Lisa Jes­samy

The vi­sion of a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety in which gov­ern­ment and cit­i­zens can cre­ate, share, ac­cess, be in­formed and em­pow­ered by a an open Web of da­ta and ser­vices is ma­te­ri­al­is­ing dai­ly. In the on­go­ing ef­forts to en­hance on­line re­sources and in­for­ma­tion, the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go will soon kick-start two new pro­grammes to con­tin­ue to pro­mote pro­duc­tiv­i­ty among pub­lic ser­vants, as well as en­cour­age and en­gage par­tic­i­pa­tion of cit­i­zens. "Apart from the many oth­er key ini­tia­tives to serve the peo­ple, cit­i­zens in rur­al ar­eas of Trinidad and To­ba­go will soon be able ac­cess more gov­ern­ment in­for­ma­tion and ser­vices though TTCon­nect ex­press. Mo­bile units will vis­it rur­al com­mu­ni­ties of­fer­ing res­i­dents in­for­ma­tion and ser­vices - from ap­ply­ing for their birth pa­pers, or a home, to even find­ing in­for­ma­tion on schol­ar­ships. Sim­i­lar­ly, this same in­for­ma­tion and ser­vices would short­ly be made avail­able us­ing mo­bile phones," says Cleve­land Thomas, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of Na­tion­al ICT Lim­it­ed (iGovTT).

"The achieve­ment of e-Gov­ern­ment is one of the main pri­or­i­ties of the Gov­ern­ment," says Mark Car­val­lo, an avid In­ter­net user. "I do all my busi­ness on­line and forms can now be down­loaded with­out me hav­ing to go to their of­fice. I don't have to join the line for any­thing. "If the gov­ern­ment fol­lows through with their plan, we can look for­ward to an ef­fec­tive and op­er­a­tional e-Gov­ern­ment which will fa­cil­i­tate bet­ter and ef­fi­cient de­liv­ery of in­for­ma­tion and ser­vices to cit­i­zens." It still re­mains an open de­bate on how many peo­ple ac­tu­al­ly ac­cess gov­ern­ment in­for­ma­tion on­line and those cit­i­zens who still pre­fer face to face meet­ings or phones calls to get their in­for­ma­tion by ac­tu­al­ly vis­it­ing gov­ern­ment fa­cil­i­ties. Five out of ten per­sons said 'yes', when asked if they used ttcon­nect.gov.tt or gov.tt to get in­for­ma­tion on gov­ern­ment ser­vices. How­ev­er, with over 20,000 hits per day, it still makes sense to see why the Gov­ern­ment put so much ef­fort and fi­nan­cial re­sources in on­line in­ter­ac­tions.

So how much in­for­ma­tion is avail­able on­line?

"Present­ly the pub­lic can ac­cess in­for­ma­tion on over 400 plus gov­ern­ment ser­vices on­line," says Thomas. "At the same time, the pub­lic can ac­cess ttcon­nect.gov.tt through ser­vice cen­tres in Ari­ma, Bon Ac­cord, Princes Town and St. James and kiosks at Gulf city, Pi­ar­co and Port of Spain." Gov­ern­ment's so­lu­tions are in­tend­ed to im­prove cross-min­istry com­mu­ni­ca­tion and cit­i­zen­ship. While pub­lic sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tions (at all lev­els) con­tin­ue to face chal­lenges with in­ter- and in­tra-agency com­mu­ni­ca­tions � from emer­gency pre­pared­ness and man­age­ment to bud­get­ing and ba­sic health and hu­man ser­vices. The so­lu­tion to these chal­lenges is im­prov­ing through col­lab­o­ra­tive work process­es and stream­lined shar­ing of in­for­ma­tion across pub­lic sec­tor en­ti­ties.