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Project
definition
The CARIBTIC
project proposes to dedicate itself to the creation of infostructures
so as to obtain a better cooperation in the scientific and cultural
sectors, as a foundation of a co - development policy with the DFA,
policy that will be able to spread to all the fields of the civil
society.
The
construction of an infostructure, naturally goes beyond layers
of transportation and transmission of networks, and mainly focuses
on the aspects linked to users and services. There are not any technical
obstacles today in the Caribbean region to the use of the Internet,
exception being made of problems in the areas badly served by traditional
telephony. On the other hand, problems of equipment or
access in certain cases still remain, as well as problems of
mutual knowledge of partners or identification of the existing
resources in most cases, problems of training to the professional
use of tools which
should not be underestimated and, of course the necessity to practice
the multilinguism in well-managed virtual communities 1.
An efficient
strategy could start with the communities of intellectuals (sciences
and culture), go on with the communities of social importance (health,
education...) and attract the business circles 2.
Objective
of the project
To create, from
the French-speaking axis of the Caribbean�s, but spreading them
to the whole region, the mechanisms based upon the Internet, to
bring together the scientific and cultural sectors of the region
and their involvement into a regional French cooperation actions,
characterized by the transparency in the management and the opening
to the multilateral.
Mechanisms
to create
The
project is articulated around a reference web site on Caribbean
cooperation in French, Psanish, and English 3
that will include the following elements:
For
the scientific part:
- Systematic
identification of Caribbean research centers, first with the
French-speaking 4 ones
with the redaction of identification cards and links toward the
corresponding information resources.
- Organization
of the access to the existing information resources in
and on the Caribbean region, be it of direct or indirect interest
for the regional cooperation.
- Negotiation
and organization of Internet footbridges towards scientific
data banks of regional interest.
- Constitution
of on line available scientist directories.
- Creation
of thematic virtual communities with all the essential
ingredients for an efficient and pro - active management of communication
(moderation, animation, support of users, translation, maintenance
of the available archives, trainerd training of formatives and
long distance training for the use of the NICTs).
- Creation
of a transparent mechanism of management of cooperation projects
(call for project, management of projects 5).
For the
cultural part:
It is difficult
to propose a similar strategy because of the weak proportion of
cultural actors on the Internet. A more efficient strategy would
consist in the pilot phase, to constitute cultural actor directories
in the Dominican Republic and in the DAF, from a work in the field.
After the building of a network from this information, the partners
of the project could replicate the same action in the other countries.
This method should produce a better incitement among the cultural
actors, to motivate them to have their work published through information
technologies.
Parameters
of the project management
The
information that will be gathered in the Internet reference site
will be accessible to the public with a special concern about offering
a simple access. A certain number of protected access will be
planned for commercial or restricted information.
The
site will shelter a synthetic information on partners with cards,
but will keep on being concerned about encouraging decentralization
(as a rule, links toward the outside sites will be privileged to
the reproduction of information).
A special stress
will be put on the maintenance of the site and the constant updating
of information. Users of the site will be permanently invited to
comment and to criticize the information of the site and its arrangement.
Assessments will be made to improve the site. The first objective
of the site being to create conditions for gathering and cooperation,
a particular importance will be given as far as possible to the
quality of the working of virtual communities, with the encouragement
to the decentralization of the mentioned functions.
A particular
effort should be made to have the project being autonomous.
During the progress, different options for the entity assigned to
manage the service after the end of the project and the possible
regional partnerships will be analyzed.
1
The virtual community concept is here used in the sense of networks:
distant persons that mantain permanent communication only through
electronic conferencing (simple tools that permit to exchange
e-mails in a group) [back to text]
2 Actually, the same road of the Internet development
[back to text]
3 Only in French during the pilot phase [back
to text]
4 Particularly a development of network for offer available
in the DFA [back to text]
5 Based upon the World Bank Infodev model [back
to text]
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