Dear Editor,
Being an avid user of the internet and a web developer, I feel a compulsion to write on the subject. By virtue of my job I usually browse a number of sites in order to get ideas or evolve existing ones for my own projects, however, when it comes to sites operated by Guyanese institutions and organizations these sites are found to be wanting, for some reason or the other the content hosted on these sites is never or rarely updated.
Let me provide an illustration, I saw in the papers last Sunday that the University of Guyana has begun to accept applications for the next academic year, however, on visiting their website (www. uog.edu.gy) to download an application form I found that they still have the application form for the current academic year posted, now this is rather unfortunate since prospective applicants will have to incur some expense to travel to the University to purchase the form and then additional travelling expenses to submit the completed form, when they could have downloaded and printed these forms in their homes or offices and made one trip to UG.
And similar situations exist for a lot of websites operated by Guyanese organizations and institutions where visitors are unable to access updated content. I have also found it painstakingly difficult to retrieve information from some Guyanese sites such as GINA (www.gina. gov.gy ) and the Guyana Chronicle (www.guyana chronicle.com) and I am often forced to use Stabroek News (www.stabroeknews.com) website since it offers an easier method of retrieving content.
The President and other spokespersons for the Government are often heard advocating harnessing the internet towards the development of our country and they have often touted the provision of internet access to school-aged children. Yet, these children will continually suffer since content of a number of Guyanese sites is not updated.
Webmasters and web developers should look at the methodology in which their websites was developed and I urge them if it is possible to mimic the designs of Stabroek News (www. stabroeknews.com), Government of Guyana National HIV/AIDS Pro-gramme ( www.hiv.gov. gy), GAWU (www.gawu.net) and Caricom Law ( www.caricomlaw.org).
Yours faithfully,
(name and address
supplied)
