Sean Nero

Progress on Gov­ern­ment's planned con­struc­tion of the George Bovell III Na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre, the Na­tion­al Cy­cle Velo­drome and the Na­tion­al Ten­nis Cen­tre can now be tracked in re­al time on the Min­istry of Sport's new Web site www.sport.gov.tt when work be­gins next year.

So said Sport Min­is­ter Anil Roberts at Wednes­day's launch of the agency's por­tal, held at the VIP Room of the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Port-of-Spain.

He as­sured the gath­er­ing that over­haul­ing the Web site and the in­tro­duc­tion of up-to-date so­cial me­dia so­lu­tions on a mod­ern and so­phis­ti­cat­ed plat­form that was user friend­ly came at no ex­tra cost to tax­pay­ers, since the in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy staff at the min­istry un­der­took the project.

"You have links to the Sport Com­pa­ny (of T&T) and the Life Sport Pro­gramme. I want you all to mon­i­tor the projects. First, they say it would build, then it will cost too much. It will not. We are all go­ing to mon­i­tor the projects. We are go­ing to get the Aquat­ic Cen­tre, the Cy­cle Velo­drome, Ten­nis Cen­tre on course, on bud­get, on time, by Oc­to­ber 2014 to De­cem­ber 2014.

"We have nine re­gion­al cen­tres all start­ing right now, we hope to com­plete those with­in two years. We have start­ed and com­plet­ed 32 pavil­ions and we have 32 more com­ing. We have fa­cil­i­ties for up­grade. We have swim­ming pools to do, we have rur­al car­a­vans, com­mu­ni­ty pro­grammes," he said.

Roberts said it was his sis­ter-in-law who vis­it­ed the pre­vi­ous Web site and ex­pressed dis­sat­is­fac­tion with its func­tion­al­i­ties. He then called An­dre Hanief, man­ag­er of the in­for­ma­tion and tech­nol­o­gy de­part­ment, to dis­cuss what was wrong with the por­tal and ex­plore ways for its im­prove­ment.

Hanief told the min­is­ter that a con­sul­tant could be called to give an opin­ion and cost of re­vamp­ing the Web site.

Roberts asked about the ca­pac­i­ty of pub­lic ser­vants in the min­istry and per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Ash­win Creed gave the ap­proval for staff to un­der­take the project.

Roberts said, "All I want to know is that it's top­per-top­per. When peo­ple go on it, they must 'BBM' me and say that thing re­al sweet. Any­thing they want to know, they can go on it and find out about Rod­ney Wilkes. In 1948, he didn't take no BWIA plane (now CAL); he went on a ship to the Olympics. Now if you don't get a first class plane tick­et, they bad-talk­ing the min­is­ter. He (Wilkes) went on a ship with Alex Chap­man for the Lon­don Olympic Games. He took about 17 days to reach. When he reached there, he got our first sil­ver medal."

The T&T Re­lay Car­ni­val, held ear­li­er this year, was the first event to be streamed live as the IT de­part­ment test­ed the ef­fec­tive­ness of the so­lu­tions they em­ployed.

Vis­i­tors from Cana­da, Ja­maica, the Unit­ed States and T&T logged on to wit­ness the ac­tiv­i­ties us­ing an ar­ray of de­vices from desk­top com­put­ers to tablets and mo­bile phones to ac­cess the site.

Now, users of the por­tal can ac­cess video-on-de­mand through the video li­brary via its YouTube page. It can eas­i­ly live-stream events as was done for the T&T Re­lay Car­ni­val dur­ing the test­ing phase of the Web site.

Bryan Gray, con­tent man­ag­er at the min­istry, said us­ing the MSYA site vis­i­tors would not have a pos­i­tive ex­pe­ri­ence as the site was not com­pat­i­ble with these de­vices, leav­ing them un­able to view the Re­lay Car­ni­val.

"The world has evolved and we see the im­por­tance of so­cial me­dia in com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Ar­ti­cles from our web­site can now be shared on a vis­i­tor's Twit­ter or Face­book page just by the click of a but­ton.

"The Web site has a fresh, mod­ern, snazzy, pa­tri­ot­ic look and feel and guess what? We're mo­bile friend­ly on any de­vice. Google maps have been in­te­grat­ed to il­lus­trate the lo­ca­tion of events and our fa­cil­i­ties," he said.

He added, "Gov­ern­ment min­istries were ex­pect­ed to pro­vide on­line ser­vices as part of the na­tion­al e-gov­ern­ment agen­da. Your Min­istry of Sport is meet­ing this re­quire­ment. Through this com­bi­na­tion of sport and tech­nol­o­gy we ex­pect an in­crease in the num­ber of peo­ple util­is­ing the ser­vices be­ing of­fered by the min­istry, whether through fund­ing, vis­it­ing our fa­cil­i­ties, or par­tic­i­pat­ing in events host­ed by the sport de­vel­op­ment of­fi­cers or the min­istry. It is our in­tent to pro­mote and high­light the works of the min­istry. To make the pub­lic aware of all that the min­istry does, how the min­istry is serv­ing them."

The min­istry has al­so em­barked on the Na­tion­al Sport­ing Archives, which is a data­base with in­for­ma­tion and bi­ogra­phies with every sport­ing in­di­vid­ual who has worn na­tion­al colours for the past 50 years, as part of Min­is­ter Roberts' com­mit­ment to keep­ing the mem­o­ry of all na­tion­al ath­letes alive.

The Na­tion­al Sport­ing Archives is a three-year project and was com­mis­sioned by Roberts as part of the Gov­ern­ment's gift to T&T as part of the na­tion's 50th an­niver­sary last year.

Roberts not­ed that the archives will be of­fi­cial­ly launched in Au­gust.

To source the archives go to: www.sportarchivestt.com.