ICT is the new fron­tier for re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion, Cari­com Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Ir­win LaRocque said yes­ter­day as he un­der­scored the crit­i­cal role of the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union (CTU) in the in­te­gra­tion ar­chi­tec­ture.

Speak­ing at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the CTU's 25th an­niver­sary con­fer­ence and ICT week at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain, LaRocque said ICT was a "cru­cial el­e­ment in not on­ly re­solv­ing our present chal­lenges, but al­so in build­ing the plat­form for our growth and de­vel­op­ment."

He added: "The CTU, there­fore, has a crit­i­cal role to play in the in­te­gra­tion ar­chi­tec­ture. Work­ing to­geth­er with Mem­ber States and your part­ner in­sti­tu­tions, there is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to make a dif­fer­ence and sub­stan­tial­ly im­prove the lives of the peo­ple of the com­mu­ni­ty."

LaRocque said cre­ation of a sin­gle ICT space is at the heart of Cari­com's Five-Year Strate­gic Plan, 2015-2019 which was ap­proved by the Heads of Gov­ern­ment last Ju­ly. He said the plan iden­ti­fies tech­no­log­i­cal re­silience as one of eight strate­gic pri­or­i­ties.

The Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al said there will have to be an ad­just­ment in Cari­com's meth­ods of op­er­a­tion since the plan re­quires an in­creased lev­el of co-or­di­na­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion among mem­ber states, in­sti­tu­tions and the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at.

"The im­ple­men­ta­tion of the plan will re­quire the most ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive use of all the re­gion's re­sources. It has al­ways been my view that the spe­cial­ized in­sti­tu­tions es­tab­lished by this com­mu­ni­ty, of which the CTU is one, must use their unique skills to serve a com­mon pur­pose–name­ly the in­te­gra­tion of our re­gion to im­prove the qual­i­ty of life of our peo­ple," he said.