KEVON FELMINE
Se­nior Re­porter
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Faris Al-Rawi says there have been sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ments in re­design­ing process­es, some of which will see pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ees work­ing from home - on­line.

It’s all part of lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions at the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) on Lo­cal Au­thor­i­ties, Ser­vice Com­mis­sions and Statu­to­ry Au­thor­i­ties (in­clud­ing THA) yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi said the Gov­ern­ment de­signed and mapped var­i­ous process­es and ex­pand­ed its da­ta cap­ture by get­ting a spe­cial­ist dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion build­ing. Yes­ter­day’s sit­ting was an en­quiry in­to the sta­tus of the lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form ini­tia­tive.

He said the min­istry bought scan­ners and equip­ment to get records on­line, and with that struc­ture, it an­tic­i­pates many em­ploy­ees would be able to work on­line through an eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble da­ta room.

Al-Rawi said peo­ple go to court vir­tu­al­ly all the time and file doc­u­ments on­line. He said even Par­lia­ment sits with mem­bers out­side the cham­ber in cer­tain cir­cum­stances. He said the min­istry al­so de­vel­oped the Re­turn of Per­son­nel ap­pli­ca­tions for mu­nic­i­pal po­lice, dai­ly rat­ed work­ers and hu­man re­sources, and an­tic­i­pates it will be able to cut the tra­di­tion­al ac­com­mo­da­tion re­quire­ment for phys­i­cal spac­ing and have, in­stead, ro­ta­tion­al spac­ing as­pects.

Al-Rawi said the min­istry is mind­ful that far too many peo­ple spend a lot of time in traf­fic get­ting to and from work.

“For those who live in San Fer­nan­do, the tes­ti­mo­ny of spend­ing two hours a day to get to work in Port-of-Spain and two hours back, four hours of life be­comes nau­se­at­ing and a waste of time. We have de­vel­oped these projects and prod­ucts al­ready so that we can tack­le the re­duc­tion of re­quests for ac­com­mo­da­tion space and specif­i­cal­ly move once there is ap­proval from the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion, and the Re­turn of Per­son­nel func­tion can be doc­u­ment­ed ac­cu­rate­ly, we can move to on­line or flexi-time, work­ing in those struc­tures,” Al-Rawi said.

With decades of lo­cal gov­ern­ment archives, JSC chair­man Suni­ty Ma­haraj queried the state of gov­ern­ment records.

Al-Rawi said the main­te­nance of pub­lic records is a mat­ter of law. De­spite statu­to­ry lim­i­ta­tions on some doc­u­ments, the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act pre­scribes that the Gov­ern­ment keep records ad in­fini­tum, he said.

Al-Rawi said the min­istry has been cap­tur­ing tomb­stone da­ta to elim­i­nate the pa­per struc­ture and bal­ance oblig­a­tion un­der the Da­ta Pro­tec­tion Act. He said it al­so broad­ened the record man­age­ment de­part­ment and in­vest­ed in scan­ners, op­er­a­tors and stor­age sys­tems for digi­tis­ing, in­clud­ing cap­tur­ing meta­da­ta to al­low for easy search­es of data­bas­es.

He said the archive man­age­ment was some­thing the min­istry was not quite sure has been ful­ly tra­versed be­cause the records go far back.