All countries have taken note of the potentially significant contribution that ICTs can make in their development process and in the eradication of poverty. In developing countries, the hope is that the creation of a knowledge society through strategic use and application of ICTs would empower citizens, create jobs and generate wealth through improved economic performance. Rich developed countries have similar goals especially as these relate to their poor neighborhoods and disadvantaged communities. Countries which have made significant strides in ICT development generally have a strategy or ICT development plan that focuses attention on specific ICT sectors in a manner consistent with some pre-defined set of objectives. This is a sensible approach in view of the fact that ICT development initiatives are very costly to implement and can strain the resources of even wealthy countries. Many ICT strategy plans concentrate activity on the following sectors:
(a) Infrastructure Development
(b) E-government
(c) Human Resource Capacity Building
(d) Legal and Regulatory Framework.
We have had a look at the first two and now proceed to examine some initiatives that can be undertaken with respect to the third viz., improving the ICT skills and capacity of a country’s human resources.
IT Training Initiatives
Countries generally try to implement training initiatives that impact on IT skills development in the following areas:
(a) IT skills training of primary and secondary school teachers as a pre-requisite for similar interventions in the school population.
(b) Providing IT facilities in primary and secondary schools.
(c) Supporting IT training at the tertiary level such as universities, technical colleges.
(d) Encouraging private sector investment in training establishments that provide technical training in IT related fields.
In Guyana there is a great deal of activity in all four of the above areas but there is little attempt to evaluate the impact of the several programmes that have been instituted. Impact assessment is important particularly as a safeguard against viewing programme implementation as an end in itself rather than a means of achieving some desirable goal. For example a programme to deliver ICT training to say 100 primary school teachers within a year must be seen not as an end in itself but as one among many activities deemed necessary to ensure the over-riding objective that children exiting the primary school system have acquired a desired level of IT skills.
Training at the Primary and Secondary School Level
Computer laboratories are now common in many of our schools and Information Technology has been on the school curriculum for several years. The syllabus of the Caribbean Secondary Examinations Council is quite rigorous and candidates who are successful in securing a pass in this subject at the general proficiency level would have had a very good grounding in basic IT skills.
At several secondary schools, local and Diaspora past students associations and parents have made significant contributions to the establishment and upgrading of their computer labs.
It is unfortunate that the lack of available information at easily accessible places such as the Ministry of Education’s Internet website makes very difficult any attempt to assess how well we are doing with respect to IT training in our primary and secondary schools. Statistics such as the percentage of schools that have IT facilities, the nature of these facilities and the effectiveness of the teaching programmes in terms of number of students graduating in IT and their levels of achievement would be useful content for the Statistics section of that website (http://www.moe.gov.gy/)
Training at the Post Secondary Level
The vast majority of IT graduates in Guyana are products of the University of Guyana. This institution offers two programmes viz., a Diploma in Computer Science and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science. Additionally, a small number of students obtain scholarships to pursue IT related training at overseas colleges and universities mainly at the graduate level.
Our IT development process needs a far greater number of these young professionals than what is currently being turned out from UG and this needs to be addressed. A significant number of persons at varying ages attend various IT training programmes currently being offered by privately owned institutions.
The quality of instruction at a number of these is substandard and many of the certificates they grant of questionable value, but some of the more reputable centres train students to take certifying examinations of well known IT industry leaders. The Microsoft MCA, MCSA, MCSE and CISCO CCNA and CCNE are examples of IT professional certification that are increasingly being demanded by employers and for which training and tuition are offered at the better centres.
One useful intervention to upgrade the more backward would be for government to develop set standards for IT curricula, qualifications of teaching faculty and desirable levels of available computer facilities in IT training centres and to offer official recognition of all training institutions that meet these requirements.
This tactic has been adopted by other countries in an attempt to ensure that an acceptable standard of IT training is provided by privately owned training establishments.
I mention in closing a very disturbing trend of low scholastic attainment in traditional subjects particularly English and Mathematics and a widespread but erroneous belief that IT training is a substitute for these core subjects.
This problem is illustrated by the piece of prose below produced by a talented and skilful young IT professional who recently graduated without a pass in English language from one of our top secondary schools:
‘Because of computer viruses, hardware and software problem that we the users is face, the company is currently planning a maintenance day for looking at problems encountered; this includes virus checks, defragmenting of hard drives checking hardware to determine failure points. The day will be reserve in each month for looking at these problems.
Thank you for your kind co-operation for this endeavour. If there is any questions of assistance that I can provide please email me at copy the mail to management. Thank you.’
I also noticed this deficiency in written communication while teaching Information Systems courses for many years at UG. Student answers to final examination questions were generally poorly articulated and it was often difficult to understand what the candidate was really trying to say. It is indeed a great pity that while we attempt to equip our young people with sophisticated IT skills; we are not ensuring that they also attain an acceptable level of competence in the equally important communication and computational skills.
