Country Readiness Assessment Report – Kyrgyzstan . and are they being widely used? There are 113 public access points; 22 people per 1000 use a free-of-charge access to Internet, annually. 3.4. ICTs in the workplace • Do employees have: o (Un)limited access to phones? Usually, employees have unlimited access to phones. o Personal e-mail accounts? Use of e-mail accounts is becoming common among the younger generation of employees. o Internet access from personal workstations? Exists for a limited number of employees. o E-mail and web addresses on business cards? E-mails are widely used on business cards, while Web presence is not so common. • What percentage of businesses and government offices has computers, how many of them, how many employees use them? 17.4 % Number of state owned computers – 12085 Total number of computers - 25953 Are they networked? 10 % of government offices, mid-sized and bigger businesses use LANs. 6.3 % of state agencies are connected to the State Computer Network. Is business mostly conducted in person or by e-mail, or are there data sharing, enterprise, reporting, transaction, and research applications? How intensively are they used? It depends on business; in the banking sector, foreign currency auctions are conducted online on a weekly basis and online transactions are made between commercial banks and the National Bank. The majority of business issues are conducted in person. Are there efficiency gains resulting from the use of ICT systems? In some fields, especially in tourism, there are sizeable gains from the use of ICT systems. • • • 4. Networked Economy 4.1. ICT employment opportunities • • • Are there opportunities for technically skilled workers within the country? Yes, there are employment opportunities for technically skilled workers within the country. Are companies from outside of the country investing in IT related projects? There are numerous joint ventures in the field of ICT with financial contributions from the Russian Federation, USA, Kazakhstan, Germany, Finland, Norway and other countries. What is the portion of knowledge workers and information related business in the economy? (percentage of labor force, percentage of GDP)? ICT companies – 0.7 % 56