region. In past capacity building DevInfo activities were held to enable the member countries to implement DevInfo as a dissemination tool for their national statistical systems.
The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) has also recognized the potential of DevInfo for improving reporting by member countries on the CSMDGs, CSME and on national and regional development initiatives in general. Moreover, CDB recognizes the potential of DevInfo for improving the monitoring and reporting on CDB-financed initiatives, particularly those financed by Special Development Fund resources.
In the region most of the Member Countries are at the initial stages of implementing
DevInfo whereas Jamaica and Saint Lucia are relatively more advanced. The Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Commission has also made significant progress in establishing DevInfo as an information dissemination tool. At least 13 Borrowing Member Countries (BMCs) of the CDB have received training in the DevInfo application and they have developed their DevInfo national desktop and web adaptations.
The region has been facing challenges of non-adherence to standard procedures for defining metadata, for overall data integrity and for data compatibility. There are also significant data gaps in the published data used to populate new DevInfo databases. National Statistical Office (NSO) and the key stakeholders have limited human and financial resources to support DevInfo implementation and to fill data gaps. This CDB and UNICEF funded project is expected to directly address some of these implementation challenges. This project will facilitate the development of DevInfo implementation plans to bring structured implementation and database management process. On the technical side, this will reinforce the need to ensure data quality for all agencies within the national statistical systems. It will also expand the pool of trained DevInfo users and administrators and increase the cadre of available DevInfo trainers at the regional level.
During the week of Septerber 14th to 18th 2015 the OECS Commission hosted a consultation with key internal stakholders. The objecticves of the workshop was to:
• To review the latest status of DevInfo implementation, identify the challenges being encountered and the approaches taken to address these challenges and the implications for the ongoing implementation and effectiveness of DevInfo.
• To develop and administer a self-assessment instrument to assess readiness to implement, or progress made in implementing DevInfo as a national knowledge dissemination tool; and to determine implementation support needs;
• To conduct DevInfo orientation session and identify the resources, timeframe, milestones, roles and responsibilities, project organization structure required to support the implementation of DevInfo.
• To finalize the DevInfo implementation plan based on the feedback from the Project Implementation team, Project Steering Committee and other stakeholders.
The OECS Commission launched its desktop enabled version of DEVInfo (OECSInfo) in November 2009.