IT as a service to innovation

The general objective of the programme is to support the positioning of TT as a renowned location for global provision of Information Technology enabled Services (ITeS) so as to provide exports and jobs in the sector.

The project will target companies and entrepreneurs in the ITeS industry who are currently exporting and wish to expand or local companies that wish to compete internationally; support our diversification thrust.

At the outset it is important to identify the gamut of company types that such a definition, ITeS, covers. A report of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development that classifies the IT industry allocates 12 major areas for IT services.

One of these is business process management under which ITeS fall; these are traditional business activities that are enhanced or encouraged by other IT services/infrastructure, eg outsourcing of call centres or accounting or legal services. In another space I referred to these services as those for which we may have a comparative advantage as regards the client countries to whom we offer these services.

The activities of the Government’s ITeS programme are quality control and productivity improvements and management systems required by the target markets (eg ISO 9001).

The programme will also finance a survey of the ITeS companies operating in TT and those foreign companies that express an interest in investing locally and conduct a gap analysis to determine the specific needs for short-term technical training to increase the availability of qualified human resources.

Today the digital technologies that span the components, the required coding, telecommunications and their interconnections are all service technologies that underpin many of the modern-day innovations.

Hence, we should indeed be considering also the development of products and services that exploit the integrated use of these digital technologies.

For example, there was a need to improve the power factor of nonlinear arc furnaces in the steel plant. Using the digital technologies it was possible to smooth the electric demand by switching heating or lighting loads to compensate for the variation in the nonlinear arc furnace loads. The same technique was used in Dubai to minimise the size of electric cables in an unpredictable loading environment.

If we are to compete in the global market we either have to provide a service/product that the market leaders find less financially attractive to get involved in (benefit from a comparative advantage) — for example India’s ITeS out-sourcing or back-office processing — or offer a differentiated or novel product or service.

Given the limited human resource at our disposal, the class of IT that could give the greatest returns is one which makes us globally competitive; one in which we use the digital technologies to underpin the innovations in a priori chosen technologies/industry sectors.

Competitive advantage is acquired by what you do with the knowledge and the coding skills. For example, Israel is world renowned for its integrated IT products, but they are in one major area — security systems which are novel and globally competitive.

Locally, we have received patents (for novelty) in such systems where the invention is about, for example, improved DC motor control and in copyright, the control of power factor and peak power demand in nonlinear arc furnace loads in steel mills. They were all imbedded IT use, but the fundamental characteristic was that they derived their novelty from ideas in specific technologies (eg automatic control).

Hence, the Global Services Promotion Programme should be upgraded, or included in the country’s proposed innovation policy, which requires a foresighting exercise to choose the technologies/ industries in which we see ourselves acquiring both comparative and competitive advantage.

The programme attempts to put in place some aspects of an innovation system but ignores the fundamental requirements of centres of excellence, small and medium-sized enterprises creation, venture capital funding that would facilitate our diversification effort into IT.

Mary K King & St Clair King St Augustine