Basseterre, St. Kitts, February 16, 2018 (SKNIS): A number of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) personnel in St. Kitts and Nevis are currently exploring the use of Amazon Web Services through a two-day official technical training workshop at the newly reopened National ICT Centre.
The training is facilitated by officials from Amazon Web Services – a subsidiary of Amazon.com that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms to individuals, companies and governments on a paid subscription basis.
ICT Senior Policy Advisor, Pierre Bowrin, explained that Amazon Web Services presence in St. Kitts and Nevis means a great deal for the federation as they are here to introduce the country formally to the use of Cloud. He said that this is extremely important and will prove beneficial to St. Kitts and Nevis, as Amazon is the industry leader in cloud techniques and they have the largest market share.
“It means that you have an industry leader willing to have a presence here in St. Kitts and Nevis. It means that there is an attraction to a multi-national company seeing that the ICT development environment in St. Kitts and Nevis is very good and they know that based on ranking,” said the senior policy advisor, adding that St. Kitts and Nevis jumped 20 spots in 2016 to #34 based on the ICT Development Index, which is a measure of how well a country’s ICT development and performance are.
He pointed out an important aspect of the training where persons would be introduced to an overview of the many Amazon infrastructure Web Services, and outlined a number of expected outcomes coming out of the training.
“The three core expected outcomes would be: a good overview exposing a cadre of 20-30 persons as to what’s possible; a clean cloud use policy; and an agreement between the Government of St. Kitts and Nevis and Amazon that we will continue this relationship, extending to more training and to them coming back and branding the innovation units … so that this is not just a one-off visit and go – that this is the first step in a development partner relations between the Government of St. Kitts and Nevis, its people and Amazon Web Services,” said Mr. Bowrin.
The senior policy advisor said that a number of areas in the public and private sectors have been using Cloud but there are lots of questions regarding risks and security. He noted that the Department of Technology tries as much as possible to seek assistance whenever available to address the issues, as the department sees itself as a leader with respect to how particular technologies are implemented in St. Kitts and Nevis.
