 The discussion focused on online registration for new businesses and government promotion of business development services to facilitate medium and small businesses development in Latin America. Particular attention was given to:
(1) Practices of simplification of and reengineering of associated requirements and procedures,
(2) scope of G2B services and the implementation process,
(3) cost and return on investment.
AGENDA | 10:00—10:10 | Introduction
James Hanna, Moderator, Lead Operations Officer & Senior Advisor e-Business Initiative for SME Competitiveness, LAC Region WB
Introduction by participating countries (see below)
| | 10:10— 10:40 | Keynote Speakers
Chile - Mr. Jaime Gré, Executive Secretary Digital Agenda, Director Sub secretary of Information Technology, Ministry of Economy
México - Lic. Noemi Carillo, Government of Aguascalientes, Proyecto UNO
| | 10:40 – 11:40 | Discussants Comments |  | Brazil – Rodrigo Assumpção, Deputy-Secretary, Secretariat for Logistics and Information Technology, Ministry of Planning. | | Ecuador - Juan Carlos Solines, Former Director of Agenda de Conectividad Ecuador and partner & founder of Gobierno Digital consulting firm | | Perú - Rafael Parra, Director General, National Office for Electronic Commerce and Informatics
| | 11:40 - 12:20 | Open Discussion: Moderator will identify three main issues & questions raised during the participation of main discussants for further debate
| | 12:20 – 12:30 | Conclusions: William Eggers, Global Director Public Sector, Deloitte Research
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SUMMARY Entrepreneurial innovation and market contestability are hampered in many parts of Latin America by a persistent web of rules, regulations and bureaucratic procedures to establish a business. Though they have often proven resistant to reform and simplification, examples are beginning to be found in the region, as they have in OECD countries, of the powerful influence of how online registration for businesses dramatically cuts down such barriers and simultaneously benefits business and government.
To search out and discuss progress in this area in Latin America, the e-Business for Small Business Competitiveness Initiative (sponsored by the LAC Knowledge Management Unit held its third dialogue of 2004 on Government-2-Business Services. The specific focus was on (1) profiling the simplification process involved in building online business registration services, (2) the realities of actually implementing such services, and (3) the costs and benefits from such investments.
Presentations were made on Chile’s 2002-2006 Ventanilla Unica by Jaime Gre, National Executive Secretary of Chile Digital Agenda, and on Mexico’s Project UNO Aguascalientes online business registration services by Lic. Noemi Carillo, state government of Aguascalientes. Further commentary and discussion were provided by digital program government leaders in Brazil and Ecuador, as well as the Global Public Sector Director of Deloitte Research in Washington DC.
In Chile, online business registration has become a reality as part of a nationwide five year program begun in 2002 to simplify and deliver web-based services for 80 of the nation’s core processes relevant to business in areas such as business creation, labor, the environment, taxation and trade. In Aguascalientes, the state and municipality worked over 2000-2002 with the Federal regulatory agency COFEMER to simplify requirements for registration and building online services. Both cases are good examples of how, as e-development matures, value-added rises in the form of rich information content, service functionality, government efficiency and business growth.
The dialogue first zeroed in on the key conditions to successfully deliver complex online registration systems. Speakers emphasized the importance of adopting upfront targets to yield dramatic operational improvements (from many months to a matter of a one or a few days) as an important means of gaining top-level attention and generating political and management support for action. They underscored the need to foster the technical interoperability of systems in order to truly integrate registration through a single window, particularly where requirements were managed at different government levels (e.g., taxation and social security at a national level and zoning at the municipal level).
Multiple benefits were reported in both the Mexican and Chilean experiences. The first obvious benefits included increased services access and 24/7 availability, higher transparency of transactions and lower potential for administrative discretion, and immediate receipt of registration fee payments across secure web sites. They also emphasized that the systems produced radical reductions in processing time of and associated costs. In Aguascalientes, the average time to register dropped from 71 days to 1 day and 1,250 new business registrations were processed online in 2003, about 30% of the previous total annual average of business registrations. Aguascalientes was also recognized in 2003 as having the most streamlined business registration system in Mexico.
They considered highly useful in Mexico from a state and local perspective the role of national standards and guides set for the reform of public services and practices. Officials in both Mexico and Chile pointed to the importance of increasing service access of the plethora of small firms in the business community lacking network access by utilizing post offices and by building multi-purpose business centers that host portals and offer related support services. They considered these also key instruments to break through the cultural digital divide and to promote uptake. The speakers also felt that implementation and firm-level response could be further accelerated by financial incentives (such as matching grants) to government agencies and companies. The promotion of other online services, such as for public procurement or export and import procedures, also tend to augment to online business registration in these cases.
In Chile, an evaluation by the Alberto Hurtado University has calculated this year that, from the trends to this midpoint in the Ventanilla Empresa program, it can be expected yield total net benefits of about $350 million over 5 years, of which about 80% will accrue to the business sector.
Participants urged the Bank to help others to adopt of online business registration services. They encouraged it to take the lead to facilitate a leapfrogging process, in particular by (1) benchmarking good practices and standards in online business registration in leading countries, (2) diffusing methodologies to measure their costs and benefits, (3) promoting the adoption of interoperability standards and technologies that would facilitate the adoption of such online services between different government agencies and levels, and (4) financing programs to generate online business registration and their uptake. READING MATERIALS eGovernment Services for SMEs: Reduce barriers to business formation and operationsSource: World Bank, eBusiness for SME Competitiveness Initiative, 2004
(PPT 1.82 MB)
Ventanilla Empresa, Chile
Source: Ministerio de Economia, October 2003
Most transactions and services that involve the government and businesses (Government-2-Business) are offered online through this website Ventanilla electrónica única (www.sitioempresa.cl). More than thirty-five simplified transactions are currently online and involved multi-agency.
Ventanilla Empresa: Proyecto de simplificación, automatización, y puesta en linea de trámites
Source: División de Tecnologías de la Información y Comunicaciones, Ministerio de Economia, 2004
(PPT 500 KB)
Aguascalientes en la Mejora RegulatoriaSource: Secretaría de Desarrollo Económico, Dirección General de Mejora Regulatoría, 2004
(PPT 3.35 MB)
eGovernment's Next Generation: Transforming the Government Enterprise Through Customer Service Source: Deloitte Research, 2003
( 444 KB)
Citizen Advantage: Enhancing Economic Competitiveness Through eGovernment
Source: Deloitte Research, 2003
( 652.2 KB)
Red Sercotec, Chile
Red Sercotec a website (www.redsercotec.cl) by the Servicio de Cooperación Técnica (Sercotec), that offers information, tools, and services oriented to support business management, establish business contacts and generate business communities. The primary objetive is to bring closer information and communication technologies and telecommunications to the micro and small businesses so that they improve and strengthen their management through the information and tools available on the Internet. This website is available to any community; however, content is focused primarily on micro and small businesses and start-ups.
CORFO, Chile
The Production Promotion Corporation created in 1939, is the Chilean Government agency that promotes national production development. Its key areas of action are quality and productivity, innovation, finance, and investment promotion (www.corfo.cl)
CAT365, Spain
Source: Government of Catalonia
It manages the portal of the Open Administration of Catalonia, the entity entrusted to distribute public services to the citizenship. In this way, CAT365 presents itself as a one-stop portal where citizens can manage the services of all the public administrations. The idea of CAT365 is to create a new framework of relations in which the businesses and citizens become central to the processes of the administration, having at hand the services needed to carry out any administrative matter.Author: Administració Oberta de Catalunya, Spain. (eEurope Awards for eGovernment 2003 and Yahoo Award 2002 “The Best of the Year in Government and Politics)
CAT 365: Open Administration of Catalonia
Source:Government of Catalonia
(PPT 633 KB)
The Transformation is now: Michigan's Innovative Formula for eGovernment Success Source: Deloitte Research, 2003
( 1.66 KB) |
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