ICT solutions to face crisis situations: the case of Haiti
03/08/2012
By Reynold Guerrier
President
Haitian Association for Information and Communication Technologies (AHTIC)
“The 4th LACNIC Conference in the Caribbean was an opportunity to organize a panel on the use of technological solutions in times of crisis and in particular on the case of Haiti. This panel was held by Harry M. Lindor’s Technical Advisor to the Ministry of Public Works and Communications of Haiti and myself, Reynold Guerrier, President of AHTIC. To set context, I chose to remodel a presentation made after the earthquake of January 2010 in which I presented the infrastructure that resisted and why it resisted, particularly the Exchange Point. I compared the ecosystem of ICT in Haiti two years before and after the earthquake. The market has since undergone enormous changes with the acquisition of Voila (second telephone operator) by Digicel which already possessed nearly 60% of the market while the 3rd operator has gone bankrupt. I then highlighted the need to have particularly resilient networks to ensure business continuity.
For his part, Mr. Harry Lindor chose to interact with the public in seeking to identify the different types of risks the country may face. He proposes to establish a map of risks before developing solutions and contingency plans to cope with it. The public has strongly participated through fruitful exchanges of proposals from redundant networks up to the creation of local data center or the adoption of “cloud” solutions. This is definitely a panel that will be remembered by people as he addresses some of their daily concern: ICT solutions in crisis situtation”