Embracing ICT for national development

Evan Duggan and Herman Athias, Contributors

Our frequently articulated objective of achieving developed-country status by 2030 is laudable. That milestone, however, requires a transformational agenda consisting of several pivotal components including the strategic planning and implementation of various convergent 'projects'. That agenda includes overcoming potential inhibitors of development, namely, negative cultural predispositions, low resilience to socialvulnerability, economic fragility and the underemployment of the impressive stock of information and communication technologies (ICT) Jamaica has developed, especially over the past decade. A particular challenge is to devise and implement a pivotal role for ICT as the fulcrum of the transformation in our quest for national development.

Nathan Associates, international development economics consultants, recently estimated that ICT capital has seven times the impact on productivity than non-ICT capital in nations with lower levels of IT usage, and approximately three times more in other nations.

Many benefits

Our own accumulated ICT assets have provided benefits such as improved communications and information management and flows, as well as ready access to educational materials, which in turn provide a basis for more effective decision-making and problem-solving. These benefits that accrue largely from the extent of a country's ICT stock are not, in and of themselves, transformational; the centrepiece of ICT-enabled transformation is purposeful application. This involves the exploitation of acquired ICT innovations (infrastructure) to facilitate and sustain indigenous ICT innovations that, at minimum, bear down on development priorities, but ideally, are also export-oriented.

It is common knowledge that ICT has revolutionised the way citizens, businesses, governments and countries interact. More important, as affirmed by the United Nations 2008 report, The Global Information Society: A Statistical View, ICT has become pivotal agents of social and economic transformation in developing countries. The large number of research findings and case studies that have provided evidence to corroborate this perspective have ignited sparks of optimism for many developing countries; however, only those that are willing to summon the diligence to survive the wilderness of effective planning and execution will reach the desired, though not promised, land of development.

Many developing countries have also been inspired by the ICT-enabled advancement of a politically and culturally diverse group of countries, including Brazil, China, India, Ireland, Israel, Malaysia, Singapore, the Republic of Korea, and Uruguay. These countries have given ICT the highest priority in their development strategies and have derived considerable benefits from this decision. In the last two decades, the phenomenal achievement of the Indian ICT sector has now become a familiar, almost banal, story; but for India, the benefits continue to accrue. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development indicated that the Indian economy has grown at 7.5 to eight per cent annually in recent times; it was expected to grow by eight per cent in 2010. Similarly, the Republic of Korea has used ICT to reverse its condition of near abject poverty in the 1960s to the lofty position of a contemporary economic power, which it now occupies.

Although ICT is not intrinsically sufficient to cause developing countries to attain developed status, it is acknowledged as possibly the most influential factor. Any developing nation desirous of attaining developed-country status within a respectable time frame requires, in part, that it emulate the countries above in ICT application effectiveness; specifically, the proficiency with which these countries convert ICT infrastructure into knowledge-based applications (computer-based systems involving the organisation of knowledge, people, and ICT artefacts). These are the applications that enable national strategies and targets needed to accomplish development objectives. There are no substitute routes or alternative blueprints on the horizon.

Transformation requirements

The Republic of Korea is a particularly useful benchmark because it demonstrates the pivotal requirements for such a transformation and illustrates the tenacity required to sustain it. The bedrock of this incredible success story is (1) the strong and sustained political commitment to the development of an appropriate ICT agenda and industry supported by comprehensive policy and strategy, and (2) the public/private partnership and the collaborative creation of a promotion fund to facilitate ICT innovation in products, services and infrastructure. The resilience of their indigenous ICT regime bolstered the country's capability to withstand the severe economic crisis it faced in the late 1990s.

The impressive Jamaican ICT stock - largely boosted by mobile telephony, other telecommunications innovations, and the dynamism of that sector - resulted from the process of ICT [innovation] diffusion (the spread of new ideas and technology throughout the society), which was accommodated by marketing efforts of the telecommunications companies to advance competitive positioning, and by spontaneous adoption of innovation by citizens. For transformational effects, however, the country must also embrace the notion of ICT infusion - the deliberate injection of ICT interventions into the 'veins' of the society. This operation must be orchestrated to modify the essential character of the ICT application landscape and place it on a development trajectory.

Much discussion surrounds the development and expansion of the ICT sector and the encouragement of ICT entrepreneurship. This sector, however, is currently fragmented, lacks organisation, and has no entity that represents its interests. Several organisations that have, in the past, supplied the impetus for the advancement of this industry have faded into inactivity. For example, the Jamaica Computer Society has been in relative decline over the last several years, the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica's ICT Committee is now defunct, and no other body now represents the software-development subsector. We must quickly remedy this situation.

Even a vibrant ICT sector, however, cannot be treated as another independent plank of national development, as this would subject it to tremendous resource competition within a climate of capital constraint. This sector must be projected as a core enabler of the transformation and should simultaneously be the flag-bearer in the establishment of indigenous ICT innovations and endow other sectors with the capabilities to maximise their contribution to development.

An ICT-based strategy for national development requires the infusion of ICT in all sectors of the economy - education and training, health, agriculture, financial, manufacturing, commercial, tourism, government, the creative industries, services, transportation, and energy - and should provide policy guidance for both country and sector development strategies. This requires immutable will and impeccable coordination.

Critical entity

The importance of coordination lies in the criticality of the cross-sectoral linkages and the requirement for fluidity to accommodate possible shifts in national policy direction, grapple with ICT volatility, and integrate ICT into the nation's overall development strategy. The Central Information Technology Office (CITO) was established in Jamaica in 2001 with the objective of promoting a world-class national ICT sector that would propel Jamaica into the enviable position of the most developed knowledge-based society in the region. However, since its formation, CITO's resources have been progressively depleted. Yet it is clear that such an entity is critical for coordinating the national ICT charge and concretising the nation's ICT-enabled transformation.

The notion that Jamaica can attain developed-country status in the early part of this century is intuitively appealing. Other countries have made the climb from farther down the economic development ladder; and we have the necessary attributes and capabilities. However, it will take exquisite planning, excellent implementation, targeted actions, and unwavering tenacity. We will not achieve this status by accident, luck, platitudes, flashes of brilliance, or tentative planning. Despite our declarations of self-belief (which is sometimes indistinguishable from self-deception), the stark prognosis is that our current trajectory will not get us there.

The prescription has been "determined", but there are troubling contraindications. Quite fundamentally, the pivotal role of ICT is not sufficiently understood. For example, ICT is subsumed under the general umbrella of the 2030 vision. This, frankly, is a potential failure factor. Many of these ICT objectives are elements of the 2006 National ICT strategy, which contains time-ordered priorities. Some required immediate implementation, a number of them need appropriate sequencing to accommodate antecedent relationships, others need adjustment, and a few are no longer relevant.

ICT ignored

Further, development specialists, policy experts and other technocrats who conceive the national development strategy tend to ignore the role of ICT and seldom engage ICT specialists in the conversation. Similarly, there is usually a deafening silence about the prospect for ICT remedies in the general proposals of solutions to national problems. In the digital age, no country has attained, and none will experience, the transformation to developed-country status without the effective application of ICT.

In order to harness the transformational impacts of ICT, countries must satisfy several complementary requirements, including:

1. A comprehensive and forward-looking ICT policy, regulatory, and legislative framework;

2. Investments in human capital to supply the skills needed to enhance our ICT competence;

3. Procedures for dynamically incorporating national priority changes in the national ICT strategy set;

4. A process for quickly integrating relevant, new technologies into the ICT stock;

5. A well-resourced national coordinating agency (CITO or another entity), endowed with the status and stature, and possessing the authenticity to provide leadership to, and assume ownership of the planning and implementation process;

6. Korean-like intervention involving the political directorate and public/private collaboration to ensure and protect the environment within which ICT-enabled development can marshal the appropriate resources to succeed.

Meeting these requirements is not impossible; but it will require approaches to policy formulation and execution that have not been a feature of our development thinking. But if necessity is indeed the mother of invention, our present dire circumstances may just inspire the change.

Evan Duggan is executive director and professor of MIS, Mona School of Business, and Herman Athias is business and technology consultant and associate teaching fellow. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.