Digital divide: Kazakhstan's perspective
Kazakhstan is also facing the problem of digital divide, especially between the urban and rural population characterized by uneven distribution of telecommunications infrastructure. Most of the rural areas of Kazakhstan are technologically backward. People who live in the province face many difficulties which hinder their development. “The lack of infrastructure, energy grids, international bandwidth, and the high costs of access and equipment are the main constraints to providing international communication technology to the rural masses, and even to some urban centers. In addition to this basic lack of physical infrastructure, the limited human and institutional capacity, outdated or weak regulatory frameworks are common to most parts of the peripherilized territories.
Furthermore, rural economic sectors, small and medium scale industries have not been properly connected to the national and regional chains of production and services, and thereby into the global economic system” (Neville, 2003).
In order to improve the situation, Kazakhstani government has been taking some measures, like the Program for Bridging Digital Divide in the Republic of Kazakhstan. This program was adopted by Resolution of the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan in October, 2007. The program’s goals are bridging digital divide in the Republic of Kazakhstan, achieving 20% computer literacy of citizens and Internet users, enhancing the value of information resources for citizens' everyday life.
This program has yielded positive results. Within two years of the Program implementation about 2 million citizens were trained, tested and certified, in collaboration with the government agencies, 8 information portals aimed at promoting ICT adoption were created, a Distance Learning Center was established, 80 certified e-courses on IT and Management were laid out on the DLC portal in Kazakh and Russian languages (Electronic Government, 2009).
The effectiveness of the measures taken may be expressly demonstrated by the growth of the number of Internet users in Kazakhstan, which is presented in the table below (Lyakhov, 2006):
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