(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) Heads of institutions of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) have agreed that functional cooperation provided a means by which they could achieve programme objectives and become even more effective in contributing to fulfilling Community mandates.

To this end they have agreed to intensify efforts towards initiating projects involving the use of information and communication technology (ICT) which they identified as a primary tool in creating the cooperation and collaboration required to accomplish their work programmes.

This agreement came at the end of a two day meeting of Heads of regional institutions held at CARICOM Secretariat Headquarters, Georgetown, Guyana, 23-24 July, 2009.

Assistant Secretary-General for Human and Social Development at the CARICOM Secretariat, Dr Edward Greene reminded the meeting of the decision of CARICOM Heads of Government on functional cooperation as outlined in the Declaration of Needham’s Point: A Community for All. That decision at the conclusion of their Twenty-Eighth Regular Meeting in Barbados, July 2007, stressed that the Community needed to embrace a broader view on functional cooperation which went beyond the longstanding co-operation in the social services sector such as health and education.

The Heads of regional institutions agreed to use ICTs to create inter agency linkages and to intensify existing efforts at establishing portals for more effective information sharing.