GOVERNMENT is committed to facilitating national development through information technology, says recently appointed chairman of the Central Information Technology Office (CITO) Danville Walker.

“It is critical that we get IT more in the daily operations of persons’ lives to help them become more productive. It is not something that should be separated and abstract, but intertwined in the decision-making that we do in business,” said Walker at yesterday’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) Express seminar hosted by Digicel Business at the Terra Nova All-Suite Hotel in Kingston.

Walker, who was appointed to head up the CITO in February, said IT development will specifically foster innovativeness amongst Jamaicans.

“This is how we transform the way we do business and transform the way people think. The next great idea can come from anywhere, but what we have to do is provide the vehicles for it,” said Walker, who is also commisioner of customs.

Walker said that Government will play its part in IT development by ensuring that the neccessary infrastructure is in place on the island.

“We are going to be working very hard at CITO to make sure that we’re able to deliver the infrastructure we need to move on,” he said, adding that Jamaica already has some very useful assets in the ground, such as a fibre-optic cable network.

Meanwhile, Bryan Sklar, enterprise sales manager at BlackBerry manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM), explained that the BES Express software provides small businesses with many of the same corporate management solutions found on the BES — the middleware software package offered by RIM that is primarily used by big businesses in the provision of corporate e-mails and other administrative tools — at no cost.

“We had BES out there but it’s a very expensive proposition,” said Sklar. “We realised that small businesses need that same power; they need that same ability to deploy applications, be mobile and productive.

“It gives all the best of everything you need from the BES Server at a low cost — free,” added Sklar, who noted that the BES Express offered an integration of Microsoft Outlook, Windows Small Business Server and Microsoft Exchange.