Raising the Bar on IT and Economic Development

For over 20 years tiny Singapore, a nation state of 3.5 million people, has been working on something called "IT 2000," also called "the Intelligent Island Project." Now, six years after claiming success, they’ve launched Phase II of a new plan to use information technology as a catalyst for a major change of their community. Called "IN 2015, "http://www.in2015.sg/ it is a 10-year master plan "to grow the info com sector" and build a well-connected society. Singapore wants nothing less than to turn the whole country into what authors Debra Amidon and Bryan Davis call a KIZ or knowledge innovation zone http://www.inthekzone.com/toc.htm .

John M. Eger
After almost two decades of efforts to put in place the 21st century information infrastructure of broadband wired or wireless communications systems connecting communities to the Web — and to use IT as a transforming tool — Amidon and Davis talk about enabling "new forms of enterprise, collaboration, knowledge sharing and commercialization of ideas" not only within communities, but between private, government, NGOs and academic sectors.

After 18 months of research, the authors found hundreds of examples of what can be called knowledge innovation zones operating in various parts of the globe. From a review of their research, a few examples of which are in Latin America, the authors concluded some organizations like the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) http://www.iadb.org/ must seize the initiative. Earlier this summer, the IDB invited Debra Amidon and this author to brief their various country-specific executive directors to talk about a strategy and plan for using IT to create both smart communities and KIZs, in the greater Latin American region.

By John M. Eger

Full Story: http://www.govtech.net/magazine/channel_story.php/100738