Microsoft Sets Sights on "E-Mexico"

by Diego Cevallos

Authorities announced last month, more than a year after the scheduled date, that 3,200 "digital community centers" would soon be up and running in remote, low-income areas, to provide local residents with access to the internet through a government server.

They will come equipped with Microsoft programs that the company is offering at a discount. Information technology experts had recommended that the government avoid tying itself to Microsoft technology, and that it choose free "open-source" operating systems instead, which can be modified by Mexican technicians.

Nevertheless, Microsoft will play a key role in e-Mexico.

"Microsoft is taking advantage of its leadership position to make a bundle, even if it sells its software to the Mexican government at a low cost," said Eduardo Nisivoccia, founder of the Mexican Alliance of Cybercafes.

Other countries have opted for software that keeps them free of "the Microsoft yoke," said Estuardo Barreda, an information technology expert at La Salle University in Mexico.

However, the coordinator of the plan called e-Mexico, Julio Margain, said that what was important today was to encourage the country's development in information technology, in order to promote democracy, education and access to health care through such technology.

According to Margain, the new Internet centers "will help all social sectors in the country grow."

Mexico is on its way towards becoming part of the developed world, with the tools of digital technology, said President Vicente Fox, who promised that the entire country would be online by the end of his six-year term in 2006.

The program, which has the financial and technological support of the U.S. computer giant Microsoft, will provide educational programs and distance learning opportunities, as well as support for local health workers, while enabling visitors to the internet centers to pay their taxes and shop and trade online.

The community centers will be set up in municipal seats of government, schools, libraries and health centers.

Although the number of people surfing the net in this country of 100 million has risen from 1.5 to four million in the past four years, internet access remains a privilege of middle and upper-income segments of the population.

But critics point out that there are much more urgent priorities in a country where half of the population lives below the poverty line, many have no clean water or sewage services, and a large number of people do not even know what a computer is.

"What is a poor community going to do with the computers -- check on the balance in their bank accounts? Read their e-mail messages?" wondered internet expert Javier Matuk.

However, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) maintains that information and communications technology can contribute to reducing poverty in the world.

By ignoring technological advances, opportunities for transforming the lives of the poor are lost, UNDP director Mark Malloch said last year at the presentation of the Human Development Report 2001.

The internet centers or "e-Mexico" project is aimed at the "continuous innovation of services and the participation of citizens in the way of governing through the transformation of internal and external relations by means of the Internet and other technology," said government information technology adviser Abraham Sotelo.

But it is unlikely that the objectives of e-Mexico will be achieved with just one computer for communities of 1,000 or more people, especially when the government has not yet upgraded its online services, said Matuk.

The Mexican government's web sites are fairly rudimentary, unlike those of the governments of other Latin American countries like Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and El Salvador, according to a study released last year by Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

The study assessed government web sites based on aspects like the online services offered, privacy and security policies, and language and publicity.

The United Nations Electronic Commerce and Development Report 2001 by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) stated that the main obstacles facing government efforts to create digital networks in developing countries were a lack of telecommunications infrastructure, illiteracy, and the lack of familiarity with information technology among a large part of the population.

Less than 10 percent of the Mexican population know how to use a computer; illiteracy stands at 10 percent; and 10 percent have no access to a telephone.

However, the Fox administration says its e-Mexico program, in which it has invested $66 million, will help push the country on to a higher level of development.