Morocco Embraces Economic Intelligence to Boost Competitiveness Amid Global Crisis

EI is an information process aimed at informing decision-making, ensuring the protection of tangible and intangible assets, and strengthening the competitiveness of organizations through lobbying. So many dimensions that make it a must-do for successful adaptation to the specificities of countries and the internal strategies of organizations.

"In 2011, Morocco was the first African country to set up an Open-Data platform," notes Ghizlane Salam, professor of economics at the University of Hassan II-Casablanca, in an interview with the MAP, adding that, "this initiative did not achieve the desired objectives for several reasons, including the lack of trust in digital technology, which remains the main factor," because, "it is a whole mindset that needs to be changed."

Highly sought after by consulting firms, Think Tanks, banks, large companies or professional associations, EI is less present in public institutions, due to a lack of a global vision and a public strategy in this area. If we succeed in setting up good governance of Open-Data, by facilitating access to data, the State and companies will fully benefit from this enthusiasm, notes Ms. Salam, author of a book entitled "Economic Intelligence".

The academic also makes two proposals: the popularization of the "EI" concept, explaining that the concept is poorly defined, or even "misunderstood" and is sometimes synonymous with "hacking", and sometimes "espionage", which does not make it easy to talk about it, and consequently to develop it properly.

The second point is the establishment of a good private-public collaboration climate, reinforced by a controlled Open-Data policy. And to conclude that, since human resources are available, ideas are numerous and innovations are increasingly numerous, it only remains to federate all these potentials to evolve towards a "balanced national EI system".