PROCEEDINGS 

A. OPENING SESSION

1. Opening remarks of Mr. Miguel von Hoegen, Secretary General of the Planning and Programming Secretariat (SEGEPLAN) of the Republic of Guatemala 

Ladies and gentlemen:  

I wish to share with you, from the Planning and Programming Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic of Guatemala, a few thoughts at the beginning of this workshop that you are going to hold in Antigua, Guatemala, the next days. I would like to share with you two or three thoughts about the importance and significance of the issues that you will be addressing.

The first thought is that in Guatemala and in the world we are not living in an age of changes but in a change of era. When we moved from the middle ages to modern times, there were at least three indicators telling us that it was not a time of changes but rather a change of times. Those three indicators are among others: The beginning of the Ottoman and Turkish Empire in the 15th century; the rupture of the Christian with Martin Luther and the coming of Europe inside our continent. I think through this context, just like in the transition of middle ages to modern times, today we are moving from modern times to “postmodernism”, perhaps shall we call it, and is one clear indicator just like that time in the world.

Three indicators were three clear signals of a change of times. One of the indicators today of the change of times and not time of changes is computer technology or the electronic data processing that has revolutionized the world. It has significantly changed social life in every domain from research, office management, private and families’ lives.

The significance of becoming aware of a change of time or a time of change is that in every point of view, we in Guatemala are facing this substantial change and is the nature of the life of all human beings.

After this first thought, I would like to point out the part of the substantive issues that you will be addressing which are the use of technology within the frame of the globalization and the significance of using globalization in these technologies for our countries: South-South cooperation. We, the planning bodies of our countries, therefore, must be aware of the challenge that the use of these technologies represents for the benefit of our countries.

The second thought that I’d like to share with you is about not the use of these technologies at the forefront of the globalization, which is a substantive topic that you will be addressing. I want to share the use of these forefront technologies within our countries and to point as an example the use of these modern technologies and the forefront of profound reforms that these technologies make possible in the case of Guatemala.

In Guatemala, we are building a participative democracy, which is a substantive topic of any representative democracy that fortunately has stabilized in the last fifteen or twenty years in our nation.  But the construction of a participative democracy is not possible without the use of these technologies. Please let me share with you what we are doing at this time in the discussion of the poverty reduction strategy.

Last year, in November of 2001, the Government of Guatemala, through the Cabinet of Ministers, approved the Poverty Reduction Strategy. Already in December, we started planning and right now, we just started the implementation of the submitting of this poverty reduction strategy for validation from the grassroots, at the municipalities’ level, as a preamble to move on to a more specific level: villages that are communities’ organizations. But in order to be able to implement these tasks we are resting strongly on tracing information about poverty at municipal level through the internet. For example, the level of poverty in each municipality, extreme poverty, the gap to take the people leaving in extreme poverty to poverty, the level of education in general by municipality, levels of health by municipality, public expenditure by sector or by municipality.

The purpose of using these technologies is to give access to the population to that kind of information. That population will become aware of the use of the information, so they can identify where the projects they choose should be implemented in order to fight their levels of poverty and fight their conditions and possibilities of health, education and public expenditure.

When I say where they are means where they can compare themselves with their average municipalities and departments and national average.

I close this second thought in the context of the macro agenda. I see that the use of technology is already very strongly discussed in the frame of the globalization to take our nations to the forefront of the fight for progress or for the poverty fight, but this topic, is not going to be a topic of discussion, I want to share another big dimension of the advantage of the use of the technology which is a clear signal that we are changing a time moving from a contemporary time to post modernism. We still haven’t found a name for this new time and the use of the technology within our countries is a tool for the construction and implementation of what we can really call a participatory democracy. Where it is not the election period or the reelection period, where people express their interests or preferences to every president, but is every year, every six months, every quarter, every month, and every single day that the citizens can decide on their destinies to stand programmes or projects that they can choose for the poverty reduction process.

I thank you very much for the opportunity to share these thoughts with you and with this, in addition, to welcome you, I declare this workshop officially inaugurated.

Thank you.

2. Opening remarks of Mr. Erick Constanza, National Coordinator of the National Science and Technology Secretariat (SENACYT) of the Republic of Guatemala

Good Morning:

We know and we are well aware that as the National Science and Technology Secretariat, to support the transfer of technology and the technological development of our nation is going to allow us reduce the digital divide. That is making the difference in other nations. I think that this type of meetings allows us to look at a technological globalized world and allow us to jump on that train, but we are a little backward. So, when we are talking about technology, we talk also about globalization, free trade agreements. But we haven’t even started to implement methodologies that make it possible for us to compete, to be competitive compared to other countries in that technological level.

We are making huge efforts, we are developing projects, and we are developing infrastructure that will allow us to fight against our digital divide that is marking the difference within all our nations. We have been making efforts with different governments agencies in order to implement infrastructure because we are creating and we already have enough tools that makes it possible for us to market ourselves and to look to the future, but we don’t have the infrastructure or installed capacity to be able to use it.

The huge efforts are going to be in the first place creating that infrastructure and not to centralize these technologies in the capital city. But rather than centralizing it, we need to focus on the country side, the rural area, in the departments, where it is really necessary, where technological infrastructure is truly necessary in order to be able to decentralize this digital divide and just like my country, in your countries can make the difference. This is the challenge of the developing countries. So on behalf of the National Science and Technology Council and Secretariat, I welcome you and I thank you for the opportunity for being here and thank the coordinators of the event, who have made a huge contribution and have put a hundred percent of their efforts. We, as a Secretariat, are here also to support these types of events.

Thank you very much.

3. Opening remarks of Mr. Achmad Rofi´ie, Director of Programme of NAM CSSTC.

Good morning Mr Miguel von Hoegen and Mr Erick Constanza.

Good morning ladies and gentlemen.

On behalf of the Board of Directors of NAM CSSTC I would like to make a short opening statement for this workshop.

The opening speeches stated by Mr. Miguel von Hoegen and Erick Constanza have pointed out some key points for us.  The first point is about modern technology, the second one is about a globalization context, and the third is concerning poverty eradication programmes and how to handle them within the different framework of social and development context. The other significant issue is the digital divide and is the most important key point that we have been conceiving through NAM CSSTC.

If I may go back to the history of the NAM CSSTC itself, I think we could refer to the Tenth Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement held in Jakarta, 1992, where there was an important warning stating that South-South cooperation is an important effort for promoting our own development among developing countries and for reducing the dependence on the North. There is also another very important element in accordance to establishing the new equilibrium of equitable international economic order. The second statement made during the Jakarta NAM Summit in 1992, specifically stated that through dialogue and cooperation we will project our movement as a vital, constructive and genuine interdependent component of the mainstream among developing nations. These are the two statements that are the base of the establishment of NAM CSSTC.

In the Eleventh NAM Summit held in Cartagena, Colombia, 1995, there were two important statements related with the protocol of Colombia. The first one is to take all necessary steps to promote South-South cooperation among members of the Movement and it is one of the fundamental objectives of the efforts in our states to have a more advanced collective self-sufficiency. The second statement of the protocol of Colombia is to move ahead with the studies and implementation of actions of the Movement in an effective way, so we can improve the social conditions of our people.

Now we can view some results of the last Summit in Durban, South Africa, in 1998. There is a final document which partly, but significantly, emphasizing on poverty eradication efforts. There are three main issues. The first one recognizes the need of poverty eradication policies and programmes. They should be effective and use appropriate methodologies with an objective vision to accomplish an effective cooperation within and among our countries.

The second is within the context of all our actions for eradication of poverty. Special attention should be given to the multidimensional nature of poverty, to the national and international favor conditions, and education policies that are very important for this eradication. Some of those issues had been expressed by Mr. von Hoegen in his statement.

And the third one, in addition to its role of eradication of poverty, this programme can be also or could be effective to the social and human developing process in the empowerment of women and social justice tasks. These three documents are now becoming the basis that has led to the establishment of the centre for technical cooperation among developing countries. NAM CSSTC was officially established in 1995 during the Eleventh NAM Summit in Cartagena, Colombia.

Now if we speak about this workshop in Guatemala, this is also part of the programme of activities that have been planned since last year which is supported by the Government of Indonesia and technically done by the Board of Directors of NAM CSSTC. There are very important things that should be considered. The first one is that NAM CSSTC is very concerned with ICT development. Why? As already stated by SEGEPLAN and CONCYT/SENACYT as well, it is because we are now facing, whether you like it or not, the globalization process and the technology is a vital part of that system. Within the development of the ICT itself and the digital divide phenomenon, there is an elite group. That is why we have a serries of selective activities to facilitate the development of ICT for the developing countries, especially for NAM member countries.

During the year 2001, we organized two expert group meetings in which SEGEPLAN official attended to representing Guatemala. The first meeting was on the “Establishment of NAM CSSTC Networking System with NAM member countries”. In the meeting the experts highlighted the importance of the ICT development and how to find the appropriate ways to measure and reduce the digital divide among NAM member countries. We had participants from Brunei, Ghana, Guatemala, Indonesia, Malaysia, Namibia, Sri Lanka, Syria, Thailand, Uzbekistan and Venezuela. There were several experts who participated in this meeting and there were several meaningful inputs that were considered important to follow up. First, it is the preparation of the first surveys in NAM member countries on E-Readiness. We have developed and improved our website now as a very strong recommendation too. Not all is ready, but we have started to publish information in Spanish because we are aware that the Spanish speaking people living in Latin America and the Caribbean are very important for us.

We are now promoting the participation of NAM member countries to join our Networking System. And we are considering the establishment of NAM CSSTC E-Task Force in cooperation with other organizations or groups concerned.

Based on the first meeting’s outputs, we developed the ideas and we had another expert group meeting: “Establishing electronic linkages among NAM member countries through NAM CSSTC”. This is a tactical follow up from the previous meeting that was held in August 2001, in Jakarta. We had there the participation of countries like Burkina Faso, Burundi, Brunei, Guatemala, Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mali, Nigeria, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Surinam, Thailand and Uganda. More people came to discuss this important issue and more people expressing the need to address the digital divide. Some of this came up with the need to have training. Some of the participants came up with the need of technical assistance among ourselves, because we see that everything that there is in a system always come from the developed countries. In the meantime we have so many experts so many competent technicians coming from our developing countries. So, why don’t we develop the idea of having training or technical assistance among ourselves and we can cooperate with the experts. I mean, from other countries within the NAM countries.

One of the main objectives is the preparation of an expert database and its development. We have now established the development of a data list of experts with expertise in different sectors, including the ICT of course.

We also are thinking of the process of E-Leadership. We know that as long as we don’t have E-Leadership, the path will be very difficult to develop and improve the ICT in the country. The E-Leadership concept must be the recognition of the importance of the ICT development in our countries besides the connectivity issue, so we can connect each other in an electronic way since it is faster and effective. The first thing that should be considered is the infrastructure of development, as we have discussed in our meeting in South Africa. And now, we are thinking how to decide on the training programmes or technical assistance programmes to be developed among African countries within the NAM programmes.

The publication of the Manual on E-Readiness is another important aspect. This manual is already published and distributed in English, but SEGEPLAN, through Mr. René Lavidalie, now has succeeded translating the Manual on E-Readiness in Spanish and will be distributed to you. So you can see that both Manuals on E-Readiness, in Spanish and English versions, are available now.  

NAM CSSTC in association with SEGEPLAN and CONCYT/SENACYT and other member countries, are now looking to have cooperation with the NAM member countries and other institutions that are not part of NAM, since we should be active in what we are looking for, especially on addressing that digital divide issue. This thing has been part of our main concerns, because the ICT development must be focused as our future development. Through ICT development we can go further to the international trading system, with equal cooperation opportunities with developed countries. This is also part of our concerns within the Latin America and the Caribbean region.

We have experienced the participation of Latin America and the Caribbean countries in our past programmes. Probably is very difficult and relatively far away to get Jakarta or Asia. But now we are trying to close this gap through this meeting where we have a bilingual discussion, so this is a good way to start and we are going to proceed other meetings like this with other languages in order to gradually increase our networking capacity.

We hope that this meeting will give us concrete results to be followed up because what we have done so far is not only to write the papers, put them in a file and store them, No! What we are looking for is to have a technical follow up after this meeting. We hope to receive concrete ideas we can implement after this meeting

Again I would like to thank Mr. Miguel von Hoegen of SEGEPLAN, Mr. Erick Constanza of CONCYT/SENACYT and all national and international participants for their cooperation, being sure that this workshop will be very useful for all of us, especially for our countries and especially for Latin America and the Caribbean Region.

 Thank you.

4. Statement of Mr. Omar Halim, Executive Director of NAM CSSTC

Thank you very much. I wish I can give a short statement to you in Spanish, but my Spanish is too poor to feel confidence, so I will use English.

Let me take about fifteen minutes of your time to impart to you what we, NAM CSSTC wish to share. We, as members of the developing World of the South, are very concerned about the prospect of developing countries and their role in the world of the future.

We are concerned not only in the present moment that the developed countries are much more advanced in economic terms, technological terms, military terms as well as politics. We developing countries, we are preoccupied with all the problems in our respective countries, regions and sub-regions. But many of us not see beyond our frontiers and see what is happening here on developing countries. I had lived in United States for 37 years. I worked for UN for 28 years. I served in peace keeping missions of UN in a lot of countries, in Africa (Somalia, Namibia) and in the Middle East (Lebanon). I was sent as special representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations to Armenia, to deal with an internal country conflict. I was also sent to Cameroon and Nigeria to solve problems there based in inter-country conflicts. What we are really dealing with is a very serious prospect that the developing countries are not only left behind now, but will be left behind more and more in the future.

We know that in terms of economic and military positions, we are so much dominated by the developed countries. When I see these things is not that I am anti developed countries, but I think we, developing countries, should realize what our position is and what our prospect is. The developed countries have pushed very much in the question of globalization. That means opening up all the borders and we have to open the import gates for their products to come in. And of course, we have the opportunity to export products we can produce more efficiently than them. But as you know, even the developed countries are not fully consistent with the old precepts. In many cases, we find that developed countries and this includes Europe, Japan and the United States, had not fully opened their frontiers or have replaced with other suppliers the products we can export to them or replaced the products we can produce.

Recently, United States has provided subventions to agriculture. They are relatively efficient in agriculture but they put more subventions to their farmers, which mean that all our products will be much less competitive. The European Union has not ruled the agriculture barriers with the reason that they are in political opposition domestically and they do so. The same happened in Japan. The problem is that we, developing countries, are facing basically an unequal and unfair balance prospect where we are supposed to open our markets, but they don’t open their markets as we do, and besides that, we go beyond trade.

What it means is that the globalization is good in principle because we have very good examples. China in 1978, until that time they had decided to exclude themselves from the world. They were very out taken in economic terms. But after 1978 they decided to open out their frontiers. We will look at what is happening now to China. They have grown enormous. Maybe 9% or 11% per year on a relative basis and is expected to continue growing in the future.

But not all the developing countries are like China, because many of us are not prepared. Because many of us don’t have the capability to compete in the world markets if barriers were all eliminated and that is the problem for many of us. So, the first thing that we have to do is to develop the conditions for developing countries to be able to face the competition which is required for the globalization process. That means we have to do substantial reforms, political reforms, economic reforms, judicial or justice reforms so that the economies, the political systems will not just depend in only one individual or one group of individuals. We have to grow within each country; we have to grow providing equal opportunities for everyone in political and economic spheres.

So this is why the reform is so important for us, but look at our own countries and I am not pointing at any individual country. Our leaders are not very willing to see the future, even in my own country. We have a much more democratic system now, but our leader is politically only looking at the next election. But not looking upon that, then they will see the picture which I am trying to provide to you.

What is in the future for us? We are not only, as I said, economically, politically and militarily left behind. There is something which we do not globally or normally remember: technology. If we look at the literature, you will find that the development of tremendous advances had took place in the developed countries. You have heard about cloning. It is a great advance in the biotechnology. What it means is that we will be able to duplicate exactly Omar Halim in the future. Because they have already understood what it means, what are the basic elements of our bodies, they can produce new bodies. But what they have not been able to do is to produce intelligence and emotions, but they are pursuing very well with regard to the field of computer, artificial intelligence. In the future  and not so far from now, we will be able to do that and once they are able to understand why we are all so intelligent and why we also had the emotions we have, then we will be able to produce completely new human beings. So what is going to happen to us at that time? They are not going to produce human beings like us, but they will be producing human beings more to what they feel and like and these are our problems: the exclusion of the developing world, the people from the developing world at that time.

Of course we can see that this is going to happen, maybe one hundred years from now. We have long gone, but we have to look to the future; we have to start something which will prevent that. Ladies and gentleman, the only way we can try to catch up developed countries is through economic and social development. One way to try to force that economic and social development is to advance across bio technology, computer, quantum physics, information technology and others. What it means is that we have to be focused in specific areas in order to be able to catch up with them. And this has happened also.

Singapore fifty years ago was just like any other developing country, but look at where they are now. Their income capitals are now about twenty four or twenty six thousand dollars per year, an amount that Europe can have, not far from United States and if you talk about computers, they are producing certain chips, but they are producing these chips which are totally recognized by countries like United States and are supposed to be one of the best. They are not stopping in information technology; they are going to bio molecular. The same happened in Asia, like Thailand. Of course we have heard about Korea and Taiwan and these are countries which have been growing at a very rapid rate. Korea, as you know, has been accepted by the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation Development), the rich men club. Why? That is because their biotechnology and other criteria are compared to the wished states of technology. So if these countries can do it, why can’t the rest of us. That is because we have not done the same things.

The reason why NAM CSSTC is very interested in this ICT area is exactly this. We hope and I understand that you are a focal point within your respective countries. You can try to stimulate the interest and with results and concrete efforts within your countries, try to involve and try to catch up with regard to ICT. But you are not alone; there are other people also within other fields who should also do the same.

I am very happy on behalf of the Board of Directors of NAM CSSTC, that we organized this meeting together with the government of Guatemala, CONCYT/SENACYT and SEGEPLAN in particular.

For this meeting in Latin America and the Caribbean region, all countries are far away from our headquarters in Jakarta, but it is one of our distance fathers. In terms of ways of thinking we are not so very far. I have a Latin American wife, so Latin America is not strange to me and it is always close to my heart. We hope that you go back to your respective countries and think about how to use the areas of expertise that you have in order to meet your respective countries focus on that area. If it can not be done nationally, it could be done sub-regionally: and if it could not be done sub-regionally it could be done regionally; and if it is not possible then it could be done globally. We are ready and able to assist you as much as we can because the purpose of this is to help to achieve as much as we can to the development of the developing countries, so that we will not be excluded of the rest of the world in the future.

Lastly I would like to thank the government of Guatemala for willing to work with us. To find, as a first step, in the future much more meaningful impacts and more cooperation as we can, in which we can go to a different level.

We are supporting your efforts to develop your ICT at individual or regional levels. We also hope that technical regional cooperation to be expanded to the international area. We have one hundred and fourteen (114) developing countries in the Non Aligned Movement (NAM) and we should make this movement to be a meaningful concept because without a meaningful concept, then we are lost as we were in the past.

Thank you very much.

B. BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE OF THE WORKSHOP 

Background and Purpose of the workshop, presented by Mr. Achmad Rofi´ie, Director of Programme of NAM CSSTC

The workshop background was explained in a structured way to highlight its importance in Latin America and the Caribbean Region. The purpose of the workshop was explained briefly to later summarize the follow up actions and issues to be discussed by the participants.

From March 27^th and 28^th 2001, NAM CSSTC organized an expert group meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia, on the “Establishment of NAM CSSTC Networking System with NAM Member Countries”.

The first issue was to highlight the importance to reduce the digital divide problem in NAM member countries. The second issue was to discuss the need to make an E-Readiness survey or study in NAM member countries. Countries from different continents and regions of the world expressed their need to make such kind of study or survey, especially Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean and some countries of the Asia continent. The third key issue was the improvement of the NAM CSSTC website, with contents in different languages (English, Spanish and French). The information within the website is intended to be important for NAM member countries and for all interested parties in a particular subject. In the website, the results of all the activities, seminars, meetings and workshops will be published. The last important issue was the promotion in participating in NAM CSSTC networking system. Success stories of some NAM member countries will be published, including those related to ICT development and the immediate actions to be taken by each country in that particular sector. There is a document related to the first meeting. The establishment of regional relationships or cooperation programmes between developing countries was another important issue discussed and all related efforts to achieve results and concrete actions at regional level.

In August 2001, a second expert group meeting was again organized in Jakarta, Indonesia, as a follow up of the last meeting on the “Establishing Electronic Linkages within NAM Member Countries through NAM CSSTC”.

A lot of electronic linkages are already established with NAM member countries, but still a lot of works to do. Some success and failure stories can be told so far, but the focal points in each country are key pieces of the puzzle to achieve the appropriate levels of success, depending on each country’s needs. An expert database in different development issues will be established, including of course those in the ICT sector.  A manual to support awareness on the importance to reduce the digital divide was published and distributed. The E-Readiness manuals (in different levels) and an ICT history and development manual was published and distributed. These manuals are now also available in Spanish and in printed or CD-ROM versions.

In 2002 in Antigua, Guatemala, the workshop on “E-Readiness in Latin America and the Caribbean Region” was organized. A lot of inputs from this region are expected as this is a follow-up meeting of the previous meetings mentioned earlier. There are two main issues that must be discussed in the workshop. The first one is related to the E-Readiness concept and its impact in Latin America and the Caribbean Region. The second important issue is related with connectivity. Hopefully the sessions will enrich further discussions. The objective is to establish a regional network and future cooperation among NAM member countries in the region. Even in this workshop, the World Bank cooperation seems quite interesting for the region.

During the workshop, the main agenda will focus on two key issues: First, the country presentations on local capacities regarding ICT issues and the second, the follow-up agenda of the discussions in order to obtain real benefits from this workshop and the previous ones. We expect the recommendations in where NAM CSST can help NAM member countries to make a work plan or programme of activities in order to achieve more cooperation among NAM countries, especially among the region. This kind of cooperation can be bilateral or regional, but the main objective is to achieve ICT development. It is not only for NAM member countries, but for any developing country or party interested in participating and contributing to this process to achieve sustainable development of their countries and their region. Factually the globalization process involves everyone and no one can be excluded.

To some extent NAM CSSTC can help to facilitate the interaction and cooperation among developing countries, especially NAM member countries. To establish and extend electronic linkages with NAM member countries is also important. Assessment in how to strengthen ICT infrastructure, how to start an E-Readiness study (using the manuals) and the most important, follow-up actions in some countries are also some of the issues in where NAM CSSTC may facilitate.

NAM CSSTC promotes the ICT development of NAM member countries and one of its main objectives is to reduce the digital divide between developing countries and developed countries. But the cooperation among countries is an important element in order to achieve easier and faster results. ICT is a tool that allows sustainable development in our countries and is also a weapon to fight against poverty reduction in the world.

The workshop on “E-Readiness in Latin America and the Caribbean Region” is a two day activity. In the first day, the country reports and papers will be presented by the international participants. In the second day, a press conference at the National Palace in Guatemala City will be the first activity. Then, back in Antigua, the country report presentations will continue to finish the workshop with a group discussion and recommendations period by all the participants.

Thank you very much.