Country representatives from several Caribbean governments will discuss the findings of a recent study on how e-government systems are being implemented in the region, at a meeting in Port of Spain hosted by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) subregional headquarters for the Caribbean, on 17 March 2015.
Entitled “Regional approaches to e-government application development in the Caribbean”, the meeting will highlight ECLAC’s recommendations on how governments in the Caribbean could harmonise their efforts to acquire and implement e-government systems. The recommendations will be based on the findings of the study that was recently carried out in Barbados, Jamaica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago.
E-government systems can improve the efficiency of governments and help citizens to more easily perform activities such as applying for permits or filing taxes.
Though implementing these systems can be difficult and expensive, this meeting will determine how countries can benefit from working together on such projects. It is believed that mutual cooperation in these efforts could reduce costs, improve application quality, eliminate redundancy, and enable the standardisation of systems across the region.
There are acknowledged numerous challenges to this approach. ECLAC will therefore facilitate discussions on how these obstacles might be overcome for the benefit of the people of the Caribbean.
