Colombia. An urgent call to entrepreneurs from all sectors of the economy to transform themselves digitally was made by the ICT Minister, David Luna, and the Executive Director of CINTEL, Manuel Martínez, during the opening day of ANDICOM 2016, an event that was held in Cartagena de Indias.
Minister Luna in his presentation "The digitalization of the economy is the new economy" emphasized that progress has been made in the use of the Internet but it is necessary to move from the Internet of consumption to the Internet of production, so that Colombia is increasingly competitive.
For his part, the Director of CINTEL pointed out that the whole country has to transform digitally, since experience has shown that companies that have entered the digital world have overwhelming successes. "In CINTEL we are working so that all the productive sectors of Colombia are immersed and have digital inclusion, that is our task but we need the collaboration of all," Martinez emphasized.
In his presentation, Minister Luna presented interesting figures on the use of ICT in the country: 100% use technology to send and receive emails, to search for information and electronic banking; while there is a lower incidence in issues such as internal or external contracting (33%) and distributing products online (45%), hence the minister emphasized that the challenge is to move from the Internet of consumption to the Internet of production.
"The new economy is the Digital Economy and it depends on everyone that this change is orderly, a digital evolution and not a revolution. In developed countries such as the United Kingdom, this sector contributes up to 10% to GDP, so from the ICT Ministry we are working on the Public Policy of the Digital Age. We have already made progress in defining the skills and infrastructure gap, initiatives for the use of data, network privacy and Internet governance, as well as the Digital Security Policy," said Minister Luna.
Within the framework of ANDICOM, Minister Luna took advantage of the space to launch the Digital Economy Observatory, with which public policies, incentives and consistently monitor the degree of digitalization of the Colombian economy can be formulated. This initiative will have the support of Raúl Katz, professor at Columbia University and President of Telecom Advisory Services, who was invited to the stage to explain how this Observatory will work.
"For the Observatory, we will work in four stages: Define the conceptual framework of what we want to measure and the institutional architecture, in such a way that there is a collaborative work; as well as measuring the degree of digitalization of companies and finally, defining public policy," said Professor Katz.
Finally, Minister Luna pointed out that "the results of the Digital Economy Observatory will allow us to advance in the measurement and classification of challenges for the digitalization of the economy and determine the impact on employment and the quality of wages."
