Dr. Nam Sang-yirl, Research Fellow at the Korea Information Society Development Institute (KISDI), attended the APEC Study Centers Consortium (ASCC) Annual Conference held in conjunction with APEC 2014 Second Senior Officials’ Meeting (SOM2) on 11-12 May, 2014 in Qingdao, China, and gave his presentation titled “Promoting Innovative Development in the APEC Region Through the Internet Economy”.

In his presentation, Dr. Nam said that the gaps in ICT infrastructure among APEC member economies have been significantly narrowed in the past decade between 2002 and 2012, whereas some critical gaps still exist across the region when it comes to technology utilization. He explained that the reason behind the achievement in expanding ICT infrastructure is the efforts of APEC’s Telecommunications and Information Working Group to achieve the Brunei Goal of tripling Internet access from 2000-2005 and targeting universal access to broadband by 2015. Regarding ICT human capacity, he added, there are relatively small gaps among the member economies and slow progress has been observed, but the indicators currently used to measure ICT skills of APEC countries such as adult literacy rate and secondary or tertiary gross enrolment ratio are not specifically designed to measure the capability to use technology and, therefore, more appropriate indicators need to be developed.

He also introduced the results of his analysis based on the ICT Development Index (IDI) published by ITU, which found that 1% improvement in the Internet economy would bring about a 0.1-0.5% increase in per capita GDP growth. To improve ICT utilization and close the digital divide in the region, governments and stakeholders from the private sector should work together, especially in the areas of converged services, software, content and social culture, Dr. Nam emphasized.

※ For more information on 2014 ASCC Conference, please visit:

http://www.apec.org/Press/News-Releases/2014/0515_workforce.aspx

Contact: Cho Han-Kyung, Researcher, International Cooperation Research Division (Tel: 02-570-4246)