The new Mi­crosoft En­ter­prise Agree­ment (MEA) signed by the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (MPAC), IGOVTT and Mi­crosoft pro­vides pub­lic ser­vants ac­cess to the Mi­crosoft Of­fice Suite of pro­grammes at dis­count­ed prices.

The Home Use Pro­gramme un­der the agree­ment will al­low for 9,388 pub­lic ser­vants to ac­quire the of­fice pro­duc­tiv­i­ty suite at a dis­count­ed rate of US$9.99 as op­posed to US$399.99 for per­son­al use dur­ing the ac­tive en­roll­ment pe­ri­od of three years. How­ev­er, all pub­lic of­fi­cers wish­ing to take ad­van­tage of this fa­cil­i­ty will have to pay for it out of their own pock­ets.

There was a for­mal cer­e­mo­ny to mark the sign­ing of the MEA at the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Max­ie Cuffie the new agree­ment brings tremen­dous sav­ings to Gov­ern­ment as well.

The new MEA cov­ers a three year pe­ri­od and se­cures about 20 per cent dis­count on the full range of Mi­crosoft prod­ucts and ser­vices over the life of the agree­ment. This means that re­gard­less of any in­creas­es in Mi­crosoft's re­tail pric­ing, the dis­count­ed prices of­fered to the Min­istry do not change over that three year pe­ri­od.

Cuffie said: "this price freeze fa­cil­i­ty is a source of sig­nif­i­cant na­tion­al cost sav­ings . . . the last three year Mi­crosoft En­ter­prise Agree­ment cost US$40 or$272 mil­lion more than the cur­rent one. Those sav­ing could fund the full de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme of the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment for a year."

Un­der the Home Use Pro­gramme of the MEA, pro­vi­sion is made for pub­lic ser­vants to in­crease their per­son­al skill lev­els, and by ex­ten­sion that of their fam­i­lies who can use mod­ern pro­duc­tiv­i­ty tech­nolo­gies, while im­prov­ing the lev­els of on­line se­cu­ri­ty for the fam­i­ly. Gov­ern­ment will al­so ben­e­fit from E-Learn­ing/On­line Train­ing, at no cost, for 9,390 per­sons on ap­pli­ca­tions like Word, Ex­cel, Pow­er­Point and 7,781 per­sons will, at no cost, be able to ac­cess E-Learn­ing for sys­tems like Win­dows Serv­er, SQL Serv­er, Share­point Serv­er and oth­er pro­grammes.

Gov­ern­ment work­ers can im­prove pro­fi­cien­cy with the use of tech­nol­o­gy used in the work­place, and if de­sired can ready them­selves for for­mal cer­ti­fi­ca­tio–this re­quires a pay­ment for the ex­am process by a cer­ti­fy­ing au­thor­i­ty, but work­er saves on course cost.

Un­der the pro­gramme, 7,781 named users will al­so be able to in­stall and use the Of­fice soft­ware on five PCs or Macs, five tablets, and five smart­phones for use on their de­vices, with the Gov­ern­ment's ad­min­is­tra­tive ap­proval and over­sight. Cuffie said Gov­ern­ment plans to ful­ly lever­age the ma­jor in­for­ma­tion com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy de­vel­op­ments that are un­fold­ing glob­al­ly to de­liv­er ef­fec­tive, end to end pub­lic ser­vices.

The min­is­ter not­ed that ". . . our progress as a na­tion has been ham­pered by the lega­cy of pa­per based process­es that per­me­ate the pub­lic ser­vice. Progress on the leg­isla­tive re­form need­ed to dig­i­tize and vir­tu­al­ize these tra­di­tion­al frame­works, has been painful­ly slow."

Not­ing that this is the world of the e-Gen­er­a­tion, Cuffie said the pub­lic sec­tor re­mains chal­lenged in mak­ing mean­ing­ful progress to­wards in­fus­ing ICTs in­to im­prov­ing pub­lic ser­vice de­liv­ery.

For him this is why the new Mi­crosoft En­ter­prise Agree­ment (MEA) is im­por­tant.

"Dur­ing the life of the MEA, gov­ern­ment min­istries, de­part­ments and agen­cies will be able to ac­cess up­grades to the lat­est ver­sions of Mi­crosoft soft­ware and op­er­at­ing sys­tems with­out ad­di­tion­al gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture. This en­sures that val­ue for past ex­pen­di­ture on li­cense ac­qui­si­tion is re­al­ized," he said.

The new MEA has been de­scribed by Cuffie as one of the most crit­i­cal and chal­leng­ing since the in­au­gur­al Gov­ern­ment en­ter­prise wide use of the Mi­crosoft suite of prod­ucts and ser­vices be­gan in 1999.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, in­stead the Cab­i­net ap­proved ne­go­ti­a­tion team fo­cused on elim­i­nat­ing waste, cor­rup­tion and soft­ware li­cense mis­man­age­ment. The ne­go­ti­a­tion, he em­pha­sized, fo­cused on en­sur­ing val­ue for mon­ey and will re­sult in an­nu­al cost sav­ings of US$3.7 or $25 mil­lion a year over the life of the new agree­ment.

Speak­ing at the cer­e­mo­ny, Pub­lic Sec­tor Di­rec­tor at Mi­crosoft (Trinidad), Edi­son Stephen said his com­pa­ny is com­mit­ted to de­liv­er­ing val­ue to Gov­ern­ment by pro­vid­ing so­lu­tions that are se­cure, trans­par­ent, com­pli­ant and pri­vate. He said Mi­crosoft's goal is to en­hance the ex­pe­ri­ence of cit­i­zens and fur­ther the Gov­ern­ment's E-Gov­ern­ment's thrust.