Latest update March 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Mar 07, 2014 News
CARICOM Heads of Government, inclusive of President Donald Ramotar, will meet next week in St Vincent and the Grenadines for two days, when that island nation will host the 25th Inter-sessional Meeting beginning on Monday, with a focus on Information Communication Technology (ICT).
At the two-day meeting heads will focus on ICT which will be twinned with Human Resource Development as the other key area of focus towards the Community’s sustainable economic development.
The Community’s economic prospects will also be considered and Heads of Government will receive recommendations from the Commission on the Economy which they had instituted following their last meeting in July 2013.
ICT has emerged as a priority area for the Region in every Member State where national consultations for the Community’s Five-Year Strategic Plan were conducted.
CARICOM Secretary-General, Ambassador Irwin LaRocque, who has participated in many of those consultations, said recently that all Governments of the Region have identified ICT as a key pillar and enabler for their country’s socio-economic transformation and development.
“It would be terribly remiss of us if we do not daily, constantly seek ways in which to move ICT to the place of key enabler and catalyst for all we seek to accomplish as a Region and as a people,” said Ambassador LaRocque, who has characterised ICT as the new frontier for Regional integration.
In preparation for the Inter-sessional Meeting, a special meeting of the Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) was held in St. George’s, Grenada, in January, to lay the groundwork for the Heads of Government’s discussions.
Grenada’s Prime Minister, Dr. Keith Mitchell, who is the Community’s Lead Head on Science and Technology including Information and Communications said, as he addressed the Special ICT COTED Meeting, “We need to find a way of leveraging the use of ICT to change our current paradigm as a Region, and to optimize our development.”
The deliberations in St. Vincent and the Grenadines will centre on the development of a Single Regional ICT space, resource mobilization, cyber security and crafting the CARICOM Digital Agenda for 2025.
As part of the holistic Regional ICT thrust, public private sector partnerships are paramount in considerations.
The Single Regional ICT Space is conceptualized as the digital layer of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME).
The CSME’s fundamental objective is to achieve a single economic space that will foster growth and will result in sustained development with consequent improvement in the standard of living of all Caribbean peoples.
As envisioned by its framers, the Single ICT Space encompasses the management of Regional information, human resources, legislation and infrastructure in the sector to elicit maximum benefit for the Region’s populace.
The Single ICT space and the Region’s Digital Agenda 2025 will be constructed on the foundation of the Regional Digital Development Strategy (RDDS) which was approved in 2013, and will also have inputs from the Commission on the Economy and the Post-2015 Agenda.
Exciting and creative possibilities are available for the Region according to Jennifer Britton, Deputy Programme Manager, Information and Communication Technology for Development at the CARICOM Secretariat.
She pointed to the opportunities, particularly for the youth that will become available.
With information at the “core of everything” Britton pointed out that one “value nugget” was in the realm of the Community’s creative industries.
“Education is key; it is what drives innovation and what will allow us to do different things,” Britton stressed, adding that the Region must be equipped with the tools that were applicable to national and Regional needs.
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