VP Meriton tours DICT department |30 December 2016

Vice-President Vincent Meriton yesterday conducted a familiarisation visit at the Department of Information Communications Technology (DICT) to familiarise himself with the agency.

DICT supports the government which creates the necessary framework (policies, legislations & regulations) that allows the full potential of ICT to be harnessed nationally for the benefit of the country.

Accompanying VP Meriton was the principal secretary for DICT Benjamin Choppy, the principal secretary in the Vice-President’s Office Alain Volcère.

The visit enabled the VP to see firsthand the importance of DICT and find out what needs to be done so that the department can progress.

PS Volcère stated that the visit would enable them to familiarise themselves with the department.

“We have seen at firsthand the entire department that compose DICT, to interact with the staff and find out about their working conditions, also to find out if they are having any difficulties with their system. DICT is a crucial department in the country; today technology has overpowered us, so we need to keep on upgrading our system and stay up to date,” he said.

PS Choppy added that DICT has got two critical functions.

“One is to develop polices and regulate the ICT sector nationally. We have to deal with so many issues such as telecommunication, regulations and tariff.  We also have to handle the implementation of e-government; it is the use of ICT to facilitate the delivery of public services. We have several issues that we need to work on for 2017, such as the pricing and tariff, along by bringing better service for telecommunications,” he said.

The missions of the department are to develop legislations, regulations and policies pertaining to telecommunication and related services; implement legislations and policies pertaining to telecommunication and related services; develop and maintain software applications to support the delivery of government services; implement, manage and maintain government ICT infrastructure, among others; establish the role/s of ICT in the various sectors/ministries and support the enactment of these roles and plan and manage radio communication resources (e.g. domain names, frequency, numbers etc.)