The state’s E-Governance Data Centre (GOVNET) is currently gearing to provide wide technical support for the National Intelligence Centre (NIC) as the government prepares to expand CCTV countrywide.
“We will provide assistance to them for the CCTVs they have around Georgetown and those will soon expand throughout the country,” Head of GOVNET Floyd Levi told Stabroek News in an interview.
Minister of Public Security Khemraj Ramjattan in August announced that government wants to install CCTV cameras on every city street as part of its plans to address crime.
Ramjattan had informed that under Phase Two of the Citizens Security Programme (CSP), government has formulated an “emergency smart street, safe city proposal” that will see the installation of over 100 CCTV cameras in and around the city, where over 50% of crimes are committed.
Additionally, he said the proposal also includes the construction of a command centre, where the footage would be monitored throughout each day.
During an interview with Stabroek News, Ramjattan had outlined the proposal for the additional cameras but when asked how long it would take to implement, he said the plans were still in the infancy stage.
Though he could not say how many cameras are currently working, Ramjattan stated that the command centre where all the cameras will be linked will be separate from the NIC. Based on what this newspaper was told previously, the existing CCTV cameras are monitored by staff attached to the NIC. Police are also receiving a live feed from the unit. Up to now, the head of the unit, which falls under the control of the Ministry of the Presidency, has not been identified to the public and information on its workings and staff complement has been top secret.
According to the Minister of Security, the CCTV cameras proposal had to first get the backing of Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to ensure that funding could be made available for the purchasing of the cameras and the construction of the command centre.
Levi explained that while GOVNET and the NIC are two separate agencies, and housed in the same Castellani House Compound, his agency will use its Georgetown fibre optic network to bring the CCTV feeds to the NIC.
“They will use our network to bring the CCTV images to that centre and elsewhere from which they will operate”, he pointed out.
“In terms of supporting them technically that is (the fibre optic cable) brings the images from the CCTV cameras to their centre and we will move to do that on the fibre optic cable that is along the coast”, he added.
Meanwhile, Levi said that GOVNET continues to be provided with free trial software services from US software giant Microsoft. If this is successful he said the government will consider procuring webhosting services also from Microsoft as the company will also give free technical support with its package.
“We are working closely with them through this period of assessment… they have given us access to their enterprise systems for trial and we are currently trialing Microsoft 365 online, which is the most advanced form of the Microsoft office suite .
We intend to pursue that. They are also allowing us to trial their platform free of cost for the central hosting of all government websites,” he stated.
