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Brazil: Software Livre's Biggest and Best Friend
2005-03-29
Inclusão DigitalA photograph of children at a Sao Paolo telecentro (like the girl below) appears in today's New York Times on the front page of its Business section. Todd Benson's article reports on the Brazilian government's initiative to bring computers to its citizens. The effort is similar to one launched by the Ministry of Information and Communication in South Korea four years ago. It may be unusual for a major U.S. newspaper to run a image of children in a developing country using computers on a business page, but Brasil is probably the only country where global companies selling hardware and software to the government have in-country managers with job titles that include "digital inclusion."
A Happy GNOME User in a Telecentro
Wake up and smell the chimarrao
Brasil has no Grand Canyon to give relevance to the term digital divide, yet it does have enormous barriers to including its population in the information society. Digital inclusion is a term popularized by the PT (Worker's Party) in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, the country's first oasis for free software. Since the election of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in 2002, many of the IT leaders who deployed Software Livre in Rio Grande do Sul are supporting the digital inclusion efforts of other Brazilian states. Marcos Mazoni went to oversee IT in Paraná. Rogério Santanna dos Santos and Patricia Pessi are in Brasilia working on Governo Eletrônico (Electronic Government) at the Ministry of Planning.
GNOME has been a cornerstone in the telecentros deployment, as illustrated in this testimonial from Frederico Camara, who recently left the Sao Paolo city hall to join Coletivo Digital, a non-government organization.