NIA and Telecentre.org co-hosted “Spark13,” the 4th Global Forum on Telecentres, which was held in Granada, Spain at the Palacio de Congresos last May 28, 2013. By many measures, the event was a resounding success, with more than 1,100 attendees from six regions across the globe. Participants had the opportunity to listen to and interact with 240 speakers who presented topics, programs, research, and projects in four plenary sessions, 26 concurrent sessions, 38 Hub sessions, and 19 Apps Lab showcase sessions. Since Spark was also designed as a virtual event, live and recorded content was made available to a global audience. During the event, 5,600 connections from 46 countries were detected. Based on the number of connections, an estimated 20,000 people “attended” the virtual forum.



The annual event was organized by the National Information Society Agency of Korea (NIA), Telecentre.org Foundation (TCF), Telecentre-Europe (TE), Comunidad de Redes de Telecentros, and Red Guadalinfo), as the conference brought together many participants from the information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) sector as well as private and public agencies from around the globe. The 4th Global Forum on Telecentres was held under the theme; “People, Innovation and Sustainability.”



Beyond the numbers, however, Spark13 always envisioned as an opportunity for new beginnings—igniting not just awareness on telecentres and information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) but forging partnerships and identifying opportunities. While many partnerships were undoubtedly formed, the Spark team recorded over 50 formalized agreements at the national, regional and local levels, as direct outcomes from Spark13.



NIA Vice President, Kyung Sub Kim give an opening keynote address that promoted Korea’s informatization along with a description of the values that Korea keeps in order to promote access to information. He talked about historical development of ICT where Korea rallied around the motto; “We are behind industrialization but will lead informatization,” and the Korean government established    and implemented its national informatization vision and strategy. This initiative eventually led to Korea achieving the top ranking in the UN’s e-Government Survey for both 2010 and 2012. He then mentioned in his address Korea’s own Information Access Centers (IACs) that have been established in 34 countries over the past decade reaching over 8 million people. He went on to add that the Korean government aims to expand the IAC network to 100 countries by 2020 in order to contribute to improving the global information access environment, and to open and share various projects as well as Korea’s ICT development experience.



The Spark13 Forum was a great opportunity to meet network leaders, telecentre activists, entrepreneurs and social innovators. The event also gave a chance to showcase the work at the Telecentres of the World exhibit at Spark where telecentre officials were able to interact with visitors and share about various telecentre initiatives from around the world.