Chile's IT industry association Acti has called on the government to upgrade its digital program Estrategia Digital to the category of ministry, in order to speed up the adoption of ICT in the country, Acti president Miguel Pérez said during his presentation at Chile's national summit for digital development, taking place Tuesday.

The Chilean government initiated efforts to boost ICT access in the 1990s with the creation of several workgroups focused in this area. In 2000, the government created the modernization committee, which was replaced by Grupo Acción Digital - the Digital Agenda program - which since 2006 has been called Estrategia Digital.

"We would like this program to have a category of ministry, just because it is that important. There are several countries that have done it, and such an act will only make all of our efforts come to a good end faster. Something like this will help us to pick up the pace [in ICT adoption]," Pérez told BNamericas.

Acti is also working on a document that includes the industry's demands for the presidential candidates.

Based on World Economic Forum standards, which categorize economies into natural resources, efficient and innovation markets, Pérez said Chile is in the efficient group, but that in order to join the innovation group it is important to create a value added economy.

"Innovating in ICT is a good alternative [to become a value added economy]. It's not the only one, but it would certainly allow us to leapfrog. This is not an easy task, but ICT is required to move to a higher value added economy," he said, mentioning that one of the efforts made in this aspect was the promotion of Chile as an IT services offshoring cluster.

Revenues from offshoring services reached US$843mn in 2008, and this is expected to increase to US$1bn in 2010, generating some 35,000 jobs.

Source:

http://member.bnamericas.com/news/technology/Acti_asks_government_to_create_ICT_ministry