Conclusion:
E-governance: An Opportunity for Growth E-governance—the tools, technologies, and processes that facilitate the business of government—is a rapidly growing sector in many markets. Globally, the field’s roots go back at least to the 1960s. In countries such as the United States, Germany, and Lithuania, the sector has driven the highspeed growth of small and medium-sized technology firms, eager to capitalize on public spending. In Tunisia, as with most of the Middle East and North Africa region, the sector remains largely undeveloped, providing a rich opportunity for growth among SMEs with advanced software and business process capabilities. Unfortunately, the market for e-governance applications is largely off-limits to these willing entrepreneurs. Like many other attractive markets, e-governance is currently controlled by a public entity, Centre National de I’Informatique (CNI).4 For all intents and purposes, CNI holds a nearmonopoly on the enterprise information technology systems used by the Tunisian government. Despite reports of poor performance from these products and services, the near-monopoly was historically protected by the government. 5 Yet in the current transitional period, SMEs with strong
engineering resources have a hungry eye on this market. They see an opportunity to break into a global market by using the Tunisian government as a “buyer of first resort” for their enterprise systems. Allowing Tunisian companies access to these business opportunities will require a substantive shift in the role of CNI, as well as in the policies that mandate its monopoly. Many respondents, both within the government and from the private sector, would like to see CNI transition to a new role as technical project manager for the Tunisian government, relinquishing its role as primary product developer and becoming instead the primary administrator of competitive technical contracts. Since Arabic is the mandated language of all government systems, an opening of this market could allow Tunisian enterprise software developers to create products that are easily deployable to a much larger regional market. In addition to benefitting Tunisian enterprise, it also has the capacity to improve the operations of other governments in the region through more efficient products and services, such as payroll and benefits administration databases.
Section 3: Expanding Opportunity Through Entrepreneurship | 49