Mr. President,

Allow me, on behalf of my delegation, to express our appreciation to the Secretary- General for his report on this item as contained in document E/1998/44. We also highly appreciate the report by the Chairman of the Ad Hoc Open-ended Working Group on Informatics, Ambassador Ahmad Kamal, delivered this morning. Let me also thank him and his delegation for preparing the draft resolution we have in front of us. Bearing in mind the importance of the subject and the wide support gained by the resolution last year which Indonesia also cosponsored I need not assure him of our continuing support.

Mr. President,

My delegation is well aware of the significance of informatics in the context of the United Nations, as it is clearly reflected in the work of the Working Group. At this stage, however, my delegation would comment on just a few issues we deem to be of particular importance.

It is a fact of life that the information explosion has become a very crucial part of our daily lives. The more information available, the more the pursuit of accurate, balanced and timely information. Informatics has, therefore, a central role to play in this process. For these reasons, we support ECOSOC's request to the Working Group in resolution 1997/1 to design an overall information management strategy for the United Nations system. We view this request as technical in nature and within the context of the overall resolution, which seeks to harmonize and improve UN informatics system for optimal utilization and accessibility by all States. Exchanges of views to this end have taken place in the technical sub-group, and we wish to express our appreciation to our colleagues, particularly the US, the EU and the ITSD, for the concrete ideas they have presented.

Mr. President,

While we highly appreciate the efforts by the Secretariat in developing and maintaining the UN website, it also deserves a number of comments. Because of the increasing importance of the UN website to global audience as well as the Permanent Missions, there is a corresponding need to have all documents and information posted as early as possible. Moreover, information posted by the Secretariat must also be clear on who the author is; whether it is the Secretary-General's or the Secretariat's formal document, or the opinion of someone, somewhere in the Secretariat. Because this is a real problem we have encountered on the UN website.

In concluding, let me just say that while we appreciate the current level of electronic information services provided by the UN to its Member States, we also look forward to its further expansion, particularly of the information base to include significantly more information and to channel it through various electronic media that are now available.

Thank you, Mr. President.