In its fourth year, the Information and Communication Technologies Task Force, through its core activities, working groups and regional nodes, made a substantive contribution to the preparations for the Tunis phase of the World Summit on the Information Society by sponsoring several regional meetings, organizing a series of global forums, producing several publications and participating actively in events organized by other stakeholders; organized three high-level round tables linking inform ...

The Inter-American Development Bank’s Multilateral Investment Fund announced today the approval of a $10 million grant to support an information and communication technology (ICT) program for e-business and small and medium-sized enterprise development. The MIF will oversee the program, known as ICT4BUS-II, that will consist of individual pilot projects executed by selected institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean with the objective of improving the competitiveness of small and medium ...

President Hugo Chavez has long been critical of big transnational companies, and now his government is promoting free open-source software as an alternative to market-dominating Microsoft Corp. Venezuela's science and technology ministry on Friday began the Latin American Free Software Installation Fair, an event promoting the use of the open-source Linux operating system and other nonproprietary programs over Windows by Microsoft.

CARICOM is placing increased focus on Information and Communications Technology (ICT) as a critical part of human and social development in the region, and as such, has placed the ICT development agenda and its myriad of activities, directly under the portfolio of the Deputy Secretary General.

The construction of the Information Society must be complemented with pro-poor visions and policies. With this goal in mind, this paper defines the concept of information and communication poverty, introduces the criteria of poverty line locality for its identification, and suggests ways to compute the economic cost of reaching such line for its aggregate measurement. In this process, the structural and technological restrictions faced by a society are acknowledged, and the way they affect a ...

eginning next week, stores all over Brazil will start selling computers on the installment plan, at low interest rates, for no more than US$ 440, as part of the Linked Citizen Program, known as "Computers for All."

"This is a government measure that combines digital inclusion with social inclusion - in which many Brazilian families that lack access to computers will be able to acquire them under extremely favorable conditions, while industry will be stimulated by the increase in demand for ...

It was an idea everyone loved: Develop a cheap PC that would let large numbers of Brazilians connect to the Internet. Literacy would rise, the economy would improve and the country's emerging tech sector would get a boost.

Unfortunately, it's been about six years and counting.

Alejandro Toledo, president of Peru, signed legislation this week that allows public institutions to consider adopting open-source software, another step forward for the open-software movement. The legislation, which Peru's Congress approved in September, allows government agencies and schools to choose between proprietary software from companies like Microsoft or Oracle, as well as open-source alternatives.

The gap between the poor and the rich can be bridged by information and communication technologies.

That was the consensus among stakeholders at the just concluded meeting on the commonwealth action programme for the digital divide, in Trinidad.