<incom> UNCTAD-ITC-ILO Meeting on E-business and E-employment (report)

[Geert Lovink]

> From: wsiseco at unctad.org

WSIS follow-up and implementation: Action Line Facilitation meeting
"E-business and e-employment"

ICTs, GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAINS AND DEVELOPMENT
Palais des Nations, Geneva, Room XXIII
24 May 2007

Jointly organized by UNCTAD, ITC and ILO
Open to all WSIS stakeholders

REPORT

1.    As mandated by Paragraph 108 and by the Annex of the Tunis Agenda 
for the Information Society, UNCTAD, ILO and ITC jointly organized the 
secondWSIS Follow-up Action Line Facilitation Meeting on "E-business 
and e-employment" on the theme of "ICTs, Global Supply Chains and 
Development". The meeting was held in conjunction withother WSIS 
follow-up events and with the 10th session of the Commission on Science 
and Technology for Development.

2.    The meeting brought together about thirtyWSIS stakeholdersto 
explore the role of technology and innovation in supply chains, the 
measures that policy makers and enterprises can adopt to exploit the 
opportunities of greater market access and strengthen enterprise 
competitiveness, the labour market implications and the costs and 
benefits of such changes. The meeting was organized in such a way that 
short presentations on different aspects of the theme were followed by 
interactive group discussions that allowed participants to share their 
experience and reflect their viewpoint as representatives from 
government, NGO, private sector and civil society. In each group, a 
rapporteur, selected on a voluntary basis, reported the outcome of the 
discussions in the plenary session, and proposed suggestions for 
action/recommendations to improve the participation of developing 
countries in global supply chains.

3.    Opening statements were made by Mr. Supachai Panitchpakdi, 
Secretary-General, UNCTAD, Mr. Stephen Browne, Deputy Executive 
Director of ITC and Mr. Michael Henriques, Director, Job Creation and 
Enterprise Development Department, ILO.

4.    Mr. Panitchpakdi welcomed the participants and highlighted the 
instrumental role of ICTs in the conduct of trade. He recalled the 
ICT-led major global economic transformations of the past decade. These 
include shifts in both manufacturing and services from developed to 
developing countries; a shift towards FDI in services; growth in 
services exports; and growth in South-South trade and investment flows. 
Mr. Browne spoke about the importance of ICTs for the increased 
participation of SMEs in supply chains, and singled out mobile 
telephony which can provide low cost solutions. ICTs can help give 
visibility to SMEs, facilitate linkages between them, access 
information, leapfrog the traditional barriers and facilitate financial 
transactions. Mr. Henriques said that despite the significant changes 
in the geography of production and the subsequent global employment 
growth in all parts of the world, many workers lack the skills to use 
the technology productively, and many countries that lack the 
infrastructure and the resources to join in the rapid transformation of 
production and logistics resulting from technological advances. He 
further stressed the need to empower the labour force to face these 
changes.

5.    The first session of the meeting focus on the theme of ICT 
policies and global supply chains in developing countries. It was 
chaired by Mr. Roberto Zachmann, ICTs focal point, ILO. Ms. Claudine 
Bicharade Oliveira, Director, Netune(Brazil) presented the policies 
that developing countries need to deploy in order to enable their 
companies to participate in global supply chains and which should aim 
to:

-     foster an enabling business environment and mechanisms to promote 
the structuring of clusters, including IT ones;

-     create an enabling ICT environment including among others, 
broadband communications infrastructure, electronic business, and 
support services online.

-     disseminate the intensive use of ICTs and promote 
entrepreneurship and innovation within SMEs.

She mentioned the case of countries in Latin America which have taken 
advantage of the size and dynamism of their domestic markets and 
adopted a combination of political measures, concrete infrastructure 
and support services to facilitate local SMEs participation in global 
business. 

7.    Paul Bailey, Senior Technical Specialist, ILO, spoke about the 
high growth and investment in the electronic components sector of the 
IT industries. He recalled that the IT sector is among the most dynamic 
and innovative sectors worldwide, including in some developing 
countries, but pointed out the related social and labour issues. He 
stressed the need for SMEs to build capacity in order to create the 
skilled workforce required for their operation and a better integration 
in the global supply chains. He also spoke about the industry 
initiatives adopted by multinational companies in response to social 
and labour challenges such as the Corporate Social Responsibility and 
the Global e-Sustainability Initiative and the Electronic Industry Code 
of Conduct, which aim to explore ways in which ICT sector companies can 
cooperate to manage social and labour issues in their supply chain more 
effectively.

The first round of group discussions focused on the economic players 
who benefit from ICTs to position themselves in global supply chains, 
and public policies which have been adopted or could be promoted to 
foster the participation of enterprises in global supply chains. The 
results of the group discussions were presented during the subsequent 
plenary session. The participants acknowledged the huge potential of 
ICTs in developing countries to change the way in which business is 
carried out. They stressed the challenges ICTs pose, including in terms 
of awareness, ICT access and affordability (it was recalled that in 
many countries the cost of labour is cheaper than the cost of 
technology), and suggested the following:

• 	·     Public policies are needed to create an enabling 
environmentfor the development of ICT-related opportunities and 
e-business, including developing the access to ICTs, create an 
efficient institutional framework and a legal and regulatory framework 
for e-commerce, and e-government;
• 	·     Prepare a new ICT generation prepared to work in a technology 
empowered environment: build capacityfrom basic education to life-long 
learning,develop a skilled workforce, and make enterprises aware of 
existing ICT tools;
• 	·     Governments should support SMEs, by encouraging them to 
participate in government procurement, by providing time bound fiscal 
and financial incentives to enterprises producing ICT goods and 
services, or those investing in innovation;
• 	·     Favor the development of a platform of cooperationwhere all 
stakeholders can come together and share their ICT experiences;
• 	·     Share best practicesat the regional level (through regional 
trade agreements?) and build public private partnerships;
• 	Pay particular attention to the creation of decent work since this 
is the main way of creating productive employment and reducing poverty 
and, at the same time combating a race to the bottom where both labour 
standards and budgetary resources could be severely affected;
• 	·     Develop ICT servicesto fulfill current and future needs of 
enterprises and more broadly the society (including youth, women, 
disabled)

The second session was dedicated to the role of innovation in supply 
chain. It was chaired by Geneviève Féraud, Head, ICT and e-business 
Branch, UNCTAD. It started with a discussion on the link between 
innovation, ICTs and value chains.

Mr. Raphael Dard, Associate Expert, International Trade Centre, talked 
aboutthe potential of mobile phones for businesses. He presented the 
ITC’s “Trade at Hand” initiative which uses mobile phones to send an 
SMS (short message service) every day to exporters in developing 
economies with the daily product prices on international markets. Local 
Trade Support Institutions also transmit business opportunities, 
contacts and market news. Exporters have thus access to targeted 
information in their sector, enabling them to react to demand, plan 
export volumes and negotiate fair prices. "Trade at Hand" was launched 
with fruit and vegetable exporters in Burkina Faso and Mali in 2006.

Mr.Daniel Salcedo, Founder and CEO,www.CatGen.org,showed a platform 
which helps 1400 SMEsin over 44 countries participate in e-commerce by 
enabling them to create and maintain their e-commerce catalogue 
benefiting from search engine optimization and credit card payment. He 
mainly addressed the issue of trust, which more than technology, is the 
main remaining challenge to enabling e-commerce to deliver on the 
potential of disintermediation. He explained that SMEs should focus on 
developing the necessary visibility and credibility and this can be 
done by collaborating with partners (in the case of CatGen, for 
instance with Paypal, and search engines)

Mr. Paul Donohue, E-Business Programme Manager, Universal Postal Union, 
recalledsome hurdles that SMEs face preventing them from accessing 
international markets. These barriers are mostly of two kinds: first, 
they indicate a lack of valid information about foreign markets, how to 
act in case of disputes or how to collect payments from customers. 
Second, SMEs, especially in developing and least developed countries, 
might not have access to infrastructure at all, including transport 
facilities. He showed how the global postal network can offer 
innovative solutions to help SMEs overcome many of these hurdles and 
exchange more goods internationally by describing a few projects of 
various postal operators that use the key postal assets in an 
innovative, ICT-driven way in order to provide affordable supply chain 
solutions.

As in the first session, the presentations were followed by a group 
discussion that focused on innovative e-business solutions that 
enterprises can put in place to remain competitive and the key factors 
of successful integration of SMEs in global supply chains. After the 
group discussions, the following conclusions and suggestions were 
presented to the plenary:

• 	·     A collaborative approachis needed for all stakeholders to 
benefit from supply chains. Social capital and dialoguebetween all 
operators needs to be enhanced for them to understand the benefits of 
ICTs, receive adequate ICT education and training.
• 	·     Clustering SMEsby sectoris needed to break their isolation;
• 	·     With regard to public and private partnerships, some examples 
of use of ICTs were mentioned, such as the Norway-Sweden gateway 
through which the economic operators can register with the customs 
authorities to facilitate cross border trade. Partnerships between 
universities and the industry for applied research should be developed;
• 	·     Governments should promote online public procurement, and 
encourage the participation of SMEs;
• 	·     Innovationshould be customer-centeredand not 
technology-centered. Customer relationship management (CRM) systems are 
now relatively easy to implement;
• 	·     Ensuring trustis key to fostering e-business transactions; 
this required partnering with certified bodies (online payment systems, 
search engines, etc); 
• 	·     With regard to developing skills, managers should be trained 
on new technologies and be capable to make the relevant choice of 
technologyfor their company (such as open source solutions);
• 	·     Broadband accessibilityis critical to help e-business take-up.

Some participants acknowledged the work carried out by international 
organizations in particular regarding their research work that help 
them take strategic decisions regarding ICT deployment and related 
policy options and strategic measures in their countries.

Geneviève Féraud (UNCTAD), Roberto Zachmann (ILO) and Nicolai Semine 
(ITC) made some final remarks and informed the participants that the 
report of the meeting will bedisseminated to WSIS stakeholders involved 
in implementing the Summit action lines.