ACTING Commissioner of the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC), Newell Dennison, on Wednesday, January 15, 2020 signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Ministry of Public Telecommunications’ (MoPT) Industry and Innovation Department.

According to a release from the ministry, this collaboration is specifically to host a GGMC-specific Hackathon during this first quarter of 2020.

Dennison noted that his agency is intent on enhancing the quality of services the Commission provides to its clientele, stakeholders, customers and the public service. MoPT said it sees an opportunity through the collaboration to involve more of Guyana’s young ICT skills to resolve public service delivery issues.

The release said Mr. Dennison signed the Agreement along with MoPT’s Permanent Secretary, Derrick Cummings, GGMC’s Deputy Commissioner, Dianne McDonald, and MoPT’s Training Coordinator, Donnella Collison.

In brief remarks, the Commissioner said that everything is being done by GGMC to ensure the mining sector continues to develop. He noted that the sector will grow faster and more efficiently with the integration of Information Technology designed to capture and analyse data through a dedicated, user-friendly online platform.

Minister of Public Telecommunications, Cathy Hughes, had said in a recent interview that every MoPT event results in a working product which addresses community and national challenges. “The most recent is the online Farmers’ Market which was developed by Innovative Systems, winner of the Ministry’s 48-hour Hackathon in 2017. That app has been in refinement since then, and was first introduced to the Guyanese public during the Caribbean Telecommunications Union’s (CTU) Roadshow held in Guyana in 2018,” the release reported Minister Hughes as saying.

MoPT and InnoSys have since been training National Agricultural Research and Extension Institute (NAREI) Extension Officers, field staff in the Ministry of Agriculture and the New GMC, and farmers in the uses and benefits of the farm produce online market platform. The release said too that supermarket owners and large-scale food producers have also been familiarized with the app.