ABSTRACT
Information and communication technologies offer significant potential benefits for socioeconomic development. Efficiency gains in production and services are at least as relevant in developing countries as in the advanced economies. There is a need to improve the management of large bureaucratic institutions and corporations and the small and medium sized enterprises often family-owned in the Third World. One does not need much imagination to think of IT applications that could assist in the improvement of social services, such as health or education, and the whole range of productive enterprises, from banks to manufacturing companies.
