Monday, 27 November 2006
Today RA IT Development Support Council has met, presided at by council chairman, Republic of Armenia Prime Minister Andranik Margaryan.
The meeting has discussed the course of performance of the assignments given at the previous session, the results of realization of actions under the Month of Information Technologies as carried out during September - October, 2006 in accordance with the decision of Republic of Armenia Prime Minister, the proposals concerning legal and legislative changes for the removal of barriers on the way to the development of the sphere of information technologies in the Republic, as well as other questions of topical interest.
On the first item of the agenda, ITDSC Secretary Armen Grigoryan reported that in compliance with the assignments of the previous session, in line with the provisions of the final documents adopted at the Geneva and Tunis world summits, with the purpose of assistance to the formation of an information society in Armenia, jointly with the Ministry of Finance and Economy the Secretary of the Council had specified those loan and grant programs containing an IT component, as well as the final information received from government agencies on the organizations created by corresponding decisions or functioning in the frameworks of the above-stated programs, using thus and the information submitted by control centre of foreign financial programs of the Ministry of Finance and Economy. According to the speaker, made as a result of all it and the list submitted for discussion of the Council, also has been specified and added with the data received from donor organizations and the international organizations, as well as from those organizations ITDSC which in the State agencies carried out credit and grant programs containing an IT component. Armen Grigoryan noted that as a result of the done work the numerous and diverse perspective programs which were carried out for successful development of information technologies in Armenia, however, as he said have appeared, it was difficult to estimate their efficiency as these programs basically had numerous components the assessment of which required further detailed research.
The Prime Minister instructed the ITDSC working groups to keep holding the results of realization of all these programs in the center of attention and suggested to the representatives of the private sector to provide the Council with proposals on the given programs so as to take them as a basis for future negotiations under similar programs.
Among other assignments of the previous session, with reference to the Month of Information Technologies, it was noted that it had had an appreciable success. This action, carried out in our country for the first time based on a decision of Republic of Armenia Prime Minister, was joined by thousand IT sector representatives from Armenia and over 30 foreign countries. Among active participants there were representatives of such authoritative international organizations, as the UNDP, the UNIDO, the UNESCO, as well as leading IT companies, such as Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett Packard, Alcatel. It was emphasized that during the Month of Information Technologies, cooperation memorandums have been signed with a number of authoritative organizations of the IT sector (HP, Sun Microsystems), German Festo, the memorandum of cooperation between Armenia and Egypt. The details of a similar memorandum to be signed with Microsoft are under negotiation.
The public authorities of our country have discussed with Executive Director of U.N. "Global Alliance for IT Development" organization Sarbuland Khan the prospects for the development of information technologies in Armenia and have discussed the possibility of opening in Armenia a regional center of this organization. Alcatel has signed with the Armenian "Luksoft" company an agreement on realization of teamwork in the field of software development. The members of the Council, among which there are organizers of the Month of Information Technologies, said that it had been quite successful and productive. The Month, as assured by them, had received wide recognition abroad as well. The active participation of youth and their interest for the IT sector, too, were appreciated by council membership. The prime minister expressed gratitude to the organizers and participants of the IT month and went on to emphasize the importance of the recently started preparative work on a number of actions which have become traditional already. It was instructed to submit before the end of year proposals on the actions planned for 2007 so as to summarize them and, if necessary, complement with other initiatives.
On the following question of the agenda it has been reported that the legal affairs working group of the Council had studied the legal acts relating to the certification of electronic devices and equipment, regulation of e-communications, allocation of radio frequencies, licensing in the IT sector, as well as their practical application. With the purpose of revealing the problems connected to legislative regulation in the IT sector, joint discussions were said to have been held between the working groups on legal affairs, strategy and telecommunications, the outcomes of which were summarized and submitted for Council discussion.
The legal affairs working group proposed to make amendments to RA legislation on electronic communications and on State duty, as well as to GoA decision No. 2066-H of December 1, 2005, as the latter has a direct bearing on the questions discussed.
