Promoting E-Competency at the National Level

In another series of plenary and focus sessions of the Executive Forum on Export Development in the Digital Economy, the focus was on Promoting E-competency at the National Level.

Information technology must be understood by exporters. They must be given tax rebates and other incentive. E-commerce telecentres should be established throughout the country.

A video showing how SMEs have automated their transactional activities, a video on "e-marketplaces", technology parks should provide assistance, government should let hardware and software enter duty free, training (including awareness) buildings at all levels of society, and provide simple, basic services such as establishing e-mail addresses for SMEs.

Successful dot.com SMEs, trade associations, and Internet service providers can provide training and serve as mentors in mentor-protégé relationships. TSIs should act as brokers, linking key partners, create "backward integration" to avoid firms in the supply chain being left out, create communities, and be skilled at handling and creating information electronically.

An e-competency programme for enterprises is extremely relevant. Due to scarcity of resources, training, infrastructure, marketing and financial and / or tax incentives may be most prudent. SMEs will be encouraged to "go e" through education to raise awareness, incentives that may give them financial advantages (e.g., loan programmes, tax and duty relief, etc.) and the provision of affordable and efficient telecommunications infrastructure.

Training. Governments or TSIs may want to train a number of trainers, though university e-commerce institutes. Universities and other educational institutions may want to increase the number of positions for computer-related degrees.

Infrastructure. Again, the importance of liberalize the telecommunications infrastructure was mentioned with a suggestion that the private sector should be allowed to establish its own satellite communication links. Establishment of an information technology village was suggested as well.

Marketing. It was suggested that countries should explore the possibility of obtaining business on a sub-contract basis from other countries and to promote non-traditional exports since "traditional exports" are handled by established institutions or groups.

Incubators are not a new concept, and yet they continue to provide synergies and coherence between different actors, facilitating complementary, not competing, activities and services. In fact, the failure rate of incubated businesses is much lower than non-incubated ones.

It was suggested that incubators should provide access to experts, infrastructure, funds, training, business plan development, advice, mentoring, monitoring, physical space, and venture capital. To be successful, incubators must link with local resources. Some successful incubators cited are concept nursery.com in Sri Lanka, Hatch Asia in the Philippines and the Technology Park in China.

Government can provide physical space and financial incentives while the private sector runs sector-specific incubators and handles financial operation. In terms of managing the incubator, a Board of Directors should be established.

Selecting the SMEs to participate in the incubator should be based on pre-determined and stringent criteria. Most SMEs should participate a maximum of one to two years since most indicators of success or failure become known within one year. Payback can be done by having SMEs give a small ownership stake in the incubated businesses or voluntary contributions of services or goods.

(Drawn from reports by: P. Williams, I. Worrell, L. Naas, M. Borgeon, and
Y. Gibb of ITC)

Sincerely,

ITC Moderators
Natalie Domeisen and Sarah McCue