Ms Ja-Kyung Yoo is the newly-appointed Chief of the ESCAP Population Information and Communication Unit, switching her duties from managing the secretariat’s Library to taking responsibility for the Unit and the Asia-Pacific POPIN network.

       Ms Ja-Kyung Yoo, former Chief of the ESCAP Library and long-time staff member of the ESCAP Population Division, was appointed Chief of the Population Information and Communication Unit on 1 May.

       She assumed her new responsibilities for the Division and Asia-Pacific POPIN following the retirement of the former Chief, Mr Fred Burian, at the end of February.

       Based on her more than 18 years of involvement in the ESCAP Population Information Programme, Ms Yoo noted in a recent interview that the Programme has come a along way since its inception. “Yet it’s amazing to find that some in the United Nations system still associate today’s Programme with its former clearing-house and reference centre functions of the 1970s and early 1980s”, observed Ms Yoo.

       “In those early days when the countries in the ESCAP region did not have the capacity to provide population information services, ESCAP had to act as a central clearing-house or reference centre to provide population information while trying to build national capacity in collecting, processing, providing services and producing information products through training and assisting in national population information programmes. With the subsequent establishment of population information centres whose staff were trained in such functions by ESCAP, population data and information are now being provided in most countries in the Asian and Pacific region by these centres”.

       The approach used to develop Asia-Pacific POPIN was a decentralized one, Ms Yoo pointed out. “Through this approach, information is collected, processed and disseminated at national population information centres to ensure fast and cost-effective services”, she said.

       Region-wide standards are advocated by the secretariat only where a common format is needed to aggregate and share information among members. One example of this type of coordination is the creation of the regional population directory series, she noted. “The development of the Internet is promoting the decentralized approach even more. Through the Internet, national population information centres can access a wide array of both population data and information and also make their information sharable among wide audiences”.

       To make the population data and information that the secretariat itself generates more widely available, the ESCAP Population Information Programme has also established its own Web site, said Ms Yoo. Users can access such materials either directly at ESCAP, or indirectly through links from other sites such as United Nations Headquarters and the POPIN home page. ”For example, the full text of articles contained in this Bulletin is available through these Web sites and, for users who need substantive information on a number of population subjects, they may obtain the full text along with tables and graphics of articles that have been published in the Asia-Pacific Population Journal We have just updated the ESCAP home page, the new address of which is http://www.unescap.org/pop/”, she stated.

       There is much more population data and information than this available at the Web sites, Ms Yoo pointed out. Among the various types of information are descriptions of the Asia-Pacific POPIN members along with their own information products and services. Since not all members have Web servers, ESCAP’s POPIN site carries copies of members’ home pages. “It would be ideal to maintain only links to the members’ site to keep them up to date when members establish their own Internet servers”, she noted.

       Ms Ja Kyung Yoo and her colleague, Mr John Loftus discuss the ongoing coordinating activities of the POPIN Unit network with Ms Susan Kingsley Pasquariella, Coordinator of the Global POPIN of the Population Division of the United Nations Headquarters during her recent visit to Bangkok.

       “One of the major goals of all our information development work is to facilitate implementation of both the 1992 Bali Declaration on Population and Sustainable Development and the 1994 Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development”, explained Ms Yoo. “These instruments are blueprints that governments themselves have helped to develop in order to guide their population programmes into the next century. They represent what people are calling major `paradigm shifts’ in the way population programmes are to be implemented. Information plays a key role in getting people and governments to follow the new approaches these action programmes call for. Because people act on the basis of informed understanding, our role is to provide them with the information they need to take action”.

       However, not all countries and population professionals have access to the Internet, so the ESCAP information programme also uses other approaches. “One of the things we will be doing in the future is developing CD-ROMs”, said Ms Yoo. “This will enable users who have a computer to obtain a wide array of population information at low cost which is especially important if they cannot afford access to the Internet”.

       The Programme will also produce a CD-ROM to provide training on information technology. “The CD-ROM will be used as a self-raining tool to explain various areas in the field of information technology. For this purpose, ESCAP is working in collaboration with the China Population Information and Research Centre (CPIRC) to develop a set of training modules”.

       Still another approach used by the ESCAP secretariat in information dissemination is through its publications programme. “No matter how good computer-based information technology may be, people will still want a publication they can hold in their hands and read wherever and whenever they want”, stated Ms Yoo. ESCAP produces a number of periodicals and monographs for this purpose, she added. “We know our publications are being used for policy and programme purposes because of the number of times they are cited in the literature and by the way the positions that our publications advocate are picked up in the official statements of governments at various meetings”

       “In the future, with the continued support of UNFPA, we hope to develop our work further, perhaps through the establishment of a ‘listserv’ on the Internet and the development of thematic regional databases on ICPD topics of greatest importance, interest and complexity, such as reproductive health and rights, safe motherhood and the like”, commented Ms Yoo.

       Another recent development is helping some members of Asia-Pacific POPIN that share common characteristics and are located in relatively close proximity to one another to build subregional networks, she added. “Under the ESCAP information programme, we organize meetings and workshops with the aim of increasing the members’ self-reliance. In the future, we also hope to broaden membership in the network to include more NGOs, population research institutes and statistical offices”, she said. “In this way, more and more people concerned with population issues will be working in unity and in line with the common goals and objectives of the ICPD Programme of Action. When one considers that the ESCAP region accounts for over 62 per cent of the world’s population, the importance of such work becomes more apparent”.

       “In the information age, when information can be accessed and disseminated through modern information technologies, information professionals should be well equipped with new skills to provide up-to-date and relevant information” explained Ms Yoo. “It is not an easy task since the pace of development of information technology is so fast. Therefore, it is a challenge the secretariat faces — to choose appropriate information technologies and help the members in adapting these fast developing technologies in their information work”.

       Ms Yoo herself is well versed in all aspects of information and computer science. Besides her recent service as the head of the ESCAP Library, her association with Asia-Pacific POPIN dates back to 1980 when she first started to work as a staff member for the Population Division.

       Prior to that, while working as the Assistant Director of the Computer Systems Lab of the Korea Scientific and Technological Information Center, she also taught librarianship and computer science courses at various universities in Seoul.

       Ms Yoo was graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 1988 with a Ph.D. in library and information sciences. She holds a master’s degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Information and Computer Science, and a bachelor’s degree in library science from Ewha Women’s University in Seoul.