E-Governance Data Centre started

According to an article by GINA, apparently based on information provided by Project Coordinator Mr. Alexei Ramotar, worked has started on construction of this centre. The core of the data centre will be housed in 3 containers which house power, cooling and servers. This allows relocation in the event of flooding or other disaster. Using special containers is not unusual for a modern data centre.

The centre will be hooked up to the optical fibre cable coming from Brazil. Cables will also connect it to government offices.

Mention is also made of 55 sites around the country and of a 4G network. Presumably these will be the 4G cell towers. True 4G provides a faster mobile data service than is available nationally at present and often it replaces DSL for data service and is used on laptops. This service may tie in to the OLPF project and to internet access for schools but this is not mentioned in the article. There will be many bandwidth and security issues to resolve as the project unfolds but it holds much promise.

Of particular interest to me is mention of open source software: "... an electronic library will be created utilising open software."

Other links
Demerara waves article

Open source software

A great alternative to propriatary software with high license costs. Reliable and free of viruses. Having used it almost exclusively at work for years both as a desktop and a server I would recommend it. We started using Linux in 1996 for servers. Soon many who currently use unlicensed copies of software - often without knowing - will be faced with difficult choices. Open source software is a good choice if it can do what is needed, and it usually can.

Guyana has an active Linux user group - GLUG.

Useful links:
http://www.linux.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux
http://www.glug.org.gy