QUICK TAKES

Panama's Government Leads in Technological Innovation

By Juan Carlos Martinez

Another of President Martinelli's campaign promises related to technology, for example free internet for all to bring Panama up to speed in the digital age. Creating a more technological customer service arm in public health institutions, less bureaucracy in government are just a few among others. These are several things that must be done on the technology front and the institution tasked with spearheading and supervising the technological aspect of these projects is the previously called, Government Innovation Secretariat ascribed to the Presidency, now the National Authority for Government Innovation.

This past week the Government Innovation Secretariat became the National Authority for Government Innovation, a fully independent entity. It seems maybe a trivial thing but when you consider all the technology projects this government intends to carry out in public institutions to make dealings with the government easier, faster, and more reliable then this small change takes a front seat. It is specially important when indexes for ranking "international country's" such as those issued by the World Bank take into account indicators such as ease of doing business, ease of paying taxes, time it takes to get documents from the government, etc.

The Government Innovation Secretariat was created in 2004 and its the government entity responsible for managing the use and implementation of technology in the government. Last week it became an authority which means it is independent and has the right to enter contracts, acquire rights and contract obligations, it has competence over all the national territory, it has its own budget, can manage its assets and its resources.

The next few years look to be busy as the new Authority has many projects on the drawing board and some are already running. The Authority is in charge of projects that must improve public service and they are all to be finished by 2014. There are 12 main technology projects to be completed by this institution in five years at an approximate cost of 350 million. |

One of the main projects and the one which is due for delivery as of the end of this year the first stage and the rest within the first half of next year is INTERNET FOR ALL. This project was announced in early October 0f 2009 and the first cities to have free WiFi should have it before the end of this month. Internet will be free and users can connect with a speed of up to 512 kb. This will help the government close the digital breach and bring its citizens into the digital age.

Other priorities are the health sector where the investment is estimated at approximately 50 million and four years to implement projects designed to make the patient's lives much easier. This Authority is also working with the Ministry of Economy and

Finance to set up a Public Finance system in order to have better budgetary control, totally synchronized and transparent public accounting. This project is slated to start next year.

Another project the authority will work on is a "Paperless Country" which they intend to implement on January 1, 2012 through which all documents and procedures pertaining to the government will be done on-line from beginning to end, which will allow the government to follow up on documents and track the time it takes from start to finish in order to improve. Other projects to be implemented are the Modernization of Banking Services, Multi-service Telecommunications Platform among others.

Some of the institutions to benefit from these projects who have pledged their support to them are the Banco Nacional de Panama, Caja de Ahorros, Banco Hipotecario Nacional, Banco de Desarrollo Agropecuario; all of these are State owned banks and they and their users will certainly benefit from a big technology push. The technology sector will also get a boost from large government contracts.

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