11 December 2003

Speech by Hon. Phillip Paulwell, Minister of Commerce, Science and Technology, Jamaica

Regional and Sub-regional Strategies for the Information Society

Latin American and Caribbean countries are cognizant of the fact that the development of national ICT strategies and regional cooperation to overcome the digital divide are crucial to the building of an information society. Of necessity, policies implemented in this area must cover a broad range of issues, including liberalization, legislation, education, infrastructure, trade, transport and logistics.

Our ICT strategies must reflect a clear strategic vision; well-formulated policies and implementation plan as well as a regular evaluation and readjusting through a well-defined monitoring process. National ICT strategies must include close collaboration among public and non-public stakeholders.

As has been widely acknowledged, the adoption of ICT by the business sector is at the center of the information society and economy in our region. In particular, SMEs, which constitute the large majority of enterprises and require assistance in using the new technologies in their business operations, the efficient delivery of services and full integration in the supply chain.

ICTs offer a number of interesting export opportunities in human resources intensive sectors, such as tourism, the cultural industry, professional services or ICTs enabled services.

Policies that foster not only ICTs skills but enhance literacy and education in general, will support a higher involvement of the region in these sectors. Such policies could include formal tertiary education and vocational training for technologies and engineers as well as social science related disciplines for e-business ventures.

The creation of a legal and regulatory framework that generates trust among enterprises and citizens has been recognized as a fundamental requirement for the effectiveness of ICT strategies for development in the region. The creation of trust includes aspects such as the legislative changes to accommodate e-business (for example, the recognition of digital signatures and electronic contracts), but beyond this, the creation of trust in e-business is a challenge that refers to multiple aspects of the development of the Internet: problems such as privacy and data protection, consumer protection, cyber-crime, are all to be addressed. (Jamaica’s e-transactions policy and legislation can be a useful model for the region. It embraces both regional and international perspectives).

Cooperation and coordination in enforcement both domestically and internationally, and public awareness about security issues are other crucial elements in building confidence in e-business.

The challenges facing Latin America and the Caribbean in the area of legal and regulatory frameworks are not peculiar to this region. The need to adopt a holistic approach to promote trust, the problems caused by a growing trend of fragmentation as ad hoc solutions are adopted for specific issues in different countries and the new non-tariff barriers to trade that can result from them are common to all regions of the world. We accept that a regional approach to the development and implementation of common responses to e-business legal and security issues can deliver useful results.

Transport and logistics services are increasingly important elements of determining the competitiveness of foreign trade of countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. Improved market access through negotiated tariff cuts will benefit traders only if adequate transport and logistics services are available. National and international policies should therefore be geared to improve access by the trading community of the region to such services.

Transport and logistics infrastructure and services are essential prerequisites to advance regional integration. At the same time, regional integration is an important factor in improving overall international connectivity. Governments of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean actively pursue integration efforts through transport infrastructure investments and facilitation policies.

It is necessary to pursue policies aimed at improving infrastructure and networks and, at the same time, seek solutions to improve infrastructure utilization and service qualities. This involves managerial improvements and systematic application of facilitation tools using ICT, including through the creation of international service zones.

The application of such solutions and the creation of a knowledge infrastructure are key elements in the region’s efforts to increase the efficiency of transport and logistics services and, hence, the competitiveness of its foreign trade. Being part of transport and information networks within globalized production processes requires the use of common standards and technologies.

ICT will play a major role in achieving a higher degree of security and in ensuring compliance with national and international requirements and regulations. Reducing the lead time in international trade is crucial to be competitive. The largest component of this lead time tends to be related to the importing procedures, including Customs.

Improvement of risk management practices in customs using ICT is one of the central elements not only of improving supply chain security but also of facilitating customs passage and improving customs revenue collection. Strategies need to be developed to enable customs to undertake risk analysis aimed at the same time at detecting security threats and customs irregularities.

Most LAC countries are focusing mainly on two information Society areas: connectivity and E-government. A high number of national policies are basically oriented to reinforce connectivity, stimulate the telecommunications market, and to generate a critical mass of users. The main goals are to disseminate e-government, and encourage e-commerce, and e-business.

The identified connectivity plans and projects are focused on increasing the penetration of Internet services among the populations, and are considered by the respective governments as priority in respect to other sectors, such as generating national technological developments, or investing in R&D for such purposes. According to recent estimates, in LAC, only 8% of the total population is connected to the Internet. This digital gap is considered as an obstacle for development.

The global reach of Internet give individuals an unparalleled access to people, resources, and experiences. However, all this potential will amount to little, if people use technology just as a consumption item, instead than as productivity tool. In the case of LAC countries, governments have important roles to play in using ICTs to solve social problems, encouraging productivity, and protecting democratic values.

Promote e-economy

• Promote the development of ICT-based SMEs and micro-enterprises.
• Promote Information Society-oriented national industries through fiscal policies.
• Promote national and/or local government’s participation in the development of incubators for ICT-based enterprises.
• Relate ICT-oriented economic strategies with employment policies.
• Relate ICT-oriented economic strategies and employment policies with the S&T sector’s production.

S&T and Education for Information Society

• Increase the national budget for S&T, particularly for the areas related to information
• Detect and define priority areas for S&T related to IS
• Encourage productive partnerships between R&D Centers, enterprise, and local or regional governments
• Use ICT to contribute to educational reforms, improving the systems for information, student tutoring, survey of educational results
• USE ICT to improve the ability of teachers and parents
• Create innovative professional training careers for Information Society, in order to satisfy the present and future demand for qualified labor
• Encourage the training of students to become engineers in IS-oriented careers
• Implement virtual education to avoid migration from rural area or small towns to larger cities

Build Infrastructure

• Negotiate the participation of private enterprises infrastructure construction, through the creation of Funds (such as Brazil’s FUST) oriented to social uses of the Internet, funded it with a percentage of the billing of private telecommunications enterprise.
• Regulate the telecommunications marketing order to facilitate a larger number of actors and investors.

Enlarge Physical and cultural access to the Internet

• Promote permanent training campaigns on ICT uses for enterprises, civil servants, community organizations.
• Policy makers and connectivity programs need to allocate resources to improving equitable access to ICT, but also to encourage meaningful use and social appropriation.
• Create centers for public access to the Internet, mainly in low income areas, and in low-density areas.
• Agree with telecommunication enterprises preferential costs in order to promote Internet services (i.e. e-government services).

National Governments should be model agents and consumers

• The State must be one of the most important ICT promoters and consumers, through e-government, education, S&T, public health, social plans, and economic plans. (Emphasize Jamaica’s Public Sector Modernizing Project).
• Support Internet uses and applications in all government levels.
• Implement massive information and training campaigns for citizens, about Internet’s benefits and potentials (e.g. HEART/NTA, Caribbean Institute of Technology, CISCO and national computerization of educational institutions, use of Post Office network etc).
• Create National Agencies specialize on Information Society, integrated by members of the public and private sector, the civil society, and the academia sector. (Cite the role of CITO and the Jamaica Computer Society).

Promote the growth of the Internet access market

• Promote competition among Internet providers, to favor the decrease of access cost.
• Encourage the dissemination of large bandwidth, regulating the costs.
• Regulate, survey, and if necessary intervene, to ensure that Internet costs remain accessible for the population.

Promote the production of local contents

• Create and implement a legal framework to protect contents’ copyrights.
• Implement contest with prizes to the websites that display the best local contents.
• Provide financing, and technological aid to help the production of local contents.
• Promote regional multilingual contents, using not only Spanish and Portuguese, but also indigenous languages.

ICT and poverty reduction: national development policies

• Consider poverty reduction as a central axis of national and regional policies, placing ICTs as a service for the populations, and as tools in the fight against poverty.
• Implement campaigns oriented to involve the population in a common project, and raise conscience about the importance of integration to IS. Generation of online services that can answer low-income population’s needs.
• Decentralize government’s actions, offering communities larger opportunities, for participation.
• Coordination between governmental organizations and community organizations, for common actions to reduce poverty, suing ICTs as tools.

Information and Communications Technology is making a continuing impact on the way people live, the way businesses operate and the way governments function all over the world.

For developing countries like ours in the Latin and Caribbean Region, the ease and rapidity with which the general population acquires ICT skills will become a major determinant of the pace of development in the coming years.

At the national and community levels, disparities in income between different groups mean that many persons may be excluded from the process of benefits and opportunities provided by Information and Communication Technology. We need to be focused on efforts to ensure that poor communities and low-income persons are guaranteed equitable access to ICTs resources.

Taking digital information, transforming it into economic and social value, offers huge opportunities for the development of new products and services. Already in our country, particularly since the liberalization of the telecommunications sector, small innovative start-ups are mushrooming. New entrepreneurs are beginning to find new niche markets in Internet services, content and software.

Jamaica recognizes that ICT must facilitate our industries to re-engineer their organization and processes, increase their productivity and widen their market reach and broaden their worldwide presence.

As a matter of priority, we are deepening the relationship between our government and citizens through the application of electronic interventions.

One implemented, the electronic government initiatives contemplated by the Government of Jamaica will bring Jamaica into the company of a growing number of countries that have come to realise the extent of the social and economic benefits that can be derived from the application of new technologies to government services.

Already, a growing number of government services are on line, thus eliminating the delays and inefficiency. Companies can now be registered in a matter of hours rather than months; vital data can be accessed within minutes; and goods can be cleared at our ports with relative speed and security.

Electronic transactions are set to become an important growth factor for our economy. However it also presents us with new and difficult challenges: above all - to remove complex legal uncertainties; and to create an environment in which both businesses and consumers can enjoy confidence and trust … while protecting our revenue base from any negative fallout.

As a result, we are engaged in the global search for an appropriate framework of rules and codes of conduct, in areas such as taxation, tariffs, copyright, data protection, encryption, authentication, and liability.

Through the Public Sector Modernizing Project, we are making steady progress with respect to the delivery of public services and the engagement of increasing numbers of our citizens in the process of national development. In short, we are committed to e-governance.

In this regard, we have liberalized the telecommunications sector resulting in major investments in our telecommunications infrastructure. We are moving steadily to put government employees on e-mail in order to facilitate interactive communication and the reduction of paper filing. We have put key government services on-line with user friendly interface and are publishing information and accommodating feedback on the Internet.

Increasingly, information technology is being utilized to promote distance teaching as an integral part of our education and training system. All our secondary and tertiary educational institutions now have computer laboratories, while more than 70% of our primary and junior high schools are so equipped.

At the community level, we are equipping our post offices to become the hub of online activities where the ordinary citizen can send and receive e-mail, conduct transactions and in a fundamental way, embrace the technology as a way of life. Internet kiosks are now available at major population centers across Jamaica.

At the national level we are moving ahead with the e-government component of the Jamaica Information and Communications Technology Project. The objective of this project is the development of industries which create and contribute to growth … it will continue to orient the economy to becoming knowledge-based and service-oriented.

The e-government component of the project seeks to facilitate and enhance the relationship between the government and citizens through the application of electronic mechanisms. A critical element of this process is the enabling of fiscal agencies to offer online services including payments.

Portmore Telecity Network Project

Government recently granted city status to Portmore a large urban community located in South-Eastern St. Catherine. Over the past twenty years the population has tripled, growing from 82,000 inhabitants to an estimated 250,000.

The proposed “Portmore Telecity Network” project was developed to promote the application of Information and Communication Technology to solve problems of community governance. This forms part of an “e-Governance” initiative spearheaded by community stakeholders in collaboration with Governmental organizations.

The project involves the establishment of a community-based, demand-driven information and communications technology system comprised of a number of access points (“telecentes”), located in the pilot communities.

The telecentres will serve communities through citizens associations and provide public access, especially for low-income individuals. Citizens and community organizations will be able to access a range of Internet-based services through these facilities.

The project is intended to address three inter-related sets of problems:

• The need for effective methods of governance and environment management
• Existing weaknesses in community organizations
• Closing the “Digital Divide” and including low-income individuals
• Taking advantage of Portmore’s unique features

As a new urban center, Protmore is in a unique position to contribute to its own as well as the nation’s development.

The Government of Jamaica has already been targeted Portmore as a center for the Information Technology industry, and is the site of an Informatics Park, which is expected to provide employment to thousands of residents.

It is within this context that the Government of Jamaica and the citizens of Portmore are committed to develop an improved system of governance. This in essence is our vision of e-governance and the success of the communities of Protmore will provide us with a prototype for implementation across Jamaica and the Region.

Regional Declaration

During the recently concluded UNCTAD Regional Conference on ICT Strategies for Competitiveness and Development: Promoting E-Business, Trade Facilitation and Logistics in Latin America and the Caribbean, held in Rio de Janeiro, 25-27 November 2003 Draft Rio Declaration on ICT Strategies for Competitiveness and Development.

Latin America and the Caribbean countries concerned with the development and implementation of policies in the field of information and communication technologies agreed in principle to Draft Rio Declaration.

• To enhance the productivity of our enterprises, to facilitate international trade and investment flows, to enhance the effectiveness of trade and transport facilitation, and, in general, to act an as engine of economic development and social progress,

• Noting that while some countries in our region have been able to make progress in the adoption of ICT and e-business policies and practices, wide gaps exist both inside our societies and between them and the more advanced regions of the world in terms of access to and usage of ICT, and that efforts should be undertaken to reduce these gaps and to facilitate the participation of our societies and enterprises in the emerging information economy,

• Recognizing that in order for our economies to fully benefit from ICT, existing national, regional and international development strategies and policies should take into account ICT-related issues, and that those imply actions addressing a wide range of economic, social, technological, infrastructural, legal and educational issues,

• Acknowledging that ICT strategies for development should be firmly grounded in national economic realities and interests while at the same time drawing on regional experiences and international best practices and respect and promoting international standards,

• Realizing that Governments have a central role to play in addressing public-policy issues such as development of a legal and regulatory environment facilitating e-business and ensuring that the opportunities of the information economy are equally accessible to all, particularly to underprivileged and vulnerable groups and communities,

• Recognizing the leading role that the private sector can play in the development of ICT and e-business and that the adoption of ICT and e-business across our economies will be rendered more effective through an approach that relies on partnerships with all relevant stakeholders in civil society, academia and the public and private sectors,

• Considering that the international aspects of the development of the information economy should be addressed in a manner that is consistent with the principles and purposes of the Charter of the United Nations, including the sovereign equality of States,

• Considering that policies aimed at promoting the adoption of ICT and e-business by the enterprises of Latin America and the Caribbean could be a major factor in achieving the objective of putting ICT at the service of development and that they should therefore receive particular attention in international and regional cooperation efforts,

• Aware of the importance of international cooperation in this area and appreciating the work being carried out in UNCTAD and in other global and regional forums to promote ICT and e-business for economic and social development.

We also expressed our commitment to enhancing our cooperation in the area of ICT for development and taking action to:

(1) Include in our national economic and social development strategies measures to promote the development of ICT and e-business. Such ICT for development strategies should be established through a process involving all relevant stakeholders, while at the same time generating an environment of effective competition among the private-sector players involved.

(2) Actively participate in international initiatives and processes related to the development of the information economy, in order to ensure that the interests of all countries are taken into account and that the principles of legality, equality, interoperability, non-discrimination and transparency are respected in the definition of the technical and regulatory framework of operation of the global information economy – for, example in aspects such as international interconnection costs.

(3) Optimize connectivity among major information networks by encouraging the creation and development of regional ICT backbones and Internet exchange points, so as to reduce interconnection costs and broaden network access.

(4) Take the necessary actions to eliminate any unilateral and discriminatory restrictions contrary to international law that are applied to the acquisition and free use of technologies and equipment available in the market, as an essential pre-requisite for the promotion of investment, the creation of technological and logistical infrastructure and the economic growth of developing countries, particularly the least developed countries. These restrictions limit the full integration of these countries, the development of global e-business and the application of national strategies and policies for development.

(5) Pay particular attention to the needs of developing countries, least developed countries, small island developing States, landlocked countries and highly indebted poor countries so that viable solutions can be found to ensure the effective participation of these countries in the information economy.

(6) Work towards the achievement of an outcome for the World Summit on the Information Society that gives adequate treatment to the implications of ICT and e-business for the economic prospects of developing countries.

(7) Put in place measures to facilitate affordable access to ICT for all citizens, particularly underprivileged and vulnerable groups and communities, facilitating the development of local capacities through, inter alia, free, open-source, and proprietary software, encouraging the adoption of open standards and, wherever feasible, establishing a competitive environment for the provision of ICT and e-business-related goods and services.

(8) Support small and medium-sized enterprises in their adoption of ICT and e-business practices. Specific incentives and support should be considered in areas such as financial support to ICT and e-business projects and training. The needs of SMEs should also be particularly considered when developing the on-line delivery of government services for businesses.

(9) Adapt our legal and regulatory frameworks in order to accommodate e-commerce and e-business practices, to protect privacy, address security concerns and generate trust in the practice of e-business among enterprises and consumers, and to prevent the use of information resources and technologies for criminal or terrorist purposes that could affect both e-commerce and the overall trade of any country; create a legal framework conducive to the application of modern ICT-based trade and transport procedures, particularly with regard to the introduction and promotion of the use of electronic transport documents.

(10) Promote the benefits of international trade and the use of e-business, and promote the use of e-business models in developing countries.

(11) Promote the use of ICT in the relationship between citizens and Governments as a means of improving transparency and facilitating their democratic participation.

(12) Provide incentives and assistance to aid the growth of SMEs in the ICT industry, as well as SME-entry into e-business, to stimulate economic growth and job creation as an element of a strategy for poverty eradication through wealth creation.

(13) Work to ensure that the international discussions and decision-making processes regarding Internet governance take place in a framework that respects the sovereignty of all States and that is representative of their interests and those of other relevant stakeholders.

(14) Enhance public awareness of the relevance of ICT and e-business for economic development and increase human capacity in the field of ICT through education and training.

(15) Leverage ICT to improve trade and transport facilitation in areas such as Customs administration and other trade-related government services; to enhance the connection between national, regional and international transport and information networks; and to promote the establishment of e-portals in the logistics sector and regional initiatives in the area of technology, transport and related infrastructures, so as to ensure connectivity and competitiveness in globalized trade and production processes.

(16) Ensure Compliance with international security requirements through the use of available and affordable ICT and promote the establishment of partnerships between shippers, carriers and national and international organizations to this end.

(17) Create the necessary conditions for the development and application of ICT-based management information systems in national and regional transport and logistics companies, as part of the strategy to ensure their competitiveness and development in international markets.

(18) Develop basic statistical indicators of ICT usage by businesses and households and participate in international initiatives to ensure their comparability, so that progress in the development of ICT and e-business can be monitored and performance benchmarked.

(19) Facilitate the development of a dynamic information economy by encouraging international cooperation. In this regard, concrete proposals to facilitate the participation of all developing countries in the global information society and economy could be considered at UNCTAD XI.

(20) Encourage cooperation among Latin American and Caribbean countries and with other developing countries in order to facilitate South-South technology transfer and the exchange of information and experiences regarding the development of ICT and e-business.

WSIS 2003

Information: aisi@uneca.org
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