A meet­ing of Caribbean Com­mon­wealth of­fi­cials with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for ICT will bring the re­gion's eGov­er­nance and cy­ber­crime is­sues square­ly in­to fo­cus.The Caribbean Stake­hold­ers' Meet­ing on the Im­por­tance of ICTs and their Im­pact on Re­gion­al De­vel­op­ment takes place in Port-of-Spain from to­day to Wednes­day.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar will de­liv­er the fea­ture ad­dress at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the high-pro­file three-day re­gion­al meet­ing, which aims to strength­en the re­gion's ca­pac­i­ty for cy­ber se­cu­ri­ty and on­line gov­ern­ment ser­vices de­liv­ery.It is be­ing con­vened by the Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tari­at, in part­ner­ship with the Min­istry of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS), In­ter­na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union (ITU), Mi­crosoft and the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union (CTU).

The ITU, OAS, CTU and Mi­crosoft are ac­tive part­ners in the Com­mon­wealth Cy­ber­crime Ini­tia­tive (CCI), an in­ter­na­tion­al pro­gramme start­ed in 2011 to sup­port mem­ber states in the im­ple­men­ta­tion of ro­bust cy­ber se­cu­ri­ty pro­grammes.The 53 mem­ber coun­tries of the Com­mon­wealth share sim­i­lar le­gal sys­tems and in­sti­tu­tion­al struc­tures, and have a long his­to­ry of ac­tive col­lab­o­ra­tion on is­sues and con­cerns re­lat­ed to cy­ber­crime and the In­ter­net.

Bernadette Lewis, Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the CTU, will de­liv­er the wel­come ad­dress at the cer­e­mo­ny and greet­ings will be de­liv­ered by Ru­pert Grif­fith, Min­is­ter of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, An­tho­ny Ming, ICT Ad­vis­er to the Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tari­at, Cleve­land Thomas, ITU Caribbean rep­re­sen­ta­tive, and Riyad In­sanal­ly, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the T&T Of­fice of the OAS.

Con­fer­ence del­e­gates are ex­pect­ed to dis­cuss the im­pact of cy­ber­crime on so­cial and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, with a view to iden­ti­fy­ing next steps in im­ple­ment­ing e-Gov­er­nance and in­fra­struc­ture ini­tia­tives in iden­ti­fied coun­tries. Cy­ber­crime is a glob­al multi­bil­lion dol­lar in­dus­try with un­told im­pact on Caribbean economies.The con­fer­ence will al­so iden­ti­fy and ad­dress the ma­jor in­fra­struc­ture com­po­nents re­quired to de­liv­er gov­ern­ment ser­vices on­line.

By in­vest­ing in elec­tron­ic gov­er­nance, gov­ern­ments across the world are sav­ing mon­ey, de­liv­er­ing more ef­fec­tive ser­vices, and com­pet­ing more ef­fec­tive­ly in the glob­al econ­o­my. In­fra­struc­ture is a crit­i­cal com­po­nent to suc­cess­ful­ly im­ple­ment e-gov­er­nance strate­gies.

"An ef­fi­cient, ef­fec­tive and se­cure pub­lic ser­vice is es­sen­tial for eco­nom­ic in­vest­ment and de­vel­op­ment as well as for deep­en­ing cit­i­zens' par­tic­i­pa­tion in pol­i­cy and ser­vice de­liv­ery," a re­lease from the CTU quot­ed Com­mon­wealth Deputy Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al De­o­dat Ma­haraj as say­ing.

"The Com­mon­wealth is unique­ly po­si­tioned to bring to­geth­er the ma­jor re­gion­al play­ers in ICT for de­vel­op­ment. This meet­ing presents a sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ty for col­lab­o­ra­tion by a range of stake­hold­ers on is­sues that have a di­rect im­pact on cit­i­zens' lives."