Bulgaria’s High-Technology Industry Emerges from the Cocoon of Communism ALL - 2010/11/12
Excerpt from:
Bulgaria’s High-Technology Industry Emerges from the Cocoon of Communism
Signal, AFCEA’s international journal, November 2010, vol. 65, No 3, pp. 57-59
“The information and communications technology supply market has been driven largely by growth in local demand for traditional computing and office machinery, as well as information technology service outsourcing and offshoring, according to an information, communications and technology report written by the Applied Research and Communications Fund (ARC Fund), a Bulgarian innovation policy and research institute founded in 1991. Part of the ARC Fund's vision is to promote innovation and facilitate the transfer of new and advanced technologies and know-how. Diffusion of elements such as computers, local network integration, Internet access, Web pages and enterprise software in enterprises, schools and homes boomed after 2000, according to the ARC Fund.
This growth increased the demand for telecommunication services and locally produced software and implementation services, the report states. Furthermore, companies producing office machines and apparatus, precise instruments and optical goods offer a serious competitive advantage and contribute to new product development. In addition, local telecommunications companies have established their own technology development units, and non-information technology companies have created a demand for information technology products and services.
With spending being scaled back, the e-government effort has become more important to industry. "Considering the limited national budget and reduction of armed forces modernization programs, e-government gains importance for the public sector for the information technology market," Zografov observes.
The country also has had some difficulty implementing information technology-related strategies. The policy framework for information and communication technology has been defined largely by the National Policy for Information Society Development adopted in 1999 and updated in 2001 and 2008, according to another ARC Fund-published report, e-Bulgaria 2020. But, these strategies have been incoherent, uncoordinated and poorly resourced, which has resulted in lack of implementation, the report states.
Even the e-government effort has not gone entirely smoothly, according to the ARC Fund. The systems composed of e-governance elements remain dispersed, functionally incompatible and non-interoperable; a number of legal provisions are not observed; the number and scope of working electronic services remain far too limited; attempts to develop new types of electronic governance services have seen only a few isolated successes; and senior administration officials often do not understand or are unaware of the concept and principles of e-government, the ARC Fund reports.
Furthermore, the information technology sector has, in large part, failed to invest adequately in research and development following privatization, the ARC Fund has found. Defense research and development has gone steadily downward, from 1.4 percent of the defense budget in 1990, to 0.25 percent in 2006. After 1989, most of the research and production units of the former defense industry have been privatized and significantly downsized, and companies have downsized or eliminated research and development efforts due to a lack of resources.”