A book and a centre

Double launch at UWI marks telecoms developments

Mel Cooke, Sunday Gleaner Writer

Representatives of academia, government and the private sector gathered for the recent joint launch of the Mona ICT Policy Centre and the book Ringtones of Opportunity: Policy, Technology and Access in Caribbean Communications.

In welcoming those gathered at the Undercroft at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, the dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Professor Evan Duggan, noted that the ICT Policy Centre is a development on the Telecommunications Policy and Management (TPM) programme.

"As they would say in the country, it (the TPM) has grown out of my sight," Duggan said. "This is the programme that is making the transition into the ICT Policy Management Centre," Duggan said, adding that it is a critical institute in the evolution of "this excellent university".

Professor Archibald McDonald, deputy principal of UWI, Mona, said the centre marks the "culmination of seven years' work". Therefore, the centre is to ensure the permanence of, expansion on, and sustainability of the TPM's work in a national, regional and international context.

VENTURE WORTH SUPPORTING

That TPM programme came out of a grant from the Digicel Foundation, its executive vice-chairman, Major General Robert Neish, pointing out that "the event this evening has caused me to go back almost to the beginning of the Digicel Foundation". In 2005, a team from UWI pitched for a grant from the foundation and was awarded $61.5 million as the project was deemed "very relevant and worthy of our consideration".

Neish, as others did at the joint launch, noted the TPM's extensive research and publication record.

Professor Hopeton Dunn is director of both the Mona ICT Policy Centre and the Caribbean Institute of Media and Communication, and Professor Paul Simmonds, executive director of the Mona School of Business and Management, pointed to Dunn's PhD dissertation. It was, Simmonds said, the beginning of a research agenda which has contributed immensely to the developments being marked at the launch.

Speaking to Ringtones of Opportunity, Simmonds said, "It argues against linear decision making."

DELIGHTED, HUMBLED

Dunn, while delighted, was humbled on the occasion - delighted by the developments, while, at the same time, humbled by the accolades. Stating, "I consider myself a son of rural Jamaica," Dunn spoke to the importance of working to understand the issues which affect the people in Jamaica and the centre. The objective is "the development of the Caribbean people", Dunn noting the connections between academia and the industry which allow testing of what is being developed.

Dunn said Ringtones of Opportunity, which he edited, is part of the process of building a community of scholarship in a sector that is one of the fastest growing and most important in the world.

Minister of State in the Ministry of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining Julian Robinson made the connection between academia and government, saying "when we develop and formulate policy it should be driven by data, it must be driven by fact". The centre, therefore, should assist in providing that hard data, Robinson congratulating UWI for its leadership in ICT. He noted that the drive for the programme has come from the top - principal, deputy principal and dean of the faculty, among others.

Dean Fraser's saxophone performance, including Jimmy Cliff's Many Rivers to Cross, was warmly appreciated.