CARICOM IS placing increased focus on Information and Communications Technology (ICT) as a critical part of human and social development in the region. In this regard CARICOM has placed the ICT development agenda and its myriad of activities, directly under the portfolio of the Deputy Secretary General.
According to Jennifer Britton, senior project officer for ICT Development at CARICOM, this move "of course gives the ICT for development movement the profile and positioning it needs in the region to get all the work that is necessary done."
Ms. Britton was speaking recently on the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies during a public policy seminar on the outcomes and follow-up to the second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). This was held in the North African state of Tunisia from November 16-18, 2005.
"We formed the CARICOM ICT steering committee in January, which is supposed to act as an advisory guiding body for all the activities in the region. The first meeting will be May 2006," Ms. Britton said.
RESOURCE MOBILISATION
She added: "In addition, we have had to be involved in aggressive resource mobilisation, mostly funding, so that we can get a lot of the things that need to be done between now and 2015 done in a comprehensive manner."
She noted that because of the cross-cutting nature of ICT for development, it had been placed more comprehensively on the work programmes of the major units in the Secretariat, which include: Human and Social Development, Regional Trade and Economic Intelligence, and the Office of the Secretary General.
"We are in the process of creating a CARICOM ICT for Development website, which we hope will help us do a lot of the coordinating that we need to do at the Secretariat level, in terms of contacts and getting feed-back from stakeholders. We have started work with regard to the development of a regional ICT strategic plan," Ms. Britton told the gathering.
OTHER ISSUES
Pointing to challenges that faced the region's communications sector she mentioned human capacity development, legal issues surrounding ICT for development, the telecoms regime and broadband access. Other issues are e-government and e-governance, disaster management, Internet governance, financing, and the maintenance of the region's cultural identity.
At the Secretariat level, she said, attention was being placed on increasing coordination to reduce duplication of effort across the region. "That is a tremendous challenge and we hope that continuous meetings and feedback and reporting will assist with regard to coordination of effort across the region," she said.
Ms. Britton further pointed to the need to mobilize the private sector and civil society. "If we don't bring those people on board, (education, social workers, etc), we will perhaps miss the boat with regard to both the development and implementation of the WSIS plan of action and the Millennium Development Goals," she noted.
