The general objective of the project is to build evidence and capacities to help inform Cambodia's ICT and telecommunications policies. In so doing, it will enable key ICT institutions and actors from government, NGOs, academia and private business in Cambodia to design and pilot a multi-faceted strategy that comprises different ICT technologies, need-based service development, local institution-building and community governance, with a view to formulating and recommending a universal access component for the Government of Cambodia to mainstream into national ICT policy.
The specific objectives are:
In local ICT infrastructure development:
To establish and nurture two pilot e-communities, one in the rural locality of KrongKep Municipality and the other at Kamchay Mear.
To pilot-test a community-driven system of blended technologies in support of services, applications and content identified by the communities as contributing to social, economic and cultural development.
In local capacity building, institutional development and community governance:
To build the capacity of local organizations, agencies and key people to mainstream ICTs into community institution building.
To support the evolution of a community-driven entity, to manage and ensure the provision of ICT-based services for all sectors of the community.
To build the capacity of local organizations, agencies and key people to undertake participatory research, including participatory rural appraisal in ICT-related needs assessment, and in service delivery and enterprise development; and in monitoring the impact of technology access in communities
To ensure the participation of women both as beneficiaries and as actors in the management of ICT-based services and to integrate gender analysis in all research aspects of the project.
To build the capacities of Cambodian institutions to address issues in a systematic way for research publication.
In mainstreaming ICT policy:
To build a national level multi-stakeholder constituency (including Ministries, major institutes and NGOs working in the ICT sector) favorable to the evolution of a progressive and innovative Universal Access Policy focused on all poor communities.
To rigorously analyze and document all the processes, lessons and outcomes of the Project, and to include gender indicators for distillation into policy-making.
To combine state-of-the-art research and experience of universal access policy as practiced internationally with local and national research.
To influence ICT policy in Cambodia, and specifically to mainstream a multi-dimensional approach to universal access policy.
