Countries from Latin America and the Caribbean advocated deepening regional cooperation in digital transformation through specific actions and projects

Countries in the region advocated today to deepen regional cooperation in digital transformation through specific actions and projects, and highlighted the new stage that begins the institutional arrangement, also known as eLAC, which is close to celebrating 20 years of existence and that allows working on a Digital Agenda for Latin America and the Caribbean.

During the Ninth Ministerial Conference on the Information Society of Latin America and the Caribbeanwhich will be held until Friday, November 8 at the ECLAC headquarters in Santiago, seeks to approve a new Digital Agenda for the region that allows progress in a digital transformation that contributes to overcoming the traps that inhibit its development.

The opening day was attended by Alberto van Klaveren, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Chile; Juan Carlos Muñoz, Minister of Transport and Telecommunications of Chile; Aisén Etcheverry, Minister of Science, Technology, Knowledge and Innovation of Chile; Óscar Mauricio Lizcano Arango, Minister of Information and Communications Technologies of Colombia; Claudio Araya, Undersecretary of Telecommunications of Chile; Virginia Pardo, Director of the Information Society Area of ​​the Electronic Government and Information and Knowledge Society Agency (AGESIC) of Uruguay; Amandeep Singh Gill, UN Secretary-General’s Envoy for Technology (virtual); and Javier Medina Vásquez, Deputy Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), representing the Executive Secretary José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, among other authorities.

“I would like to thank, on behalf of the Government of Chile, ECLAC for convening this Ministerial Conference on the Information Society of Latin America and the Caribbean, where Chile has the honor of assuming the Presidency of the Digital Agenda for Latin America and the Caribbean (eLAC) for the period 2024-2026,” said Foreign Minister Alberto van Klaveren, who ratified the country’s commitment to multilateralism and regional cooperation. “Meetings like these allow us as a region to address the scope of the Global Digital Pact, recently adopted at the Future Summit, and explore its implementation through the eLAC2026 Agenda. This will allow us to ensure that the vision of our region plays a role and has an effective impact on the development of global technological governance,” he noted.

Along the same lines, Juan Carlos Muñoz, Minister of Transport and Telecommunications of Chile, stressed the need to address as a country and region the necessary regulations to ensure that the “zero digital divide is real”, so that “no one is left behind.” ”, while Claudio Araya, Undersecretary in the same portfolio, pointed out that “the digital transformation of our economies and societies is an opportunity to overcome inequities in Latin America and the Caribbean, improve regional productivity and get out of development traps” .

During her intervention, Virginia Pardo, from AGESIC Uruguay, gave an account of the actions led by her country in the exercise of the Presidency of the Board of Directors of the Ministerial Conference on the Information Society between 2022 and 2024. Next year, she said , 20 uninterrupted years of the regional Digital Agenda will be celebrated, “which has objectives and goals, which poses challenges and which is fundamentally a space for dialogue and collaborative action.” “Today we are meeting to define a new Digital Agenda for Latin America and the Caribbean,” a key instrument to guide national digital policies, he said.

“We see digital transformation and the strategic use of emerging technologies – such as artificial intelligence – as part of the solution for Latin America and the Caribbean to escape the three development traps in which it is mired. But this will only be possible if we advance in real and effective use of digital technologies,” indicated, for his part, the Deputy Executive Secretary of ECLAC, Javier Medina, who agreed that “regional cooperation will be increasingly important. to address shared challenges, such as cybersecurity, data protection and AI regulation.”

The ECLAC representative also highlighted that “these 19 years of joint work with the Digital Agenda for Latin America and the Caribbean, within the framework of the eLAC process, have shown us the relevance of strengthening and consolidating regional collaboration efforts and spaces to “to be able to move towards a more interconnected, productive and inclusive region.”

Amandeep Singh Gill, Envoy of the Secretary-General for Technology, explained that “the Global Digital Compact links all new issues in this area with a holistic approach that recognizes the interaction between development, the digital economy, human rights and security in line, data and, of course, artificial intelligence. “It has allowed the emergence of a new field for global digital cooperation.”

On the first day of the Conference, ECLAC officially presented to authorities, key actors in the private sector, civil society, the technical community and international organizations, the document Overcoming development traps in the digital era: the transformative potential of digital technologies and AI in Latin America and the Caribbean, which points out that the region has before it the historic opportunity to use digital tools to address the three traps that inhibit its development: a first trap of low capacity to grow, a second of high inequality and little mobility and social cohesion, and a third low institutional capacity and ineffective governance.

On the same day, ECLAC also unveiled its new Digital Transformation Laboratory, an initiative implemented in conjunction with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and financed by the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) of Germany. The Laboratory has been conceived as a space for experimentation and innovation in which policymakers, technology specialists, academics and other actors collaborate to address the challenges associated with digitalization and define concrete actions.

Both the program and general information on the Ninth eLAC Ministerial Conference are available in the website specially created for the meeting.

The media is invited to fill out this accreditation form to attend the meeting in person. Journalists must carry their media credential or their identity card to have access to ECLAC.