Booz Allen Hamilton: ICT parks offer a fast-track development approach for the Middle East (page 1 of 4)

Economic development experts continue to give increasing attention to the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector because of its demonstrated impact on social, economic, and political advancement. Naturally, as these development themes gain prominence in the Middle East reform environment, ICT-related activities are taking centre stage in the public and private arenas. Conventional wisdom now associates ICT with a nation's level of advancement and its commitment to long-term economic development, equitable social development, and sustained political reform.

Governments in the region looking to create a development-friendly environment should adopt an approach that includes promoting ICT business parks as a fast-track way to begin benefiting from the vast opportunities associated with the ICT sector, according to consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. This potential is underscored by estimates that investment in the ICT sector, as a percentage of GDP, stands at 1% in the Middle East and could grow to exceed 8% over the next 10 years.

The road to a self-reinforcing ICT sector requires the formulation and execution of a comprehensive framework. In fact, the study of leading ICT-readied markets in recent years points to a four-pronged approach that involves environment, readiness, usage, and impact.

Firstly, an ICT-conducive market exhibits the right environment: strong political leadership, an enabling regulatory and legal context, adequate educational infrastructure and maturity of IT skills, a favourable climate for innovation, and accessibility to an efficient and effective infrastructure.

Secondly, there must be adequate ICT-readiness at the level of individual citizens, businesses and government agencies. Thirdly, these stakeholders must be incentivized to embrace and use the ICT-ed environment; said differently, ICT tools and applications should become widely available. Fourthly, and most importantly, the impact of these factors should be continuously monitored in order to gauge the extent to which benefits have been realized and introduce enhanced initiatives as required.

Karim Sabbagh, Partner and Vice President with the communications, media, and technology practice at Booz Allen, said, "The Middle East has had mixed success along these four dimensions. On one extreme we find markets such as Kuwait and the UAE where stakeholder readiness and usage have reached advanced levels, though the elements related to the environmental readiness and impact measurement are not explicitly defined and/or institutionalized as part of a broader economic, social, and political development agenda."

Sabbagh, who is based in Dubai and Riyadh, noted that on the other extreme, where the geographic, demographic, and social challenges are considerable, markets such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia are investing considerably in creating a balanced framework. Mid-range markets such as Bahrain, Jordan, and Qatar - amidst a more conducive context - are pursuing a phased approach across the entire ICT development framework.

The lessons learned from international markets have consistently pointed to a gradual build-up of a favourable ICT environment, whether at a national or cluster level. The cluster approach has proven to be quite relevant, particularly when governments recognized the difficulty of creating the right ICT framework at a national level, and elected to fast-track the process by creating smaller developments.

In such cases, governments allowed the build-up of self-sustaining zones, typically referred to as ICT parks, where the four dimensions of the ICT development framework (environment, readiness, usage, impact) were realizable more quickly and with less resistance.