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Caribbean out Performs Many Region’s in E-government Readiness


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Honourable Felix Finisterre addressing the workshop on E-Government and Sectoral Development

Honourable Felix Finisterre addressing the workshop on E-Government and Sectoral Development

Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - The Government of St. Lucia and it’s counterparts from the Caribbean are well on their way to providing the much needed environment that would make their services more accessible, responsive and cost efficient. St. Lucia’s Communications, Works, Transport and Public Utilities Minister, Honourable Felix Finisterre made the disclosure today, as he addressed a three-day regional workshop on E-Government and Sectoral Development at the Cara Suites Hotel in Castries.

Minister Finisterre told the regional grouping that new information and telecommunication technologies (ITCs) were facilitating the acquisition and adoption of information, thereby offering developing states unprecedented opportunities to enhance their education systems, improve policy formulation and execution, while expanding the possibilities for social change.

The Caribbean, he said, had proven itself ready to reap the benefits of E-government Readiness, placing second only to North America with respect to the human capacity index for e-government, while outperforming regions, such as South and Eastern Asia, South-Central Asia, Western Asia, South and Central America, and Europe. “The development of St. Lucia as a service-based or information and knowledge-based economy, therefore, aims at exploiting digital technologies to stimulate the achievement of the country’s development objectives,” Minister Finisterre said.

He noted that the establishment of a knowledge-based society “was the platform on which the region must foster, accelerate and sustain long-term social, cultural and economic development.” He admitted however, that much work still needed to be done to realize the goal of shaping a new economy, predicated fully on information and communication technologies.

Government, the Communications Minister pointed out, was seeking to create an enabling environment to attract local and foreign investors through appropriate policies, legislation and improved public sector efficiency. That note struck a cord with officials of the Commonwealth Secretariat, who are sponsors of the three-day event. “E-government without the culture change becomes expensive government and I think we have to focus not so much on the technology, but on the re-engineering of processes, of regulations, of information and data sharing, and those are always the tough issues,” said Henry Alamango of the Commonwealth Network for Information Technology for Development (COMNET-IT)

E-Government is a concept aimed at encouraging governments to use less ink and paper and more electronic information technology in their day-to-day affairs.


 

 


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