It is a sector of the economy with a turnover of over USD 1.1 billion, employs over 13,000 people directly and is the only industry in the country today that can grow exponentially.
Today, every time a tonne of meat is sold to any country, the buyer can be assured which cut the meat comes from, so it is possible to know where the cattle were born and how they moved around the country. This is possible, among other things, because there is a computer system that allows to keep track of all cattle born in the country, how they move, where they are sold, who owns them, etc. This system was developed by a consortium of three national companies, partners of the Uruguayan Chamber of Information Technology (Cuti), members of the ICT sector of the economy. Moreover, since it was put into production in 2006, this solution is unique worldwide, as there is no other solution with national coverage in any other country that provides individual traceability of cattle.
All companies that work in foreign trade surely interact with a system called Lucia, of the National Customs Directorate, a system created from its origin and conception by a partner company of Cuti, which has then implemented the aduna solution in other countries, competing with only a few solutions in its field.
Today, the IT industry has a turnover of more than USD 1.1 billion and exports close to USD 300 million to more than 52 countries, with the main export destination being the US market.
We will continue to list particular cases, but they will be contextualised in time, because an industry such as information technology was not created out of nothing, but arose from the vision of some entrepreneurs, academics and government officials who at the time bet on technology.
In order to explain how we arrived, I will go back to 1968 when the first high-performance computer arrived in Uruguay, an IBM 360 Model 44 (it had 128 KB of RAM, which today far exceeds any mobile phone), which implied an investment equivalent to USD 4 million today, a decision that was taken by the rector of the University of the Republic (UdelaR), Eng. Oscar Maggiolo, who saw the machine's potential for complex calculations, as well as the proposal made by Rafael Laguardia from the Institute of Mathematics and Jorge Vidart from the Computing Centre of the University of the Republic (CCUR). With this computer it is possible to make hydraulic calculations for UTE, help process the census, etc. To get a clear idea of the scale of the decision, it is as if Uruguay were now deciding to buy a quantum computer.
This computer is considered a milestone in the beginning of computer careers at the UdelaR, the passion and euphoria is soon cut off by the military process, which puts a stop to the use of computers and also puts a quota on the entry of students to these careers.
In 1985, with the return to democracy, quotas were freed up from 200 students per year to 1,200, which had a total impact on the computer science degree courses, which for the first time became half of the admissions to the Faculty of Engineering. There were no teachers because most of them had left the country, the students themselves set up self-evaluation groups, they went beyond the co-government and were part of the process of change. Juan José Cabezas took over the direction of the Institute of Computer Science of the Faculty of Engineering and began with a total renovation of the study plans. He managed to get several teachers from abroad and began to put together a quality staff with a lot of new knowledge brought in from abroad, and the result was a degree in Computer Science, which provided a very good basic knowledge that would later support the creation of the industry.
At the same time, the number of graduates has gone from a few engineers to many more and, in addition, a very large number of programmer analysts with a strong mathematical background. This means that the traditional sources of employment, the State, the financial sector and large companies, are quickly covering their needs and, as a result, small enterprises are beginning to grow, constituting an incipient software industry.
In 1987 the Presidential Scoreboard was created; in 1988 the seed of solutions such as Bantotal (bank management software that several banks in Uruguay and the region began to use) was sown; in 1989 Artech was founded, a company that began the commercialisation and development of GeneXus, software that would revolutionise the industry; in the same year the Uruguayan Chamber of Software was founded, which would later become Cuti. And so several companies began to be founded in those years.
The UdelaR continues to receive many registrations and the industry continues to welcome all the graduates, the national market is starting to become small and companies are beginning to be encouraged to go abroad, first and most naturally to Argentina, and then to other Latin American countries. For now these are incipient exports, but it is the beginning of a path of exports that will grow year by year.
Paradigmatic cases begin to emerge, which combine the boldness of some governments with the knowledge of some companies, and so it is that in 1996, for the first time in the world, a population and housing census is processed with optical handwritten text recognition technology through the creation of a solution that has now been used by several countries such as Chile, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic, among others.
Another important milestone was in 2002, when Luis Stolovich led a Cuti project, financed by the IDB, called Programa de Apoyo al Sector del Software (Software Sector Support Programme). In the midst of the financial crisis, the sector decided to carry out this project, even in the midst of the economic situation, which placed three very important issues on the agenda of the sector's companies: internationalisation, technology commercialisation and software quality, which allowed many companies to begin to explore international markets, improve their sales processes and manage to build software with the quality that the national and international markets demanded.
All of this led to a notable increase in exports, which began to grow at an annual rate of 20% after 2004, before slowing down in 2012 and continuing to this day.
At the same time, there are some important changes in the country, with the creation of the Ceibal Plan, the National Agency for Research and Innovation (ANII) and the Agency for Electronic Government and the Information and Knowledge Society (AGESIC), three units that create a new platform for the development of the industry. For example, the sector is one of the largest consumers of ANII instruments, being clearly one of the most innovative and dynamic.
Today we face the challenge of growing much more, so that the information technology industry becomes one of the main sectors of the Uruguayan economy. The joint work between the different actors, government, universities and the private sector, are essential for the sector's growth to become exponential again. There are new mechanisms that need to be explored, for example, that the State donates to other countries the unique technological solutions that are being developed, which would generate new business for the sector, among others, that is the challenge we face.
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