These changes may be as great as those of the industrial revolution, with far reaching effects we cannot even envision today. No country or region can afford to be left out. Governments, private firms, NGOs and others are strongly urged to recognize the critical, core importance of these new technologies. The ICT revolution is especially important and essential for developing societies and their people. More and more information and communication services and technologies are being embedded in the everyday processes and activities of modern life.
Information processing is embedded everywhere in developed and in developing societies.
It should be thought of as a requirement for equitable and sustained economic development and social development, through education, training, health care, culture, leisure, employment and so forth. While a modern imperative for all countries, diffusing ICTs effectively and equitably, is neither easy nor automatic. To be effective, ICT diffusion and popular acceptance requires top leadership, effective vision to mobilize new behaviours, wider participation, and major organizational changes in the ways that governments, NGOs and firms are organized internally and to interact with one another. In the main, it will be diffused as much or more through the private sector as the public. We encourage the ECA to find a constructive role for the public sector and the NGOs in this implementation.