By Linda Straker
As part of the efforts aimed at raising the awareness of the ICT sector for its direct and indirect opportunities, Grenada in collaboration with the Caribbean Telecommunications Union will be observing ICT Week 2015 as of today, 16 March.
The week will be highlighting innovations, sector opportunities, policy and regulatory issues, and other pertinent sector issues, said the Minister responsible for ICT Alvin Dabreo, who explained that the week will present a unique opportunity to engage policymakers, regulators and senior industry officials, to network with young entrepreneurs and generate new business.
The main venue for the week will be the National Stadium, and throughout the five days there will be sessions aimed at specific audience as well as for the general public.
“The session on Monday is aimed at the public service as well as citizens. In order for government to get the best results from ICT, everyone must be connected and systems must be integrated so that there is efficiency and less wastage of resources. This will result in better quality of work by employees and improved delivery of services to citizens,” he said.
Government working systems and other methods that will be highlighted are: health systems for doctors and patients; Asycuda system for easier management of entries at the various ports of entry; education systems for education management and learning; agriculture systems that help farmers with various aspects of farming; and the E-Tax system that allows persons how to file and pay taxes online.
There will also be a session for persons with disabilities. “This is aimed at persons with disabilities showing how technology can be used to assist them with their daily lives in a variety of ways,” said Dabreo, who explained that young people’s creativity and innovation will be highlighting during a session aimed at the youth. “The session on that day is aimed at young persons who have an interest in mobile development,” he said.
On Tuesday, 17th March, The session on this day is aimed at young persons who have an interest in mobile development. Since it is a one-day session there will be a focus on how one can go from ideas, design, development and publishing a mobile application.
On Wednesday, there will be sessions on Internet governance, Cyber security, Local development (Local development will aim to highlight persons in society that developed interesting applications or services). This session is aimed at the public.
Throughout the week, there will be a community outreach program which aims at teaching persons in the community how to make use of ICT devices for communication and as well as earning a revenue from the use of ICT.
On Thursday, the day will focus on Education in ICT. This will be done by local presenters as well as persons from CTU. The focus will be on integrating ICT into teaching and learning. Teachers as well as the public are invited to this session.
On Friday, ISOC the Internet Society will have a session on how to deal with security issues such as spamming and ensuring the government network remains safe. There will also be a session on crowdsourcing which will allow persons to learn how to use the internet to raise funds for projects being developed.
GIDC will also do a presentation on opportunities in the ICT sector, this will allow persons to have an idea of what ICT skills to learn so that self-employment can be achieved as well as learning how to make use of skills already acquired.
The session on Friday is aimed at the public as well as public servants.
The theme for the Week is “ICT Integrating, Connecting and Enabling a Technological Society.” The tagline is “I am connected too.”
The full agenda can be viewed here
