Besides the involvement of such community institutions, lessons from technology intensive economies teach that technology increasingly flows through private networks of information and assessment services, management consultants, financial firms, lawyers and accountants, and technical specialist groups. These new insights make it important for governments to strengthen the networks in which these diverse organisations can contribute to technology transfer. Information access and assessment are essential to technology transfer. However, focussing too narrowly on information barriers while ignoring the later stages of the transfer process can be counter-productive. Technology information programmes should be demand driven and results oriented to the degree possible.
Information is most useful when it supports an actual technology choice, investment decision, etc.
Because of its public good characteristics, technology infrastructure required to generate new knowledge and information may lack direct economic value to one firm, and thus individual firms may lack adequate incentives to build technology infrastructure on their own. This points to an important role for governments to create the necessary information assessment and monitoring capacity. However, the roles of governments and private actors in technology assessment are changing. Private information networks are proliferating through specialised consulting and evaluation services and over the Internet. Increasing FDI also demonstrates that many ESTs can diffuse rapidly without direct government action.