Martin Henry

Governments of the Caribbean, certainly Jamaica, have largely been forced to play a catch-up game with information and communication technologies in the region. Private entrepreneurs have driven the revolution here as most everywhere else. What we see is government scrambling to regulate, to manage, and to harness the power of ICT 'for national development'.

CARICOM, with the support of the World Bank, has established the Caribbean Knowledge and Learning Network (CKLN) with the aim of using ICT to help the region "to become more globally competitive". The network is headquartered in the ICT backwaters of St. Georges, Grenada. The low-keyed status of the CKLN, which remains largely unheard of, may be an indication of its level of (non)performance in achieving its goal.

CARICOM governments, on behalf of CARICOM people lagging huge chunks of the world in unleashing the power of ICT for development, certainly the Jamaican Government, could better consider how to let private enterprise do it with light and effective state regulation and management. The world's first telecommunications service, the telegraph, mainly went that route internationally with some excellent results from private competition.

Even in Jamaica where the domestic service was state-owned, the overseas service was delivered by rival companies two of which at one time had offices across the road from each other in Kingston competing for customers. We are now seeing the value of competition again in the hot cell phone market. Radio emerged from the deliberate quest by private enterprise for wireless telegraphy.

Dominating the education sector

Even ICT education, with government dominating the education sector, is dominated by private enterprise. Once you get past the high profile higher education programmes which are accessible to only a very few Caribbean/Jamaican citizens, basic ICT training is largely conducted in little private institutions, which have sprung up all over the place pushed by demand for the skills, or non-formally on the job.

ICT literacy is the new literacy. People just gotta have it. And Caribbean states, certainly Jamaica, have been lagging well behind the need in their education systems. The Government of Jamaica has belatedly launched an elearning project for schools and has taken the sensible step to organise a 'company to run the project. We are watching.

The GraceKennedy Foundation has finally caught up with ICT in its annual lecture series, which since 1989 has sought to address "significant issues in our society". The GKF ICT lecture was delivered on May 29 by the CEO of the Caribbean Knowledge and Learning Network (CKLN), Mr. Kenneth Sylvester, who has come to head the organisation via a 28-year stint with the ICT giant Fujistu.

Sylvester told his audience that governments who do not move briskly to harness the power of ICT for economic and social transformation will be sentencing their people to being dominated from the outside. English is the language of the ICT revolution. Some 70 per cent of all websites is in this lingua franca. "Is English we speaking". Yet Sylvester speaks of "the failure of Jamaica and the Caribbean to develop an ICT sector that contributed to the countries' direct development."

The lecturer devoted a chapter to "Using ICT to Promote Global Competitiveness", a scenario in which education figures prominently. "The current education system," Sylvester argues behind many others, "has failed to complete its most vital and strategic mandate, that of preparing the workforce for the future." And this despite comparatively higher levels of GDP being expended on education by CARICOM states.

The CKLN boss outlined the perils and risks, and the challenges and opportunities of the ICT future having vastly more power, more reach, more connectedness - and more impact - a future which we need to position ourselves better to understand and to work with.