The Expert Group noted that during the past decade there had been dramatic changes in information technology (IT) infrastructure and development. Each year the price of computer hardware had declined while its performance had risen spectacularly due to improvements in microprocessors, memory chips and other base technologies. At the same time there had been a steady rise in the speed and capacity of telecommunication devices as well as of multimedia applications such as those on the World Wide Web on the Internet. These developments had contributed to the growth of LANs and WANs, the emergence of metropolitan area networks (MANs), and to the spreading of the Internet to the region. Mobile personal communication networks was another important emerging technology.

The experts observed that recent developments and likely trends in IT had an important impact on the countries. Among the mature users of IT, the employment of easier-to-use specialized applications and emerging technologies - including multimedia, imaging, and workflow - was on the rise. There was also a trend towards the decentralization of certain applications. In several advanced countries there was already a trend to move towards an integrated workflow support and decision support system.

The Expert Group noted that the countries in which, by contrast, IT applications had not advanced very far had the opportunity to leapfrog and benefit from the latest technology in designing, developing and implementing applications for public-sector computerization. LANs would enable IT users to share applications and databases in the same location, while the same could be achieved at the national level through WANs. The view was however expressed that those applications required a technically much more complex environment than the older mainframe-based systems and were therefore more difficult to develop and support.

The Expert Group also discussed information technology standards, including operating systems, networking protocols, programming languages, database management systems, and electronic data interchange (EDI). It was noted that popular industry products, such as operating systems, often became de facto standards by virtue of their proliferation. In one country, for example, the local language version of an operating environment had become the standard despite its apparent shortcomings, as no other party was willing to invest in improving the situation. Nevertheless, the need for adopting open/generic standards was stressed. For widely-used applications such as databases it was felt necessary to employ some common standards. The Expert Group noted that standardization of the hardware and applications across the entire public sector might not be simple and perhaps would be more practical within a department. It was emphasized that the use of standards should be judicious and have the objective of facilitating inter-operability; they should not introduce inflexibility.

One key to effective utilization of information technology was the availability of maintenance and reliable and sustained support. The experts noted that once those aspects and the corresponding utility of the existing platform and software were assured within an organization, it would not be necessary to move to new products unless there were distinct and appreciable advantages in introducing changes.

Discussion on technology trends were stimulated by a presentation and an Internet demonstration by Dr Charoon Chirapaisarnkul, who is the Executive Director of the Regional Computer Center, Asian Institute of Technology, G.P.O. Box 2754, Bangkok 10501, Thailand. (Phone: (66-2) 524-5342, Fax: (66-2) 516-2120, 516-2126, E-mail: charoon@ait.ac.th)