‘FAIR’: Minister of Digital Transformation Hassel Bacchus.
{{description}}
Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.
‘FAIR’: Minister of Digital Transformation Hassel Bacchus.
A LITTLE over a year at his post, Minister of Digital Transformation Hassel Bacchus rates his performance as “fair.” His self-assessment of “fair” is because he is a hard taskmaster.
“For me, I would never be able to say I have done enough. We have achieved a lot and I want to be able to do more,” he told the Sunday Business in an interview last week.
He said one of his “biggest successes” has been making the public service more digitally conscious and showing them how to be efficient.
“Since I was appointed, I have probably attended six physical Cabinet meetings and a few of those were retreats. We do Cabinet online. We do the Finance and General Purposes Committee (F&GP) online. All our committee meetings are done online. It’s certainly more efficient. Covid may have pushed us there, but those are lessons we have kept,” he said.
So where exactly is his ministry in terms of digital transformation?
He explained that digital transformation wasn’t confined to the performance of one Ministry but throughout the public service.
“It’s about alignment. Everything that was happening before was being done in silos. Ministries were not communicating with each other. There were different levels of security, there was no coordination on laptops or software purchases happening in the ministries. So we’ve been able to go in and streamline a lot of this. A great deal is going on in the Ministry of Social Development and the Ministry of Works and Transport,” he said.
“You know how when you’re building a new building, there is some galvanise put up to block the public from seeing it? Yet the work is being done? Well that’s exactly what it’s like. We are doing the work, but it’s meticulous, it takes time, but it’s being done. And one day, we will be able to move the galvanise and show our customers what we’ve done. Notice I say customers because that’s how we view them. Customers are not just people who consume the services. Customers also involve the people who deliver the services. This is all public offices. So when we talk about the implementation of technology, yes it is focused on the consumer but also the processes that allow for delivery to happen,” he said.
And what kind of timeframe is he working with?
He is hesitant to commit to a specific date, explaining that digital transformation is not an overnight fix and it would be a continuous evolving process as things change over time.
“It is a journey. Not a destination. There is no end,” he said.
In an interview last year following his appointment to the new ministry on July 21, 2021, Bacchus said while Government policies are aligned with the People’s National Movement Vision 2030, there will be incremental steps with a number of milestones to be met by next year.
“It is hard to put a defined time frame on change, but I would say that 2030 is a reasonable target for the concept of a digital T&T. By then it would mean we would have quality, secure, and resilient infrastructure in place. We would have optimised ICTs in our daily lives making our population more productive, our business and public services would be conducted digitally, and digital technology will be in harmony with the ICT environment.
“We will also, and quite importantly, have a digital sector that is contributing to our GDP and earning us foreign exchange. But as I mentioned before, getting us there requires some massive undertakings and taking significant Moko Jumbie-sized leaps. But with the right capacity and infrastructure, nothing is impossible,” he had said.
In March, Bacchus said there are 94 Government services that are available online and that by year end, he hopes to make that 200.
Hits and misses
Bacchus described the implementation of the TT Travel Pass as a success but acknowledged that the traveling public did not like it.
“Not once did the website go offline,” he said.
As for the vaccination cards which did not materialise?
He explained that two solutions were built out for the Government – one from Crimson Logic, based in Singapore, who previously did work for the Ministry of Trade and Industry. The other was from Riomed, a UK-based company, and one was accepted.
He said what followed were challenges in data collection as there were human errors in the input of names.
“The error rate was simply too high,” he said.
In responding in the Senate to a question from the Opposition, Bacchus said that “investigations and clean up” caused a backlog.
He said there were “unacceptable level of inconsistency in the database, which remains to be queried”.
Bacchus also pointed out that malware discovered in December 2021 called Log4j as another reason:
“This required assessment and fixed implementation where this was applicable… it was quite dangerous and had to be addressed” he said.
He said that “no cost was incurred by the Government as the companies developed the solution free of charge.”
As it stands, the solution is still an option for the Government to utilise as a depository for the Ministry of Health for immunisation history.
He said that it will be up to Energy Minister Stuart Young, in his capacity as Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister, to authorise its use.
In the meantime, Bacchus said that he has a lot of work to do with regard to legislation – one which has to be repealed, one which has to be changed and some which are new.
He said a big challenge with new legislation, which would address new technology, is that it would require a special majority to ensure that it doesn’t run afoul of constitutional rights of citizens.
“But the political environment is such that the Government has not been able to convince the Opposition of its initiatives, so that legislation which requires a special majority has not been passed,” he noted.
In an address to public servants at a Digital Transformation workshop in January, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley said his vision was for a transformed T&T where citizens were pleased with the scope, quality, and delivery of public services which were delivered in a timely manner at people’s point of need.
He said he envisioned digital technology being fully utilised in the public and private sectors to improve the ease of doing business and that a transformed public service would allow “an assault on white-colour criminal conduct, which currently flourishes with impunity, but which will wither if access is digitally controlled and recorded and information in the form of evidence identifies who did what, where, when, how and under what authority.”
Digitally literate citizenry
For his ministry to be successful, Bacchus has to have buy-in from the public: Unless they access and use the services online, it won’t happen fast enough.
So, for him, a big focus at this point is digital literacy.
He describes this as a cultural shift which needs to take place as the ministry aims to improve customers’ understanding of the potential and uses of the Internet as a basic good/service and harnessing its creative and economic potential for digital transformation.
One of the findings of the 2021 Digital Inclusion Survey conducted by the Telecommunications Authority of Trinidad and Tobago (TATT) concluded that more than 70 per cent of households have a working fixed broadband Internet service (fixed Internet subscription).
In seeking to drive digital literacy, the Ministry of Digital Transformation has established, in collaboration with the Youth Training and Employment Partnership Programme (YTEPP), a functional digital literacy programme at ICT access centres throughout the country and at YTEPP’s facilities.
Bacchus told the Sunday Business he was pleased with the reception.
“Last Tuesday, before the PNM’s political meeting in Belmont, I stopped at the centre there to check in and at 8 o’clock there were still people there, so I am pleased with that,” he said.
A LITTLE over a year at his post, Minister of Digital Transformation Hassel Bacchus rates his performance as “fair.” His self-assessment of “fair” is because he is a hard taskmaster.
“For me, I would never be able to say I have done enough. We have achieved a lot and I want to be able to do more,” he told the Sunday Business in an interview last week.
Government is making it clear that it has no plans to take over scrap iron yards, as was said by protesting scrap iron workers earlier this week.
However, Minister of Trade and Industry Paula Gopee-Scoon insisted that the industry must be regulated.
Trade and Industry Minister Paula Gopee-Scoon is calling on manufacturers to capitalise on opportunities available following the recent Agri-Investment Forum.
On August 19-21, 2022, the Government hosted the first Agri-Investment Forum and Expo, with the objective being to reduce the Caricom region’s food import bill by 25 per cent by 2025.
Last week Wednesday, in this space and under the headline “Is CAL a strategic asset of T&…
The Trinidad and Tobago Coalition of Services Industries (TTCSI) yesterday called on the Government to pay urgent attention, in the upcoming budget, to the issues affecting the services sector, which was severely impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Instagram
Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device.