Dr Wal Taylor has been appointed as an international expert in community informatics to a research panel to oversee a $900 000 project which will examine the role of ICT in communities across Canada.

Dr Taylor who has just returned from the inaugural research meeting in Montreal last week said that Canada was moving to address a common problem related to the large rates of failure associated with IT access programs.

With 10 years experience in one of the world’s largest ICT access programs and being rated as the global leader by Accenture in ‘e-readiness’, Canada was well positioned to examine how communities can make better use of ICT.

Dr Taylor joined international experts from Mexico, the Netherlands and Russia in helping shape the commencement of the exciting research program which was headed by Professor Andrew Clement from University of Toronto and Professor Michael Gurstein from NJIT. It will involve up to 10 postgraduate research programs working with a range of community based organisations, from cities to remote indigenous communities.

Dr Taylor, who is the co-chair of the international Community Informatics Research Network, said that governments in many parts of the world are now recognising the high importance of community engagement in the role out of ICT.

In the UK for example, after five years since the establishment Tony Blairs’ e-Envoy Office which had a charter of harnessing all government services to ensure that the country had a high take of ICT, the experience is considerably less successful than expected.

As a result, the UK is placing high emphasis on the ability of all sections of the community to able to use ICT effectively, rating it as the third essential life skill alongside literacy and numeracy.

Dr Taylor said Australia had a long way to go in matching the innovative ‘citizen centric’ programs now emerging in Canada, UK, Korea, Singapore, United States, Denmark, Belgium, France and the eastern European block countries.

Dr Taylor’s trip was funded by the Canadian research program.

For details call Dr Taylor via 4923 2568 or 0409 456 115