ICT

According to this Trinidad Express article:

EDUCATION Minister Dr Tim Gopeesingh says the $83 million to provide laptops for successful Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) pupils is not as exorbitant as some people believe.

I sat across from an attractive female academic not too long ago as she asked me about helping her find a USB mass storage device for her Apple laptop. Trinidad and Tobago, of course, is a small market - and the people who bring down hardware bring what is most likely to sell. And Apple compatibility is really not as big of a draw as the typical Apple user may think. The majority of the market in Trinidad and Tobago uses the PC platform - so when people bring in computing paraphernalia, it's basically for the PC platform.

A few weeks ago, the T&T government decided to award sole rights to distribute coverage of major Carnival 2010 events to its own media house: the Caribbean New Media Group (CNMG).  On the face of it, this seemed sensible: award management of the distribution to a trusted partner.  However, though CNMG has been streaming its own programmes on the Internet for over a year at www.ctntworld.com, it proved to be completely unable to handle streaming of T&T Carnival.

Out of the blue, a message on the Trinidad and Tobago Drupal Group caused an impromptu meeting at Haagen Daz, Gulf City, here in Trinidad and Tobago.

It wasn't too long ago that I was waxing poetic about innovation. Even my last post about the need for an emergency SMS system for nations is a good lead in to the Caribbean Innovators Challenge:

According to this story, the Government of Trinidad and Tobago is purchasing software from Nova Scotia that hasn't actually worked in Nova Scotia yet:

...The $12.9-million system at Nova Scotia’s registry has not worked as intended since it was introduced in April 2008.

"The problems we’re having in Nova Scotia is in how the software is working with our system, and we have a dedicated team that is working intensely on resolving the problem," Ms. Jennex said...

That equates to $77,461,283 TT dollars for software that is not working in Nova Scotia.

So - problem one is that the software isn't working where it is being purchased from. Problem two is that the Government of Trinidad and Tobago is investing in foreign software when we have the intellectual capital in Trinidad and Tobago to handle such a project.

Ace Suares, a friend of mine in the Netherlands Antilles, has been hearing a lot about Trinidad and Tobago's IT initiatives through a group called iGovTT. Frankly, without Ace I wouldn't have been able to write this because I've been busy with other things over the last few days.

Apparently iGovTT been quite busy in Curacao telling people about their big plans while they don't even have a functional website.