National Strategies to Harness Information Technology: Seeking Transformation in Singapore, Finland, the Philippines, and South Africa

257 Pages·2012·3.45 MB·English

by  Nagy K. Hanna (auth.)

Innovation, Technology, and Knowledge
Management
Series Editor
Elias G. Carayannis, George Washington University, Washington D.C., USA
For further volumes:
http://www.springer.com/series/8124

Nagy K. Hanna Peter T. Knight
●
Editors
National Strategies
to Harness Information
Technology
Seeking Transformation in Singapore,
Finland, the Philippines, and South Africa
Editors
Nagy K. Hanna Peter T. Knight
Bethesda, MD, USA Arlington, VA, USA
[email protected] [email protected]
ISBN 978-1-4614-2085-9 e-ISBN 978-1-4614-2086-6
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-2086-6
Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011942514
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Preface
This book aims to capture the experiences of countries in their journey toward
e-transformation, and the strategic issues and choices they faced along their journey.
From our own practice and observation of the aspirations and challenges of devel-
oping countries, we believe there are a lot of lessons to learn from sharing these
experiences. They transcend the formal descriptions of national information and
communications technologies (ICT) strategies. We attempt to capture the dynamics
of formulating and implementing a strategy over a long time horizon, and to exam-
ine how some countries have learned to harness the ICT revolution, while others
have been slow to adapt to a fast changing global economy.
As a new fi eld of development, with poorly understood strategic implications for
countries and institutions, ICT-enabled development raises many issues for policy
makers and researchers alike. Best practices are yet to be established or codifi ed,
failures not fully recognized or examined, and expectations far exceed results on the
ground. Some speak of “next practices,” even before we have learned what are the
best practices today, or what worked and what did not, and why, so we can confi -
dently and reliably embark on developing next practices. We consistently asked
ourselves and our coauthors: Why did some countries succeed in transforming their
economies and enhancing their global competitiveness, with the help of ICT, while
for others, ICT made no difference, even though almost all countries have expressed
similar aspirations about ICT and formally adopted national ICT plans? What factors
made the ultimate difference in results?
Given the high risks of failures of ICT investments for transforming business,
and even more in transforming government, should countries adopt a venture capital
approach where the high payoffs of few ICT investments would outweigh the failures
of many? Are there strategies and approaches that can reduce these risks while
maximizing the transformational impacts of ICT?
In a similar vein, can we learn from failures, at least as much as from successes?
Even within the same country, there are examples of successes and failures in effect-
ing transformation in different regions and sectors. For example, both South Africa
and the Philippines have had a mixed record, in contrast with their aspirations about
the information revolution and bridging the digital and income divides. Were the
failures to meet expectations due to design or implementation factors? Were these
aspirations unrealistic in view of broader political and policy constraints? Conversely,
v
vi Preface
how did Singapore and Finland make such dramatic progress in transforming their
economies, despite diffi cult initial country conditions and very different political
systems? We are obviously not short on questions in this fi eld. Countries are in search
of ways to harness this technological revolution in all sectors and at all levels.
When it came to applying ICT, most aid agencies have focused on pilots and
micro-interventions, or components of investment in other sectors. Apart from
UNDP-funded technical assistance to draft a fi rst wave of national ICT strategies
and a few studies done by the World Bank, very little has been done to help coun-
tries manage this transformation at the national or cross-sectoral levels, or to put
micro-interventions in the context of national e-transformation strategies. Operating
at the pilot or enclave project level may have its merits in terms of selecting the “low
hanging fruits,” lowering risks by focusing on “privileged particles of development,”
and/or avoiding complex policy and coordination issues and sustainability chal-
lenges. But in doing so, international development agencies may have avoided entry
at the strategic and transformational levels, missed on learning about the most chal-
lenging tasks facing their clients, and failed them in building local capacity for ICT
integration and coordination at the national or ecosystem level.
In this book, our focus is at the national level of e-transformation. Country cases
attempt to cover all components of e-transformation: polices, institutions, human
resources, communications infrastructure, ICT industry, the vast array of possible
ICT applications in public and private sectors, and the synergies and interdependen-
cies among these components. These case studies also refl ect the hard choices and
tradeoffs that must be made in designing and implementing e-development within
real-life human, fi nancial, and institutional constraints. They attempt to capture the
gap between blueprint design and implementation, and the instruments used to meet
implementation challenges.
We drew on the in-depth observation of the authors who have been actors or
participant-observers of the country they are reporting on. That gives these authors
a position or perspective that can capture the process of formulating and implement-
ing e-strategies and appreciate the roles of various stakeholders and the underlying
forces and dynamics that shape both design and implementation. All cases follow a
common conceptual framework, to facilitate cross-country comparisons of e-strategy
design and implementation. Yet, the story is told in ways that emphasize the unique
features of each county’s conditions and journey.
Initially, we thought of having many country case studies, briefl y told. But as the
drafts emerged, it became clear that the limits on the length of each case would
deprive the readers of some interesting innovations and concrete examples of the
initiatives taken, or the long-term perspective taken by some countries over a series
of strategies, or the interdependencies among various elements of e-transformation.
Hence, we decided to have two companion books, each focusing on four countries
and a comparative analysis, done in more depth than would have been possible in
one volume. This is the second of the two books. It covers Singapore, Finland,
South Africa, and the Philippines, and compares their characteristics along key
design and implementation parameters. A companion book covered Brazil, China,
Canada, and Sri Lanka (Hanna and Knight 2011). We hope more cases will be
Preface vii
developed and more comparative studies will be done and published as the list of
such country cases becomes longer, and country experiences get better documented
and analyzed.
We owe many colleagues special thanks for helping us on our own journey in
coauthoring and coediting this book. Jeannie Chua contributed the Singapore country
case. Jorma Routti coauthored the Finland case with Peter Knight. Lucienne
Abrahams and Arthur Goldstuck collaborated on the South Africa case, while
Sherwin Ona and Estafenie Ulit coauthored the Philippines case with Nagy Hanna.
We also acknowledge the valuable comments we received from: Sandor Boyson,
Research Professor, Robert H. Smith Business School, University of Maryland;
Irfan Haque, Special Advisor on Financing for Development, South Centre, Geneva;
J.P. Auffret, Managing Director, Center for Advanced Technology Strategy. We also
benefi tted from generous comments of our colleagues at the World Bank: Shahid
Yusuf, Randeep Sudan, and Samia Melhem. Finally, we must acknowledge the
many policy makers and innovators, in part cited in the publications in the four
selected country cases, as they led their countries’ e-transformation.
Bethesda, MD, USA Nagy K. Hanna
Arlington, VA, USA Peter T. Knight
Reference
Nagy K. Hanna and Peter T. Knight (eds.) 2011. Seeking Transformation through Information
Technology: Strategies for Brazil, China, Canada and Sri Lanka . New York: Springer.

Contents
1 Why National e-Transformation Strategies? ......................................... 1
Nagy K. Hanna
2 The e-Transformation Journey of Singapore ........................................ 41
Jeannie Chua
3 Information Society and Consensus Formation in Finland ................. 77
Peter T. Knight and Jorma Routti
4 A Decade of e-Development in South Africa:
Suffi cient for a “Services (R)evolution”? ............................................... 107
Lucienne Abrahams and Arthur Goldstuck
5 The Philippines: The Quest for Genuine e-Development ..................... 153
Sherwin E. Ona, Estefanie Ulit, and Nagy K. Hanna
6 Comparative Experience and Lessons in e-Transformation ................ 195
Nagy K. Hanna and Peter T. Knight
Index ................................................................................................................ 233
ix