As an answer to the impacts of the globalization and of the recent technological changes, the industrialized nations have been looking for a higher level of competitiveness vis à vis other nations. The intelligence techniques are among the tools used by both the state and private agents in search of competitiveness, starting from the monitoring of the country's or organization's environment. The present study starts with a discussion of the intelligence concepts, in its several manifestations and activities, then it mentions the strategies used by the most developed nations in the work of economic intelligence in support to their production sector, and finally it proposes a monitoring service based on a group of indicators of S&T competitiveness of Brazilian States, built from data of the Sistema Estadual de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia-Seict/ States Systems of Scientific and Technological Information. The proposed service, basis for an integral system of competitive intelligence, has as its preferential customers the government authorities of the National System of C&T (at States level) and secondarily it is open to the consultation of every individual and organizations from both public and private sectors. As the States are in different evolution stages in the the inputting of Seict's data bases, a comparative study could generate strong statistical deviations. Even though limited by these internal circumstances, the test showed that the proposed indicators service is a quite valid decision making tool, as part of a comprehensive intelligence system, and anticipated Seict's potential for knowledge management, a necessary focus at the transformation of any country towards an Information Society.
S&T Monitoring
