| The abridged document was presented by the Executive Secretary for UN-ECLAC, José Luis Machinea (2/6/2008) The presented document is an excerpt of a book of the same title to be published by ECLAC during 2008. It was prepared in the framework of the Agenda for the Information Society, which is being implemented by the Division of Production, Productivity and Management of ECLAC, with financial support from the European Union under the cooperation programme  LIS-Alliance for the Information Society.
In recent years the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have made enormous strides in terms of the use of ICTs on a mass scale in a broad range of areas of economic and social development. This includes the deployment of digital information infrastructure, modernization of the State, the digitization of economic processes as a means of boosting productivity, the upgrading of education and health care, natural disaster management and a host of other elements. ECLAC is of the opinion that the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have achieved positive results in terms of the progress made towards building information societies in the region in a relatively short time and have turned ICTs into a tangible solution for meeting the challenges posed by the development agenda. However, and new challenges are constantly being added to existing ones. The transition to information societies does not take place in a vacuum but rather within the structure of the region’s societies. In striving to make efficient use of ICTs to promote development, it is important to bear in mind that these technologies are a tool, not an end in themselves. The question therefore naturally arises as to whether ICTs should be the core element of a sectoral approach to the development of information societies or whether it should be the various aspects of development that occupy a central position within this technological revolution. The question as to the “development of ICTs” or “development with ICTs,” which is a common thread running throughout this document, goes right to the heart of the debate about ICTs and development and about the complementarities necessarily involved in the simultaneity of these two processes. | 
