CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

RAND

The Future of the

Information Revolution

in Latin America

Proceedings of an

International Conference

Gregory F. Treverton and Lee Mizell

National Defense Research Institute

^NIC Mr/

Prepared for the

National Intelligence Council

as a contribution to the

Information Revolution project

within the DCI's

Strategic Estimates Program 20010912 045
CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

RAND

The Future of the

Information Revolution

in Latin America

Proceedings of an

International Conference

Gregory F. Trevorton and Lee Mizell

of-1*&£>-/-^xt-

National Defense Research Institute

Approved for public release; distribution unlimited
The research described in this report was prepared for the National Intelligence

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Institute, a federally funded research and development center supported by the

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Preface

The National Intelligence Council (NIC) is undertaking a systematic research and

development program on broad, crosscutting issuesfor the next millennium; this

constitutes the DCI's Strategic Estimates Program. One of these strategic

estimates focuses on developing a better understanding of the future course of

the information revolution throughout the world over the next 10-20 years.

The NIC has asked RAND to take the lead in this effort to chart the future course

of the information revolution. As a major part of this effort, RAND is convening

a series of international conferences on various aspects of the information

revolution. The first of these conferences, focusing on societal trends driven by

the information revolution, as they are unfolding in different areas of the world,

was held in Washington, D.C., in November 1999. The proceedings of this

conference were published in Hundley and others (2000). The second conference

in this series, focused on the technology drivers of the information revolution,

was held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in May 2000. The proceedings of that

conference were published in Anderson and others (2000).

The third conference in this series, focused on the information revolution in Latin

America, was held in Washington, DC, in November 2000. This report contains

the proceedings of this third conference. For sharpness of presentation, it

presents most arguments as statements, not as "one participant argued." Often,

arguments were overstated for effect, to provoke thought, and this report points

out those instances.

This research is sponsored by the National Intelligence Council, and monitored

by the National Intelligence Officer (NIO) for Science and Technology. It is being

conducted by the Acquisition and Technology Policy Center of RAND's National

Defense Research Institute (NDRI). NDRI is a federally funded research and

development center sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint

Staff, the defense agencies, and the unified commands.
Contents

Preface iü

Figures vii

Tables ix

Summary and Reflections xi

Acknowledgments xxiii

1. Introduction 1

2. Surveying the Latin American Infrastructure 5

3. The Economic and Business Dimension 15

4. Information Revolutionaries 23

5. Small Group Discussion: Economic and Business Dimension 27

6. The Political Dimension 33

7. The Societal Dimension 39

8. Small Group Discussion: Political and Societal Dimensions 43

9. Looking Forward 49

Appendicies

A. Conference Participants 53

B. Conference Agenda 57

Bibliography 61
Figures

Figure S.l Number of Internet Users Worldwide, October 2000 xii

Figure S.2 Internet Users per 1,000 People Worldwide xiii

Figure S.3 Internet Hosts in Latin America per 1,000 Inhabitants, 2000 xiv

Figure S.4 Internet Penetration in Mexico xvii

Figure S.5 International IP Links xxi

Figure 2.1 GDP Per Capita (USD $), 1998 6

Figure 2.2 Number of Internet Users Worldwide, October 2000 7

Figure 2.3 Internet Users as Percent of Population in Latin America, 1999....7

Figure 2.4 Internet Hosts in Latin America per 1,000 Inhabitants, 2000 8

Figure 2.5 Projections of Latin American Online Commerce, 1999-2005 8

Figure 2.6 International IP Links 9

Figure 2.7 International Internet Links (mbps) 10

Figure 2.8 Telephone Main Lines per 100 People in Latin America, 1999.... 11

Figure 2.9 Cellular Subscribers per 100 Inhabitants, 1999 12

Figure 3.1 Internet Penetration in Mexico 18
IX

Tables

Table S.l IT Penetration in Mexico by Access Device (% of population) xvi

Table 3.1 IT Penetration in Mexico by Access Device (% of population) 15

Table 3.2 New Economy Startups Covering Mexico 19
Summary and Reflections

The information revolution is bringing about profound changes in the globe's

political and economic life. RAND has embarked on a multi-year effort,

sponsored by the National Intelligence Council, to chart the future course of

these changes over the next 10-20 years, around the world. As a major part of

this effort, RAND is convening a series of international conferences on various

aspects of the information revolution. The third conference in this series,

reported on here, was held in Washington, D.C., on November 1-2,2000,

focusing on the information revolution in Latin America.

The information revolution is so entwined with the global economy that this

conference's discussion about the future of information technology (IT) in Latin

America often became a conversation about Latin America's prospects in the

emerging global economy. Indeed, the major issues are the same for both

subjects:

• the role of government and of the large incumbent, and sometimes protected,

local firms;

• the nature of connections to the richer countries, especially the United States,

and to their technology, capital and companies; and

• the need to train and retain skilled people, which begins with education but

runs far beyond, to safety and living conditions that will attract real or

potential "brain drain" by comparison to New York, Miami or Silicon Valley.

So, too, Latin America's challenge in IT is the same as for the global economy:

how to, first, get on, then move up the value chain from simple processing -such

as Intel's chip-making in Costa Rica -to higher value-added manufacturing or

services. Yet it is easy to blur the distinction, as this discussion sometimes did,

between "producing" IT and "using" IT effectively to improve other industries.

The IT revolution might be thought of in three categories:

• Creating technology;

• Embodying that technology in products or "artifacts"; and

• Offering and using services based on the artifacts.
Xll

Certainly, not all Latin American countries can or need to create technology or

products to be successful. Not all need to develop IT industries. Perhaps none

need to do so. The temptation to think that "making things" is necessary can

easily lead to a slippery slope of protectionism and heavy-handed government

intervention. Most of the gains from IT will be in services, not objects, in using

IT to become more competitive across the board.

Latin America in a Global Context

The subject is not just the Internet or the World Wide Web but the entire range of

technologies that are reshaping communications, and the implications of those

technologies for business and the economy, politics and governance, and

ultimately for how societies organize. The impact of the information revolution

touches all of society, and so the different dimensions cannot really be separated.

For instance, the role of government is eminently political but also is critical to

the business environment. A social dimension, like education, also is at the heart

of countries' economic and business opportunities in information technology.

•ao

3

5

400

350

300

250

200

150

100

50

0

Number of Internet Users Worldwide, October 2000

161.31

89.68

105.89

2.4 3.11 15.26 11 i

m

Middle

East

Africa Latin Asia Pacific

America

Europe US&

Canada

377.65

World

Total

Source: Various, complied by NUA Surveys. As cited in presentation by

Larry Press at RAND Conference on IT in Latin America, November 2000.

Figure S.l Number of Internet Users Worldwide, October 2000
Xlll

As shown in Figures S.l and S.2, the Internet came late to Latin America, and,

while its penetration in that region is still small relative to that in the rest of the

world, it is growing rapidly. Only 1.5 percent of Latin Americans have access to

the Web today, versus 24 percent of North Americans. Internet penetration is

projected to still be less than 12 percent in Latin America in 2005, and most of this

penetration will be in the richest 20 percent of the Latin American population,

about 100 million people in total. Still, the numbers of end users and host

computers are growing faster than the world average.

Internet Users per 1000 People

800

700

600

500

400

300

200

100

0

1995 1998 2000 2005

Worldwide

North America

-Western Europe &

Scandanavia

-Eastern Europe

-Asia-Pacific

-South & Central

America

Middle East & Africa

Source: Computer Industry Almanac, as presented by Larry Press

at RAND conference on IT in Latin America, November 2000

Figure S.2 Internet Users per 1,000 People Worldwide
Internet Hosts in Latin America perl000 Inhabitants, 2000

I IM iss ino data

0.6

.6-2.1

.1-4.2

1.2- 7.7

| ]MI

Scurce:ITU,2000

As cited in presentation by Larry Press at RAND Conference on IT in Latin America, 2000

Figure S.3 Internet Hosts in Latin America per 1,000 Inhabitants, 2000

For the information revolution, as for roles in the global economy more

generally, there is no "Latin America." Differences across the region are vast, as

shown in Figure S.3. Illustratively, the countries might be divided into three

groups:

• the "leaders" - Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay;

• the interesting, successful "outliers," like Costa Rica or some of the

Caribbean islands, and

• the rest.

These variations across the region notwithstanding, its countries face many

similar problems in addressing the information revolution, and they seem

unlikely to solve many of them by mimicking the approaches of the world's IT
XV

leaders. For instance, e-commerce has been slow to develop not just because few

people are online but also because, in varying combinations, few people have

credit cards with which to pay; there is little infrastructure for delivering

purchases; and trust in procedures for paying for and getting goods is lacking.

Pre-paid cell phone or "smart" cards have been one way around some of these

obstacles.

Outside major cities, the information revolution will not come to Latin America

with hard wires and modems. It will come with new, wireless technologies,

though those will hardly be a panacea. There are, for instance, 100 cellular

providers in the region, but, alas, half of the phones are still analog. Third

generation cellular phones will communicate at 3 mbps (384 kbps in a moving

vehicle), but will not be available in Latin America - or the United States ~ for

several years. Moreover, some places will remain hard to reach with cellular

technology. Satellite links also hold promise; the cost of a local ground station to

serve communities or educational institution is now on the order of $6,000, and

in Peru there are now 700 cabinas püblicas (public outlets, or kiosks) - a franchise

operation serving local communities.

The Case of Mexico

Mexico is particular in its connection to the United States and in the power of its

dominant incumbent telephone company, Telmex, but it does display most of the

issues common to the region's more advanced IT countries. As an aside, the

parallels between the Internet today and the railroad boom of the nineteenth

century are intriguing. Railroad building in Mexico accounted for half of total

economic growth, and there was talk of "railway time" and the "death of

distance." Then, as now with the "digital divide," the growing disparity of

wealth that resulted from railroad building was cause for concern; owned by

foreigners or local oligarchs, railroads generated growth but worsened the

income distribution. In Mexico, the backlash against this social impact of the

railroads contributed to the Revolution of 1910. The railroad bubble burst, and

Mexico has built hardly any railroad track since.

Mexico has 100 million people and a GNP of about a half-trillion dollars, or

about a twentieth that of the United States. Its population is young, with seventy

percent under 35 years of age, and the income distribution is skewed, with the

top twenty percent of the population accounting for 58 percent of income (about

the same, however, as in the United States). As Table S.l shows, that top 20

percent of the population is much more penetrated by the various

communications technologies than are Mexicans in general.
IT Penetration in Mexico by Access Device (%of population)

Total (%) Richest 20% (%)

Fixed lines 11.5 33.4

Wireless 7.6 22.0

Total lines 19.1 55.5

PC 5.6 16.2

Internet (estimate) 1.6 4.6

TV 87.0 100.0

Cable TV 11.0 31.9

Source: Telmex, Goldman Sachs, and author, as presented by Timothy Heyman at

RAND Conference on IT in Latin America, 2000 |

Table S.l: Internet Penetration by Access Device

As shown in Figure S.4, current trendssuggest exponential growth in Web

access, from the current one-percent penetration among homes and slightly

higher penetration among businesses to approximately 18 percent among homes

and 26 percent among business by 2010. This growth, however, is likely to be

concentrated among the richest 20 percent of Mexicans.

Mexico's companies that are relevant to IT can be divided into seven categories -

connectivity providers, old economy incumbents, Telmex, the media, banks, new

economy start-ups, and global Internet companies. Telmex stands out. It

monopolizes the "last mile" of wire to the consumers, controlling 99 percent of

local telephones. It has more flexibility than the incumbent telephone companies

in other Latin American countries, which either had to develop their Internet

strategies outside their corporate structure, or were legally barred from

becoming Internet service providers (ISPs), as in Brazil. In Mexico, Telmex

currently controls 58 percent of all Web accounts. It accounts for a third of the

Mexican stock market, and it is controlled by one man ~ Carlos Slim, Latin

America's wealthiest businessman, who also owns Prodigy Inc., the third-largest

ISP in the United States, and who recently bought CompUSA.
Internet Pentration in Mexico

30

25

*. 20

c

10

5

0

Homes

Businesses

1999 2000 2003 2010

Source: Estimates by Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, as cited by Timothy

Heyman at RAND Conference on IT in Latin America, 2000

Figure S.4: Internet Penetration in Mexico

Telmex aside, the obstacles to the development of IT and e-commerce in Mexico

are familiar across the region. There are few Internet start-ups, and, especially

given the problem of financing, most of those are organized outside the country

even if they intend to conduct business in Mexico. The 125 firms in Mexico's

own "Silicon Valle," (valley), where IT start-ups are beginning to thrive, are all,

like the railroads a century ago, foreign-owned ~ four-fifths American and the

rest Asian. Global Internet companies have a presence in Mexico, but neither

Mexico nor Latin America more generally is a priority for them. Advertising on

the Internet has yet to take-off as a revenue source, and Internet connectivity as a

revenue stream is dominated by Telmex. There are 44 other ISPs in Mexico, but

the fact that they have, on average, fewer than 200,000 subscribers each suggests

future consolidation among providers.

E-commerce is hampered, as everywhere in Latin America, by how to pay and

how to deliver. In Mexico the problem is not the lack of credit cards, for the

country has some eight million, but there is nothing comparable to the U.S. sales

tax advantage in buying online. For these reasons, business to business ecommerce (B2B) is more promising than business to consumer e-commerce
XVUl

(B2C). Mexico does have one important "pull" factor that is unique to it. The

just-in-time inventory needs of the maquiladoras - processing operations, mostly

in consumer electronics, whose inputs can be imported duty free provided all the

products are exported - on its northern border provide a powerful incentive to

use IT. Foreign direct investment in the country has grown from $4 billion

annually to $13 billion since NAFTA, the North America Free Trade Agreement,

came into effect in 1995.

The Successful "Outliers"

Costa Rica and some of the island states in the Caribbean -the Cayman Islands,

the Bahamas, St. Barts, Aruba, the British Virgin Islands, and the U.S. Virgin

Islands - are notable in being further along, not in making but in using IT. These

outliers share several preconditions: their governments are founded on trust and

transparency; they have a well-established rule of law, high literacy rates,

economic cultures in which business can prosper, populations that are fluent in

English (in Costa Rica's case, tolerable working knowledge), and, perhaps most

important, political stability. The islands demonstrate that it is not necessary to

produce IT to use it effectively, and that even small countries can do so. Their IT

advances were driven by the needs of their commerce -tourism and banking,

including, unfortunately, money laundering.

In attracting Intel, Costa Rica took political risks, like committing to teach

English in primary schools. Intel now accounts for a sizeable fraction of the

country's economy. The country is thus involved in producing, or at least

assembling, IT artifacts, but its tourism industry has also been a driver of IT use.

It has the advantage of a world-class business school, INCAE, which was

founded with assistance from the Harvard Business School.

Creating Niches...and the Skilled People for Them

In talking about the need for human capital, the conversation about IT becomes

very much that about economic progress more generally. It takes skilled people

to use IT, much less produce it, but the same is true for many other aspects of

economic life. In much of northern South America, skilled people who can leave,

do leave, most often for the United States. They are pushed out by violence, by

the lack of opportunities and by populist politics that discourage innovation and

individual enrichment. In the process, Miami is becoming a kind of economic

and cultural "capital" of Latin America. Given the large market for Spanish-
XIX

language content, not only in Latin America but also throughout the entire

Spanish-speaking world - only 2 percent of Web content is now in Spanish — the

region has the opportunity to produce content. Yet it will have to compete with

Miami, which now has advantages in infrastructure and financing.

Education is a primary obstacle to narrowing the income gap in Latin America.

Dropout rates are high, repeat rates in primary school are very high, teaching

materials are outdated, and the worst teachers are in the primary schools. At the

university level, teachers are ill paid, and so moonlighting and part-time

teaching are the norm. Unions and bureaucracy create barriers to innovation,

and the upper classes send their children to private schools.

There are, to be sure, some points of excellence. Mexico is noted for UNAM

(Universidad Nacional Autönoma de Mexico, or Autonomous National

University of Mexico), as well as the Monterrey Technical Institute, which has 27

branch campuses and an innovative virtual learning program. Brazil stands out

for its university-related incubator programs and growing indigenous venture

capital market, while Chile has its secondary school Enlaces (links) program that

will eventually introduce more IT-interested students into the already successful

higher education system. Biological science and agriculture are strengths in both

Argentina and Uruguay.

Government and IT, and Vice Versa

The role of government is critical to the development of IT, and government and

politics will in turn be reshaped by the information revolution. The United

States has taken the global lead in IT with a government role mostly confined to

staying out of the way. The process might be labeled, in Joseph Schumpeter's

words, "creative destruction."1In contrast, many Europeans would prefer a

more predictable, more controlled, government-led process. Latin America

seems somewhere in the middle, moving toward the U.S. model but with strong

vestiges of state intervention. Latin America's best and brightest now go to

study in the United States, not Europe as in former times, and the faintly Marxist

cant against business and business schools has waned.

But might Latin American governments again enact high barriers to make sure

that foreign companies don't overwhelm the domestic companies as they did in

the 1970s? Will information entrepreneurs in the region want governments to

1

See Schumpeter (1942), particularly pp. 81-86, for the original statement of the "creative

destruction" thesis.
XX

stay out of the way or protect them? The answers are directly related to

assumptions about the role of IT in development more generally. If growth is

believed to ensue because countries make IT products, the policy logically

becomes one of protection and import-substitution. Instead, if growth is

believed to result from using IT products, then import-substitution is

inappropriate. The temptation to make things is giving import substitution

some renewed favor, for better or worse.

Governments are relatively larger in Latin America than in the United States, and

thus they will be important users of IT. Brazilians can vote online, and sixty

percent of Brazilian income tax returns are filed online. Yet, on the whole, the

region's governments have taken a "fiscal," rather than a "consumer," approach

to IT; taxes and duties have kept prices high - and so computers costs twice as

much in Venezuela as in the United States. Governments pay lip service, but

seldom much more than that, to IT as a means of increasing the transparency of

governance. And advertisers are not willing, in many countries, to support

media, either traditional or new, that oppose ruling governments.

As governments learn about the potential dangers of the Internet (to them), they

may attempt to move against it in various ways, but they will also face sharp

limits on how much they can control information flows. A recent case is

suggestive of those limits. When Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez made a

deal with Cuba's Castro, many of the deal's provisions -like bartering

Venezuelan goods for Cuban doctor and other professional services - were

questionable in the norms of international trade. The Venezuelan government

was able to suppress details of the deal from traditional media, but those details

did leak out via the Web.

North-South Connections

The hub-and-spoke configuration of fiber optic cables is a metaphor for Latin

America's connections to the richer countries, especially the United States. As

shown in Figure S.5, those cables link Latin American countries to the United

States, not to each other. The metaphor evokes concerns regarding national

security and national autonomy - powerful echoes in Latin American history.

Yet in the short run, the main concern about the cable configuration is price, and

it is not obvious that the current arrangement is more expensive than a string of

low-traffic cables around Latin America would be, quite the contrary.
XXI

International IP Links

As cited in presentation by Larry Press at RAND Conference on ITin Latin America, 2000

Figure S.5. International IP Links

Prices will come down, as photonics make possible a several order of magnitude

increase in bandwidth.2 Yet if that advance, like previous ones, is exploited

fastest in the United States and Europe, they may jump ahead again, leaving

Latin America just as far behind, perhaps even further. Latin America didn't

close the gap during the industrial revolution, so is there any reason to believe

2

This is discussed in Anderson et al (2000).
XX11

that it might during the information revolution? Thus, it doesn't take a

commitment to 1970s style "dependence theory" for a Latin American to worry

that the existing global "game" is rigged against it.3If Latin America becomes

more and more integrated in a U.S.-led global economy, it may be able to have a

piece of the action; but can it have its own action? Can any country in the global

economy? Is it such a bad thing that all the cable lines run north and south, if

Latin America is trying to develop technologically? If the region is to integrate

into a global economy, its technical people have to be connected to those at the

top of the game, and that top is now Silicon Valley.

Mexico decided through NAFTA that it couldn't escape the United States and so

should benefit from the U.S. economy as best it could. It weathered the financial

crises of the 1990s better than other regions because it was so closely tied to a

booming U.S. economy. Other nations will not choose or be able to connect

themselves so directly to IT's dominant nation.

Desires for national or regional autonomy will persist, and they will continue to

lure Latin American nations in the direction of policies, like protection and

import substitution, that are destined to fail. In the world of the global

information economy, to opt out is to opt for poverty. Autonomy does not mean

disconnecting but, rather, trying to structure connections to the global economy

in a way that will provide maximum advantage to the nation and its citizens.

By this theory, the structure of international economics advantaged the industrial countries at

the center and destined the poorer ones on the periphery to a dependent position. The terms of trade

ran against the latter's agricultural and mineral exports, and their ability to move up the ladder to

more capital-intensive production was limited by the structure and operations of multilateral

corporations, especially with regard to technology transfer, the availability of capital, and the coopting of elites from the periphery by the companies and institutions of the center. See, for instance,

Cardoso and Faletto (1979). For a critique, see Packenham (1992).
Acknowledgments

This conference on "The Future of the Information Revolution in Latin America"

was very much the product of a group. To encourage frankness at the workshop,

we promised not to generally attribute particular arguments to specific

participants. That, however, carries the risk that our colleagues will not get

appropriate credit for what follows. Here, we aim to remedy that. If one coauthor can acknowledge the other, Lee Mizell's organizing for the workshop

ranged from grand substance to grubby details, none too small. She was both

impressive and a pleasure to work with.

Larry Press worked closely with Lee in preparing basic information on

infrastructure, demographics, and the penetration of various information

technologies. Only some of that good work could be included here, and we want

both to thank Larry and to indicate that more is available on his website, at

<http://som.csudh.edu/depts/cis/lpress/>. The other discussion provokers

were Timothy Heyman, Ricardo Setti, Ernest Wilson, Diego Arria, Antonio

Botelho, Elliot Maxwell, Robert Vitro, Juan Enriquez, and Susan Kaufman

Purcell. We thank them all. We particularly appreciate the preparation that

Timothy Heyman and Ricardo Peon gave to the Mexican case.

Several of our RAND colleagues are identified in the report - Dr. Richard

Hundley, Dr. Robert Anderson and Dr. Tora Bikson. We benefited from their

participation and their comments, and we thank them for being such good

colleagues. We are also grateful to several other RAND colleagues, not

mentioned in the report: Dr. C. Richard Neu was characteristically tart and

thought provoking in his comments, Dr. Angel Rabasa's notes were invaluable in

making a good conversation even better, and Dr. Philip Anton's review further

sharpened the report's logic and its prose. Craig Barela did the final formatting

of the report.

We express our appreciation to all these people and, again, to all of the workshop

participants, who are listed in Appendix A.

Dr. Gregory F. Treverton

Conference Chairman
1. Introduction

Chair: Gregory Treverton, RAND

What are the prospects for and implications of information technology in Latin

America? What will be the state of the information revolution in the region in ten

to fifteen years? These questions were the themes of a RAND workshop on the

information revolution in Latin America held on November 1-2,2000, in

Washington, D.C. Information technology (IT) was defined not just as the

Internet or the World Wide Web, but also the entire range of technologies that

are reshaping communications - and their implications for business and the

economy, politics and governance, and ultimately for how societies evolve.

This workshop was part of a larger project, one asking about the future of the

information revolution around the globe. RAND's efforts to address related

issues are expected to extend over a three-year period. The first step in this effort

was a conference held in November 1999 on the political, economic, social, and

cultural trends driven by the information revolution as they manifest themselves

globally; the proceedings of this conference were published in Hundley and

others (1999). The second step was a conference in May 2000 to explore the

technological drivers of the revolution in more detail; the proceedings of that

conference were published in Anderson and others (2000). The workshop on

Latin America represented a third step toward RAND's over-arching goal of

mapping the likely future of the global information revolution over the next one

to two decades. This report presents the proceedings of that workshop.

Thirty individuals participated, bringing expertise from business, government,

academia and think tanks across the region.4The agenda for the workshop was:

• the likely diffusion of the information revolution in the region;

• the economic and business realities in which that process is embedded;

• the extent to which political considerations will spur or constrain the process

and, in turn, will be reconfigured by it; and

• the broader impact of the process on Latin American societies.

4

Participants' names and affiliations are included in Appendix A.
The workshop sought to give special attention to how the impact of the

information revolution might vary within Latin America, as well between Latin

America and the rest of the world.

The workshop began with an overview of information technology infrastructure

in the region. This session asked: What is the profile of IT infrastructure across

Latin America? What are the dominant features of that infrastructure across

countries? Which countries are leading, which are lagging? What are the

predominant differences across countries? Section 2 of this report summarizes

this discussion.

A discussion of the economic and business dimension of the information

revolution came next, with particular emphasis on the region's two biggest

countries, Mexico and Brazil: What are the sources of financing for IT and for

new IT-enabled businesses and services? Who are the major players? Are there

critical IT business clusters in the region? Where, and why have they developed?

How is e-commerce developing in the region? What are the main differences

across countries? What are the driving forces of change? What are the main

obstacles? Ultimately, what can be said about the impact of IT on the conduct of

business and economic advance in the region? A keynote address on

"Information Revolutionaries," by Ernest Wilson of the University of Maryland,

followed this discussion. The plenary session and keynote address are

summarized in Sections 3 and 4, respectively.

Section 5 summarizes three breakout groups addressing how the impact of the

information revolution might vary across the region. Each group dealt with a

different subregion of Latin America - Mexico, Central America, and the

Caribbean; Northern South America; and the Southern Cone, including Brazil.

The first day of the workshop wrapped up with a discussion of the political

dimension of information revolution, summarized in Section 6.

Section 7 deals with the first plenary session on the second day of the workshop,

addressing the societal dimensions of the information revolution: How will IT

affect delivery of health care, education, and other social services? What social or

cultural factors prominent in Latin America, if not necessarily unique to it,

facilitate or inhibit the diffusion of information technology? How common are

these factors across the region? Is the information revolution increasing

economic inequalities in the region? Is it increasing social inequalities in this or

other ways, for instance by accentuating rural-urban cleavages?

Before wrapping up the workshop, breakout groups again grappled with

differences across the region, focussing on the political and societal dimensions,

and this time with each group dealing with all of Latin America. Those
discussions are presented in Section 8, and the workshop's major themes and

conclusions are laid out in Section 9. Two days are hardly enough to fully

apprehend the current state of the IT revolution, much less its future, but the

workshop did outline a provocative menu of provisional conclusions.
2. Surveying the Latin American

Infrastructure

Discussant: Larry Press, California State University

The Internet made a late start in Latin America and was introduced primarilythrough the region's universities -- which formed ENRED ("on the Net," or

"connected"), an association of networks, in 1991. Since 1991, ENRED has met

eight times, although not since 1998. Efforts to form a Latin American Network

Information Center and assign IP numbers in the region have yet to succeed.

Yet, while the Internet came late to and is still small in Latin America, its growth

is impressive. Between 1999 and 2000, international bandwidth in the region

increased 47 percent, from 48.3 mbps to 71.0 mbps. While these figures are

dwarfed by increases in the U.S./Canada and Europe (178 percent and 102

percent, respectively), the bandwidth increase in Latin America in recent years is

notable: In October 1996, for example, only Mexico had an international Internet

connection exceeding one mbps.

Latin America, including the Caribbean, is extremely diverse in economic

development and in both technological and socioeconomic infrastructure. Figure

2.1 presents one measure of this diversity, showing the range of GDP per capita

across Latin America. Another measure of this diversity is the Human

Development Index (HDI), developed by the United Nations Development

Program. The HDI ranks countries in terms of life expectancy, educational

attainment and adjusted real income. Predictably, within Latin America,

Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, along with Mexico and Venezuela, rank higher

than Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and most of the countries of Central America.5

5

The 1999 HDI rankings of the Latin American nations are presented in UNDP (1999).
GDP Per Capita (USD $), 1998

Source: ITU 2000

CU Mssing data

0-198?

H 1984-3305

3305-6335

16335-9020

As cited in presentation by Larry Press at RAND Conference on ITin Latin America, 2000

Figure 2.1 GDP Per Capita (USD $), 1998

There are grounds for skepticism about all numbers, including the HDI, and

because IT is growing so fast, numbers about it are especially suspect. For

instance, the "number of Internet users" throughout the region is widely cited.

Nua Internet Surveys estimates that approximately 15.3 million Latin Americans

were online in October 2000 (as shown in Figure 2.2); the Computer Industry

Almanac projects that Latin America will have approximately 100 Internet users

per 1000 individuals by the year 2005.

But what constitutes a user? Is an Internet "user" someone who logs on twice a

year? One count had 15 million users in Latin America, but another at the same

time found 14 million in Brazil alone. There is no common definition of "user,"

and most surveys, including those cited here, collect what news and other

reports are available. With this in mind, comparisons are probably safer than

any point statistics. The safest conclusions are that: (a) Latin America is a very

diverse region, in general; (b) users and hosts in Latin America are small in

comparison to the rest of the world but growing rapidly; and (c) differences in IT

among Latin American countries are striking. The southern cone, plus Mexico, is

the (relative) advance guard. Figures 2.1 through 2.5 demonstrate all three of

these points.
Number of Internet Users Worldwide, October 2000

350

300

250

.200

1

150

89.68

105.89

2.40 3.11 15.26

HP

161.31

m

SIM

377.65

ÜÜ

I

tu

9

m

Middle East Africa Latin America Asia/Pacific

Source: Various; compiled by NUA Surveys

^s cited In presentation by Larry Press at RAND Conference on IT in Latin America, 2000

Europe US/Canada

Figure 2.2 Number of Internet Users Worldwide, October 2000

Internet Users As Percent of Population

in Latin America, 1999

I—I Mssingdäa

^ 0-1.2

S 1.2-2.9

^ 2.9- 4.3

LjfiJ 4.3- 7.6

Source: ITU, 2000

As cited in presentation by Larry Press at RANTTTTonference on IT in Laün America, 2000

Figure 2.3 Internet Users as Percent of Population in Latin America, 1999
Internet Hosts in Latin America perlOOO Inhabitants, 2000

f^J Nisshg data

0-0.6

06-21

L_l 21-42

^M 42-7.7

Sorce: fTU, 2000

As cited In presentation by Larry Press at RAND Conference on ITIn Latin America, 2000

Figure 2.4 Internet Hosts in Latin America per 1,000 Inhabitants, 2000

Projections of Latin American Online Commerce, 1999-2005

$10

Online Speradtag j

Percentage of Onlfria Users Buying

100%

60%

1999 &m 2ocrt aoos- 2003 äOö* 3005

40%

0%

Source: Jupiter Communication, March 2000

As cited in presentation by Larry Press at RAND Conference on IT in Latin America, 2000

Figure 2.5 Projections of Latin American Online Commerce, 1999-2005
International IP Links

&v.v»r 'ä-'.v^.'./^v-s .

:

i;*J.*-. .&&•>.';* : }:. Itohttn . Mifr^virX..

Vancouver

San Francisco,

/Dallas; ;.;; ;:;'';:

;

.j

Montreal ; .-I

New York /

Washington' /

Miami ^

Paris 'V

Palermo &

As cited in presentation hv Larry Press al RAND Conference on ITin Latin America. 2000

Figure 2.6 International IP Links

Bandwidth is an intriguing and important topic. On one hand, given the newfiber optic cables that are under construction or planned, bandwidth should be

much less a constraint, making possible a surge in connectivity for the region. It

might even have a bandwidth "glut." On the other hand, as shown in Figures 2.6

and 2.7, those cables link Latin American countries with the north, especially the

United States, and with Europe, not one to another, Does the shape of those

connections matter? It surely evokes concerns regarding national autonomy and

security - powerful echoes in Latin America. In the short run, the main obstacle
10

to greater bandwidth access is price, and it is not obvious that the current huband-spoke arrangement of cables is more expensive than a string of low-traffic

cables around Latin America would be. Prices will come down, as photonics

make possible a several order of magnitude increase in bandwidth.6 Yet if that

advance, like previous ones, is exploited fastest in the United States and Europe,

they may jump ahead again, leaving Latin America just as far behind, perhaps

even further.

International Internet Links (mbps)

357.1 Mbps

As cited in presentation by Larry Press at RAND Conference on IT ih'Latin

America, 2000

Figure 2.7 International Internet Links (mbps)

So, too, local access to the Internet and to other communications is both limited

in the region and varied across it, as suggested in Figure 2.8, which shows the

number and distribution of telephone main lines across Latin America.

It appears that if Latin America is to catch up, it will have to "leapfrog"; simply

following the approaches taken by the United States and Europe will not let it

' This is discussed in Anderson et al (2000).
11

Telephone Main Lines per 100 People

in Latin America, 1999

Source ITU, 2000

HO.8-5.8

5.8-9.3

J9.3-14.9

I 114.9-20.6

20.6-32.7

As cited in presentation by Larry Press at RAND Conference on IT in Latin America, 2000

Figure 2.8 Telephone Main Lines per 100 People in Latin America, 1999

catch up with other parts of the world. New, wireless technologies may allow

penetration into rural areas at a rate far faster than hard-line systems and

modems would allow. (Figure 2.9 shows the current number and distribution of

cellular subscribers in Latin America.) Still, while wireless technologies hold

promise, they will hardly be a panacea. There are, for instance, 100 cellular

providers in the region, but, alas, half of the phones are still analog. Third

generation cellular phones will communicate at 3 mbps (384 kb/s in a moving

vehicle), but will not be available in Latin America for several years. Moreover,

some places will remain hard to reach with cellular technology.

Another technology that offers potential benefits for Latin America is satellites,

in both geostationary (GEO) and low earth orbits (LEO). In contrast to recent

failures, Tachyon and other companies intend to provide Internet connectivity,

including voice over the Web. While such technology holds promise, there are

still technical as well as regulatory problems to be overcome. The local telecom

companies oppose the proliferation of voice-over technology. Of three

companies providing LEO technology in the region, two are bankrupt and the

third company is approaching bankruptcy -indicating pitfalls with the existing
12

Cellular Subscribers per 100 Inhabitants, 1999

I I Missing data

0-12

a2-65

as-10.3

110.3-15

Source: ITU, 2000

As cited in presentation by Larry Press at RAND Conference on IT in Latin America, 2000

Figure 2.9 Cellular Subscribers per 100 Inhabitants, 1999

business model. The good news is that the cost of a ground station to serve a

local community, community access centers, or local university, for instance, is

now on the order of $6,000, and in Peru there are now 700 cabinas publicas (public

outlets, or kiosks) - a franchise operation serving local communities. If

innovations like these continue, they may encourage Latin Americans to remain

in the countryside - slowing or even reversing the rural-to-urban migratory

trend.

Although various technologies offer promise for leap-frogging, technology alone

is insufficient to propel the region forward in the information revolution.

Human capital is critical. Latin America will need both trained, demanding

users and technicians of all sorts to manage and repair networks. Some

countries, such as Chile, are working to develop demanding users. In 1992,

Catholic University in Chile began a five-year project to develop and evaluate an

elementary school network called Enlaces (links). The project aimed to enhance

efficiency, quality and equity in education and to "integrate the children into the

culture." By the end of 2000,100 percent of Chilean middle and high schools and

50 percent of grammar schools will have Internet-connected labs. Enlaces is
13

comprehensive in that it covers curriculum development and teacher training

and collaboration as well as hardware and software. It was intended from the

first to cover the entire nation, and, as such, different universities are responsible

for different regions of the nation.

In addition to such elementary and secondary school projects, university

networks throughout Latin America are graduating networking technicians, and

the Organization of American States (OAS) provides some support in connecting

networks. Despite these important efforts, however, the region still faces an

uphill battle with respect to educational attainment. Only a handful of countries

have adult literacy rates at or above 94 percent. As the opportunities afforded by

information technology to the average person usually center around information

gathering, literacy is an absolute prerequisite. In combination with the fact that

only two percent of Websites were in Spanish in 1998, illiteracy is an important

hurdle to be overcome in order for Latin America to successfully take advantage

of the information revolution. To be sure, speech recognition and language

processing is rapidly progressing, so literacy may become less of a problem.7

The question, though, is how rapidly those advancing technologies will diffuse

to those less literate Latin Americans, most of them very poor, who need them.

Bottom Lines

The Internet did come late to Latin America, and, while it is still small relative to

the rest of the world, it is growing rapidly. Numbers of end users and host

computers are growing faster than the world average, but the gap between the

region and the world's IT leaders is not likely to close. For the information

revolution, as for roles in the global economy more generally, there is no "Latin

America." Differences across the region are vast, and illustratively, the countries

might be divided into three groups:

• the "leaders" - Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay;

• the interesting, successful "outliers," like Costa Rica or some of the

Caribbean islands; and

7

See Anderson and others (2000), p. xiii.
14

• the rest;

Variations across the region notwithstanding, its countries face many of the same

problems in addressing the information revolution, and they seem unlikely to

solve many of them by rnimicking the approaches of the world's IT leaders.

Outside major cities, the information revolution will not come to Latin America

with hard wires and modems. It will come with new, wireless technologies,

though those will hardly be a panacea.
15

3. The Economic and Business Dimension

Discussant: Timothy Heyman, Heyman y Asociados

Discussant: Ricardo Setti, iG International

The Case of Mexico

The Internet appears poised to accelerate economic development in Mexico, but

at the price of greater income disparities. Certainly, more broadly distributed

gains would benefit Mexico - a country of almost 100 million people and a GNP

of about a half trillion dollars, or about a twentieth that of the United States. Its

population is young, with seventy percent under 35 years of age, and the income

distribution is skewed, with the top twenty percent accounting for 58 percent of

income. As Table 3.1 shows, at present, the top 20 percent experience

substantially higher penetration rates of various communications technologies

than do Mexicans in general.

IT Penetration in Mexico by Access Device (%of population)

Total (%) Richest 20% (%)

Fixed lines 11.5 33.4

Wireless 7.6 22.0

Total lines 19.1 55.5

PC 5.6 16.2

Internet (estimate) 1.6 4.6

TV 87.0 100.0

Cable TV 11.0 31.9

Source: Telmex, Goldman Sachs, and author, as presented by Timothy Heyman

at RAND Conference on IT in Latin America, 2000
16

Table 3.1: Internet Penetration by Access Device

As shown in Figure 3.1, current trends suggest exponential growth in Web

access, from the current one percent penetration among homes and slightly

higher penetration among businesses to approximately 18 percent among homes

and 26 percent among businesses by 2010. This growth, however, is likely to be

concentrated in the richest 20 percent of Mexicans.

c

01

30

25

20

15

10

5

0

Internet Pentration in Mexico

1999 2000 2003 2010

Source: Estimates by MSDW, as cited by Timothy Heyman at RAND

Conference on IT in Latin America, 2000

Figure 3.1: Internet Penetration in Mexico

The distribution of access to and benefits from the information revolution in

Mexico is related to the industry structure, which can be divided into seven key

categories:

Connectivity Providers: Within Mexico there are multiple connectivity

providers. Latin America connectivity providers operating in Mexico

including Telmex and Telefonica, fixed line country operators such as

Telmex/Telcel, Avantel (Worldcom), Alestra (ATT), and Bestel, and regional

operators such as Iusacell (Verizon), Pegaso (Qualcomm), and Telefonica.

New entrants to "last mile" access -that is, access to consumers - include
17

Unefon, Axtel, Metrored, and/or Megacable. Internet service providers

include Prodigy (Telmex), Terra (Telefonica), AOL, and Psinet. At this time,

satellite, cable and utility companies have no clear strategy for providing

connectivity.

Old Economy Incumbents: Not only the information technology companies

are affected by the information revolution; all companies have an incentive

to develop an Internet strategy, whether it is defensive or involves new

businesses - and many companies such as Bimbo, Cemex, ICA, and Walmex

have done so. While these traditional "bricks and mortar" companies face

less risk of being displaced by new entrants - being "Amazon-ed" -than do

their counterparts in the United States, some banks, media corporations, and

telecommunications companies are more exposed to changes in the business

environment brought about by the information revolution.

Telmex: Telefonos de Mexico, or Telmex, is the national telephone company

of Mexico, and it looks like the clearest "winner" in Mexico's IT sweepstakes.

A connectivity provider, Telmex, which was privatized in 1990, stands out in

almost every respect. First, it controls the "last mile" of wire to the

consumers, controlling 99 percent of local telephones, and thus competitors

are the position of having to get "let in." Second, it has more flexibility than

the incumbent telephone companies in other Latin American countries,

which either had to develop their Internet strategies outside their corporate

structure, or were prevented from becoming Internet service providers

(ISPs), as in Brazil. In Mexico, Telmex currently controls 58 percent of all

Internet accounts. Several Wall Street analysts believe that Telmex's

dominance is the biggest obstacle to the spread of the Internet in Mexico.

On the other hand, Telmex was the first to provide computer financing in

Mexico. Telmex also differs from other Latin telecoms in that the company is

owned largely by one man: Carlos Slim's Grupo Corso, in conjunction with

Southwestern Bell Corp. and France Telecom. Slim is Latin America's

wealthiest businessman, who also own Prodigy Inc., the third-largest

Internet service provider in the U.S, and whose Grupo Sanborns recently

bought CompUSA. Given its size -it accounts for a third of Mexico's

fledgling stock market - and its connections, it is hard to imagine strong

regulation or other action against Telmex.

Media: In the media sector, some companies are extending their information

services. Televisa, the largest media company in Mexico with interests in

television production, broadcasting, satellite services, publishing, and music

recording, recently announced an Internet initiative. TV Azteca, a television

programming company with a 30 percent market share, set up a cellular
18

service called Unefon and bought a substantial portion of Todito.com, which

will allow it to distribute content on the Internet. One family owns all of TV

Azteca, Unefon, Todito.com, the Elektra retail chain, Grupo DataFlux, and

CNCI, a chain of 77 computer schools.

• Banks: As is the case with banks in general, the existing electronic

infrastructure of banks in Mexico provides a foundation for e-commerce

based on their established clearing systems. Foreign banks have made

substantial inroads in Mexico in recent years; Spam's presence is particularly

notable, with Grupo Financiero Santander Mexicano and Banco Bilbao

Vizcaya Argentaria, S.A., topping the list. These, among other banks, are

offering online banking and e-trading services, but unlike Brazil, banks are

not offering Internet service in general. At present there are no "pure" Webbased banks or brokers, although a Patagon-Santander broker is leading a

group planning such an institution.

• New Economy Start-ups: While there are few Internet start-ups in Mexico,

there is a handful of companies, not really "Mexican," that provide services

to Mexico and the surrounding region. Such start-ups are listed in Table 3.2

on the next page. The obstacles to start-ups are financing and lack of legal

and other infrastructure. Given the need for scale, most Internet start-ups

have to include several countries in a regional strategy, which makes set-up

costs higher than in larger markets. Start-ups in Mexico have been financed

mainly though international venture capitalists and established Mexican

corporations, and only to a much lesser extent by local capital.

• Global Internet Companies: The final category of players in the information

industry in Mexico are the global Internet companies such as Prodigy

(Telmex), AOL, Yahoo, Terra, and PSINet. While these companies have a

presence in Mexico, Latin America is not a priority for them. Other

companies, like Amazon, serve Mexico without regional presence.

At present there are four primary revenue streams in information technology in

Mexico —Internet connectivity, advertising, business-to-business (B2B) ecommerce, and business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce. In Internet

connectivity, Infosel, owned by Spain's Terra Networks, is a distant second to

Telmex, holding approximately 11 percent. Infosel, however, has recently

introduced free Internet access. There are 44 other Internet service providers in

Mexico, but the fact that they have, on average, fewer than 200,000 subscribers

each suggests future consolidation.
19

Advertising on the Internet has yet to take-off in Mexico, although it does offer a

new and unique way to reach the high-income population. There are only a few

major online sites by new start-ups, and e-commerce is hampered, as everywhere

Table 3.2

New Economy Startups Covering Mexico

Company Internet Segment Coverage

EHola Portal Pan-Latin and U.S.

El Sitio Portal Pan-Latin & U.S.

Fiera Commerce Pan-Latin, U.S., and Brazil

IFX Infrastructure and Portal Pan-Latin

Patagon Financial Services Pan-Latin, soon Mexico

andU.S.

Quepasa Portal U.S., soon Latin & U.S.

Star Media Portal & Infrastructure Pan-Latin & U.S.

Submarino Commerce Large Pan-Latin & Spain

Todito Portal & Infrastructure Mexico & U.S.

Zona Financiera Financial services Pan-Latin & U.S.

As cited in presentation by Timothy Heyman at RAND

conference on IT in Latin America, November 1-2,2000.

in Latin America, by how to pay and how to deliver. Mexico is relatively

penetrated by credit cards, with some eight million, but there is nothing

comparable to the U.S. sales tax advantage in buying online, and delivery is less

trustworthy. Overall, B2B is more promising than B2C, and there are likely to be

some first mover advantages. An important "pull" factor driving IT is the justin-time inventory needs of the maquiladoras.

These obstacles to the development of IT and e-commerce in Mexico are familiar

across the region. The power of Telmex is predominant, but the telecom

incumbents are strong elsewhere as well. So, too, the absence of strong foreign

and start-up competition is the case almost everywhere, as are the problems of

how to pay for a deliver e-commerce purchases, and the limited experience

consumers have with it. Mexico also suffers from slow and ineffective regulatory

procedures, which in part reflect the importance of local interest groups.

A final question regarding IT in Mexico is also common to the region. That is the

effect of illiteracy and low education levels on productively using, let alone
20

innovating in, IT. In particular, can Mexico overcome the growing "digital

divide"? Like the railroads, recent IT is a reminder that growth can occur

without development. Yet, there are some bright spots on the horizon. First, the

incoming Fox administration brings opportunity for change and growth in

telecommunications. Second, there are pockets of educational excellence such as

the technological institute in Monterrey, which came up again and again in the

discussions as a model. It has 27 branch campuses and an innovative virtual

learning program. Third, NAFTA has brought significant growth to Mexico,

although the disparity between it and the United States is enormous. Foreign

direct investment in the country has grown from $4 billion annually to $13 billion

since NAFTA. Finally, the existence of the Mexican diaspora in the United

States, with access to information and resources, can also be viewed as an

opportunity. While the digital divide is likely to remain a fact of life in most

emerging markets, Mexico is one of the countries with the best chance of

eliminating it.

The Case of Brazil

In Brazil, changing government policies facilitated the growth of the Internet. -

beginning in 1996 when the government began privatizing the

telecommunications sector. The country was divided into five IT regions, the

most important of which was the city of Säo Paulo. Initially there was to be one

company providing services in each region, with other companies allowed to

enter and compete over time. In Säo Paulo, Telefonica, the Spanish company,

began operating, and growth in telephones has been rapid. The city of 20 million

had fewer than one million fixed phone lines in 1996; and on the open market a

line cost $1,000. Now, there are five million lines, and the "free market" for lines

has disappeared. .

The lack of appropriate infrastructure means that interior areas of Brazil have not

fared as well as Säo Paulo with respect to hard-line penetration, but cellular

technology has increased rapidly in those areas. The privatization of the cellular

industry in 1997 contributed to that growth. Until then, mobile cellular remained

a monopoly in the hands of the national telecommunications giant, Telebras, plus

four independent companies with local monopolies. In 1997, companies were

permitted to bid for ten regional cellular licenses. Today cellular phones allow

millions of Brazilians access to information technology.

Because only one tenth of economically active Brazilians have bank accounts,

paying for information technology services is a challenge. In the case of cellular

technology, 65 percent of users take advantage of prepaid services. It is no
21

surprise, then, that the introduction of free Internet services sharply increased the

number of users. Free Internet access arrived in Brazil in 1999, when Universo

Online (UOL), in existence since 1996, and Internet Gratuita (iG) became free.

Other providers soon followed. Before it offered free access, UOL had 5 to 6

million visits a day; now the number is on the order of 30 million.

Unfortunately, because these free ISPs rely on advertising to cover costs, the

recent economic downturn has forced many providers to close shop. Those that

have survived had partners, or were banks that offered free Internet banking to

secure accounts. iG changed its name from "Internet Gratuita" to "Internet

Grupo," and no longer provides all services for free. UOL, the biggest ISP in

Brazil, has yet to turn a profit after four years; its loss last quarter was $40

million.

By law, telecoms in Brazil cannot be ISPs. They can and do invest in ISPs, but

those investments are also limited. Non-Brazilian companies that sought to enter

the ISP market on a regional basis have found it difficult to do so, in part because

Brazilians think of themselves as apart from Spanish-speaking "Latin

Americans."

E-commerce in Brazil is in its early stages. As of yet, big retailers have not

developed serious Internet strategies. One obstacle to the growth of e-commerce

is the limited use of credit cards. At present, only 3 to 4 percent of Brazilians

have credit cards - making online payment difficult. Banks are reluctant to open

accounts for individuals earning less than $200 per month. Another obstacle is a

weak infrastructure for distribution and delivery of goods. Such obstacles may

require e-commerce producers to develop payment, distribution, and delivery

strategies different from those currently in use in the United States and

elsewhere. One such strategy has been the development of prepaid "smart

cards," which are already used to pay for other types of goods and services.

While Brazil's IT industry is not as developed as the United States, Canada, or

western Europe, it probably has more indigenous IT technology than many other

countries in the region, perhaps in part because Brazil tried so long to remain

closed and develop its own technologies. Despite this advantage, the country

still faces challenges in training technologists. While good programs exist, such

as those at the universities of Säo Paulo or Campinas, they are limited in output,

and some of them are expensive.
22

Bottom Lines

The case of the Internet today is intriguingly parallel to railroad building in the

last century: Both held promise of dramatic increases in national wealth but at

the price of growing disparities across citizens. In 1845, investments in railroads,

like the initial public offerings (IPOs) of high-flying technology companies in

recent years, equaled the GNP of Britain. Commentators talked of "railway time"

and the "death of distance." Yet by 1853 the bubble burst, and the value of

railroad stocks had declined by 85 percent. Competing railroads were building

duplicate tracks. Later in the nineteenth century, railroad building in Mexico

accounted for half of total economic growth. Then, as now with talk of the

"digital divide," the growing disparities of wealth that result from railroad

building was cause for concern; owned by foreigners or local oligarchs, railroad

building generated growth but increased income disparities. In Mexico, the

backlash against this social impact of the railroads contributed to the Revolution

of 1910. Mexico has built not a single kilometer of railroad track since.

Will the Web fall prey to the same fate as railroad building, with bright promise

ending in dashed hopes, even a backlash? There is a decent case that it need not

do so. Both Mexico and Brazil are markets too big to ignore, and both have

some "points of light" - UNAM, Monterrey Tech and Silicon Valle in Mexico, the

university-based incubators and some venture capital in Brazil. Mexico also has

its special connections to the United States - the "pull" of the maquiladoras, and

the intermediary role of Mexicans living in the United States. Both, however, are

hampered by corruption and by the vestiges of statist policies, for instance

nationalized industries, complicated tax structures or, in Mexico, the requirement

of majority domestic ownership.
23

4. Information Revolutionaries

Keynote: Ernest Wilson, University of Maryland8

Is Latin America's IT glass half full or half empty? Globally, IT is developing fast

in the poorer countries, at 18 percent yearly, but it is growing faster in the rich

countries, at 23 percent.9The result is that the gap between "haves" and "havenots" is growing. In consequence, Africa, Latin America, and much of Asia are

sometimes viewed as emerging market opportunities and sometimes, more

cynically, as regions that are too far behind to be priorities. "Information

revolutionaries," or the lack thereof, are important shapers of countries' IT

futures.

Why are they important? Why should we care about who is making the

information revolution? There are four compelling reasons why. First, we

should seek best practices in the information revolution - and find out what

works and what doesn't. Second, examining information revolutionaries is

another way to identify and examine patterns that emerge across nations. Third,

a critical look at the IT players is an examination of leadership, which seems

especially important during periods of great institutional change. The

information revolution is, in fact, only half about technology. It is also about

institutional and organizational arrangements, and so the character of relations

among the government, the non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the

telecoms, and the ISPs are key.

Looking at the information revolutionaries lets us better understand the unique

roles as well as the interconnections of the private sector, the public sector, and

civil society. Who are the local allies, local partners, local competitors, suppliers,

customers - and who is leading these groups? Who are the leaders in the

government, and what role do they envision the government playing in

investment and regulation? Who are the leaders in civil society? This is an

especially important question for poorer countries, including in Latin America,

because NGOs can spur both public and private sectors into action.

8

See his forthcoming book, The Information Revolution in Developing Countries, (Cambridge, MA:

MIT Press, 2001).

9 Cited in Wilson and Francisco Rodriguez, "Are the Poor Losing the Information Revolution",

available at www.bsos.umd.edu/cidcm/wilson. The numbers are indices reflecting a basket of IT

applications, such as Internet hosts, faxes, TVs, and cell phones.
24

A study of the "revolutionaries" across a number of developing countries found

them to be mostly males, with degrees in technical fields, neither poor nor rich

but upper middle class, most of whom attended graduate school in the United

States. They returned home not to make money but to make a difference for

"their people." One such Chinese, for instance, observed that his country had

missed the industrial revolution, and he wanted to do what he could to assure

that it didn't miss the information revolution. The revolutionaries spread across

the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors, with a small handful highly placed

in government. In Morocco, the core group consisted of two people at a

polytechnic institute, one person in the private sector, a handful of others in

NGOs, plus one who had the ear of the Prime Minister. How do they do what

they do? They appear to blend technical savvy and social skill, making use of

pre-existing personal networks. The personal networks appear to precede

technical networks, and to contribute to the development and diffusion of the

latter.

As they are distributed throughout government and industry, different people

play different roles. One role is promotional, attending meetings and promoting

technology. A second role has to do with the development oflegal structures that

are necessary if IT is to grow, including the protection of intellectual property

rights. A third role is leadership to build a national constituency, one that is

invested in the growth of information technology. Finally, there are those who

promote structural and institutional changes in order to forward IT growth. Perhaps

the role of entrepreneur, actually linking capital, technology and a business model,

is a fifth one. It would be interesting, though it remains to be proven, if the

revolutionaries turned out also be to carriers of ideas such as transparency,

accountability and democracy because they realized that institutions had to

change in order to take advantage of new technology.

Information revolutionaries appear and play different roles at different stages in

the development of a country's IT. The case of Brazil illustrates four phases. The

first phase might be called pre-commercial, during which most changes took place

in research and university institutions. In Brazil this activity centered on the

National Research Council. The second phase was a commercial period in which

ISPs were developed and individuals got online. In Brazil this period began in

June 1992 with the creation of the first ISP. By 1995 about 45,000 Brazilians were

online.

A standoffish attitude by Brazilian information revolutionaries toward the

government in the first period was reflected in the second. The revolutionaries

had sought and succeeded in banning telecom ownership of ISPs not because

they disliked Telebras per se but rather because the government owned it. They
25

wanted to move fast, and they regarded the government as slow and so sought

to keep it out of the Web. During this period, a consortium of Brazilian

newspapersjoined to form UOL. The third period, extending from

approximately 1996 to 1998, can be deemed the competitive period, when

privatization was occurring and "property rights" were in doubt. The fourth and

final phase might be called consolidation, but Brazil has not reached that stage and

so what it will entail remains unclear.

Bottom Lines

The interaction of the university-based national research community, the

government, and the private sector, both national and multinational, is critical.

The United States reached its leading position in IT through several phases. In

the first, the government led the way in early research and development,

virtually all of it sponsored by the military. More recently, the government has

mostly gotten out of the way, letting private sector innovation and competition

drive new business models. That latter process features, in Joseph Schumpeter's

words, much "creative destruction." In contrast, many Europeans would prefer

a more predictable, more controlled, government-led process.

Where does Latin America stand? Might Latin American governments again

enact high barriers to make sure that foreign companies don't overwhelm the

domestic companies as they did in the 1970s? Will information entrepreneurs in

the region want governments to stay out of the way or protect them? The

answers to these questions are directly related to assumptions about the role of

IT in development more generally. If it is believed that growth ensues because

countries make IT products, then it is tempting to protect infant IT industries

from foreign competition and to rely on them to substitute for exports. Instead, if

growth comes from using IT, then import substitution is inappropriate, and the

country should seek the best technology at the lowest price, whatever the source.

Now, there is some renewed interest in the region in import substitution, driven

by the frustrations of a generation of export-oriented policies that produced

growth but very uneven growth, both within countries and across the region.

The interest may also be driven by the worry that the region cannot hope to keep

up, let alone catch up, in a global IT competition.
27

5. Small Group Discussion: Economic and

Business Dimension

Facilitator: Robert Anderson, RAND

Facilitator: Tora Bikson, RAND

Facilitator: Ernest Wilson, University of Maryland

Each of three breakout groups reflected a sub-region: the southern cone,

including Brazil; northern South America; and the Caribbean, Central America

and Mexico. Each group was asked to address three questions for its sub-region:

1) How does the economic and business dimension of the information revolution

vary? 2) What drives these differences? and 3) Are there issues or problems that

are common across the sub-region?

Group 1: Southern South America

Southern South America, with the exception of Paraguay, is ahead of the rest of

Latin America in existing infrastructure and business environment. However, to

better understand sub-regional variation, the countries were evaluated along

eight dimensions:

1. The competitiveness of the telecommunications market;

2. Whether or not government enables the growth of information

technology;

3. The state of venture capital;

4. Availability of personal credit to pay for IT-related transactions;

5. IT-issues related to language;

6. The education system;

7. Intellectual property rights; and

8. Market size;

Within the sub-region (Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, and Paraguay), Chile

has the most competitive telecommunications market, followed by Uruguay,

Brazil, Argentina, then Paraguay. Uruguay was ranked relatively high despite
28

the presence of a state-owned monopoly because that monopoly "works," and

there is competition in providing value-added services. Taxes are a major issue

for Brazil, whose tax structure is too complex with too many taxing authorities.

Not surprisingly, some companies are leaving Brazil to seek better tax

environments elsewhere. Because only two telephone providers operated in the

country until 1999 (Telefonica de Argentina and Telecom Argentina), Argentina

was not considered particularly competitive, although opening all areas of

telecommunications to an unlimited number of licensees in November 2000 was

clearly a step in the right direction. Paraguay's telecommunications

infrastructure and industry are far and away the least competitive of the group.

The most important role government can play is to make possible telecom

reform. The ranking of countries along this dimension mirrored that of the

previous category, with Chile again highest. The overriding concern in the

remaining countries is corruption, which undermines government effectiveness

and authority. At present, there is more trust in local and regional governments

in Brazil than in the national government. Similarly, trust in government in

Argentina is quite low, although better-educated people do believe government

can make a positive impact on the development of information technologies.

None of the countries has in place laws and regulatory structures to permit

venture capital to flourish, but those regimes are developing. That said, good

telecommunications policies and a competitive economy are not enough to

attract venture capital. The case in point is Chile, which is not attracting large

amounts of venture capital despite its high marks on the previous two

dimensions. In part, the country has a history of controls on foreign investment,

which have only recently been lifted. By contrast, despite Brazil's less-thanperfectly-competitive economy, complicated taxes and level of corruption in

government, it is a big enough market to be able to attract more venture capital

than Chile. While having access to foreign capital is valuable, relying too heavily

on foreign investment means that profits flow out of the country. What is

needed (in addition to foreign investment) is indigenous venture capital, as

appears to be developing in Brazil and Argentina.

Again, the problems entailed by the low levels of credit card use in the region

were cited. Countries have to find innovative ways to extend services to

individuals who would otherwise not have the ability to pay. Brazil has been a

leader in getting around the shortage of credit cards with innovations such as

smart debit cards. In Argentina, people can now pay cash for Internet services in

places where they would normally pay utility bills.
29

The region's lack of English competence poses a short-term problem because

only two percent of all Web content is currently in Spanish. Only individuals of

a certain level of education are able to access and understand the majority of

information online. However, since virtually everyone in the region can

understand Spanish, and the number of Spanish-language Web sites has been

increasing, language issues are unlikely to pose a problem for the region in the

long run.

A particular challenge for both southern South America and all of Latin America

is education. Although countries of the Southern Cone do have higher levels of

educational attainment than Latin America overall, primary and secondary

education is still deficient. Local educational systems produce quality in some

places but not in large enough numbers to accommodate the needs of the new

economy. Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile are regarded as better than Brazil. Yet

regional discretion in Brazil, coupled with IT, gives its regions the flexibility to

break away from the traditionally centrally controlled education system, and to

experiment with forms of distance learning and computer-aided instruction. .

Uruguay has an educated workforce, and as a result has a growing indigenous

software industry. Paraguay's educational system is particularly poor.

Finally, in terms of protecting intellectual property rights (IPR), Chile also ranked

better than other Southern Cone countries - and Paraguay fell to the bottom.

IPR was considered a problem for the whole region, however, because of

shortcomings in enforcement.

Looking out ten years, Chile would most likely be notable for embracing the

information revolution, while Brazil will stand out in sheer market size.

Argentina and Brazil appear to be moving in the "right" direction, although

questions remain. In terms of its economic standing and progress in the

information revolution, Mexico could be considered part of this leading group,

while Paraguay should not.

Group 2: Northern South America

This region of Latin America suffers from political and economic instability that

has encouraged a "brain drain," which stifles not only the development of IT but

also economic development in general. Would getting good information systems

in place be the stabilizing force that this region needs? Absent a crisis or other

focusing event, IT seems likely to be neither stabilizing nor destabilizing in the

region. In the short run, the Internet may increase the social gap both between

and within countries. It will have a different impact on urban and on rural
30

communities. For instance, will the development of the Internet encourage

people in rural areas to stay there? Absent a real change in the circumstances of

farming, being connected might simply make it easier for them to leave.

Perhaps, over a longer time horizon IT could build stability. If better

information systems permitted middle class voices to be heard, that might

empower the middle class in ways that would not necessarily lead to greater

political stability in the short run but would lay the basis for more transparent

and accountable government in the longer run.

At this point, however, such a prospect is not likely because there are few

resources; advertisers are not willing to support media that oppose ruling

government elites. Still, a recent case is suggestive of the possibilities. When

Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez, made a deal with Cuba's Fidel Castro,

many of the deal's provisions -like bartering Venezuelan goods for Cuban

doctor and other professional services - were questionable in the norms of

international trade. Details of the deal were suppressed from traditional

Venezuelan media, but those details did leak out via the Web. As governments

learn about the potential dangers of the Internet (to them), they may attempt to

move against it in various ways, but they will also face sharp limits on how

much they can control information flows.

Group 3: The Caribbean, Central America and Mexico

This third group is unique because of its "outliers." Some of the mostly small

island states in the Caribbean have per capita incomes that are among the highest

in Latin America and are much further along in IT penetration and use. These

include the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, St. Barts, Aruba, the British Virgin

Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. These outliers share several preconditions:

their governments are founded on trust and transparency; they have a wellestablished rule of law, high literacy rates, economic cultures in which business

can prosper, populations that are fluent in English, and, perhaps most

importantly, political stability. It should be noted, however, that these countries'

IT advances were driven by the needs of their commerce -tourism and banking,

including, unfortunately, money laundering - not the other way around. The

existing electronic infrastructure associated with these industries made it easier

for them to incorporate new information technologies.
31

In Central America, Costa Rica is the outlier. Intel has based an assembly plant

there, which has had a major impact on Costa Rican employment and growth. In

attracting Intel, Costa Rica took politically risky steps, such as committing to

teach English in primary schools. But Costa Rica had advantages similar to the

Caribbean islands - a good rule of law; a population that mostly has a

"working" knowledge of English; a program to wire every school in the country,

so that much of the younger population will soon become computer and Internet

savvy; and a sizable number of trained engineers available to work in and IT

plant or in supporting industries. Moreover, Costa Rica has a business school,

INCAE, founded with help from the Harvard Business School. Costa Rica has, in

effect, created an IT maquiladora. In addition to Costa Rica, other bright spots in

Central America are: El Salvador, which has a great deal of entrepreneurship;

and Panama, which is aided by its dollarized economy and by the considerable

American influence.

Mexico, in many ways more akin to the southern South America countries with

respect to IT, faces both good and bad prospects with respect to the information

revolution. On the positive side, the existence of NAFTA and the proximity of

the Mexicans living in the United States make it easier for Mexico to access

information, human capital, financing, and technology than other countries in

the region. The transition to the new presidential administration appears to be

going smoothly, and the new president has articulated a desire to move the

information revolution forward in Mexico. Human capital exists at the

Monterrey Technical Institute, the "Mexican MIT," which produces large

numbers of trained engineers and information scientists and in "Silicon Valle," a

region of Mexico in which IT start-ups are beginning to thrive. On the other

hand, Mexico faces challenges of corruption, large income disparities, and rapid

population growth - which stretch local economies and the educational system.

In addition to these challenges, the 51 percent domestic ownership requirement

for all companies and the major role that nationalized industry plays in the

economy are big obstacles to IT development in Mexico.

Bottom Lines

The differences across the region - in particular, among the leaders, the outliers

and the rest - are stunning. If the leaders share many obstacles, they also have

some differing advantages: Brazil is a large market, Mexico has its connections

to the United States, Chile is the most competitive telecom market, Argentina has

recently opened up, and Uruguay has a state-owned telecom monopoly but one

that works pretty efficiently. The outliers illustrate the "pull" of using IT to

become more efficient in existing industries, just as the maquiladoras do in
32

Mexico. Those outliers also shared a number of preconditions -transparent

governance, relatively low levels of corruption, rule of law, favorable business

climates, decent to good levels of English among the population, and the

presence of trained technical people. Those are the preconditions for moving

forward with IT, and they are also preconditions for economic growth more

generally.

It is hard to be optimistic about the rest, especially northern South America,

where violence is growing, the lure of populist politics is present, and the brain

drain is a fact of life. Those talented people who can leave, do leave, often for

Miami, the magnet that has attracted the greatest amount of Latin American

talent, and is an, if not the, IT capital of Latin America. Miami is much more than

the Cuban community. While there are limits to Miami's potential to unite Latin

America around information technology or other issues, Miami still has

advantages that are not present within the region.. Its attraction underscores that

even where the region should have an advantage - for instance in producing

content, not just for the region but for Spanish-speakers elsewhere - it faces

competition, from Miami but also from Los Angeles and other U.S. cities that

combine technological prowess with large Spanish-speaking populations.
33

6. The Political Dimension

Discussant: Diego Arria, Technology Holdings International

Discussant: Antonio Botelho, Universidade Catölica do

Rio de Janeiro

Discussant: Elliot Maxwell, U.S. Department of Commerce

Discussant: Robert Vitro, InterAmerican Development Bank

The information revolution touches all of society, and so the different dimensions

cannot really be separated. For instance, the role of government is eminently

political but also is critical to the business environment. Or a social dimension,

like education, also is at the heart of countries' economic and business

opportunities in information technology. This section begins with a framework

for thinking about government policy, then turns to Brazil and to a perspective

from Venezuela on the region.

The Role of Government Policy

It is striking that leadership by the private sector is widely accepted yet the role

of government is important. There are a number of ways to consider the role of

government policy in the information revolution. In the United States, the

"creative destruction" model assumes that the private sector should lead, and

that governments should mostly stay out of the way, of e-commerce, for instance.

Yet government is needed, most obviously in sustaining a legal framework for

commerce. That framework should be predictable, minimal, consistent, and

simple. Governments need to recognize the unique qualities of the Internet, as

well as the fact that e-commerce must be treated on a global basis.

As part of a legal framework for the Internet, developing a system for managing

electronic contracts is clearly a role for governments because enforcement ends

up in the public courts. Specific issues in this area include digital signatures,

jurisdiction and dispute resolution, taxation, electronic payments, and antitrust.

In the area of digital signatures, the U.S. government has been arguing that

governments should be technologically neutral and should not certify digital

signatures, but should instead let the market do so. Yet whether or not the

market can accomplish this task is debatable, and many Latin American

countries currently are considering electronic signature laws.
34

At present, there is no one place to resolve international disputes over ecommerce. When a business is located in multiple places, with distribution and

delivery around the world, it is unclear whose laws should apply. Producers

and consumers both will want jurisdiction where they have most confidence they

will be treated fairly, better yet favorably, and usually that will be their "home"

country. At present, the U.S. government argues that mechanisms for resolving

disputes online will minimize arguments over jurisdiction and keep disputes out

of courts.

A related and obvious challenge for government is taxation. In European (and

some Latin American) countries, value-added taxes apply regardless of where

goods are sold, while in the United States taxes on sales are mostly at the local

and state, not federal level. Coordination of these systems is a logistic and legal

challenge. The Europeans now talk of "coregulation," though the meaning is not

yet clear. The goal will not be global rules but rather "interoperability," which

would permit somewhat different rule regimes to work together. Electronic

payments also involve governments, and some Latin American governments

have passed laws to govern such payments. Antitrust issues arise as well, from

concerns that e-commerce will create "winner take all" possibilities.

Governments have a role in building confidence and trust among consumers.

This role includes but extends beyond privacy and authentication to take in

consumer protection, cybersecurity, and intellectual property protection. These

issues are complex, as a recent case in France illustrates. French courts wanted

yahoo.com, in the United States, to be held accountable for content placed on

yahoo's subsidiary site in France. The recent controversy over the 38-million

napster.com subscribers illustrates the challenges of intellectual property rights,

especially when companies seek to patent business lines or processes. So, too,

cybercrime is difficult to prosecute if, as in the case of the "love bug" in the

Philippines, the act committed is not a crime where it was committed. On the

other hand, strong encryption is now a fact of life; U.S. companies can export it to

anyone except states on the U.S. government's terrorist list..

Governments also help build a country's information infrastructure, by

establishing a framework for competition in communications, setting policies on

spectrum, working to open markets abroad, fostering interoperability, and

managing domain names. Governments can also work to foster digital inclusion

along dimensions of race, gender, income, geography, age, and physical

disabilities, to narrow the international digital divide, and to reach out to small

and medium size enterprises. There is also a need to measure the state and

progress of the digital economy, a role that also seems a natural one for

government.
35

Last, but certainly not least, is e-govemment itself. As has been noted

previously, some governments in Latin America, such as Brazil, have made

progress in collecting taxes online. Since governments are relatively important in

Latin America, the effect as they move online -to collect taxes, file trademarks

and deliver services - will be correspondingly significant.

The Case of Brazil

At the root of the politics of the information revolution in Brazil is hostility

between the telecoms and those who are making the information revolution.

These two groups do not communicate with each other, have different histories,

and have different bases of support. Despite this friction, growth and innovation

are evident. Sixty percent of Brazilian tax returns are filed online (the figure

would be more impressive except that perhaps two-fifths of the total economy is

"informal," hence completely untaxed). Brazilians recently were able to vote

electronically. The telecom regulatory regime is now solid, after Brazil learned

from the experiences of Mexico and Argentina. There are now 22 million cell

phones in Brazil, a number expected to grow to 58 million by 2005. E-commerce

in Brazil, at $300 million in 2000, is the biggest market in Latin America.

There are now 7 to 8 million Internet users, and the government, which hasjust

published a "green book" or discussion document on the information society,

hopes that number will increase to 37 million, or a fifth of the population, by

2005.10 The government is trying to wire its 26,000 schools and 6,000 libraries,

along with other centers, or "telekiosks." Now, fewer than four percent of

elementary schools are wired. A government fund takes two percent of gross

telecom revenues, and new initiatives compete for this funding -for instance, to

create kiosks infavelas (slums), or to link the cities in Pemambuco State, or

Parana, or Rio. Rio Digital aims to letfavela dwellers band together to buy

groceries or construction supplies in bulk and have them delivered to thefavela

entrance, from there to be distributed.

Venture capital and incubators are increasing. One model is somewhat akin to

Japan's keiretsu, i.e., groups of industrial firms organized around a bank and

closely coordinating their strategies and their purchases. This arrangement

would let existing firms share risks. It may run afoul of antitrust regulation,

however, suggesting that some changes in antitrust policy may rise on the

agenda. Pension funds are another source of funding, but with interest rates at

30 percent there is little incentive to invest in anything other than short-term

10 See www.mct.gov,br, Livro Verde Sociedade da Informacao.
36

paper. By the same token, only the national development bank now confers

"microcredits," which are in any case likely to be too small to finance IT

ventures, though they surely could help other businesses become better users of

IT.

Throughout Latin America, cell phones will be key, and, as in other dimensions

of the IT revolution, Latin American applications may be different. For now, cell

phones in fixed kiosks can supply simple information. But third generation cell

phones, on which Europe has placed an enormous bet, will be very large (3

megabits/second) pipes. Can that link become a viable business? There are still

a lot of places where it is hard to get a cell phone, and so Latin America's

solutions will have to be different than Europe's.

A Venezuelan Perspective on the Region

NGOs have pushed the social dimension of IT development, and the

organization of NGOs has in turn been promoted by IT. Yet one of the focal

points for the organizing of NGOs has been Mercosur, the regional free-trade

initiative, and most of the NGOs that have emerged are against Mercosur. For

their part, most Latin American governments have opposed NGOs as a challenge

to their power. They want trade and commerce but not political integration or

freer movement of people. They see the Internet as an instrument of power.

Consider tax structures on IT, which give advantage not to the people or to IT

development but rather to government budgets: computers in Venezuela are

twice as expensive as those in the United States, entirely as a result of taxes.

Many leaders give lip service to the empowerment of NGOs but in fact fear the

phenomenon.

There is no Spanish counterpart to the word "accountability," but IT can be a

boon to accountability in the region. As in the Chavez-Castro case, it could make

available more information. The issue of cybersecurity in Latin America exists in

this context. Security surely is a problem, from both hackers and the determined

underworld of IT, terrorists and criminals. If the infrastructure for deploying IT

in the region is fragile, might security become such a worry that governments

and business shun new IT technology and resort to "old economy" ways of doing

business — face to face meetings, paper memorandums and phone calls? In fact,

when governments are determined, as in Brazil's online elections, they can

manage security. At this point, security is probably more an excuse for not

moving toward more accountability than it is a real stumbling block.
37

Bottom Lines

It is striking that, while there is a debate about the role of government in IT, that

debate presumes that the private sector will be the leading edge. Government

plainly has roles to play in establishing legal frameworks, adjudicating disputes,

building public confidence and developing the infrastructure for IT. Where to

adjudicate disputes is itself an issue, as consumers will want adjudication in

"their" country, suppliers in theirs.

Governments remain large in Latin America, and thus they will also be

important users of IT: witness those Brazilians who vote or file tax returns

online. Yet, on the whole, the region's governments have taken a "fiscal," rather

than a "consumer," approach to IT; they have kept prices high for tax reasons -

and so computers costs twice as much in Venezuela as in the United States.

Governments pay lip service to IT as a means of increasing the transparency of

governance, but most of them pay little more than that. And advertisers are not

willing, in many countries, to support media that oppose ruling governments.

As governments learn about the potential dangers of the Internet to their power,

they may move against it, but the Chavez case suggests the limits they will

confront in trying to control information flows.
39

7. The Societal Dimension

Discussant: Juan Enriquez, Harvard University11

Discussant: Susan Kaufman Purcell, Council of the Americas

This session posed sharply the question that had been running through the

workshop: can Latin America hope to compete in the information revolution?

What, though, does "competing" mean when, for most countries, the premium

will not be on creating information technology or artifacts but on using IT to

become more efficient across the board? Given that, what will it take for the

region to compete? And what choices, if any, will it have?

Can Latin America Make Its Information Revolution?

This discussant's argument posed that question sharply, and its answer was

mostly "no." The argument focussed on the centrality of information and

knowledge, by a broad definition. As noted by the discussant, it is often

observed that the structure of global production is changing. Manufacturing is

less important and services much more so. But the high impact "services" are

not about serving hamburgers; they are about creating and manipulating

information. What distinguishes successful societies from ones that are not, in

this argument, is the ability to use information.

The discussant noted that commodity prices, in real terms, are now about a fifth

what they were in 1845; not so long ago, agriculture was a third of the global

economy. Last year, Silicon Valley generated as much economic value as all of

India; chips are more valuable than steel. Nations seldom covet their neighbors'

land; Iraq did want Kuwait's oil revenues, but there was never a hint in 1991 that

the United States might "keep Kuwait." Both the United States and Brazil got

bigger after their independence, but there is no need to be big today. As UN

members have gone from 50 in 1946 to 184 in 1994, there is a whole lot of land in

the world that nobody wants. The commodity of choice is not land. Indeed,

agriculture is a drain for Europe, which spends half the European Union budget

on agriculture, a sector that accounts for less than 5 percent of GDP.

11 See Enriquez (2000) and a forthcoming book, Enriquez (2001).
40

Agriculture is a small margin business, but the United States is changing that

with genetically modified organisms (GMOs); those can raise the margin to

perhaps 6 percent. NGOs and others in Europe oppose GMOs, and while

Monsanto may "lose the company" in the short run bet on GMOs, in the long run

the power of GMOs not just to increase food margins, but to battle cancer and

other diseases, will prevail. Meanwhile, when Europe's Novatis was hectored

out of GMOs, all its scientists went straight to the United States. The commodity

of choice is information.

According to this argument, the key to both using and producing information

technology is developing human capital. But most Latin Americans are not

nurturing their intellectual talent. In Mexico, for instance, when a small group of

committed activists were permitted to close down the premier university,

UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autönoma de Mexico, or Autonomous National

University of Mexico), for more than a year over issues nobody could quite

articulate, that decimated what had been a promising molecular biology

department. The average Mexican salary is only 27 percent of what it was in

1976, and the value added in Mexico of Mexican maquiladora exports amounts to

only three percent of the selling price.12 Unwise government policies are most of

the reason, but to sharpen the caricature, according to this argument, a part is

that Mexico is not creating knowledge. It is making fewer patents now than it

did in earlier years. Those who register patents in Mexico are multinational

corporations.

Or, take flowers as another example. According to the discussant, there are

many places in the world that would seem ideal for flower growing, but the

leading country, Holland, is not one of them. What does it have? Not soil or

weather, but rather what was argued to be "knowledge" by a broad definition —

the know-how to build functioning airports, good agronomists, and

sophisticated financial systems that will lend against tulip bulbs. Similarly, why

is it that Mexico's product, cacao for chocolate, is now exploited most profitably

by Switzerland? The answer, according to the discussant, is value added

through knowledge — in this case, superior business models.

IT and Social Services

In the context of a global knowledge economy, one of the primary obstacles to

narrowing the income gap in Latin America is education, which is, again, an

12 The figure for Mexican wages is for 1996-1997. See Mexico (1998), pp. 402,403,407.

Manufacturing wages did not suffer the same decline.
41

enormous problem in the region: Drop-out rates are high, repeat rates in

primary school are very high, teaching materials are outdated, and the worst

teachers are in the primary schools. At the university level, teachers are ill paid,

and as a result moonlighting and part-time teaching are the norm. Unions and

bureaucracy hamper performance, and the upper classes send their children to

private schools. Can information technology help to improve this situation?

Some experiments with virtual universities, like ITESM in Monterrey or the

university in Bogota, are promising. Online education programs are likely to be

especially helpful to individuals otherwise unlikely to enroll or continue in

formal schooling. It will be intriguing to see how much difference IT makes in

primary and secondary school, as well as in post-secondary and continuing

education.13

There are other areas in which IT could improve service delivery. In health, for

instance, IT can provide information first, then enrollment and payment, and

ultimately it could make possible distant interactions with health providers.

Perhaps IT can spur the growth of smaller cities, which might be magnets for the

rural poor even as the same technology permitted the wealthier to move back

into the countryside without sacrificing the comforts to which they were

accustomed.

An upside for Latin America is that it has a young population, with more than

half the population under 30 years of age. Those young people look at the

industrial world, and they want to join it. In addition, an opportunity for

innovation is present: recall that "made in Japan" was a U.S. description for

shoddiness in the 1960s but the complete opposite by the 1980s. The outlier cases

are worth pausing over. Singapore, for instance, was deeply worried about its

future as an independent city-state, and it courted Hewlett Packard; what Costa

Rica did with Intel was similar. Bangalore had the advantages of English and of

good education, and now almost half the H1B visas that the United States issues

for skilled technicians go to Indians. Not just Silicon Valley, but all of U.S. high

tech, could hardly function without Indian systems engineers and programmers.

That may be "brain drain" in the short run, but those Indians, like the Latin

Americans working in Miami, represent a potential resource for their countries.

On the down side, Latin America produces more lawyers than technologists,

though that could change. The region is divided internally, in many ways,

including "digitally." In terms of models, its political culture and businessgovernment relations are more like Europe's than the United States'. That

13 This issue was addressed in Anderson and others (2000), pp. 43-4,68-70.
42

European model has made the government the leading edge of the economy,

with considerable central planning despite recent waves of privatization, and

with upwards of two fifths of GNP passing through government hands in some

countries. New technology, though, is beginning to break down the culture of

looking to the government to solve problems, and Mexico and Argentina seem

most convergent with American models. Latin America will divide physically as

well, as southern Brazil or northern Mexico acquires an identity of its own. It has

suffered recently from reversions to the "bad old days" of populist policy, as in

Venezuela. So long as the poor lack a stake in society, Latin America will be

vulnerable to this kind of demagoguery. Better information could indeed

increase accountability, making for less tolerance of bad policy, at least outside

the Andean countries.

Bottom Lines

Despite the importance of information technology, Latin America is behind in

the game, and the game is not just IT, but rather it is economic development

more generally. It is not investing enough in the human capital, and it is not

achieving the economic and political stability needed to lure back talented Latin

Americans from abroad. Neither is it developing indigenous IT or other

knowledge-based industries, nor is it rapidly incorporating IT to make existing

industries more competitive in the global economy. In recent years, Latin

America has seen absolute incomes rise but so have the income disparities. Only

1.5 percent of Latin Americans has access to the Web today, versus 24 percent of

North Americans. Web penetration will still be less than 12 percent by 2005, and

most of those will be in the richest 20 percent of Latin Americans, about 100

million people in total. That fact will be a disadvantage for the region. Latin

America did not close economic and social gaps during the industrial revolution, and it is

unlikely to do so during the information revolution.
43

8. Small Group Discussion: Political and

Societal Dimensions

Facilitator: Robert Anderson, RAND

Facilitator: Tora Bikson, RAND

Unlike the first breakout session, these two groups were not asked to look at subregions but across the region as a whole. The groups took different approaches in

looking at these issues, focusing on leading countries and human capital,

respectively..

Focusing on the "Leaders''

The first group examined the connection between social factors and the IT

revolution, focussing on the "leaders" -southern South America plus Mexico.

The first question raised was the role of women. Are they a large untapped

resource? Perhaps not just women but many parts of society are not being fully

tapped. With widespread under-investment in human capital and entire

segments of society completely outside the formal economy, issues related to

women specifically seem secondary. However, the "newness" of the information

technology industry could be an opportunity for women to break out of

traditional roles. In fact, every large Brazilian IT company has women in senior

positions.

Issues associated with human capital development lead logically to issues of

higher education in general. One issue is testing. For all the U.S. debate over the

cultural bias or fairness of testing, many Latin American countries suffer from

the lack of the evaluation those tests provide. Standardized testing is not

common in Latin America. While Brazil is establishing an SAT-like test to

replace the national entrance exam for universities, currently Brazilian

universities get a university-wide grade (an accreditation mechanism) based on

exam scores of the students. Employers are allowed know the university grade,

but not the individual's grades. This contrasts sharply to other places in the

world, such as Silicon Valley, where immigrant Indian technicians still remember

and compare their grades from standardized tests at home.

Because companies often look to locate near universities with the right human

capital, it is logical to ask: Which countries have the university structure with the
44

right people to attract existing companies and start-ups? Mexico is noted for

UNAM, as well as the Monterrey Technical Institute. Brazil stands out for its

university-related incubator programs and growing indigenous venture capital

market, while Chile has its secondary school Enlaces program that will eventually

introduce more IT-interested students into the already successful higher

education system. While some biological sciences and agriculture programs in

Argentina and Uruguay are impressive, their connection to IT is indirect at best.

Even with successful programs at national universities, often the most talented

students in Latin America leave the region to complete their higher education.

Many are educated abroad and as a result stay abroad to work. Turned off by

political and economic instability, talented individuals educated in their own

countries often leave if they have the means to do so. The region is experiencing

a notable "brain drain." This is the case despite the possibility that Latin

Americans working in U.S. companies may find it more difficult to move up in

those companies than they would in their own country. Were they willing to

return to their own country, their education and experience would give them an

advantage. In order to regain these professionals, countries need to establish an

environment of political stability, economic opportunity, and physical safety.

How easy will Latin American countries find it to jump-start or leap frog in IT?

In the same way that Costa Rica jump-started itself with Intel, could other

countries in the region jump-start themselves by attracting an Oracle, an AOL, or

a Microsoft? The answer is "possibly," but certainly companies need to have

incentives to locate there. Given the right human capital mix, political stability,

and legal systems that provide protections from corruption, tax incentives might

help attract such companies. However, the first three attributes are hard enough

to achieve, and now countries, like Brazil, may want to preserve their tax base at

any cost.

Looking ahead twenty years, will there be large-scale trade wars and

protectionism associated with intellectual property rights in the region? If there

are more "local" companies with the incentive to protect intellectual property,

then perhaps current obstacles will be more likely to be resolved. What is

needed, then, is leadership from national companies. Over the long run, IT can

promote more accountability and transparency in government, increased

participation, and improved service delivery for a larger fraction of the

population. Over a still longer term, information technology may also facilitate

an increasing decentralization of political power.

Socially, the growing income inequality that seems to result from differential

access to and use of IT need not be entirely bad so long as economies grow as a
45

whole. The key issues are how much inequality can be managed and over what

time period. Now, the whole continent has commodities and human capital that

are not as valuable anymore. Those economies that are able to retool will

probably grow, and those that do not are likely to get left behind - creating more

uneven regional growth. In this respect the Andean region is headed for trouble,

while southern Brazil seems to have the ingredients for success. It is worth

noting that the "new economy" did not just appear in one day in the United

States; making the economy more flexible has been a long process. While it is

tempting to hope that other parts of the world can catch-up quickly, it is

important to ask what is an acceptable time horizon for Latin America?

Focusing on Human Capital

The second group accepted the premise that the knowledge-based economy will

shape the future of Latin America. Who, then, are the technically proficient

people, and where do they come from? Where do they go? Are there patterns

that differ across subregions?

Surely, there are points of light, like Monterrey Tech or Enlaces. Argentina has

many young entrepreneurs who are computer proficient, many of whom are of

immigrant origin, although not first generation. The diversity of Latin American

populations creates some distortions in educational policy. For instance, the

most important cleavage remains that between the "Europeans" and "nonEuropeans" -that is, between people of Spanish and indigenous origin.

Countries with a predominantly indigenous population (the Andean countries)

seem at a disadvantage. Mexico is the only country with a large indigenous

population that has pursued an integrationist policy.

Another point of light is the emergence of business schools in Latin America over

the past decade. Now there are opportunities for smart young Latin Americans

to stay in their own countries and get a good technical education. Previously, the

influence of the Cuban revolution had fostered a bias against business education.

This viewed changed when Latin American graduate students stopped going to

Europe and began attending U.S. universities. Unfortunately, many of the Latin

Americans educated in the United States choose to stay there, despite

opportunities at home. Currently, many Latin Americans are with Wall Street

firms, steeped in the entrepreneurial culture. There is now a depth of qualified

people: although they now reside in the United States, they are a latent resource

for Latin America.
46

If the information revolution is conceived of in three categories - creating

technology, embodying it in objects, and using services based on those objects -

the outliers in the Caribbean plainly are in the third. They use IT in banking, a

classic content service. In Costa Rica, Intel is assembling objects, chips. The

debate about whether Costa Rica has done more than create an IT maquiladora

will rage on, but it is somewhat beside the point. If the Costa Ricans are doing

no more than selling their labor, that may be to the nation's good if that labor is

employed more profitably by Intel than by other existing industries. And aside

from Intel, major IT applications in Costa Rica support the logistics of the

tourism industry.

That reinforces the point that Latin American countries do not have to create IT to

find their way in the global economy. Most, perhaps all of them, do not have the

conditions necessary to create IT. Rather, they need to use it effectively, which

means adapting and perhaps creating content. Both business and government

are trying to become more effective users of information technology, with the

former in the lead. Cisco is one example of an effective user (in Latin America).

In information technology, the big value added is in software and services, not

hardware. In Latin America, services are exploding -mostly because big

multinationals are teaming up with local companies, for instance, Mexico's

Telefonica with Ariba. There are two sources of venture capital: (1) local

companies; and (2) international venture capital; for instance, Chase Capital

Partners funded Star Media and other start-ups.

The region also has the opportunity to produce content, given the large market

for it not only in Latin America but also throughout the entire Spanish-speaking

world. Is there enough connectivity to develop content in Latin America?

Perhaps, for not much connectivity is needed to develop content, but a great deal

more is needed to distribute it. In any case, Latin America will have to compete

with Miami in producing content. Today, Miami has an advantage over Latin

American locations, although some local presence is needed.

Finally, because Latin American has only nascent stock markets, an interesting

indicator of Latin American IT might be how many Latin American companies

are listed in the NASDAQ. The number is small, a measure of the distance that

Latin America still has to go; one research firm put it at 14 (listed in

www.ig.com). Some large Latin American companies have set up their own

venture capital subsidiaries, but these can be regarded only as precursors, not

alternatives to companies listed on the NASDAQ.

A related issue is what it takes to set up a start-up in Latin America. It is very

difficult. While in the United States most R&D funding comes from the private
47

sector (and government money is concentrated on "R"), in Latin America the

opposite is true: R&D spending is very small and largely government-driven. In

Mexico, about 80 percent of R&D is funded by the government. Moreover,

governments tend to allocate funds to larger enterprises, even though the sources

of IT innovation often are the small start-ups.

Bottom Lines

These discussions elaborated familiar themes: if the right human capital mix,

political stability, and legal systems that provide protections from corruption are

the preconditions for developing IT, those preconditions are daunting. If those

are present, then tax incentives might lure an Oracle, but most countries of the

region seek to protect their tax base, not give it away as an incentive. Again, it is

worth remembering that the goal for most of the region is not creating IT, but

using it.

The time horizon is also critical. The new economy did not appear instantly in

the United States; it took time to develop. By the same token, no Latin American

country can hope to catch up overnight. But, over time, the points of light can

become stronger. Currently, a number of Latin Americans are with Wall Street

firms, steeped in the entrepreneurial culture. This depth of qualified people may

now reside in the United States, but it is a latent resource for Latin America. The

opportunity to produce content is there, and venture capital is beginning.

Surely, as with past growth, IT-led progress will be uneven. The Andean region

is headed for trouble, while southern Brazil seems to have the ingredients for

success. The unevenness will raise the issue of how much inequality can be

managed and over what time period. Over the long-term, information

technology is also likely to bring an increasing decentralization of political

power.
49

9. Looking Forward

Chair: Gregory Treverton, RAND

Over and over, the conversation returned to the question of whether Latin

America will be able to provide the stability, safety and opportunity that IT

requires. Yet, stability and safety will facilitate development in any sector, and

so phrased this way, the prerequisites of IT are no different than those for

development more generally. The challenge becomes a cultural and political

one, not a technological one. Thus, it is worth pausing, in looking ahead, over

what is distinctive about IT and about Latin America.

In one sense what is distinctive about IT is that it would seem to depend less on

location, less on stability and safety than almost any other industry. It is possible

to make the artifacts of IT, save for hardware and chips, without putting much

fixed capital at risk. All that is really needed to run a first-rate software house,

besides talented people, are some PCs, a few phone lines, a middling reliable

electrical supply, and roof over your head. The same is the case for many ITbased services. The very essence of the information revolution is that people can

get rich without building big, immobile factories. In an odd way, then, IT would

seem the ideal sector for politically and socially unsettled countries. If things go

bad, entrepreneurs can take their start-ups elsewhere. In this sense, Latin

America might be able to circumvent obstacles in politics or infrastructure. To be

fair, though, even if initial innovation can be done on a shoestring with hardly

any fixed capital, converting, say, software into a real service requires more

organization to provide updates, support and the like.

And location still matters.14 In some cases it matters because it is convenient to

locate near ancillary services -finance in New York, or film production services

in southern California. Yet precisely because the infrastructure requirements of

IT are so limited, entrepreneurs can locate where they please. They are not

dependent on minerals or electric power or even, in many cases, on large pools

of labor. They can locate where life is safe and pleasant, or choose to be close to

14 See, for instance, Porter (1998) for a discussion of geographical clusters of U-related

businesses.
50

the comfort of ethnic kin or to the stimulation of peers. Cost of living may be a

secondary consideration, and so Silicon Valley, Seattle, and Miami continue to be

attractive despite the expense of living there.

Latin America would still seem to have advantages in producing IT content for

the Spanish-speaking world. Yet at the high end of that content market, the

infrastructure advantages of Miami, or Hollywood, are considerable. To those

infrastructure advantages are added the benefits conferred by the presence of a

large, relatively affluent, Spanish-speaking market close to home; by one

estimate, the "GNP" of the 15 million Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in the

United States equals that of the 100 million Mexicans in Mexico. To the extent

that content needs to be closely tailored to particular countries, then there is no

"Spanish-speaking" market, but the infrastructure and financing advantages of

U.S. locations still may be significant, especially at the high quality end.

The role of universities in creating IT clusters elsewhere in the world is plain.

Why has there been no Latin American IT success story? Surely, culture is

important, but the role of universities is key: witness Silicon Valley or Route 128

in the United States. India produces 300,000 graduate software engineers a year,

and a fifth of those come to the United States. The conversation during the

conference kept returning to knowledge and to universities: Monterrey Tech is

good but focused more on business than science; Brazil is improving; Chile is

good, and Argentinean biological sciences are promising.

How is Latin America distinctive, for all the variations across the region? While

it lags behind Asia on IT indicators, Asia does not look better in terms of building

democracy. So far, though, that difference does not seem to have much

relevance. To the extent that physical infrastructure matters, Latin America's,

while inadequate, is not as bad as that in Africa and parts of Asia. It is worth

remembering that the penetration of some new technology is not the same thing

as making it in the new economy. And so the conversation kept returning to

human capital and to the role of government. At this point, the role of

government in Latin America seems more of an impediment than an advantage.

If education and the role of government are explicit and over-arching themes in

Latin American approaches to both development and IT, the nature of the

region's connections to the United States are, as always, a powerful implicit

theme. Mexico weathered the financial crises of the 1990s better than other

regions because it was so closely tied to a booming U.S. economy. Is it such a

bad thing that all the cable lines run north and south, if Latin America is trying to

develop technologically? If the region is to integrate into a global economy, its
51

technical people need to be connected to the top of the game, and that top is now

Silicon Valley.

Yet if Latin America becomes more and more a piece of the U.S. economy, it may

be able to have a piece of the action, but can it have its own action? Can it lure

and keep its best and brightest at home? Can any country in the global

economy? If the region progresses, but the gap between rich and poor continues

to widen, then what? Latin American did not close the gap during the industrial

revolution, so it would be rash to imagine that it will during the information

revolution. Better IT will make the gaps more vivid for citizens. It is worth

remembering, though, that the lead times were long for the United States as well

-10-15 years or more for major advances in IT - and inequality increased in the

United States as well.

Looking out two decades, is it possible to imagine Latin America "opting out" of

what it perceived as an unfair global regime? What would "opting out" mean?

Suppose it decided to use new GMO seeds but not pay for them. The foreign

companies presumably would simply stop selling them, and Latin America

would be left to fend for itself. If Latin America managed to produce some

intellectual property (IP), it might seek not just good IP protection but also

barriers to imports. Desires for national or regional autonomy will persist, and

they will continue to lure Latin American nations in the direction of policies, like

protection and import substitution, that may produce autonomy but at the price

of poverty. In the world of the global information economy, to "opt out" is to

opt for poverty. Autonomy means not disconnecting but trying to structure

niches and connections to the global economy in a way that will provide

maximum national advantage.
53

Appendix

A. Conference Participants

Dr. Robert H. Anderson (UNITED STATES)

Senior Information Scientist and Head, Information Sciences Group, RAND

Mr. Fulton T. Armstrong (UNITED STATES)

National Intelligence Officer for Latin America

National Intelligence Council

Mr. Diego Arria (VENEZUELA)

Chairman, Technology Holdings International

Former Permanent Representative of Venezuela at the United Nations

Dr. John Baskin (UNITED STATES)

Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Economics and Global Issues

National Intelligence Council

Dr. Tora Kay Bikson (UNITED STATES)

Senior Behavioral Scientist, RAND

Professor Antonio Jose Junqueira Botelho (BRAZIL)

Department of Politics and Sociology

Pontificial Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro

Mr.JuanEnriquez (MEXICO)

Researcher, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies,

Harvard University

Formerly CEO of Mexico City's Urban Development Corporation,

and Coordinator General of Economic Policy and Chief of Staff

to Mexico's Secretary of State

Dr. Lawrence K. Gershwin (UNITED STATES)

National Intelligence Officer for Science & Technology,

National Intelligence Council
54

Dr. David Gordon (UNITED STATES)

National Intelligence Officer for Economics and Global Issues

National Intelligence Council

Dr. Eugene C. Gritton (UNITED STATES)

Director, Acquisition and Technology Policy Program, RAND

Dr. Timothy Heyman (MEXICO)

President, Heyman y Asociados, S.C., Mexico City

Formerly President, ING Baring Grupo Financiero (Mexico)

Dr. Richard O. Hundley (UNITED STATES)

Senior Physical Scientist, RAND

Mr. Elliot Maxwell (UNITED STATES)

Special Advisor to the Secretary of Commerce for the Digital Economy

U.S. Department of Commerce

Ms. Lee Mizell (UNITED STATES)

Doctoral Fellow, RAND Graduate School

Mr. William T. Ortman (UNITED STATES)

Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Latin America

National Intelligence Council

Mr. Jonathan Orszag (UNITED STATES)

Managing Director, Sebago Associates, Inc.

Formerly Assistant to the Secretary of Commerce and Director of the Office

of Policy and Strategic Planning, Department of Commerce

Mr. Ricardo Peon (MEXICO)

Manager of Telecoms and Internet Investments,

Heyman y Asociados, S.C., Mexico City

Formerly Managing Director, Deutsche Bank Mexico

Mr. Danilo Piaggesi (ITALY)

Head, Information Technologies for Development Division

Inter-American Development Bank

Professor Larry Press (UNITED STATES)

Chairman, CIS Department, California State University

at Dominguez Hills
55

Dr. Susan Kaufman Purcell (UNITED STATES)

Vice President, The Council of the Americas,

New York City

Dr. Angel Rabasa (UNITED STATES)

Senior Policy Analyst, RAND

Mr. David Rothkopf (UNITED STATES)

Chairman and Chief Executive, Intellibridge Corporation,

Washington, DC

Formerly Acting Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade

and Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade Policy

Development

Mr. Ricardo Setti (BRAZIL)

Brazilian journalist and Latin American business consultant

Dr. Brian Shaw (UNITED STATES)

Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Science & Technology,

National Intelligence Council

Mr. Eduardo Talero (UNITED STATES)

Principal Informatics Specialist and Informatics Procurement Advisor

World Bank

Dr. Gregory Treverton (UNITED STATES)

Senior Consultant, RAND

Senior Fellow, Pacific Council on International Policy

Ms. Regina KVargo (UNITED STATES)

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for the Western Hemisphere

U.S. Department of Commerce

Mr. Robert A. Vitro (UNITED STATES)

Intersectoral, Regional and Special Programs, Information Technology for

Development Division, Inter-American Development Bank

Professor Ernest Wilson (UNITED STATES)

Director, Center for International Development and Conflict Management,

University of Maryland at College Park

Mr. Robert Worden (UNITED STATES)

Federal Research Division, Library of Congress
57

B. Conference Agenda

Wednesday, November 1,2000

8:30 am Introduction to the Workshop

Lawrence Gershwin, National Intelligence Council

Gregory Treverton, RAND

9:00 am Starting Point: Basic Infrastructure and Trends

Facilitator: Gregory Treverton, RAND

Discussant: Larry Press, California State University

• What is the profile of IT infrastructure across Latin America?

• What are the dominant features of that infrastructure?

Which countries are leading, which lagging? What are the

predominant differences across and within countries?

10:15 am Break

10:30 pm The Economic and Business Dimension

Facilitator: Gregory Treverton, RAND

Discussant: Jon Orszag, Sebago Associates

Discussant: Ricardo Setti, iG International

Discussant: Regina Vargo, Department of Commerce

Discussant: Timothy Heyman, Heyman y Asociados

• What are the sources of financing for information technology

and for new IT-enabled businesses and services?

• Who are the major players? Are they national, regional or

global?

• Are there critical IT business clusters in the region? Where,

and why have they developed?

• What characteristics of the business environment in various

countries facilitate or inhibit growth in the use of

information technology and in new IT-enabled businesses?

• How is e-commerce developing in the region? How are

issues of intellectual property, encryption, standards,
58

commercial and contract law, and the like being dealt with?

What are the main differences across countries?

• What are the driving forces of change? What are the main

obstacles?

• Ultimately, what can be said about the impact of IT on the

conduct of business and economic advance in the region?

12:00 pm Luncheon Session

Keynote: "Latin America in an Age of Cyberpolitik"

David Rothkopf, Intellibridge Corporation

Commentary: "Information Revolutionaries"

Ernest Wilson, University of Maryland

1:30 pm Break-Out Session: Regional Differences

Facilitator: Robert Anderson, RAND

Facilitator: Tora Bikson, RAND

Facilitator: Ernest Wilson, University of Maryland

• How does the economic and business dimension of

information revolution differ across Latin America? What

drives these regional differences?

2:45 pm Report Back from Break-Out Sessions

Facilitator: Greg Treverton, RAND

3:45 pm Break

4:00 pm The Political Dimension

Facilitator: Gregory Treverton, RAND

Discussant: Diego Arria, Technology Holdings International

Discussant: Danilo Piagessi, IADB

Discussant: Antonio Botelho, Genesis Institute

• How different are the approaches of various governments in

fostering, channeling, regulating or inhibiting the spread of

information technology?

• How are politics and governance being affected by

information technology? Is there a future for "digital

democracy" in the region?
59

• Will information technology facilitate the creation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the region?

• Is information technology likely to spur economic and/or

political integration across the region?

• How should cybersecurity, information terrorism, and

applications for illegal use be considered?

5:30 pm Session Ends

Thursday, November 2

9:00 am The Societal Dimension

Facilitator: Gregory Treverton, RAND

Discussant: Juan Enriquez, Harvard University

Discussant: Susan Kaufman Purcell, Council of the Americas

• How will IT affect human service delivery in Latin America

over the next decade? How will it change health care,

education, and other social services? How, if at all, will it

change the balance between public and private providers?

What will be the implications of the change?

• What social or cultural factors prominent in Latin America, if

not necessarily unique to it, facilitate or inhibit the diffusion

of information technology? How common are these factors

across the region?

• Is the information revolution increasing economic inequalities

in the region? Is it increasing social inequalities in this or

other ways, for instance by accentuating rural-urban

cleavages?

10:30 am Break
60

10:45 pm Break-Out Session: Regional Differences

Facilitator: Robert Anderson, RAND

Facilitator: Tora Bikson, RAND

• How does the impact of information technology on politics

and society differ across Latin America? What drives these

regional differences?

12:00 pm Lunch and Keynote: "Issues Governments Face in Making eCommerce Work"

Elliott Maxwell, Department of Commerce

1:15 pm Report Back from Break-Out Sessions

Facilitator: Greg Treverton, RAND

2:30 pm Break

2:45 pm Wrap-Up: Putting it all together

Facilitator: Gregory Treverton, RAND

Facilitator: Robert Anderson, RAND

Facilitator: Tora Bikson, RAND

• What major themes emerged from this workshop?

• How might the projections of Latin American information

technology patterns compare with other regions of the

world?

• What are the key factors in or determinants of how Latin

American's future plays out insofar as the information

revolution is concerned? Are those the same as for other

regions, or different?

3:30 pm Final Comments

Lawrence Gershwin, National Intelligence Council

4:00 pm Conference Ends
61

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