On January 25-28, the regional workshop within the framework of "ICT in general education" project implemented by the assistance and financial support of the Asian Development Bank was held in Kyrgyzstan.

Our country was represented by the 6-persons delegation that included representatives of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies, Ministry of Education, AzNET Project, as well as national coordinators, representing the mentioned project in our republic. The member of Azeri delegation, Chief of the Information Society Development Department of the MCIT, Mr. Rufat Gulmamedov gave us wide information about the workshop. He said that, in general, this project covers 6 countries: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The main goal of this project is to discover existing problems in the field of ICT application in the schools of the mentioned countries by making appropriate investigations, and then find appropriate ways for resolving the issues. National coordinators representing each country within this project made researches in different directions and presented their results to the Project Coordinators from Asian Development Bank. Before this workshop, starting from June, 2006 national workshops were held in each republic, and exact working plan was developed. According to Mr. R. Gulmamedov, the meeting held in Kyrgyzstan was the first regional workshop organized within the framework of the project. On behalf of our delegation two research results have been presented during the workshop. The first one was "The opportunities and problems of connections to Internet in Azerbaijan", and the second one was "The government and private sector: cooperation and the role of private sector". These researches consisted investigations on the development of ICT infrastructure in our republic, current situation of ICT application in education system, information about the realized projects, strategic goals to be achieved, problems and the ways of their solutions. Other countries' representatives made statements containing similar investigations.

During the workshop it was decided that the next regional workshop will be held in Baku, Alma-Ata, Ulan-Bator or Dushanbe. Final decision will be made by Asian Development Bank. We do hope that forthcoming regional workshop will be held in our republic. Finally, national workshop within the framework of this project will be held in our republic on November. Project results for improving the state of ICT application in education system will be presented as proposals package to the government.

"Rabita Dunyasi" newspaper
Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies of the Republic of Azerbaijan