The Costa Rican government and local companies affiliated with CAPROSOFT, the Costa Rican Chamber of Software Developers, will provide an additional $1 million in funds, equipment and infrastructure to support the program.

In the three-year project, which will link Costa Rica's universities with local companies, students will be provided with better training in information technology so that they can enter the job market with the skills required by software developers.

The program is also aimed at introducing quality control systems in the country's software companies to help them achieve international competitiveness by improving their management. Another component will beef up CAPROSOFT's institutional capacity in order to attract more members to its roster.

Costa Rica is already a regional pioneer in promoting private public partnerships in information technology. An aggressive government campaign to create incentives for foreign investment in this sector paidoff handsomely in 1997, when Intel Corp. chose Costa Rica over 10 other countries as the site for a $300 million microprocessor plant (see "A high-technology incubator," the IDB, June 1997).

As part of that process, the Costa Rican Technological Institute in Cartago, one of Latin America's most advanced computer science schools, adapted its curriculum to meet requirements described by officials from Intel, which will ultimately employ several thousand technical staff at its massive facilities outside San José. The first batch of students trained under the new curriculum will graduate later this year.