Brazil: cooperative development of a software industry

The research arm of Brazil's Ministry of Science and Technology, CNPq, assembled a community of professors, entrepreneurs, and policy makers. Their goal was to define a strategic program that would eventually replace Brazil's existing information technology policy. At that time, a strict policy regulated the internal market, protecting the local IT industry by imposing many restrictions on importing goods from abroad similar to those produced domestically. Partnerships that existed between local groups and global producers supported this hardware production, whereas software was treated as an accessory. The community proposed specific interrelated actions aimed at improving the country's computing and human resource information infrastructure, fostering cooperative basic research and development and developing an indigenous IT industry focused on software and exports. The author analyzes the program's results.