Lilia Peña

General Director of Science and Educational Innovation at the Paraguayan Ministry of Education and Culture.

Lilia Peña Galeano, of Paraguayan nationality, is an electronics technician. She was coordinator of WordLinks Paraguay at the Centre for Technical Capacitation in Luque for five years, as well as coordinator of the Electronics specialization in the industrial technical baccalaureate at the same institution and coordinator of the IT area in the Service for Paraguayan-Japanese Professional Promotion.

Lilia also worked for two years as the counterpart of the Japanese Technical Mission in the Service for Paraguayan-Japanese Professional Promotion Project. She has been working since 2006 in the Technical Office of the Ministry of Education and Culture, along the lines for action developed by the Secretary of State for the effective incorporation of Information and Communication Technologies into the Educational system. In December 2008 she was designated Director of Sciences and Technology for the Ministry of Education and Culture, and since 2009 she is General Director of Educational Innovation at the Paraguayan Ministry of Education and Culture.

Lilia Peña from the Paraguayan government listed some of the difficulties her country faces to access information technologies. Out of a population of almost six million there is just a 3.5% penetration rate for Internet over the whole country, which makes integrating ITC in education a difficult task. In spite of these difficulties the authorities have created an ICT unit in the Paraguayan Ministry of Education in the year 2009. They have proposed the goal of 30 students per computer and ITC competent teachers.