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Contact:
John Emmanuel
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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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