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Government reverts to GTT internet for eGovernance

Oct 01, 2015 News

– pulls Guyana from ‘dark ages’

The Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GTT), five years ago offered the Bharrat Jagdeo Government its internet service to support the eGovernance project, at a nominal fee.
The administration declined the offer.
The Jagdeo administration instead chose to invest billions of tax dollars to land a separate fiber optic cable from Brazil, at a cost of some US$40M—a project that is still to see the light of day.
Jagdeo’s refusal to use GTT’s fibre optic cable infrastructure meant that Guyana was literally kept in the ‘technological dark age’ while it awaited the Brazil cable.
The new coalition government is now being credited with promoting Guyana with the roll-out, of its pilot phase of the eGovernance service.
This service is being rolled out using internet access purchased from GTT to operationalise the project.
ICT experts indicate that had Guyana been using the GTT internet service all along, its ICT sector would by now be five years more advanced than where it is currently.
Jagdeo opted to use the GTT internet service, then the nation would have been able to tap into the numerous technological advances made over the years. This would have also led to a stimulation of technological innovation on the part of the Guyanese people.
“He (Jagdeo) instead opted to invest billions of tax dollars on a cable from Brazil, a cable that is yet to see the light of day and in the process, literally retarded Guyana’s technological growth.”
Project Coordinator, Floyd Levi, has confirmed that the coalition A Partnership for National Unity, Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) has decided to take up the GTT offer.
He told Kaieteur News that the eGovernance Project will be making a bulk (consolidated) purchase of bandwidth from GTT from today, and the internet service will be distributed among the various government agencies.
Asked to comment on Jagdeo’s objection to the use of GT&T’s bandwidth, citing security reasons, Levi told Kaieteur News, “Internet service inherently is vulnerable to security risks.”
Levi said that the eGovernance unit will be putting measures in place to protect its network.
Levi used the opportunity to stress that he was not vouching for the security of GTT’s internet service, nor is he conceding an inability on the part of the telephone company to protect its data. Rather, Government will be putting its own measures in place to ensure the safety of its information being transmitted across the network.
Compounding the situation is the fact that the Guyana Government had agreed to make payments to a Brazilian company for bandwidth to the cable for the eGovernance project.
Since the cable project has never been completed, Government has been unable to use any of the bandwidth available but nevertheless had to make its contracted payments.
Levi told Kaieteur News yesterday that at the time he did not have any figures at hand and would only confirm that the contract with Brazil and payments were terminated some time back.
He told Kaieteur News that a forensic audit is currently being undertaken regarding expenditure that would have been utilized on the project thus far, and at the completion of that exercise the administration would be in a better position to say how much was spent for bandwidth never used.
The Brazil cable was to have been connected to a fiber optic network that was strung along Guyana’s coast (Moleson Creek to Charity) and allow for the transmission of high speed data, video and voice communication.
That came at a cost of an additional US$60M that was invested by Jagdeo from the national coffers.
The data network project is committed to the establishment of one centralized facility, which will host most of the government’s ICT applications, offer internet service and support operational and maintenance services. The Data Center will be established in Georgetown.
“Our immediate task is to operationalize the eGovernance network, which will bring connectivity to all government ministries and agencies between Charity in Region Two and Springlands, Region Six,” said Levi.

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