By Everton “Swagga” Powell, aka Obi
The growth of the information age increased in momentum in the early1990s, anchored by the explosion of the Internet, the massive global interconnecting network of computers and the World Wide Web, the technology used to access information over the Internet. This then led to the huge increase in certain sectors of development such as financial services, information technology with related industries such as tourism benefiting tremendously.
The countries that took the necessary steps to be part of this new development are already benefiting tremendously from this new growth industry. But my question is why hasn’t Nevis benefited from this new industry in a greater way?
It is widely known that diversity is the key to sustainable development. Thus a government must try to guard against one or two industries dominating a country’s economy in the way that tourism and financial services have become the main breadwinners for Nevis. This can spell trouble, for example look at what happened when Four Seasons was knocked out of commission for a year by Hurricane Lenny in 1999 and about 400 Nevisians were immediately put out of work, creating a tremendous strain on the Nevisian economy. Or the hard times the financial services companies in Nevis had to endure, when St. Kitts-Nevis was blacklisted by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), placing the local economy in near dire straits.
To guard itself against such economic vulnerability Nevis need to establish a strong third approach to development which can be achieved through information technology. Although the Nevis Island Administration must be commended for starting to attract information technology services through the establishment of the Clear Harbor Call Center which employs about 80 Nevisians, I feel that this is just barely scratching the surface of a potentially huge profitable market. This is because a lot more can be done to benefit from this vital aspect of development that is now in vogue, by more forcefully pursuing information technology services through offshore outsourcing.
Offshore outsourcing, a type of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), is the exporting of IT-related work from the United States and other developed countries to areas of the world where there is both political stability and lower labor costs or tax savings. The Internet and high-speed Internet connections make it possible for outsourcing to be carried out anywhere in the world, a business trend which economists call globalization. In general, US companies interested in offshore outsourcing are not only trying to save money in order to be more price-competitive against each other, but also to enable them to compete with businesses in other countries.
Companies turn to Business Process Outsourcing firms to handle non-essential day-to-day business tasks such as human resources, document management and even customer relationship management. That way, they can focus on their core businesses. This is a booming business and Gartner Dataquest of Greenwich, Connecticut now estimates that those companies that turn to BPOs will be handsomely rewarded, tripling their revenues by 2008.
There’s no doubt that BPO is big and getting bigger. Market researcher International Data Group (IDC) predicts that worldwide BPO spending will experience a compound annual growth rate of 10.9 percent between 2004 and 2009, growing from $382.5 billion to $641.2 billion per year in those five years. Countries on the cutting edge of this industry such as India, the Philippines and China, joined by central and Eastern Europe are poised to make a financial windfall.
But Nevis should not stand idly by and watch all this money disappear to countries 8000 miles away when Nevis is located almost next door to the goldmine in the US. It is important that we find a niche market in this huge Information Technology industry and corner it for Nevis just as Nevis cornered the upscale tourism and financial services markets which are now very profitable.
There are many categories of information technology outsourcing one can focus on as it ranges from, application development and maintenance to IT infrastructure management and consulting. Under each of these wide scopes there lies dozens of niche markets such as call centers, web design, and animation and as the industry becomes more mature in Nevis it can be expanded to include transaction processing and low-end software development and maintenance.
But all this would never be possible without the focus on development of the labor pool, and improving the infrastructure for it to be compatible with the influx of information technology. To effectively develop the labour pool we must strive to seriously educate our children and interested adults in information technology. Introduce aspects of computer science in the high schools and in adult education starting with low level programming such as HTML, JavaScript and then moving up to introducing the complicated programming languages such as Visual Basic, C++, C#, etc. in Sixth Form and at the college levels.
Special attention must be paid to developing the infrastructure by instituting redundant telecom and utility infrastructure. The telecom giant C&W within our midst will have to make sure there is a strong improvement in their Quality of Service (QoS) so it can achieve at least a 98% reliability rate, which is poor according to industry standards of 99% or higher but can be an acceptable range initially.
These strategic thrusts will require bold reforms, around education, investments, trade and tax regulations, and a new mindset in terms of innovation and expansion beyond the local market, driven both by the government and the community towards a common objective. Only with the infrastructure and the labour pool in place and the government embarking on a vigorous program to attract information technology services business outsourcing firms to Nevis will the industry be able to take off and play in the real world of information technology offshore outsourcing.
So I am calling on our political leaders, educators and community activists to pay more attention and focus on the growth and development of information technology in Nevis. Spend more time and effort in getting our children seriously accustomed to computers at an early age. Not just for word processing, playing games or chatting online but making sure they understand the potential that an education in a computer related field holds for the future development of themselves and their lovely island of Nevis.
