Reading "Think ASEAN!" part (1)

This is my note of fundamental information that is introduced in the first chapter of "Think ASEAN!"

1) Its Aim
By 2015, ASEAN member countries agreed to work on creating a single market. There are three areas for which ASEAN community is existing to make "a peaceful, prosperious, and peoplecentric ASEAN" : security, economy and socio-culture. (Preface ix)

2) Its Scale
Despite its diversity in race, language and religion, ASEAN "[s]pread over an area of 4,480,000 km2 with a population of more than 540 million indigenous people, immigratns, and scions of inter-marriages" as "a classic model of social and cultural integration." (Page5)

3) IT development
ASEAN adopted "the e-ASEAN Framework Agreement to facilitate the establishment of the ASEAN Information Infrastructure (AII)" and encourages "the growth of e-services and e-commerce in business, society, and governtment ." (Page15)

4) Orbicom research
Orbicom, an organ of UNESCO in communications, scaled how much ASEAN countries improved its "ICT-zation" or the "infostate" of ICT (information and communication technologies) in "the aggregation of the ICT infrastructure, skills, uptake, and intensity of use."
From 1995 to 2003, ASEAN's increased digital divide (between the highest (Singapore) and lowest infostates (Myammer) from 85.9 to 215. Singapore increased its infostate from 87.3 to 225. 7 (159% UP!). Thailand also increased it from 24.2 to 78.5 (224% UP!!). Burma (Myammar) greatly changed its infostate from 1.4 to 10.7 (664% UP!!!). Nonetheless, Vietnam is the country that increased its insfostate most greatly from 2.7 to 37 (1,270% UP!!!!).
"For low infostate economics in Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar, the challenge is to lay the necessary foundation for opportunities in ICT development. "

Such development of ICT requires its development of education or skill training as well.