Representatives of Agesic, Cuti (Uruguayan Chamber of Information Technology), the Faculty of Economics and Administration, and CEDU (Uruguayan Chamber of Digital Economy) met to exchange views at a round table entitled "Uruguay Digital: Government, University and Productive Sector". The agenda seeks to integrate different initiatives aimed at the development of the information society and technologies.
The Uruguay Digital 2020 agenda is now in its fourth edition. It is an initiative of Agesic (Agenda de Gobierno Electrónico y Sociedad de la Información y del Conocimiento) that is focused on digital transformation, based on inclusion and sustainability in the use of technologies.
According to Javier Barreiro, Agesic's director of operations, the agenda is based on four pillars. The first of these is related to social policies and inclusion. It sees information technologies as a mechanism to reduce gaps and enhance capabilities.
The second pillar aims at economic and sustainable development in a digital economy. "This agenda wants to go beyond generating infrastructure so that technology really is an enabler for capacity building," Barreiro explained. In addition, there are objectives to start incorporating elements of the Internet of Things into the citizen-state relationship. One example is an Internet of Things device that can measure water quality in the Santa Lucía river basin.
On this example, Mario Tucci, Cuti's director, said: "I get the impression that, in part of this agenda, there are explanations of things that the government does not know how to solve and then says, 'now I'm going to solve it with sensors in the Santa Lucía basin'". According to him, the government is explaining from the point of view of technology some aspects that it cannot solve from the functional operation of its government.
The third pillar of the agenda relates to governance. This is basically composed of two objectives. A first objective is related to the proximity of government, and a second one is about integrated and smart government. The agenda proposes that emphasis will be placed on the use of data. Based on that, the capacity to make evidence-based public policy decisions will be developed.
Finally, the fourth pillar is the governance of the information society. Here there is an objective linked to security, in the sense of how users relate to technologies. It establishes the creation of a cybersecurity operations centre.
Fabrizio Scrollini, a lecturer at the centre's Graduate School of Information Systems, was unable to be present during the roundtable, but shared some comments recorded by him on screen. Among his main concerns, he highlighted the role of government in the 2020 digital agenda. In this role, according to him, there are risks. "There are multiple actors who are going to have coordination challenges, and so the challenge for the government is going to be to carry forward this effort in very diverse areas ranging from the simplification of electronic procedures to the generation and support of skills for citizens and for the digital economy," Scrollini said.
He also highlighted the need to strengthen the dissemination of the right of access to public information in Uruguay. "Today, if any of you wanted to make a request for access to public information through forms or online channels, only one in three would get a response. And not necessarily all of you would get the information you were looking for," he said.
For his part, Marcelo Montado, president of CEDU, said that the country must lead in the innovation of the legal frameworks of laws that facilitate the development of the digital economy. In this regard, he mentioned the Financial Inclusion Law as an example. "It is an example at a global level and we have to continue to move forward along these lines. Create the legal frameworks to be really attractive".
Source: Crónicas Weekly
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