National ICT Strategic Plan Government of St Kitts and Nevis ICT initiative and also to set out a national ICT roadmap which is comprehensive and overarching. The National ICT Strategic Plan if carefully followed and implemented will allow the GSTK&N to achieve its aforementioned goal of cementing ICT as one of the leading sectors of the economy. It is an outgrowth and consolidation of several preliminary assessments that were prepared by international organizations as well as a series of consultations with the major stakeholders and desk research into several prior reports. Feedback from attendees at the Project Launch has also contributed to this report. After a careful review of all of the information that was gathered in this manner it was determined that the five major branches of the National ICT Strategy would be as shown below: x building the information infrastructure x enabling the policy and legal environment x developing ICT human resources and building capacity (information society) x modernizing government and delivering citizen services electronically x leveraging ICT for economic and social development through public-private partnerships. Building Information Infrastructure Infrastructure is necessary to deliver ICT services such as e-government, e-learning, and e-health to the citizens of St Kitts and Nevis and to facilitate e-commerce among its people and businesses. A landmark 1996 study by the World Bank identified the high price of communications as a barrier to the development of services export in the Caribbean Since then, nearly all countries have put new legal and regulatory structures in place and have established independent regulators. Yet, in spite of this the benefits of reform still elude most Caribbean islands, this being particularly true in St Kitts as Nevis where residents continue to pay high prices and where the unavailability of good affordable telecommunications services continues to be a barrier to the development and growth of the ICT sector Ministry of Finance, Sustainable Development, Information and Technology November, 2006 2