GOVERNMENT ministers and senior officials from across the Caribbean Region will be meeting this week to discuss practical steps needed to make basic government services available through smartphones and other Internet-connected devices.These talks, hosted by the BVI Government and by the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU), will take place under the theme: “Kick-starting the CARICOM single ICT Space by Accelerating e-Government Services”, and will begin today and end Thursday.
On Wednesday in Tortola, British Virgin Islands (BVI), talks will take place as one of a series of high-level gatherings during ICT Week.

Guyana is part of the 20 member states within the Caribbean Telecommunications Union.

The seminars seek to educate and promote understanding of ICT and its potential to advance the social and economic development agenda of Caribbean countries. According to the CTU, the ministerial strategic ICT seminars create a forum for government ministers, regulators and senior policy makers to engage industry players in order to gain greater understanding of emerging technologies and their impact on diverse spheres of operation; to express participants’ concerns regarding the use of information and communication technologies (ICT); and to obtain the necessary insight for informed decision-making.

The seminars will feature an executive council and a general conference of ministers on the first two days, and the second Caribbean Regulators’ Forum, to be on the second day, will highlight roaming charges and other important challenges facing industry regulators as the Caribbean telecommunications environment converges.

This is the second forum of its kind to be held in the Region. At the first regulatory forum, held on December 10 and 11, 2014 in Port of Spain, Caribbean regulators met first with stakeholders, and then in private, to formulate a regional response to the US$3 billion acquisition of Columbus Communications by Cable and Wireless.

The Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU) is a Caribbean intergovernmental organisation that is dedicated to facilitating the development of the regional telecommunications sector. The CTU was established by the heads of government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in 1989 in Nassau, The Bahamas.
By Rabindra Rooplall