allows productive units to produce better.

The ability to communicate at will increases the ability of firms to engage in new productive activities. Moreover, the importance of this effect increases as the information intensity of the production process increases. Thus, telecommunication investments might lead to benefits in other sectors. In suggesting that a county’s telecommunications infrastructure has strong effects on economic growth, it has been argued that telecommunications investments have important spillovers and create externalities. Telecommunications policies affect not only telecommunications, but also the economic development and social, cultural and political growth.
Many counties’ must decide how to best allocate scarce resources for improved economic development.

An ITU study of telecommunications and development, The Missing Link, concluded that “telecommunications can increase the efficiency of economic, commercial, and administrative activities, improve the effectiveness of social and emergency services and distribute the social, cultural and economic benefits of the process of development more equitably throughout the country.” Although it is recognized as an essential catalyst for growth, however, improved telecommunications generally has not been a central investment focus for developing countries.

As stated earlier, neither investment in infrastructure generally nor investment in telecommunications infrastructure is sufficient for economic growth. Other conditions must be present. The region must have the human and capital resources as well as other infrastructure investments to obtain greater benefits from telecommunications infrastructure investment. The timing of the investment and the type of telecommunications investment relative to other modernization factors may well be of great importance. In addition, installing new equipment that can provide a broader array of services will have a greater impact than marginal expansion of an existing network, providing that preconditions for modernization of other sectors of the economy are present.

Quality of service is an important variable in determining the strength of the relationship between investment and growth. Quality of service includes minimizing outages and blockages as well as the ability to expand to meet new demands.

A critical constraint is the enormous investment requirements needed to provide the population with adequate telecommunications and shortage of adequately trained technical and managerial personnel.

The primary objective of this review is to present the interaction between telecommunications and economic growth, and affirm the central role of telecommunications for the counties even as we celebrate world telecommunications day.