Caribbean: CARICOM and ICT
Written byGeorgia Popplewell
Jacqueline Morris links to a Jamaica Observer article about moves being made by the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) toward greater implementation of ICT in the region. She's especially pleased that CARICOM's plan seems to acknowledge “the efforts of the civil society in the region and expresse[s] support for the multistakeholder appproach that was successfully implemented in the WGIG and moderately successful in the WSIS”.
Written byGeorgia Popplewell
2 comments
Jacqueline’s weblog apparently doesn’t permit comments…that’s a shame.
As far as CARICOM talking about greater implementation of ICT in the region, there has been talk of that for quite some time. Talk. Lots of talk.
It’s really quite a 90’s-ish response. ‘We’re going to make a website, we’re going to…’. While I applaud any concrete work CARICOM does, I’m waiting for CARICOM to do concrete work. We’re in the winding hills, and CARICOM is a bus when we need something more like a sports car.
The real challenge for CARICOM itself is to make *itself* more responsive, which would enable it to handle ICT as an issue. As of now, attempting to reform bureaucratic processes with bureaucratic processes is redundant and, as we say in Trinidad – ‘spinning top in mud’.
‘Gee, why won’t this thing spin? Spin it harder, and tell everyone we’re going to spin it harder!’
On the ground, the average person within a CARICOM country doesn’t know what ICT stands for anyway.
What is severely lacking are criticisms of CARICOM in the press as related to ICT. I’d love to see that for a change. CARICOM needs to get out of the bubble unless it wishes to go the way of the West Indies Federation. :-)
The biggest hindrances to CARICOM activity are the nay sayers who keep saying that nothing is going to happen anyway. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We have a tendency in our CARICOM countries to wait for “them” to do it and complain that “they” aren’t doing it. Who is the “them” and the “they”? I see Jacqueline doing stuff. Why can’t we do and not complain and nay-say? CARICOM has several areas on its plate of which ICT is one. It is also made up of several sovereign states in which the people become very parochial when it is convenient. That is a big slow animal to move.
I will be the first to agree that CARICOM needs to do more, but I acknowledge that it needs the people to get on board too. How many ICT professionals in the Caribbean have looked at the establishment of the Competition Commission and studied ICT’s role or its effect on ICT? CARICOM is establishing the Competition Commission and it is an integral part of the CSME.