Digital Transformation Minister says digitization could lead to more fulfilling jobs, not job cuts – Trinidad Guardian

Login
/
Subscribe
Home
News
Budget
Business
Sports
CPL 2022
Features
Opinion
Life
Classifieds
Death Notices
Community
Real Estate
About Us
Contact Us
by
Minister of Digital Transformation Hassel Bacchus
 
Min­is­ter of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Has­sel Bac­chus vows the coun­try will be “dig­i­tal­ly trans­formed” by the end of this gov­ern­ment’s term lead­ing to more ful­fill­ing jobs, and set­ting stan­dards that won’t be eas­i­ly over­turned even if there is a change in gov­ern­ment.
Bac­chus was speak­ing at his first post cab­i­net news brief­ing on Thurs­day as he gave the coun­try an up­date on what his Min­istry was do­ing. 
The Min­is­ter said gov­ern­ment is mov­ing for­ward with Dr Row­ley’s cam­paign promise to have a unique iden­ti­fy­ing num­ber for every cit­i­zen which would tie them to state, mak­ing it eas­i­er to do busi­ness. Bac­chus point­ed out that a pass­port may on­ly tie a per­son to im­mi­gra­tion, and a dri­vers’ li­cense to the trans­port di­vi­sion but there is no one card that does all. 
He said cru­cial to this would be an up­com­ing trip to Es­to­nia with whom this coun­try signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing sev­er­al years ago to help the process along. Es­to­nia is seen is the gold stan­dard world­wide in hav­ing a so­ci­ety in­ter­act­ing with state en­ti­ties dig­i­tal­ly.  
But the Min­is­ter al­so ac­knowl­edged, that our so­ci­ety might not al­ways been ac­com­mo­dat­ing to change and em­brac­ing tech­nol­o­gy. Of­ten, up­grades can lead to job joss, but the min­is­ter said he un­der­stands the fears.
“Tech­nol­o­gy scares peo­ple,” Bac­chus said. “Does tech­nol­o­gy re­place me? Do I be­come ob­so­lete? How do I fit in this world? In this dig­i­tal so­ci­ety Part of that is a good part of our be­cause one of the ways that we have to fix that is through Symon [de No­bri­ga], through com­mu­ni­ca­tion. An­oth­er way that we have to fix that is through Dr Dol­ly, through ed­u­ca­tion. The me­dia has a big part to do with that.”
Min­is­ter Bac­chus went as far as to say, the tech­nol­o­gy could in fact make jobs more ful­fill­ing. He gave the ex­am­ple of a work­er in a min­istry whose sole pur­pose was to re­ceive an ap­pli­ca­tion form and file it away. 
“One of the things that tech­nol­o­gy could do is re­place that job by sim­ply say­ing fill out this form on­line. Do it a dif­fer­ent way. Just about that per­son that be­comes ob­so­lete. That is not true!” he said.  
He said in­stead that per­son could now be tasked with quick­ly redi­rect­ing a per­son who has filled out a form in­cor­rect­ly to the right place, sav­ing a re­turn trip to an of­fice or a trip to a new of­fice. 
He ex­plained, “That per­son who was sim­ply just col­lect­ing a form and look­ing at it and can now have a more ful­fill­ing job of be­ing able to con­tact them and say, ‘Lis­ten, we’ve no­ticed you ap­plied for this for this par­tic­u­lar thing. You’ve ap­plied in the wrong place. I can help you fix it.’ What does that do? It’s the same per­son. Min­i­mal up­skilling. They have a more ful­fill­ing job as far as we are con­cerned in terms of what they’re do­ing.”
Bac­chus was asked about the pub­lic scep­ti­cism this could be done with­in his tenure as min­is­ter. 
He was pre­sent­ed with the ex­am­ple of the dig­i­tal vac­ci­na­tion cards which were nev­er rolled out. Bac­chus strong­ly de­fend­ed the cards say­ing the tech­nol­o­gy is there, and it works, but it has sim­ply be­come ob­so­lete now. He vowed, how­ev­er that by the end of his term the coun­try would see some trans­for­ma­tion that will with­stand the test of time. 
“My man­date does not ex­tend be­yond the nat­ur­al life of this [ad­min­is­tra­tion]. So I have to fin­ish. not try­ing, I will fin­ish what I have to do with­in that time frame,” he said. “But un­der­stand what I’m say­ing. That doesn’t mean that Trinidad and To­ba­go will be dig­i­tal­ly trans­formed come 2025. It means we will be well on the way there and the things that will be put in place, re­gard­less of which regime takes over or if we con­tin­ue, it will be very dif­fi­cult to re­place.”
He said the mea­sures will be in­te­gral to not just how peo­ple func­tion in­di­vid­u­al­ly, but with how the in­ter­act with the state as well. 

Click HERE to Login
Want FREE access to all our content? Sign up HERE!
Hassel Bacchus Digital Tranformation
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley lights a Deya at Divali Nagar 2018
shastri boodan
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley lights a Deya at Divali Nagar 2018
shastri boodan
Chile Ambassador Juan Anibal Barria with Sports presenter Gyasi Merrique, left, and Sports Editor Keith Clement.
Chile Ambassador Juan Anibal Barria with Sports presenter Gyasi Merrique, left, and Sports Editor Keith Clement.
Aaron Duncan placed second with Luv Meh Country Bad.
INNIS FRANCIS
Aaron Duncan placed second with Luv Meh Country Bad.
INNIS FRANCIS
News
Business
Sports
Life
Opinion
Tobago Today
Classifieds
Death Notices
Subscriptions
Real Estate
Guardian Media is the premier provider of multimedia solutions and authoritative insight on news, politics, business, finance, sports, and current affairs. Our brand portfolio includes CNC3, Guardian, TBC Radio Network and The Big Board Company.
Send us an e-mail here or call us at +1-(868)-225-4465

source