How Taiwan is bridging the digital divide

Taiwan is world-renowned for manufacturing computers, and it also tops the list of countries surveyed in e-readiness rankings by several international organisations.

But these facts do not mean that no digital divide exists on this island country.

The digital divide is a phenomenon that exists all over the world, including in more-developed countries.

In response to the growing global concern for digitally-disadvantaged groups, the Taiwan government launched a campaign to bridge the digital divide, not only in Taiwan but in other countries such as Papua New Guinea as well.

The ‘Bridging SME Digital Divide Project’ is an important project of the Small and Medium Enterprise Administration, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Taiwan, aiming to help small enterprises with under 20 employees embrace ecommerce.

The second one is called ‘Narrowing the Digital Divide between Urban and Rural Areas’, and the third is called ‘Asia-Pacific Digital Opportunities Centres (ADOC).

The ADOC programme aims at helping less-developed APEC member economies such as Papua New Guinea address the digital divide

Thanks to progress in information technology and popularity of the Internet, the threshold for small and medium enterprises to introduce e-commerce has become lower, but how to let business owners identify with and personally experience the benefits of e-business poses a major challenge for the promotion of the project.

Fortunately, under the mobilisation of the Information Service Industry Association of the Chinese Taipei, which is responsible for the execution of the project under the commission of the administration, and 21 municipal computer industry associations, staff of the 12 SME e-business assisting teams and over 1,000 information service providers have approached renowned scenic spots and remote townships to promote e-commerce painstakingly among business owners.

Their efforts have successfully encouraged tens of thousands of small business owners to make the small e-step, allowing them to begin experiencing the power of e-commerce in creating business opportunities.

From its inception in 2005, the project has assisted 16,000 small enterprises to establish Broadband Internet access and 32,000 small enterprises to embrace e-commerce, helping them to create over NT$2 billion in business opportunities and bringing business worth over NT$800 million to information service providers.

The ‘Bridging the Digital Divide of the SME Project’ aims at enabling hundreds of thousands of Taiwan micro businesses to use the Internet and e-commerce in their business operations.
This project is sponsored by the Small and Medium Enterprise Administration, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Chinese Taipei.

There are 982,000 registered business entities in Taiwan, 94% of which employ less than 20 employees.

Although Broadband Internet penetration has reached most rural areas and subscription fees are generally affordable by households and businesses, most of these micro businesses are still not active or sophisticated users of information technology and the Internet compared to larger businesses.

Answering to the needs of the vast numbers of micro businesses, the government has staged a nationwide campaign to significantly bridge the digital divide to these underprivileged citizens and businesses.
In addition to the many impressive statistics that illustrate the success of the project, behind the figures are also many touching stories of Taiwanese small businessmen and women who have successfully integrated themselves and their business into today’s digital economy.

For instance, in Central Taiwan, Kukun village is known as the only place in Taiwan for growing coffee.

The original coffee tree seeds were brought to Taiwan by the Dutch from Indonesia about 200 years ago.

On weekends, Kukun is overwhelmed with visitors to the coffee shop, buying coffee beans and souvenirs.

But on weekdays, Kukun turns into a ghost town.

Most coffee shops and souvenir stores are closed and many men and women are idle for five days out of the week.

One of the digital heroes, Mr Ma-Cheng Lin, operates a coffee shop at Kukun.

By chance, he was asked to participate in this project.

As the opinion leader in the village, he convinced other villagers to join the project to form an e-cluster.

This e-cluster has 10 members who share a common website, named, ‘The Legend of the Black Gold’.

In their minds, Kukun coffee is like black gold which brings them fortune.

The 10-member cluster with an average age of 52 started to learn how to key in text, take digital pictures and upload them to their website.

Under the leadership of Mr Lin, who has considerable technical knowledge, the group convenes every week to discuss how to improve the look and content of the website.

A few weeks after the website was launched, Mr Lin finished his coffee baking on a weekday to find a message send to the website, asking to deliver one kilogramme of baked coffee beans with payment already wired to his account.

He could not believe that a customer he had never met would wire cash to his account before the merchandise was delivered.

The email orders kept coming for Mr Lin and other members of the cluster from the website.
Now, on weekdays, they are busy with packing the orders, arranging deliveries and answer growing enquiries from the website.

“I thought those coffee orders were dropped from Heaven,” Mr Lin described of his first experience with e-commerce.

mnalu@thenational.com.pg or SMS 6849763.

Bridging the Digital Divide

An electronics shop in Taipei, July 2007

It was quite ironic that from July 23-27, while there was an all-out Information and Communication Technology (ICT) battle in Papua New Guinea between Digicel and Telikom, APEC member countries including PNG gathered in Taiwan to discuss this phenomenon of the so-called “digital divide”.

I happened to be in Taiwan at that time and could only shake my head in bewilderment as I browsed The National and Post-Courier newspapers on hi-tech wireless Internet for the latest news from home.

I might add here that while the newspapers were spot on, same could not be said of the Electoral Commission website, as there were no election updates the whole time I was in Taiwan.

The ICT monopoly in PNG, exorbitant telephone and Internet costs, as well as unupdated websites for such an event as the PNG national elections, all contribute to this digital divide.

Taiwan has a very reliable and cheap telecommunications system and is a hi-tech country where almost everyone has a mobile phone and a computer.

Wireless internet is everywhere, meaning that you can use your laptop anywhere, without the need for a wire connection.

Papua New Guinea will continue to remain light years behind the rest of the world if we do not jump on the ICT bandwagon in this globalised world.

As APEC member economies including PNG strive to build their ICT infrastructure necessary for the development of what economists called the “New Economy” – based on ICT – the phenomenon of the Digital Divide is also emerging.

To tackle the divide, the establishment of the APEC Digital Opportunity Centre (ADOC) was advocated by Taiwan at the 11th World Leaders’ Economic Summit in Bangkok, 2003.

It was envisaged as a concrete step towards realising the goals set out by APEC leaders at the 9th APEC meeting.

During this meeting, the e-APEC strategy was specified:

• Transform the Digital Divide into a digital opportunity; and

• Prepare APEC economies to use the Information Revolution as a passport to the New Economy.

Taiwan is currently working with seven APEC partner economies including PNG on the ADOC project.

The six other countries are Vietnam, Indonesia, Phillipines, Thailand, Chile, and Peru.

ADOC offices have been set up in each economy to run the various programmes and ICT training centres, referred to as “Digital Opportunity Centres”, have also been set up to facilitate with training and capacity-building objectives.

ADOC has been actively running programmes in PNG over the last three years, co-operating with various organisations and government departments, most notably with the Department of State Enterprise and Information.

In August 2006, ADOC established its PNG office and a state-of-the-art ICT training centre at the University of Technology in Lae.

The centre aims to provide digital opportunity – digital access and training – to those who have been traditionally marginalised by ICT: women, the unemployed and out-of-school youth.

The ADOC programme is coordinated by the ADOC Secretariat based in Taipei.

The Secretariat Office is currently run by the International Cooperation Development Fund and supported by the Institute for the Information Industry, two of Taiwan’s leading development and ICT organisations.

The ADOC project runs a number of different programmes in partner organisations as well as in Taipei.

One of these is the ADOC SME Programme, which I was invited to attend in Taipei.

It coincided with the third ADOC Week as delegates came together to share experiences and expertise on bridging the digital divide.

The workshop was aimed at providing participants from seven ADOC partner member economies with the fundamental knowledge of e-start ups.

The objective of the SME Entrepreneurship Workshop was to share with the participants the successful e-commerce start-up experience given by Taiwanese professional businessmen and senior manager, as well as the advanced e-business strategies and technologies which allowed the participants to have an idea about methods to cut into the current e-commerce market.

During the six-day workshop, Taiwan provided a variety of useful courses such as e-commerce management for SMEs and individuals regarding the aspects of e-business theory, legal issues and protections that outline the e-strategies of the e-business world.

Moreover, seminars and case studies gave a platform to exchange the e-start up experience among the participants and the lecturers.

In addition, a series of company visiting provided participants a chance of active learning outside the classroom.

Deputy executive director of the APEC Secretariat, Ambassador Juan Carlos Capunay, highlighted the importance of ICT in this globalised world.

“The digital divide within and among APEC member economies is an enormous barrier to the ability of the people in the Asia-Pacific region to participate in and benefit from the digital economy,” he said.

“Access to Internet, adequate infrastructure, human capacity building and appropriate policies on ICT are central issues in addressing the digital divide.

“Success in this globalised world is predicated on ICT knowledge and successful knowledge-based economies will be based on the efficient and widespread use of ICT by all sectors within any given country.

“Small and medium enterprises, the backbone of Asia-Pacific economies, must be prepared with ICT knowledge.

“If they are not ICT savvy, they will not receive the benefits of globalisation and they will be left behind.”

Ambassador Capunay could have been speaking directly to PNG.