More than 35,000 people have already received training in technologies that can make them more employable. Baggio, who has also taken his computer classes to prisons and Indian tribes in Brazil, announced at the New Orleans seminar that he would expand his program to other Latin American countries with the help of the IDB and funding from the StarMedia Foundation. On a larger scale, Mexico s Telesecundaria program is using modern telecommunications technology to bring high school education to its most remote areas, at a fraction of the cost of building, staffing and maintaining a traditional school. One million people, from teenagers to adults, are enrolled in the Mexican distance-learning program. According to test results, Telesecundaria students scholastic achievements are on a par with those of their peers in traditional high schools.
Information technology can also help countries run their public sectors more efficiently.
Across the region, governments are deploying online systems at the federal, provincial, and municipal level, to handle such tasks as state procurement and contracting, tax collection, and payments. In the case of public sector purchases, governments can fuel more competition among providers and make the process more transparent. While enthusiastic about these new tools, leaders in the region are also quick to underscore that information technology is no silver bullet. Offering some historical perspective, Jos Octavio Bord n, education minister of the Argentine province of Buenos Aires, read at the conference the congratulatory telegram Argentine President Domingo Sarmiento sent when the first trans-Atlantic cable was laid over a century ago. In his message, Sarmiento hailed that achievement as the first step toward creating a truly global community.