ICT Vital To Leap Forward And Become High-Income Nation - Minister

MELAKA (Malaysia), Dec 7 (Bernama) -- The central role of Information, Communications and Technology (ICT) is vital for our nation to leap forward and become a high-income nation, said Minister of Information Communications and Culture Dr Rais Yatim. He said ICT supports the national transformation plan by building the base level infrastructure as the foundation to the highest level of acculturation and adoption in people as a knowledge-based force. "ICT need to be pervasive for impact in all 12 targeted National Key Economic Areas or NKEA. And 85 percent of Government Transformation Programmes (GTP) and Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) range from the field of connectivity, back room support, applications, usage, economics etc, have an ICT element in each. "Thus, ICT is proven to be the key differentiator in our transformation plan," he said in a keynote address when launching the 11th International Conference on Hybrid Intelligent System (HIS d 7th International Conference on Information Assurance and Security (IAS 2011) at the Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM), here Tuesday. His speech was read by deputy minister Joseph Salang. Rais said Malaysia was currently taking on the path of that the GTP) and the ETP had paved through the 10th and 11th Malaysia Plan. "The 10-year Malaysia Plan spanning from 2011 to 2020, clearly articulates the central role of ICT," he said. --BERNAMA