Jamaica To Assist Development Of CARICOM's E-Readiness Status

by Amanda Banks, Tax-News.com, London

01 November 2005

Jamaica has pledged to assist other Caricom member states in the development of their e-readiness and e-governance programmes in an effort to help close the gap in internet provision between the developed and developing world.

Having been ranked as the leading English-speaking Caribbean country in terms of e-readiness by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) in its 2005 survey, Caribbean Net News reports that Jamaica's relative expertise in the field is now in demand from fellow Caricom members which failed to attain the same grade.

“At last week’s Ministerial CARICOM meeting of those responsible for Telecommunications and Information Communication Technology (ICT), Jamaica pledged to assist other countries in their development of e-readiness and e-governance programmes,” explained Minister of Commerce, Science and Technology Phillip Paulwell.

"Jamaica would seek to lessen the digital divide that now existed between developed and developing states," he added.

To this end, the Jamaican authorities are already engaging in discussions with their counterparts in Barbados and Trinidad & Tobago with a view to creating a framework of cooperation that will spur the development of information technology in those countries.

While Jamaica was ranked one of the more developed countries in the Caribbean for e-readiness, the EIU survey placed it only 49th out of 65 participating nations, with an overall score of 4.8 out of ten. Top of the survey was Denmark (8.74), followed by the United States (8.73), Sweden (8.64), Switzerland (8.62), and the United Kingdom (8.54).

The EIU arrives at its overall scores by assessing countries in six categories, including: connectivity and technology infrastructure; business environment; consumer and business adoption; legal and policy environment; social and cultural environment; and supporting e-services.

Jamaica attained a score of 6.60 in the legal and policy environment - above the world average score of 6.45 - but scored poorly for connectivity at 2.90 out of ten. However, Mr Paulwell stated that Jamaica was addressing this latter failing with a "rapid deployment" of broadband technology across the island over the next two months.

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