By IPS Correspondents
MONTEVIDEO, Jun 3 2003 (IPS)

The state, civil society and the private sector must work together to foment more widespread use of the latest information technologies, which are vital for the economic and social development of all countries, say experts from the sector.

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), to take place Dec. 10-12 in Geneva, will have to achieve coordination among these three sectors, which need not be in conflict, says Richard Fuchs, director of the information and communication technologies division at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).

In the preparatory meetings for the WSIS, organised by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and sponsored by the United Nations, there has been a clash between the vision of new technologies at the service of business and that of new technologies to benefit the world’s poor populations.

But Fuchs said during a recent visit to the Latin American and Caribbean regional office of the IDRC in Montevideo that a balance can be achieved between these two approaches. And he stressed that civil society and the state cannot succeed without the private sector.

”Civil society can bring these technologies to people with problems such as education and low income. But civil society cannot do that without contact with the social world, which includes the state, the private sector and international organisations,” he explained.

Furthermore, ”the role of the state is to embrace civil society and understand that what it does is create skills that create opportunities for the private sector – and revenues for the state.”

The Canadian parliament created the IDRC in 1970 to finance scientific research that would contribute to development in the world’s poor regions, primarily Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Representatives of government, business, non-governmental organisations and mass communications will gather for the WSIS in December to discuss ways to coordinate policies in order to bridge the ”digital divide”, in other words, the disadvantage that the developing South suffers with respect to the industrialised North when it comes to information and communication technologies (ICT).

The ITU estimates there are 500 million Internet users worldwide, but 80 percent are in industrialised countries. Just one of every 50 inhabitants of the developing South has access to the world wide web. In the North, that ratio is two of five.

The WSIS also aims to help ICT-related industries, which have excess production capacity in the countries of the North, so that they can develop channels to supply the markets of the South.

But civil society is demanding that the summit take action on other issues, such as promoting cultural and linguistic diversity, improved content and development of communications media, democracy, equality of opportunity and freedom of expression.

The second phase of the WSIS, intended as a follow-up of the plans implemented in the first phase, is scheduled to begin with another summit in Tunis, Nov. 16-18, 2005.

The Geneva Summit ”is just another step in the process by which these technologies become appropriate in development,” Fuchs said in a conversation with IPS.

The expert was in Montevideo to take part in meetings involving the Institute for Connectivity in the Americas (ICA), promoted by the IDRC and other Canadian agencies, to foment policies for the development of information technologies in the region.

Ben Petrazzini, chief programme specialist at ICA, noted that the principal obstacle for making information technologies more widely available in the developing South is not economic limitations but rather the mentality of the political elite.

”There is an inability amongst the governing elite to recognise the enormous potential of technology and to move beyond the ‘status quo’. Many poor countries are making it very difficult to make the transition from the traditional system to a new, more competitive system,” said Petrazzini.

The costs of technology and infrastructure ”are falling dramatically,” he noted in a conversation with IPS.

”It is no longer a matter of sacrificing, for example, an education budget in order to purchase computers. Computers would cost about the same as savings from efficient management of the paperwork of the educational system,” said Petrazzini.

According to the experts, governments should work together to create stable economic conditions and legal frameworks favourable to ICT industry activity.

Fuchs stressed, ”We have to help them (governments) to learn that technologies make other activities more productive and less expensive.”

”We have found through our work in very poor countries in Africa that if we are able to get the political elite interested in these technologies, at the same time as we are animating the interest of civil society organisations, the actual policies developed will benefit the poor,” he said.

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