The role of government in the economy and society has been broadly debated, and gradually modified, since the 1992 peace accords. Today, the following general guidelines and tendencies prevail:

The recommendations for government which follow reflect these same trends, yet are focused on specific areas related to aspects of a learning society:

1. Ensure universal access to information and communications by promoting telecommunications and similar areas: National, local, and international connectivity is essential for adequate information and knowledge exchange over distances. This requires significant investments, which also implies a higher risk and calls for stronger guarantees, particularly in order to attract international investors. In this sense, the 1998 Telecommunications Bill represents considerable progress. At the same time, it would be useful to institute a policy of incentives and contests aimed specifically at guaranteeing national coverage in those areas where market forces do not necessarily ensure meeting the goal of universal access.

2. A role in the adequate functioning of markets: The development of a learning society will help improve the functioning of national markets, by increasing the volume of information available to all, and thereby reducing transaction costs. However, markets will continue to exhibit imperfections if the government fails to see that they function smoothly; in this sense, it is important to ensure passage of the Free Competition Bill and other relevant legislation and regulations. The government could also help stimulate certain specialized information markets, such as agricultural prices, public bidding, and science and technology.

3. Help reduce transaction costs by simplifying procedures and promoting the use of electronic transactions: These transactions should offer guarantees for due protection of citizen and business privacy in order to prevent abuses and increase their reliability; at the same time, new procedures should help modernize and speed up transactions, not make them more complex.

4. Provide incentives for innovation through appropriate protection for intellectual property rights (IPRs):

• International: Over the past several years, there have been sharp debates in El Salvador about the need for an effective regime of protection in order to encourage foreign direct investment, which requires such IPR guarantees in order to protect its competitive advantage. However, the punitive nature of the approach used by the government tends to provoke rejection and incomprehension. It would be more effective to justify IPR protection by highlighting the benefits to El Salvador of introducing innovative ideas and techniques from abroad.
• National: In efforts to build a learning society, it is particularly important to highlight the value of protection for local intellectual property rights. The process involved in registering trademarks, patents, information products, and technological innovations is very cumbersome and costly, and government protection for national IPRs is weak. Thus, local scientists, innovators, artists, enterpreneurs or agronomists, particularly if they are are of modest means, either lose the benefits of their innovations in El Salvador or else take them abroad, where procedures and levels of protection are more beneficial. We must try to avoid the loss of innovation, technology, genetic capital, and human talent because of delays in adopting an appropriate legislative and regulatory IPR framework.

5. Assume or share initial risks during the demand-creation period in new areas opened up by learning society efforts: national "infostructure" and information markets; electronic transactions; research, production, or marketing networks; electronic commerce; and others.[1] The fundamental criterion for this type of government intervention ought to be when new dynamics and abilities can be generated among participants in such a way that they themselves can continue progressively taking over the costs of their participation as an investment in their own development, coupled with adequate dissemination of results in order to stimulate emulation.

6. Assume more long-term investment costs of certain initiatives which are fundamental for national learning, such as public libraries and cultural centers.

7. Provide incentives, rewards, and dissemination for innovative and learning practices: those which are based on information and knowledge management and exchange, including experimental techniques. Hold national contests with adequate dissemination of the nature and success factors of the innovation that is rewarded; co-finance initiatives (matching grants) which prove their ability to generate innovative social and economic processes.

8. Other regulatory and normative aspects in the context of an improved judicial framework in El Salvador:

1. true guarantees for privacy and reliability in electronic transactions, since they are conducted without direct contact among those involved, and in many cases do not generate traditional support documentation;
2. promote effective self-regulation mechanisms among different sectors involved in information and communications, with broad participation by civil society, in order to guarantee pluralism and prevent over-concentration; and
3. strengthen those institutions involved in the enforcement and implementation of laws and regulations.

The government should adopt "best practices" in information and knowledge management in its specific areas of competence, as part of an overall effort to modernize the public sector. Following are five aspects related to this recommendation:

1. Design and implement a national public information policy, in order to:

1. promote governmental transparency and citizen participation;
2. stimulate a national culture of information and communications;
3. promote transparency around those norms which govern public information resources and conditions of access; and
4. reduce the actual costs of obtaining important information.

The government generates an enormous quantity of information of all types, which is generally difficult to locate, obtain and utilize, despite its great value for the nation’s different economic and social activities. However, the government must categorize properly the types of information it places in the public domain, as well as define conditions for access. It is not a good idea to leave these decisions in the hands of the individual government agencies. Some recommendations for designing such a policy include: [2]

• draw up a set of categories governing the types of information generated by government agencies (annual reports, statistics, research reports, newsletters, bids, etc.) and define the public’s access rights to them;
• convert all public information to digital format and place it on internal government networks as well as public Websites by agency, with an index or portal system which will facilitate its access by both the public and the government agencies themselves; and
• ongoing coordination among all government information centers and public relations offices; install self-service information terminals in each center for public use.

2. Electronic public administration particularly in terms of paperwork: This aspect is related to the development of the Infocenter Association, which plans to create a national infrastructure and infostructure to facilitate national and local development in all its facets. Electronic transactions in the public sector will make sense as long as people have reasonably-priced access, and thereby enjoy reduced transaction costs. At the same time, electronic administration will lead to greater transparency in public administration, since citizens will have easier access to a broad variety of public information, and it will be more interactive; it will also generate greater efficiency in the administration of public funds by facilitating electronic purchases and bidding in the public sector. Finally, this development will create an enabling environment for both domestic and international electronic commerce, which will stimulate competitiveness, particularly among small businesses, which may be more flexible than large enterprises in adopting the kinds of changes required by e-commerce.[3] In any case, the reliability and proven efficiency of electronic transactions will be the strongest factors in their potential for long-term success.

Following are only a few current examples of positive steps which have been taken to promote electronic public administration:

• The Ministry of Finance permits certain interactions with taxpayers on its Website, in the context of a broad offering of useful information to facilitate some of the paperwork required by that agency.
• The Teledespacho project promoted by the same ministry, which allows customs paperwork for imports and exports to be conducted on line.
• The Pension Fund Oversight Agency offers broad information about the national array of private pension funds.
• The Integrated Financial Administration System (SAFI) is electronically integrating 140 cost centers in order to administer the national budget electronically; its impact on the public is principally indirect, but it will radically improve government efficiency.
• The Social Housing Fund offers information about its low-interest lines of housing credit.
• The Ministry of the Interior offers information on requirements for obtaining a passport, and publishes the Official Daily Record [of legislation].
• The National Registrar’s Office is developing an electronic cadastral system.
• The Central Reserve Bank (BCR) has created a detailed, wide-ranging Website to serve both exporters and investors, which also allows businesses to register their vital statistics in a database.
• The Electricity and Telecommunications Oversight Agency offers legislative and regulatory information for businesses involved in that sector.

All these examples could evolve into more sophisticated systems of electronic administration, including direct transactions or preliminary transactions to resolve a series of steps which ordinarily require several visits in person to a series of windows and/or agencies; electronic payments for these transactions could also be facilitated.

3. Internal knowledge and information management to improve the efficiency of public operations, in the context of ongoing public sector modernization programs, including the dissemination of systematized knowledge throughout the process. The earlier chapter on learning organizations offers more detail about fundamental aspects of knowledge management in this area. Some specific recommendations are:

• Ongoing training for public officials in knowledge and information management in their agencies, as well as the effective use of intra- and interinstitutional networks.
• Continuous coordination among the individuals in charge of information management within government agencies.
• Provision of sufficient resources and infrastructure for sharing information and systematizing knowledge in an ongoing fashion throughout government agencies.
• A government-wide effort to create a store of information in each public agency which represents its institutional memory, as well as simple means of broad access to this resource.

4. Design and implementation of a national policy governing the acquisition and distribution of ICT infrastructure: On the one hand, the acquisition of such equipment tends to take place without any overall long-range planning, which results in the inefficient use of public resources. On the other hand, the distribution and utilization of currently-held infrastructure tends to be very uneven among different government agencies, which leads to cases of underutilization, deterioration, or disproportionate lack of resources. A policy of this kind should be part of overall modernization efforts. Some aspects could be: [4]

• Overall and agency-by-agency analysis of the current situation and needs
• More rational distribution of existing resources among agencies
• Plans for the acquisition, distribution, maintenance, upgrading, and training in the area of ICT infrastructure should be an integral part of the planning carried out at the beginning of each five-year executive term.
• More rational acquisition of ICT resources with foreign aid funds.
• Ongoing coordination among heads of ICT departments in the different government agencies.

1. See detailed projects proposed by the six learning circles, and the Infocenter Association, Chapter III.  [return]

2. See Appendix – "Information Resources of Public Interest available through the Central Government".  [return]

3. See Appendix – "General State of Preparedness for Electronic Commerce."  [return]