LIVE FROM GSMA MOBILE 360 SERIES – LATIN AMERICA, BUENOS AIRES: Andres Horacio Ibarra, government secretary of modernisation here in Argentina (pictured), highlighted how the country is looking to embrace digitalisation to transform government and empower citizens and businesses.

He said the aim is to develop the country’s digital economy, nurture skills and talent, and embrace digital within government. This ranges from “the basic, providing our citizens with the tools to be part of a digital world, to more sophisticated developments to drive that productivity that the world is now seeing”.

Among the works he highlighted was the delivery of a “base platform for governments to start conducting transactions digitally”, and the My Argentina app, which provides citizens with access to a number of government services, underpinned by a digital identification system.

Beyond mobile
“For all of this, we need to be connected, we need connectivity,” Ibarra noted. Plans are in place for the continued development of 4G networks by the country’s large operators, with a strategy in place to “bring investment to different cities in the country so that by the end of next year around 93 per cent of our population will have the possibility to have 4G.”

But he also citied work to improve fixed line penetration, including work with internet service providers and cooperatives to drive adoption.

“We want to provide support to the different ISPs, cooperatives and of course the large companies for the development of networks so that Argentina has at least 80 per cent of homes connected in the next few years”.

For all of the benefits these enablers can bring, “all of these developments we are having in terms of digital infrastructure, are only supported by providing training to our people. It is extremely important to have this work in parallel in terms of digital inclusion,” he said.

Bringing everything together is the key for digitalisation to pick up pace in Argentina: “All of this infrastructure has to be in parallel, and we have to provide the tools to all of the Argentines, wherever they live, so that the digital revolution the world is seeing can become a realty in our country as well,” Ibarra concluded.