Both Sides of The Coin: The Story of The Central Bank of Barbados 1972-2017

136 and staff. Project 2000 was highly successful and largely instrumental in ensuring that there was no disruption in the services provided by the Bank and other agencies to the Barbadian public. A general improvement in the IT system With the Y2K issue out of the way, the general modernisation of the IT environment resumed. In 2001, all PCs and laptops were upgraded and the Virtual Private Network (VPN) was established. The VPN facilitated a secure connection between the Bank and a computer outside of the Bank, thereby accommodating staff working off-site and allowing secure access to trusted customers such as commercial banks. During 2000 and 2002, upgrades were performed on Lotus Notes (which provides e-mail for internal and external messaging) and the statistical database management system. Several aspects of the Bank’s work were computerised for the first time and new programmes were written for some others. Between 2006 and 2013, a plethora of new facilities was introduced by the MIS Department. 78 These included video-conferencing, an IP telephone service, online publications and statistics as well as live webcasting. Towards the end of the period under review, the emphasis was placed on so- called “green IT”, the use of IT in a more efficient and environmentally- responsible way. Some of the initiatives in this regard were a reduction in the number of physical servers (so-called virtualisation), reduced paper consumption through network scanning and the creation of more electronic linkages. During 2016, work started on an upgrade to the intranet. The websites The Bank’s presence on the Web started when it acquired access to Caribsurf ’s Internet service in August 1995 79 . Around the same time, it was suggested that the Bank should launch a web page giving information about the 17th Annual International Symposium on Forecasting which the