–Minister McCoy says in overview of Guyana’s progress in ICT to World Summit on the Information Society

OWING to the government’s interventions to strengthen the national digital infrastructure, there are now avenues for more targeted national programmes which could fast-track the development of a knowledge-based society, according Minister within the Office of the Prime Minister with responsibility for Public Affairs, Kwame McCoy.

He outlined Guyana’s progress in the area of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) during an address at the opening of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) 2022 in Geneva, Switzerland.

The WSIS Forum represents the world’s largest annual “ICT for development” community gathering and is held from May 30 – June 3, 2022.

Minister McCoy, in his address, said the global challenges experienced due to the COVID-19 pandemic allowed for increased innovation and commitment at national levels and across regional and international platforms; this will undoubtedly redound to a more robust information society.

Locally, through an “all-hands-on-deck” approach with national stakeholders, expertise and resources were channeled towards getting schools and other institutions to a level where learning could be administered virtually.

“This also included a reconfiguration of the structures of the Guyana Learning Channel and expansion of its reach, to leave no one behind. Our government and public services still needed to reach the citizens, and we responded accordingly by not only ensuring that more services were put online, but by also building-in facilities and mechanisms to give our citizens the ability to access those services in the community and household levels across the country,” Minister McCoy said.

He went on to say: “Last year, we launched an online scholarship platform affording citizens the opportunity to gain academic and technical qualifications from certificate to PhD levels and to upskill with world-class industry training.”

Further, Minister McCoy said the government has developed a parallel national online remedial learning programme to fill the gaps for Guyanese who missed the opportunity to complete secondary education.

This, he added, could now be done from the comfort of their homes or at any of their more than 200 community ICT Hubs.

“I hasten to indicate, however, that our progress remains fragile in Guyana, as our experience between 2015 and 2020, while we served in opposition, brought into sharp focus the need for a strengthening of our resolve in ‘purpose’ as a nation, along with the pillars and bastions of our democratic institutions and charters that will allow Guyana to remain steadfast on her journey to fulfilling national development ambitions and the Sustainable Development Goals, while concomitantly remaining solidly grounded in our democracy, among the Democratic League of Nations,” the minister related.

McCoy said that there is much room for the WSIS networking platform to do exponentially more to help small developing nations like Guyana and its sister CARICOM member states, to adequately expand and bolster the digital infrastructure to mitigate the effects of external shocks.

There could also be efforts to strengthen the digital ring-fencing of the democratic spheres that would allow all nations to remain steadfast on a course to sustainable development.