News

National ICT Workshop - where to now

Posted by: Samiuela LV Taufa on November 16, 2007 1:24:46 PM

The devils in the details.

We finished last-weeks yap rounds with an evening of drinks at the Dupinisia Restaurant and Bar. As I recall, I was soo late that the entrees were already finished, and there wasn't anything after that except liquids.

It's a good thing we had a BBQ going at the house, even if I missed out on that one as well. This isn't looking so good.

Briefing

Subject: National ICT Strategy Development to Augment National Development

The National ICT Strategic Planning workshop brought together stakeholders from Government, Civil Society and the Private Sector. Workshop delegates assessed and initiated various policies, programmes, project proposals which they have committed to refining over the next four months. Likewise, Government is ensuring a minimal number of these projects are fully functional, at the launch of the National ICT direction scheduled for mid 2008.

Government having finalised our National Strategic Plan in 2006, have embedded significant ICT within capacity development, service development, and provisioning. In recognition of the interdependency between ICT and National Development, the Government of Tonga has long sought and accepted assistance for various ICT initiatives including the recent SOPAC sponsored e-Readiness Assessment, and the National ICT Strategic Planning workshops held with the assistance of the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Commitments from the Prime Minister and senior Government officials to workshop delegates have strengthened their resolve to pursue refinements of ICT Strategies for National Development. Although various Ministers continue pushing ICT as a significant enabler of National Development, the statements from the Prime Minister at the workshop was the first public direction to stakeholders

Participants have clearly identified human capacity retention and development as a core requirement for engaging the benefits of ICT. Several options are being investigated within the working groups targeting both long-term policies and short-term projects.

Augmenting the National Strategic Plan through ICT, six Working Groups have been formed from the workshop to refine ICT plans for: Education, e-Government, Homes and Communities, Industry, Legislation, Technology and Infrastructure.

“To ensure greater involvement of Civil Society and the Private Sector, Government must be a catalyst in the ICT arena.” says Alfred Soakai of the Department of Communications. “Government recognises and promotes long term economic growth must be led by Civil Society and the Private Sector, this Workshop is one of the initiatives of Government in the ICT field to move us all forward. We can do more, and bringing together all stake holders is an important beginning.”

The Department of Communications, again with assistance from the Commonwealth Secretariat continue to support and direct discourse.

Where to Now ?

Interested individuals and organisations are invited to participate in online discourse at the following addresses:

http://groups.google.com/group/tg-educ/ Education Working Group
http://groups.google.com/group/tg-egov/ e-Government Working Group
http://groups.google.com/group/tg-home/ Homes and Communities Working Group
http://groups.google.com/group/tg-indus/ Industry Working Group
http://groups.google.com/group/tg-legis/ Legislation Working Group
http://groups.google.com/group/tg-tech/ Technology and Infrastructure Working Group
The discussions are public, including various documents, directions related to each group.

Endnotes:

The Tonga Strategic Development Plan is available online at http://www.tonga-now.to/Article.aspx?ID=600

The Working Groups currently meet online using GoogleGroups.

: PermaLink

Where is the Tonga news

Posted by: Samiuela LV Taufa on March 30, 2007 10:25:09 AM

Came across some news through http://www.tongausatoday.com so I thought it was a good time for a reminder of the Major news sites focused on Tonga, as well as other possible Tonga related news feeds.

Matangi Tonga: http://www.matangitonga.to

Planet Tonga: http://www.planet-tonga.com

Tonga Broadcasting Commission: http://www.tonga-broadcasting.com

Taimi 'o Tonga: http://www.timesoftonga.com

Tonga USA Today: http://www.tongausatoday.com

News Feeds

In general, I follow the news on Tonga using the RSS Feeds I've put together on the frontpage of Nomoa.com as well as a slashed together feeds.

Google News: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=tonga&ie=UTF-8&scoring=d&output=rss

Matangi Tonga (via Google): http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&lr=&resnum=1&tab=wn&ie=UTF-8&q=site:www.matangitonga.to&scoring=d&output=rss

Yahoo News: http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss?ei=UTF-8&p=tonga&c=&eo=UTF-8

Tasilisili: http://groups.google.com/group/tasilisili/feed/rss_v2_0_msgs.xml

Times of Tonga: http://timesoftonga.com//component/option,com_rss/feed,RSS2.0/no_html,1/

Tonga-Now.to: http://www.tonga-now.to/Media/podcast/rssFeed.aspx?ID=2243&mode=2

With the above 'feeds' I get the latest news on Tonga delivered to my desktop, by using a program that 'aggregates' collects the feeds. When I want to check the above 6 websites to see whether there are any news updates on Tonga, I don't have to look at all those websites separately (taking a lot of time.) Instead, I just open my News Aggregator (RSSOwl) and it checks the websites for me, and gives me the latest updates.

Coool!!!

www.Tonga-Broadcasting.com has the broadest news information, and unfortunately they've not got themselves indexed by Google's News service so I can't build an RSS feed from it (yet) but if you really must keep in touch with the pulse in Tonga, it wouldn't hurt you to visit this site at least once a day.

: PermaLink

Tonga Forum - RSS up and running

Posted by: Samiuela LV Taufa on May 18, 2005 1:20:32 PM

It only takes a little longer than long, but now you can get your news updates from shuggySface through RSS.

IF you have an RSS Aggregator, then link to http://www.nomoa.com/forum/rss.php and you will be delivered your fill of the forums directly to your desktop. Of course you can use the email solution to 'watch' a topic, but I hate having more stuff in the mailbox than I already have. So, hopefully this solution will be of use to some of us.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_Feed

RSS is used to provide items containing short descriptions of web content together with a link to the full version of the content. This information is delivered as an XML file called RSS feed, RSS stream, or RSS channel. An orange rectangle with the letters XML () or RSS is often used as a link to a site's RSS feed.

A program known as a feed reader or aggregator can check RSS-enabled webpages on behalf of a user and display any updated articles that it finds. RSS saves users from having to repeatedly visit favorite websites to check for new content or be notified of updates via email.

For more 'English' information about RSS and how to get your own Aggregator, please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_Feed or