Thursday, February 22, 2007
Who Says the Majority is Silent?
Much of what is written on Cuba by the mainstream commercial media spreads the idea that Cubans are gagged and cannot express their opinions openly. Any visitor to the island can confirm just the opposite.
But just in case there remains doubt, another channel has now opened to criticize or suggest to improve the work of government institutions and everyday paperwork.
The new version of the portal of the Cuban citizen, developed by Desoft S.A. aimed to serve the common citizen. Today the site www.ciudadano.cu can inform users about 200 types of paperwork procedures in 20 entities and 10 institutions, as those related with Housing and Social Security. This site offers 71 services in all to Cuban citizens.
Now Cubans will be able to submit their claims and suggestions to state institutions and receive answers to their proposals and demands.
As a small segment of the population has access to Inter or Intranet connections, those writing to the government can do so through the 600+ Computer Youth Clubs, outlets where anyone can go for computer lessons or communicating reasons.
Also at the Informatica 2007 convention and exhibition recently held in Havana, a system was presented to help internauts sort out the increasing number of .cu domains. It may not be Yahoo or Google that have planetary reach, but the new Cuban search engine revealed the system known as 2x3 (version Beta) is the result of a revision of over 100,000 Cuban sites on Internet.
Among its virtues, creators of the system stress it can conduct general searches in the country´s media sites and special quests in speeches of president Fidel Castro, explained Leandro Silva, programmer of the state-run Office for Informatization.
For the moment it is being hosted by www.infosoc.cu /buscador / but it is being registered as an independent site under www.2x3.cu . The search engine makes a weekly revision of all Cuban websites in order to expand the engine´s searching skill.
