OREANDA-NEWS. September 25, 2008. The sixth National Summit on Information and Communication Technologies opened in Tashkent. It gathered about 400 delegates from Uzbekistan, Britain, Germany, the Republic of Korea, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia, Lithuania, Kyrgyzstan, the USA and other countries. Among them are leading experts of ICT market, representatives of the government, civil society and international organizations, heads of domestic and foreign IT companies, reported the Official website www.gov.uz.

The organizers of the forum are the Committee for information and communication technologies of the Legislative Chamber, the Coordinating Council for development of computerization and ICT, the Uzbek Agency of Communication and Information, the UNDP ICT Policy Project and the IT Association of Uzbekistan.

The traditional summit serves as a platform where experts can analyze the state of the ICT market, get acquainted with new developments in this field, discuss pressing issues and their solutions.

Among the topics considered during the summit are improvement of ICT legislation, development of electronic document circulation, creating the national digital heritage archive, standardization of ICT, introduction of 3G and WiMAX, preventing threats to information security, introducing free and open source software, use of ICT in medicine and others.

In the age of globalization, it is difficult to imagine any area of activity without the information and communication technologies. In Uzbekistan, the Program of computerization and ICT development for 2002-2010 was developed and is being implemented in practice, said deputy director general of the Uzbek Agency of Communication and Information Asadjon Khodjayev.

It was noted that in Uzbekistan, national legislation in the field of ICT was being constantly improved, and now regulates relations in copyright and related rights, electronic signature, e-commerce, e-payments and document circulation. An important issue in building information society based on respect of national priorities of economic, social and cultural development is ensuring information security.

To develop new types of services and provide the related legal framework, the Oliy Majlis in 2003-2004 adopted Laws “On electronic digital signature”, “On electronic document circulation” and “On e-commerce”, as well as the edition of the law “On informatization”.

The Association of enterprises and organizations of information technologies was set up to consolidate the efforts of public and private sector for accelerated development of ICT. Now, its members are more than 50 leading companies of the Uzbek IT market. The center of competence on e-government was also created, which creates conditions for partner companies for promotion of their products and services for e-governance.

Currently, local communication network has more than 2,000 automatic telephone stations with a general mounted capacity of more than 2 million numbers, of them 86% are digital stations. The telecommunication system of Uzbekistan has direct international channels on 28 direction reaching 180 countries, with use of fiber-optic and satellite systems.

The mobile communication market has seen rapid development. The number of cellular users has exceeded 10.2 million in September.

The competitive environment has resulted in significant increase of the number of internet service operators and providers, as well as internet access points. The number of internet users has exceeded 2.2 million people.

The country is expanding cooperation with foreign partners and international organizations. The joint project of the government of Uzbekistan and the UNDP called the ICT Policy is one of the most fruitful projects.