His Excellency Baushaun Ger, Ambassador of the Republic of China on Taiwan, is looking forward to signing the agreement with this country’s Information Technology Minister Camillo Gonsalves for a new phase of cooperation.

His Excellency Baushaun Ger, Ambassador of the Republic of China on Taiwan, is looking forward to signing the agreement with this country’s Information Technology Minister Camillo Gonsalves for a new phase of cooperation.That will be an Electronic Management Documentation System which Ambassador said is valued US$2M.

Ger made his excitement known last Tuesday at the SVG E-Government Centre at the Clico Financial Centre, Kingstown. He was speaking at a ceremony for the presentation of the ISO 27001 Certificate.

The Taiwanese Ambassador acknowledged that it was the first time that an ISO certificate, the highest accreditation for information protection and security from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), was being made available to any institution in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Ambassador Ger described the issuing of the certification as "an affirmation that the government of St Vincent and the Grenadines has successfully adopted and complied with the highest management standards in information security in the world.”

He also referred to the 2011 launch of the Technical Cooperation Project between Taiwan and this country, and pointed to the subsequent, 2013, establishment of the e-Government Centre as having "turned concepts into reality.”

Information Technology Minister Camillo Gonsalves cited the ISO certification as a stepping- stone to this country’s thrust in technological development.

Gonsalves pledged his Ministry’s commitment to improving the availability of data to the public.

Gonaslves observed that this country had met international standards to withstand threats to cyber security that threatened, as he prefaced his reflection on a recent occurrence whereby government’s website was hacked.

"I was distressed at the lack of systems and procedures in place,” Gonsalves confessed, and lamented the absence of facilities "to deal with breaches in security” at the time.

Andre Bailey, the E-Government’s centre manager, also referred to the hacking incident when he addressed the gathering.

"We have to be reinventing and ensuring that we stay on top of business,” Bailey pointed out.

He praised members of his staff, who made extra sacrifices so as to progress with the process thus far, and thanked the Audit team for their contribution in this regard.

The forthcoming EDRMS aims to build a digitised document interchange and management system to be used between government agencies at different levels. (WKA)