(CARICOM Secretariat, Georgetown, Guyana) Member States of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Regional organisations, representatives of private sector and civil society, as well as a CARICOM Secretariat team are now part of an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Steering Committee that will meet regularly to ensure the Region's optimum preparation for and participation at the November 2005 second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis.
The Steering Committee was set up out of discussions held at the CARICOM Secretariat in Georgetown, Guyana on Wednesday 12 December, where key working groups were identified in the areas of Infrastructure Strengthening, Human Resource Capacity Development, and Media to guide the Region's input in the WSIS Plan of Action.
The Committee will be tasked with monitoring the progress of work prepared by the working groups, identifying issues relevant to a broad range of stakeholders, overseeing, reviewing, commenting on, and providing expertise during the preparation of draft policy documents, based on the issues previously identified, and Identifying sources of, and facilitating access to, information and expertise relevant to the regional development process.
Other functions of the Regional ICT Steering Committee include providing appropriate feedback to stakeholder groups, recommending approaches to communicating areas of priority to the Region and the strategies identified to deal with these priority areas, and Providing a coordinating role in respect of the approach to donors and the Private Sector for funding, the implementation of ICT programmes and projects and the use of products resulting from ICT programmes and projects.
As part of its role in the Regional WSIS preparation, the CARICOM Secretariat will present for review by the Steering Committee, a Draft Policy Paper on the Region's input in the WSIS Action Plan. The CARICOM Regional WSIS Steering Committee will meet once monthly and twice annually to receive and discuss progress reports.
CONTACT:
Rose Blenman: rblenman@caricom.org
Tecla Fontenard: teclaf@caricom.org
Carolyn Walcott: cwalcott@caricom.org
