The electronic shopping has consolidated as an excellent instrument of governance, transparency and economy in public administration in Brazil. Present in the country since the late 90s, this instrument has generated the development of large reference projects and put Brazil in 2002 as a leader in Latin America and 18th position of the UN world ranking in e-government.
It was in this period when the internet started to become an indispensable channel of communication, services and trade, the population began to have access to services that were impossible before, such as electronic voting, access to electronic forms to Statement of Income Tax and integration of the Single System database Health (SUS). This movement also brought the possibility of growth of Brazilian software companies and IT services and also alçarem international projects of e-gov.
Of all innovations that period, the electronic government procurement, initiated with the launch of BEC- Electronics São Paulo Stock Exchange in 2000, followed by numerous other public shopping portals that followed, brought significant gains, especially by use of regulated electronic trading in 2002.
Despite the great advances in this segment, there are still important adjustments to be made in legislation and operating models.
Distortions such as portal performance of the Bank of Brazil, the Bids and which limits access providers to public procurement processes only to those who are their account holders – still demanding payment of service charges, damaging in particular, the MPE (micro and small enterprises) – is a blatant disregard to law, already denounced by the main organizations representing the IT sector during public event sponsored by TCU in 2012
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The investment in e-government in the early years of the new millennium did not have the same intensity over that decade or the next, when the country has given priority to free software and took out the focus of innovation and software strengthening national. This disastrous strategic action prevented the country to follow the evolution of technology for e-gov, leading Brazil to decadent 59th position in the latest world ranking of e-gov UN, published in 2014 with data from 2012. This situation is also corroborating for the country plummet in world competitiveness indicators.
The misguided policies that keep the country in a jarring scene with the digital economic evolution, remove or too slow the possibility to be more competitive and to expand the development of the Brazilian Software Industry and Services (IBSS). Much of the deterioration of this scenario can be explained by two main policies or models that derive value from the potential for innovation and productivity gains that can bring the IT industry for the country: the government gives priority to free software, failing to support decisively the national software and assumes the role of biggest competitor and sector employer, with big teams in state enterprises, which have also occurs in state governments. According to the website of ABEP (Brazilian Association of State Entities ICT), the 27 federal entities of the country have large IT companies.
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Encouraging the use of free software with open source, to the detriment of the national software development, is setting aside thousands of good Brazilian e-gov solutions that could generate success stories in Brazil and exports. Even with all since 2002 government support, free software segment is only somewhere around 6% in compliance with the Brazilian software market.
Another activity that generates negative impacts on the development of national technology market of e-gov is the government’s preference for buying services instead of software as a solution. This choice creates costly implementations, long-lived and high risk of failure, often with poor quality and without a development plan. Even encourages or promotes a model that “commoditizes” a high-tech sector. This model can be good for India, but for Brazil, which lack more than 100,000 qualified IT professionals and world class standard software platforms, has generated growing trade deficits that now exceed USD 7 billion a year.
Although we have seen the government supporting targeted and discriminatory programs such as the Public Software Portal, which accepts only free software record. This action is aggravated by the fact that the government act as a broker that provides an electronic catalog with offers for e-gov, creating a sales channel for few privileged companies, further damaging the domestic software companies of e-gov with intellectual property protected. Who interest this limitation of competition?
All this movement considered harmful to Brazilian Software Industry and Services, associated with the wrong focus and promote the export of services as commodities, traded by the best man cost / hour, strengthening the process of “technological colonization of Brazil”, put the country far below the developed and emerging in the global indicators of e-government and ICT with only countries supporting role.
To change this scenario, the government would need to assess their preference for buying services and free software to prioritize fostering the qualified domestic software, undertaking the role of generating innovations in e-government and IT, respecting the intellectual property companies. These changes would bring a new period of development services and relationships with citizens and organizations – model with which Brazil won global visibility in the early years of the new century, when there was an atmosphere of enthusiasm and momentum to the forefront of e-gov increasingly distant.
Gerson Schmitt – Chairman of ABES and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Paradigm Business Solutions
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