According to officials, the ICT Project through well targeted intervention will:

- create an environment conducive to investment by providing the legal and regulatory reforms in areas such as privacy and protection of intellectual property rights.

- Increase public sector efficiency and transparency by granting citizens access to public services by making them online (E-government).

- Enable low-income individuals to gain access to the opportunities that the internet provides, e.g. communication, research, job opportunities, education advancement.

- Promote E-exports such as outsourcing and data processing thus providing for a vibrant ICT sector.

- Encourage economic diversification and create new jobs, particularly for the young, e.g. computer repair, web site development, software design and development, networking.

- Establish network connectivity at affordable costs and reliable speeds

Officials note that there is currently very limited access to the Internet by citizens, particularly in areas outside Georgetown, primarily due to lack of communication infrastructure in the rural areas.

The objective of the Community Outreach Component of the project is to enable low-income people to gain access to the opportunities that the Internet opens up for communicating, learning, identifying employment, providing income generating activities and improving welfare.

In order to achieve this objective, the programme will promote the establishment of self-sustaining information and delivery entities at the community level (telecentres). Through these telecentres low-income communities will have access to ICT without having to own a computer. The programme will also provide investment funding to help small businesses and NGO's establish telecentres at the service of the public at large, either through direct access or as computer internet training centres.

These ICT centres will offer computer-assisted service such as training, desktop publishing, data input, research etc. To kick-start the process financing will be available to establish these telecentres in post offices, secondary schools, health facilities, and other higher learning institutions throughout the country, the officials say.

Additional grant funding will be available to help expand telecentre service to secondary schools by providing teacher training and practice vouchers to secondary school teachers to acquire and practise fundamental computer and internet skills.

School Service Subsidies will be provided to enable telecentres located in the vicinity of secondary schools to serve a dual purpose of helping schools carry out their academic programme during off-peak periods and serve the communities at large during the evening.

Officials say the Government recognises the need to promote community development and as such grant funding will be available to help finance social economic and ICT export development initiatives that improve the welfare of communities through the use of ICT. Small matching grants will be awarded to NGO's, grassroots organisations and community groups to foster effective use of ICT's to alleviate poverty and support community development.

Possible projects include: training of youth in web page making/computer repair for well defined markets, long distance learning, community radio, development of local community projects.

PROMOTION OF ICT SERVICE EXPORTS
The Government through the Guyana Office for Investment (Go-Invest) has been pursuing a strategy of encouraging foreign and domestic firms to establish outsourcing operations for ICT services in the country. These operations range from call centres to fairly sophisticated programming operations. This component would support the preparation of strategy and action plan to encourage firms to establish operations in the country.

According to the officials, these initiatives will generate employment for the youth, will encourage the entrepreneurs to invest in viable business alternatives thus contributing to the growing service sector.

Training our youth for tomorrow's challenges cannot be overlooked or else we risk being left behind, the officials note. The youths of today are our future and we must harness the energy and enthusiasm that our students and young professionals have and provide them with the opportunity to contribute to the nation's development, they say.

All project components require a variety of training and educational support that will be geared towards people with very different backgrounds, qualifications and demands. The objective of this cross cutting activity will be to provide demand training and educational services in order to support the advancement of the IT Sector.

Training opportunities are as follows:

- The University of Guyana is the only tertiary institution in the country and as such support will be provided to ensure all graduates are computer literate and have the capacity to develop the human capital expertise needed by a modern information society.

- At the community level training in the areas of social and community welfare, i.e. development of local information systems that will help to provide valuable information to the people e.g. promote the development of local community projects that will generate the enthusiasm that is needed to transform the sector.

- In Government, the training approach to be adopted is one where it will build on the skills needed for general work use, routine management and further evolution into a vibrant and productive public sector.

- ICT awareness campaign will be launched to encourage the public to embrace the new technologies that will become available.

E-GOVERNMENT
The purpose of this component is to transform the operations of government making it more efficient and effective and to develop an image of the government as a service organisation, transparent and responsible to the citizens, the officials say.

The project will promote the notion of Government-online where ICT will be used judiciously to improve communication between Government agencies, and between Government and citizens and businesses. To accomplish this task, key agencies will be connected via a communication network thus facilitating an intranet to be set up for the Government.

A government web site will be designed with links to ministry web pages, so there will be one portal for information flow to the public. Most widely used forms and instructions will be made available online thereby significantly increasing the value of this content and reducing the transaction cost to the public at the same time lowering the cost of production.

In key agencies automated processes and databases will be developed using simple solutions that can be developed and maintained locally at low cost. Some of the key agencies to benefit are; the General Registrar's Office, Guyana Revenue Authority, Traffic department of the Guyana Police Force, Ministry of Health. Also the Post Office Corporation will become a point of access to permit citizens to obtain government forms and to request services such as birth certificates.

Universal access is essential to closing the digital divide and the only means of narrowing this divide is by ensuring that each and every citizen can access the information highway at affordable rates. But there are important constraints Guyana is faced with, including the high price of dialup communications and high costs of leased international circuits, which make these services almost prohibitive to the public, not to mention the poor infrastructure available to support widespread access to all citizens.

The officials say that despite this the Government is committed to providing reliable communication services to its citizens at international competitive rates.

The project will establish a high speed Internet based network that will be accessible through key government sponsored sites at affordable rates. The network will connect key government agencies, learning institutions such as the Cyril Potter College of Education and the University of Guyana, secondary schools, post offices, health facilities, regional offices and telecenters that will be established throughout the length and breadth of the country.

However it will have the capacity to expand to other agencies thus developing into a national backbone, according to the officials.