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SARDEG can only be most successful when partnership building
involves all socio-economic sectors of the countries. In the process
of building initial partnerships preliminary discussions were held
with the existing country gateways in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri
Lanka, and India (upcoming) via teleconference, email etc. on this
initiative and the country gateways have shown keen interest to be
partners in the regional gateway. At this stage we have obtained
their agreement in principle with the proposed gateway and scheduled
to meet jointly to discuss the technical and operational details of
integrating applications and programmes being used by different
country gateways. A concept paper on the proposed regional gateway
was distributed among the country gateways and the organizers of the
respective country gateways discussed it internally among
themselves. As such the country gateways are very much involved from
the very beginning in the process of crystallizing the concept of a
regional gateway and they will be the primary partners (nodal
points) for the regional gateway in their respective countries.
Representatives of the country gateways and their technical staff
will be included in the steering committee and the technical
advisory committee as well to formalise this partnership.
The Department of Information Technology, Govt of India, is still
building the India country gateway and as such the regional gateway
will specially keep track of the progress. A channel of technical
cooperation and harmonisation between both the gateways will be
maintained. However, the regional gateway will strongly uphold its
regional, multisectoral autonomous identity through necessary
legislations and incorporation agreements to keep it distinct from
government of India’s own national initiatives. In doing so the
regional gateway will be accepted and visible as a truly regional
initiative rather than being misunderstood as an ‘India-led’
programme. The regional gateway will have the primary partners, ie,
the country gateways as the national arms of the initiative and
build on that basic partnership approach.
The regional gateway intends to include the remaining South Asian
countries in a later phase based on lessons learnt in regional
partnership strategies. Towards this end the gateway will maintain a
high ground of mutual cooperation beyond the geo-political bilateral
challenges among the South Asian countries. Specifically, on
India-Pakistan arena, we will follow the latest development in
cooperation between these two countries in specific sectors like
film, entertainment, media and trade. According to the
India-Pakistan Chamber of Commerce and Industry bilateral trade
between India and Pakistan through formal channels is worth $230
million annually, but trade through illegal channels has flourished
and is now estimated at about $1.5 billion annually. Experts believe
official trade between the two neighbours could go up to $4 billion
in two to three years if trade relations are normalised. "India's
ICT sector has enjoyed tremendous growth in the past decade. ICT
companies in both countries are keen to collaborate with each other
in the area of research & development, policy formulation and in
exploring business opportunities together worldwide."
Similarly, during the initial phase of the development of the
regional gateway various other stakeholders will also be taken
onboard through thematic workshop, consultations, and sector-wise
regional meetings. The aims of the workshops are to create
awareness, assess and identify new e-needs of different groups and,
most importantly build partnerships with various stakeholders.
In the preliminary consultative meetings, participants from academic
institutions, government institutions and ministries, the public
sector, the private sector, civil society and non-government
organizations a strong desire for partnership is demonstrated by
stakeholders. The strategy is to enhance SARDEG services and attract
more partners across the region.
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