Global Digital Opportunities

This paper examines efforts made by a wide range of countries seeking to harness information and communications technologies (ICTs) for economic and social development. Its 10 chapters highlight a number of initiatives to which the Markle Foundation has contributed since 2000. The report emphasises ICT's potential, also calling attention to the principal challenges and pitfalls that national leaders face in their efforts to organise effective nation-wide initiatives for change.

The report's central conclusion is that, despite major opportunities to take advantage of the development potential of ICTs, the results of most national strategy efforts to date have been disappointing. National strategies, the authors explain, are frequently misguided - organisers become focussed on particular technologies or applications in isolation from the broader policy, resource, and training initiatives needed to build capacities at the local level. They claim that "The 'global development community' often compounds these problems by emphasizing process, logistics and diplomatic positions, resulting in efforts that do not significantly improve understanding or attracting new resources to developing countries." [footnote number omitted]

In this context, how have countries such as Singapore and Korea, Ireland and Estonia, Brazil and Costa Rica, Mauritius and Mozambique managed to develop workable strategies? The authors explain that leaders in these countries have cut through the fog of donor, vendor, and consultant advice (which is often contradictory) to identify and manage multiple layers of technology opportunity. In most cases, the report stresses, that effort is only possible if leadership comes from the highest levels of government and the private sector. Countries such as Pakistan, Azerbaijan, and Bhutan have made great progress, they claim, by learning from the experience of others who have pursued this kind of approach.

Here is a summary of the paper's findings (excerpted):

• Forging a national strategy of "ICT for development" offers less-developedcountries a major opportunity to concentrate limited resources and attract outsidecollaborators.
• Yet most national strategies overemphasize specific technologies or applications and underemphasize local conditions, thereby falling short of a comprehensive approach that combines realistic priorities and effective execution.
• "Digital Divides" are not just the result of economic differences in access to technologies ("Have's v. Have-Not's"), but also in cultural capacity and political will to apply these technologies for development impact ("Do's v. Do- Not's").
• Strategies must include initiatives for major local and international (regional & global) change, not just programs mandated at the national level; the realities of globalization require that outside actors become collaborators in facilitating major impacts.
• Strategies should aim to achieve not just specific sector-by-sector increases in productivity, but also broad cultural changes in the way information and communications are used in general.
• In developing a national ICT strategy, the process by which key sectors and regions are engaged in collaboration and tied to implementation is as important as the plans they produce.
• Strategies must make clearer allowance for local differences in culture, "social capital" and institutional capacity, and recognize the need for "real access" to infrastructure and locally useful content.
• To avoid fixation on specific technologies or applications, strategies should focus on how ICTs can increase human capacity to make actual enterprises and entrepreneurs more productive.
• The other dimensions of ICT strategy - infrastructure, applications, andpolicy - should be viewed in light of their impact on institutional and individual capacity.
• ICTs should be thought of as "Integration & Collaboration Technologies" that facilitate processes of "networking" public and private enterprises and individual entrepreneurs to facilitate the relationships that make technologies productive.

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