Building on the Korean Government || chr(39) || || chr(39) || s administered Korea IT Learning (KoIL) Program

that is designed to promote international cooperation in the IT arena to bridge

the global digital divide and build up human capacities in the area of IT among

participating countries, NIA and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) developed

a cooperation program for the Central American region comprised of 2 courses in

Dominican Republic and Korea.



This IDB-NIA Informatization Project Course for this year is a short-term coursethat

lasted for 3 days (July 27-29) in Santa Domingo, Dominican Republic and included:

(1) LAC ICT Cooperation Program; and (2) Korea ICT Cooperation Program. This

course tackled policymaking approaches to information and communication technologies

(ICTs) in context with current international technology and market trends. The

NIA-IDB e-Government Cooperative Program was hosted by the Ministry of Public

Administration and Security (MOPAS) of the Republic of Korea and Inter-American

Development Bank (IDB) of the United States of America. NIA cooperated in organizing

the event with OPTIC (Dominican Republic) and Digital Government (Costa Rica).

Participants included around 40 people from various Central American countries

and included experts from; Costa Rica, Colombia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Honduras,

Panama, Mexico, and El Salvador. Participants that took part in the program

also included various stakeholders, including the private sector, civil society,

regional and inter-governmental organizations, and international organizations

(i.e., ITU, APEC, etc.). The objective of the sessions is to recognize and

discuss important issues in national Informatization as well as e-Governance

strategy sessions designed for public officials and IT personnel in charge
of executing and managing e-governance in their respective countries.

The program consisted of sharing e-Government public services(best practices),

with sessions focusing on topics such as: New Technologies and Transformation

of the Public Sector, e-Government in Latin America, Central America ICT Cooperation

with Korea, Mobile-Government and Korea-IDB ICT Cooperation Strategy and Plan.

All participants also had chance to share their own countries || chr(39) || || chr(39) || experiences
and innovations in e-Government and learn from each other.

At the conclusion of the meetings, the return meeting in Korea was discussed

and it will take place in Seoul next year where many of the participants from

the Central American region will take part in that program in Korea.