Governments seen to have a vital role in improving access to technology
Countries in Latin America should be harnessing young talent to ensure that technology plays an important part in their economies.
Experts in technology and telecommunications told a meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Washington, DC, that progress in Latin America depends on regular access by many more sectors of society to information and knowledge.
The issue will be at the heart of a major summit to be held in Cartagena de Indias in Columbia in April.
‘I don’t want to know if this is or not the decade of Latin America, I want to know what we should do to make it so,’ said Jose Miguel Insulza, the head of the OAS.
‘We live in a new society in which the enterprises that are most highly valued in the world are those that deal with information technology. And what we want to do is find out how through these new technologies we can transform our education, improve our health, improve also the activity of the public sector and how enterprises also can improve their effectiveness,’ he told the meeting.
Jodi Hanson Bond, vice president of the Americas for the international division of the US Chamber of Commerce, said that governments have a vital role to play to improve access to technology.
‘In the last decade, and especially in the last five years, there has been a growing interest by governments on technology and telecommunications, and many countries have created secretariats to address these issues,’ she said.
But she added that investing in technology is not enough without considering some factors such as sustainability and training.
‘Improving access to the tools of technology will not by itself achieve the necessary socioeconomic development, but rather the countries must focus their efforts on how to implement and use the technology,’ she added.
Marcelo D’Agostino, manager of knowledge and communication management at the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), talked about the use of e-health technology developed by PAHO and the important role governments play in implementing it.
‘The only entity capable of implementing an e-health project at the national level and reducing disparities that exist in access is the government, because it depends on no other institution,’ he asserted.
‘The positive perspective we have today is that technologies and access to the internet are some of the few things we can say will not go backwards; they only tend to improve. The challenge of governments and international organizations is to know how to position themselves and use them,’ he added.
On the subject of the rapid advance of technology and its complexity, Carlos Argüello, of Studio C, a state of the art computer animation and visual effects studio based in Guatemala, said that the region has a lot of young talent.
‘Before we had structures in which one person had the knowledge and distributed that knowledge, but now it is completely different, knowledge is everywhere,’ he said.
He added that there is already a lot of innovative work being carried out in Latin American countries with the most advanced technology. ‘I think that is one of the most important things this generation has done for future generations,’ he said.
Jaime Girón, coordinator of the VI Summit of the Americas, said that governments in the region have the duty to improve access to technology.
Related Posts
- Foreign companies lining up to invest and buy into Latin America growth areas, particularly banking, finance and technology
- Call for Latin America to have a say in the future of the international monetary system
- Latin America making it easier to do business, report suggests
- Call for more innovation and resources in science and technology in Latin America
- Call for closer cooperation between Latin America and Asia Pacific
