We work closely with government policymakers to maximize the contribution of ICT, industry digital transformation, and tech startup ecosystems to societal and economic development

The challenge: governments and policymakers are behind the curve

Users make ICT and digital part of their lives before policymakers have time to fully understand the social, economic, and legal implications. File sharing derailed the music industry globally while violating copyright laws. Slow infrastructure investments leave towns and villages disenfranchised from the online economy. Social media brings together dissidents as well as friends and family. IoT, blockchain, artificial intelligence and machine learning promise tremendous productivity gains and consumer surplus. But, left without a national digital strategy, they also come with risks to the workforce and the future of work. 3D printing can undermine the competitive advantage of manufacturers in low labor cost countries. A robust startup ecosystem can create a significant job market. A holistic national digital strategy and policy is required to assess the impact of digitization on consumer lives and digital disruption on industries.

The solution: a national digital strategy and policy

Synergy Consulting Group helps governments and policymakers make sense of the accelerating pace of change. We’ve created a national digital strategy and policy framework that is able to consider current, emerging, and future technologies. It assesses how they impact social change and economic growth. The national digital strategy and policy framework establishes clear cause-and-effect relationships between enablers, citizen and business use of technology, and macroeconomic outputs, such as employment and GDP growth.

Enablers of a national digital strategy

We use our national digital strategy and policy framework to recommend action in five key areas:

• Current and planned infrastructure. Legally dictated mobile and fixed-broadband coverage can have an outsized impact on economic development. We analyze how the national broadband plan can facilitate business expansion among entrepreneurs, SMBs, and larger corporations. But infrastructure is not just limited to broadband or connectivity. Data centers, payment enabling infrastructure, and logistics and postal services are critical infrastructure enablers of a national digital strategy.
•  Public and private funding. We examine where and how funding for R&D, innovation incubators, venture capital, education, training, and technology parks drives business development and investments. We also look at investor exit options.
• Government procurement. Governments are often behind the curve in their understanding of the impact of IT. But their large procurement volumes can be major drivers of demand for key players in the digital ecosystem. We help ensure government procurement moves in the right direction to support the growth of the nascent digital ecosystem.
•  National human capital readiness. Digital technologies requires savvy end-users and employees with the right skills. Digital technologies can also threat to make obsolete exiting jobs. While 3D printing promises productivity gains, it also threatens some jobs. In fact, it can undermine the competitive advantage of manufacturers in low labor cost countries. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robots can displace process-oriented jobs. To prepare the national workforce for the future of work, we assess the training and educational infrastructure in the country. Add to this the current state of national human capital readiness. Using these inputs, we prescribe where governments can rollout skills-development programs across primary and tertiary education, vocational, or corporate education.
• Laws and regulations. There are laws and regulations that facilitate the business environment, such as business tax incentives, intellectual property, labor laws, bankruptcy laws, or ease of business setting up. There are also consumer and user protection laws, such as data privacy, security, and consumer protection. Laws and regulations have a direct impact on the national digital transformation. We identify and recommend rules most likely to shape the IT ecosystem and its subsequent social and economic development.

Getting there from here: managing the national digital transformation

Managing the national digital strategy and policy implementation requires the alignment and coordination of multiple, often contradictory and silo’ed government and policymaking bodies. We utilize our Strategy Execution Management process to draw clear lines of cause-and-effect between the different moving parts of the national digital strategy and policy, and ensure that all impacted government bodies know their role in the plan, and are coordinated during execution.