The meeting was chaired by Senator Dr. Edmond Mansoor, minister of state responsible for information, broadcasting and telecommunications, Dr. Patrick Lay, director of Information Technology (IT) Centre and Delreo Newman, telecommunications consultant in the telecommunications division.
Ann Jonas, chairperson of the ICT Fest working committee, said they focused on them because once those details were ironed out everything else would fall into place.
Nelson Simon, a software business owner, said the policy was concentrating too much on the infrastructural and regulatory areas of information technology.
He added that internet access seemed to be the major focus of the policy without stating it directly, and asked that the focus be clarified.
Dr. Mansoor said that the government was focussing on making an enabling environment, which would allow people to develop, hence the physical and regulatory focus.
The Minister added that a plan was in place to make more use of the fibre optic ring in St. John’s, which would allow broadband access for schools in the area.
Head of the Department of Teacher Education at the Antigua State College Patricia Benn asked what plans were in place to empower teachers to use all the tools that would be made available.
The Government Commitment section stated that the government had a commitment within two years to transform the country with the implementation of the policy.
Eustace Hill, the Dean of the Antigua & Barbuda International Institute of Technology asked what the objectives would be used to measure that the Vision was successful.
Lay said that the government would be fully computerized, which had already begun.
And that they would be implementing fully developed labs, which would integrate the offices.
“We are aggressively moving towards e-government, so that all government services will be online, such as paying taxes or even downloading forms,” Lay said, indicating that passports and visas would be machine readable on presentation to immigration authorities.
The consultation was however cautioned to use the terminology of ‘fully computerised’ carefully. The example was raised that if the police department was ‘fully computerised’ fingerprint matching would be expected.
They were advised to define the term as they mean it so that the public would not expect too much.
Quelle: AntiguaSun, 18.10.2005
