The National Technology Implementation Index

Resumen:El objetivo de este artículo es el análisis y la evaluación de la inserción de las TIC en las pequeñas y medianas empresas españolas. Usando datos para las 17 Comunidades Autónomas españolas y las 2 ciudades autónomas, se construye el Índice de Implantación Tecnológica en las Pymes Españolas (en adelante, el IITPE) como una combinación de cinco dimensiones: (1) Gasto en TIC, (2) Especialistas en TIC, (3) Acceso a información, (4) Intercambio de datos y (5) Tecnología avanzada. Así, se ha verificado que Castilla-La Mancha, Asturias y Ceuta están entre las peores posiciones de la clasificación, mientras que Madrid, Cataluña y Navarra, son las regiones que tienen un mayor grado de implantación de las TIC.Abstract:Technological advancements made on the last decades, particularly those related with information and communication technologies (ICT) - such as the emergence of the computer and the explosion of the Internet - and their application to industry production have led to a new concept: Industry 4.0. The term Industry 4.0 has been coined by the German Government to describe the digitalization of industrial systems and processes, and their interconnection through the Internet of things to arrive at a new vision of the factory of the future (Aguilar, 2017). Current technologies make it possible to use the information at the moment it is generated, as a result of the convergence of electronics, information technology and telecommunications. The grouping of these three branches constitutes the axis of technological development that is transforming society with profound social, economic and cultural changes. ICT is of central importance in the modern world. For example, and as stated by Oulton (2012), after the growth rate of U.S. labor productivity on the 1990s, many highly influential growth accounting studies were published (e.g. Jorgenson et al., 2007, 2005, 2004; Oliner and Sichel, 2002, 2000; Stiroh, 2002; Jorgenson and Stiroh, 2000a, 2000b). These studies all attributed a high proportion of the productivity resurgence to ICT and found that most of the improvement was due to the use of ICT equipment by other industries (capital deepening) rather than to the production of ICT equipment by the ICT industries themselves. Similar studies have been published for the U.K. (Marrano et al., 2009; Oulton and Srinivasan, 2005; Oulton, 2002), and for the G7 (Schreyer, 2000). The effect of ICT and Internet has promoted a series of changes in various aspects of people's lives, which has led to the creation of new products and services, expansion of markets, changes in working styles, in spending free time, in relationships with institutions, etc. (Jiménez et al., 2009). Advances in technologies are dramatically increasing access to information and allowing a treatment ever more rapid, complex and immediate of data, communication, information and knowledge. All of this influences a greater efficiency, proximity and productivity in the business environment. From a business perspective, one of their key success criteria depends, on a large scale, on their ability to adapt their processes to technological innovations and their skills in exploiting them for profit. Currently, business processes are framed in dynamic environments influenced by constant transformations, leading to configure a new knowledge economy. From a historical point of view, the ICT revolution marks a decisive moment in our society, as it is changing the way of generating, producing and distributing products, as well as the forms of communication, leisure time and work; making it crucial to quickly assimilate the changes and to introduce them in a progressive but efficient way in everyday life. Following a more social approach, Kofi Annan expressed the usefulness of ICTs in the inaugural speech of the WSIS (World Summit on the Information Society): "Information and communication technologies are not a panacea or a magic formula, but they can improve the lives of all the inhabitants of the planet, tools are available to reach the Millennium Development Goals, instruments that will advance the cause of freedom and democracy and the necessary means to spread knowledge and facilitate mutual understanding"(Annan, 2003). Moreover, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) establishes that ICTs are essential to boost economic growth, competitiveness and productivity. The adoption of ICT, therefore, becomes a pressing and decisive need not only for the achievement of competitive advantages but also for the very survival of companies in dynamic global markets (Jiménez et al., 2009). Spain, for instance, encourages the training of people in the technological area, the development of strategies that allow progress towards the construction of an information society and, ultimately, the improvement of ICT skills (OECD, 2012). All of these reasons present a solid argument to acknowledge the importance of ICT insertion analysis into business and everyday life. In this paper we offer a global view of the phenomena, ranking ICT insertion. We use data from 17 Spanish Autonomous Communities and 2 Autonomous Cities, and the Principal Components Analysis to construct the National Technology Implementation Index (NTII) as a combination of five dimensions and twenty variables: (1) ICT expenditure, (2) ICT specialists, (3) Access to information, (4) Exchange of data and (5) Advanced technology. Results show that Castile-La Mancha, Asturias and Ceuta have the lowest ICT insertion, while, Madrid, Catalonia and Navarra are the regions that have a higher degree of ICT implementation. The contribution of our paper to the literature is the proposal of an index that ranks the ability of businesses and communities to implement ICTs. In the process, we pool diverse factors, grouping them according to different dimensions and building a ranking based on those factors. Furthermore, our analysis recognizes the multidimensional nature of the technology phenomena. We are not aware of another literature contribution that follows the same considerations and methodology. As international data becomes available, this ranking can be extended to incorporate cross-country comparisons. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the background used for the inclusion of the five dimensions on NTII. Section 3 describes the data and main variables used to compute the index. Section 4 presents the methodology, and Section 5 describes the computation of the index and our main results. Section 6 concludes the paper. The construction of a complex index avoids costly exploration of correlations and improves consultation performance. In this case, a composite index has been constructed to assess the level of ICT insertion in Spanish SMEs, distinguishing by regions. Results from this investigation shows that, based on the data extracted from ETICCE 2015-2016, ICTs valued in the index have a level of implementation between regular and good except for targeted advertising, Cloud Computing and Big Data that still resist being part of a large part of SMEs (with average percentages less than 20%). The ICT Specialists category has been shown to be advanced, but certainly the data shows that there is still a lack of progress in this area. In contrast, the Open Source and Cybersecurity variables have an average value of over 86%, although it should be noted that this percentage does not measure the level of use and effectiveness of these variables, but simply the percentage of companies that claim to have some open source software and some security system.