It is a great pleasure for me to congratulate the Korea IT Times on its 5th anniversary. Information and communication technologies (ICT) are now an integral part of our everyday life as well as one of the driving forces behind higher productivity, growth and employment. In Germany, the ICT sector now contributes more to value creation than the classical technologies of automotive and mechanical engineering. As it also grows faster than the overall economy, the ICT sector has become one of the main engines of economic growth - both as an industry of its own and as a technology that cuts across most other economic sectors. By focusing on key issues such as convergence, mobility and networking, the German Federal Government is advancing the information society through targeted policies to modernize legal and technical frameworks and to promote research and market-oriented development in an international environment.
Information and communication technologies do not know borders. They have gained great importance both in Germany and Korea and all over the world. In fact, Korea with its lead role in some ICT areas, such as broadband distribution, has been an excellent partner for cooperation for German industry and research. I am sure that this cooperation and partnership will also flourish in the future and there will be plenty of topics worth to be reported and discussed in the next five years of Korea IT Times.
Ms. Claudia Schmitz, German Charge d'Affaires