Volume 15, No. 1, April 2005
An Industry Perspective
Peter Moore
Public Sector, Microsoft Asia, Singapore
It's been a little more than 20 years since the personal computer was invented, and even less since technology became commonplace. Now, digital tools are nearly ubiquitous in business and education. In developed countries, students can barely imagine studying without the Internet; many workers couldn't do their jobs without e-mail, and cell phones have surpassed conventional telephony.
In Asia, with a tapestry of cultures in various stages of economic development, this is a time of rapid and dramatic change, and the impact of technology such as the PC - on government, on education, and on the economy in general - is just beginning to play out. How can government agencies, legislators and decision-makers make the most of the technology available today? What role do they play, and what role does the private sector play in making that happen? What are the public's expectations of having visibility into the process moving forward?
As Asia soars into the next century, corporations and governments alike are searching for the right way to come together and take advantage of technology to improve the lives of citizens through better delivery of services, more efficiency in government, and ultimately, enhanced economic competitiveness for countries. Finding the right way to do this for each unique industry, region and economy in Asia will be a key factor in enabling everyone to take advantage of the huge economic opportunities awaiting the Asia-Pacific region in the 21st century.
It's widely agreed among both public and private sector groups that technology is one of the key elements at the heart of the drive to build a more competitive Asia. The intelligent deployment and use of technology is a key ingredient to help Asian authorities deliver better, more efficient public services and transform the relationship between citizens, businesses and government. Microsoft, along with many other companies and partners in the IT industry are deeply committed and engaged to address these challenges, working in partnership with governments all over the world to develop programs and initiatives that provide local-language software, low-cost PCs, technology education, worker training and other products and services that help as many people as possible take part in the information economy.
In thinking about how it can contribute to the Asia region and to other developing markets, Microsoft is motivated by a passion for technology that drives it to work closely with governments around the globe - progressing the discussion and thinking, advancing technology-policy issues, and providing technology solutions that address the unique challenges that legislators, educators and other organizations face. Through this broad network of public/ private partnerships, workers and citizens across the globe are finding they can now participate in the digital age.
As part of this effort, late last year Microsoft hosted one of the company's Government Leaders Forums (GLF) in Singapore. Government Leaders Forums are events that bring together elected government officials and officers from around the globe, with the goal of driving discussion on how the private sector can work in cooperation with local, regional and central authorities to exchange experiences and best practices related to good governance, socio-economic development, health care and education, as well as to discuss the roles that information and communication technologies (ICT) play in achieving success in these areas.
At GLF Asia, wide-ranging perspectives were exchanged on a variety of issues, such as building a favourable environment for new job creation, boosting productivity, modernizing public services, and ensuring all citizens are able to participate fully in the information society. The conference was divided into three themes: socio-economic development, governance, and education.
In all three areas, technology acts as a key enabler to help individuals, businesses, governments and communities realize their potential. Microsoft believes that the ICT revolution is one of the single biggest drivers of economic growth and prosperity that has ever been witnessed and has become a fundamental component of economic competitiveness in the recent times. Tapping into that force is one of the biggest opportunities for the Asia region today.
The GLF Asia summit was an ideal opportunity to sit down with leaders from across the Asia-Pacific region, and really listen, so Microsoft and others in the technology industry can understand and do their part to better help the region succeed. The following is a brief summary of the conference's key findings.
Socio-economic Development
There is a very important transformation going on across the world from a goods economy to a knowledge economy. This is a complex, evolutionary process, with many fundamental changes, and in Asia today, different countries are at different stages of the transition. Some are moving quickly into a knowledge economy, while others might be decades away, with economies based on agriculture and manufacturing - industries that also benefit immensely from improved technology infrastructure and services.
While technology is a key element in making a region more competitive, it's not a magic wand. Technology can help transform the economy, but it also transforms many of the issues that government and companies must deal with. As a result, governments and corporations must strike a realistic balance in understanding what technology can and cannot do, and how they must change to provide the technology and services that people actually want and need in each country. The needs of consumers in developed countries will be different to the needs of consumers in developing countries.
The gap between developed and developing is a huge issue for Asia. There are digital divides in several directions. There are divides between Asia's leading economic areas - Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore - those that are quickly developing, such as India and China, and those that are moving ahead, but less quickly, such as Cambodia or Laos. On top of that, there are huge differences between urban and rural areas in each of these countries.
How do companies and government leaders navigate this tricky landscape, and guide each country through its transition into the modern economy? How should citizens be educated? What role does the private sector now play in that kind of an economic environment? And, specifically for people at Microsoft and other companies building the technology - what role do software and technology play in the development of an economy? The industry needs to continue to examine exactly how it is that Microsoft and companies like it can play a role in supporting the development of local economies and regions.
Microsoft believes this responsibility is shared among both the public and private sector. While the public sector focuses on introducing and implementing the right legislative frameworks - those that encourage innovation, create better and more inclusive employment practices, and provide incentives to spur economic growth - the private sector can help create the tools and technologies needed to ensure those frameworks make a difference. There are almost limitless opportunities in the Asia region for technology to have an impact - whether it's a physician in Fiji sending X-rays to a radiologist in Hong Kong or a farmer in rural China ordering tools from a community Internet kiosk - but the challenge is to turn those opportunities into realities.
Accordingly, the GLF participants spent a great deal of time looking at some of the barriers to making those realities happen. One of the key issues for the Asia Pacific region is the policy and regulatory barriers which need to grow and adapt to more closely reflect the realities of the new economy. In developing countries, there is even more uncertainty about how the law should be written and applied to technology and other forms of intellectual property.
Also, infrastructure is a barrier to development in many parts of Asia. In some places, the infrastructure needed is access to PCs, the Internet and other technologies. In other parts of Asia, simply accessing electricity might be an issue. There are also the shared issues of cyber security, physical security and information security, as with any region.
Throughout the conference, whenever there was a discussion of barriers, the solution involved one word -
partnership. There are many participants in any industry, a rich mix of players, and partnerships are very important. This is especially true when it comes to technology.
If these economies and the industry that supports them are to succeed and grow, all of the different partners must play their roles. Government must do its part to create laws, policies and processes that allow technology to create the efficiencies they are after. It doesn't do much good to implement online government services, for example, if digital signatures are not legally binding in the country. And for its part, the technology industry should spend a lot of time listening, and then working to respond according to the express needs of the people in each country - the people who really know best.
Governance
Information technology by itself doesn't do very much. What gives IT its power is its capacity to allow for new ways of working, new specialties, a new division of labor, new organizations, new industries. With these kinds of major economic shifts, there is a very important need to govern, to resolve the issues and barriers created by such a massive change, so people can move on to begin creating value and efficiency.
Those in the public sector are challenged here again with the issue of balance. Officials must balance benefits of any opportunity with the human values of fairness and equity. They must resolve the relationship between individual rights, responsibilities and freedoms with the best interests of their communities and nations. As a result, the changes that information technology is bringing to the world are creating different and more challenging problems of governance.
As one moves forward, policy-makers, legislators, oversight groups and the public at large are becoming - and must become - more directly engaged in how technology changes jobs, processes, governments and cultures. The organizational change issues should not be left to the technology staff and the consultants alone. Officials must understand what major shifts in processes, policies and practices need to take place to be successful.
To do this, there needs to be engagement between government policy makers and IT executives at the policy level that has not always been there before. Again, this is an issue of public and private organizations working together in partnership to make the right decisions that have real impact on an evolving economy. If you're only looking for enough pluses and enough minuses to balance the budget, those opportunities will be missed.
Organizational issues such as staffing, who reports to whom, what skills are necessary, are critical. On the technology community side, the role of the Chief Information Officers in more developed Asian countries should continue to evolve, giving them more input and control over the IT element of the budgeting process, the staffing process and other business functions. This issue will be increasingly important as decisions are made on technology standards and investments.
Officials across Asia must also find ways to govern technology problems that go well beyond their borders. Global issues, such as privacy, security, SPAM, and trusted computing, came up throughout the GLF forum. Again, partnership with industry will go a long way toward abating these problems.
Leaders across Asia must deal with all of these issues while at the same time bringing the public along and listening to their opinions and needs. Here again is a difficult balancing act that leaders everywhere face almost all the time - balancing the needs of the public as expressed by citizens, while at the same time making decisions, making progress and getting action even in the face of opposition. In Asia, public and private sector leaders alike must make these decisions to help move the economies forward, even as the pace of innovation and growth continue to accelerate.
Education
The question of education is clearly central to how well the Asia-Pacific region is able to respond to its 21st century opportunities. How can these countries retrain their current work forces to be as productive as possible, to have the 21st century skills - digital and information literacy skills - that they need to be competitive both today and in the future? How do they transform their educational institutions at the K-12 or university level, so that countries can have as much opportunity as possible to be competitive? And what role can the private sector, specifically technology companies, play in helping to enable this transformation?
The diversity of Asia as a whole is staggering. There are 17,000 islands in Archipelago, Indonesia, and several thousands in the Philippines. There are rural areas in China that have no computers at all. Then there are the tallest and most densely populated cities in the world. You have a city like Singapore or a country like Japan or Thailand, which have made huge investments in creating a skilled, information-literate work force. You have cultural phenomena spreading technology everywhere. This huge spectrum of Asian realities is why it's so important for companies to listen to local leaders and communities wherever they are. Every situation has unique needs that must be understood before they can be addressed.
When it comes to educating the vast and diverse populations of Asian nations, the first issue that comes to mind is access, the digital divides discussed earlier. And this issue is real. But beyond access, it's really about educating, changing behavior and encouraging adoption of technology - it's about creating a modern, skilled work force. Some Asian countries are well ahead of the curve, and some have some catching up to do.
One of the most vivid lessons in technology education at the GLF Asia forum was provided by the Singapore Crescent Girls School, which has made significant strides in e-Learning as part of Microsoft's
Backpack .NET program, an education-technology program administered by the Singapore Ministry of Education with the support of Microsoft Singapore. Through this program, instead of textbooks, binders and mounds of paper, the Crescent School's curriculum is delivered almost entirely on Tablet PCs.
In the more technology-savvy regions of Asia, this kind of experiment in education is becoming more common, and it is programs such as this that can continue to propel Asian economic growth. In a knowledge economy, the biggest asset is educated, skilled people. Programs such as the Crescent School's are preparing a new kind of skilled worker for the future, and this is something that countries across Asia will be looking at.
The first step in getting there is leadership, and a vision of where the country, community or organization should go. The arena of education is inextricably linked to the same issues of governance discussed previously. It's not enough just to have a vision. Organization leaders must craft the strategies, specific goals and measures. And public leaders must support the effort with effective policies that encourage and protect them - At the core level, it's the policies that actually enable this kind of work.
Here again, the theme of partnership emerges. In education more than just about any other field, stakeholder involvement is essential. In education there are many parties that are deeply invested, so collaboration, feedback and consensus are even more important.
Conclusion
It used to be that the technology industry looked at a public sector customer in the same way as it viewed any other large customer. But by getting involved, by really listening to government leaders and local industry leaders, the industry can not only share common learning, but also have an opportunity to see just how each government agency is unique, how each one has unique needs. There is just so much involved with being a steward of the public trust. Governments in the Asia-Pacific region need products and support in areas that may not generate revenue, but that are extremely important in terms of supporting the services their citizens need, and in terms of enabling economic and social opportunities.
For Microsoft, the relationships built with its government customers in Asia and around the world are more important than ever, and it is committed to helping governments develop strong, sustainable IT infrastructures that deliver ease of use, value through innovative technology, and a clear roadmap for future development. Having solid relationships and dialogue is the key, not only to the success of technology companies, but for the growing economies of Asia and all of the people those economies support.
Microsoft has recognized its responsibility to enable access to technology in ways that help people realize their full potential. The biggest -learning in all this is that, by listening, by partnering closely with governments around the world, by progressing technology policy issues, and by providing technology solutions that address the unique IT needs of governments, educators and other public organizations, technology companies really can play a pivotal part in the world's next great renaissance.