It has been eight month since Sen­a­tor Allyson West was ap­point­ed Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion on Au­gust 19, 2020.

How­ev­er in the eight months since be­ing hand­ed the port­fo­lio, sev­en months since of­fi­cial­ly be­ing grant­ed a bud­get the min­is­ter ad­mits that the progress in the lat­ter half of her min­istry’s port­fo­lio have not pro­gressed as much as she would have hoped.

“It is not as ad­vanced as  I would like it to be? Be­cause it start­ed out not hav­ing the kind of re­sources that we would have need­ed, and it’s is tak­ing some time to bring those are re­sources on board,” Min­is­ter West told the Busi­ness Guardian in a phone in­ter­view.

The ma­jor chal­lenge, for which she has re­quest­ed these re­sources, has been bring­ing the var­i­ous Min­istries in line with each oth­er. A chal­lenge made more cum­ber­some giv­en they had op­er­at­ed as sep­a­rate en­ti­ties with­out much in­ter­ac­tion for many years,

“What we need­ed, is what I call  li­ai­son of­fi­cers. Of­fi­cers as­signed to each min­istry, to an agency to work close­ly with them to en­sure that they were de­vel­op­ing in the way that we need­ed them to de­vel­op,” West said, “Be­cause what has been hap­pen­ing is that min­istries have tra­di­tion­al­ly been work­ing in si­los and do­ing dif­fer­ent things. All  dis­con­nect­ed from each oth­er and if we are to achieve in­ter­op­er­abil­i­ty, we have to change our ap­proach. “

West ex­plained these of­fi­cers would gauge where each min­istry was at in­di­vid­u­al­ly and com­mu­ni­cate what would be re­quired to bring them in line with the over­all goal of dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion across each Min­istry. But West has not yet got­ten her full com­ple­ment to bring this ap­proach to fruition.

“So far we’ve on­ly got a few on board and we’re work­ing to bring on the oth­er. So we are not as far as round­ed as I would like but as we move for­ward, we are be­com­ing bet­ter in do­ing things quick­er. So I’m hop­ing to make up the time as we ap­proach the end of this fis­cal,” the min­is­ter said.

But the chal­lenges have not sole­ly been that of re­sources, but a more com­mon mo­tif which has af­flict­ed most over the past year, COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has been both a bless­ing and a curse for West’s new re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as it em­pha­sised the need for dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion.

Yet at the same time the min­is­ter in charge of bring­ing the pub­lic ser­vice ful­ly in line with the dig­i­tal age has al­so been stymied by de­lays brought up­on by the re­stric­tions.

Her min­istry had hoped to ex­pand dig­i­tal ac­cess, par­tic­u­lar­ly in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties where in­ter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty is lim­it­ed. The pan­dem­ic has re­strict­ed the abil­i­ty to con­struct ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty cen­tres.

“We are build­ing out more ICT ac­cess cen­tres. These are cen­tres main­ly in rur­al ar­eas way or vul­ner­a­ble ar­eas, where mem­bers of the pub­lic will not have Wi-Fi or do not have de­vices. Can go to these cen­tres, be taught how to ac­cess the web and ap­ply to gov­ern­ment ser­vices and do re­search and peo­ple can go and do school work. For ex­am­ple, we are build­ing out more of those in dif­fer­ent ar­eas, but of course, every time we get locked down that slows down the process,” said West.

How­ev­er with the pub­lic’s eyes opened more to the need for such con­nec­tiv­i­ty, West be­lieved the pe­ri­od has been ben­e­fi­cial to her cause, as it has forced them to has­ten in oth­er ar­eas.

“(The) pan­dem­ic re­al­ly has forced us to ex­pe­dite, and put more em­pha­sis on this pro­gram. So that more, it’s lean­ing more to­wards pos­i­tive­ly im­pact­ing, the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion pro­gram, oth­er than neg­a­tive­ly,” she said.

Since the min­istry has been im­ple­ment­ed, a mul­ti­fac­eted plan has been de­signed to set the course for digi­ti­sa­tion.

“It ranges from re­view and re­vi­sion of leg­is­la­tion to sup­port the pro­gram. Get­ting the in­fra­struc­ture in place in terms of strength­en­ing the por­tal, beef­ing up our da­ta stor­age ca­pac­i­ty,” West said.

Dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy pro­grammes are al­so a part of the plan, and it is re­quired not on­ly for the wider pub­lic, but for the pub­lic ser­vice as well.
“We just got cab­i­net ap­proval to launch one for mem­bers of the pub­lic and we are work­ing. We are look­ing in­to these to see what gaps there are and the pub­lic ser­vice. So that we can al­so en­gage in the dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy train­ing and up­grad­ing for pub­lic ser­vants,” she said.

But un­der­stand­ing the gaps with­in the pub­lic, and clos­ing them are cur­rent­ly the fo­cus of the Min­istry at the mo­ment.

“What we’re do­ing in­for­mal­ly at the mo­ment is work­ing with var­i­ous key Min­istries right now. We hope in the not too dis­tant fu­ture, as we ramp up re­sources, to work si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly with all the Min­istries to guide them in how to de­vel­op their ICT pro­grammes. So that it is con­sis­tent with the in­ter­op­er­abil­i­ty ob­jec­tive that we are try­ing to achieve as well as con­sis­tent with be cit­i­zen-cen­tric ap­proach that we are us­ing to put this dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion,” Min­is­ter West said.

She ex­plained that her own Min­istry has served as the start­ing point, as they test the strat­e­gy.

 “We for ex­am­ple have set up a pi­lot project in the min­istry of pub­lic ad­min, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, to dig­i­talise one, key area in the min­istry, which is the re­al es­tate di­vi­sion. Which deals with the sale and the lease and the pro­vi­sion of prop­er­ty to State agen­cies and so on,” she said.

“So we are dig­i­tal­is­ing that, us­ing that as a pi­lot project as the mod­el and once we are suc­cess­ful, which we are hop­ing to be in the not-too-dis­tant fu­ture, roll that out to the oth­er agen­cies that have been dig­i­tal­is­ing records for quite some time but not do­ing it in an op­ti­mum fash­ion.”

From there the dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion process will tar­get change in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, all of which have been iden­ti­fied as key due to the ef­fect of the pan­dem­ic.

“Min­istry of Fi­nance be­cause e-pay­ment is key, we are try­ing to roll that  out quick­ly Min­istry of Health, be­cause of the ob­vi­ous rea­sons, Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment be­cause of the ad­di­tion­al sup­port that has been re­quired over the pe­ri­od and the gaps in how we pro­vide that sup­port and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion be­cause of the im­pact of schools, covid-19 on schools and how we roll for­ward in­to your dig­i­tal ap­proach or blend­ed ap­proach as a min­is­ter calls it to ed­u­ca­tion. So those are the key min­istries that we are fo­cus­ing on at the mo­ment,” she said. But there is still much work to be done, as even the cur­rent on­line plat­form for gov­ern­ment ser­vices; TTCon­nect, needs to be brought in line with the Min­istry’s plans.

“TTCon­nect needs to be con­vert­ed at the mo­ment be­cause the ben­e­fits or TTCon­nect or TTCon­nect be­ing a gate­way to a lim­it­ed num­ber of ser­vices, we re­al­ly have to trans­form that in­to it be­ing a gate­way to all gov­ern­ment ser­vices and it is at that time that my fo­cus on the num­bers, well, will height­en. At the mo­ment, we’re look­ing at the con­ver­sion but I am look­ing at the con­ver­sion. Okay. I think we are very ear­ly in our con­ver­sion,” she said.

Leg­is­la­tion al­so is re­quired to fa­cil­i­tate the process.

“We are do­ing a full analy­sis of the leg­is­la­tion, we’re look­ing at things, like en­sur­ing that E-trans­ac­tions can be done, ful­ly done on­line. And e-sig­na­tures, e-pay­ments, e-ap­pli­ca­tions with­out hav­ing to down­load and sub­mit a hard copy. And so we’re look­ing at build­ing that out. So the e-trans­ac­tion leg­is­la­tion we look­ing at da­ta pro­tec­tion be­cause with in­ter­op­er­abil­i­ty what we’re hop­ing to do is al­low gov­ern­ment agen­cies to share rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion.

“You don’t have to keep pro­vid­ing the same bit of in­for­ma­tion to every min­istry that you go to for a ser­vice. So da­ta pro­tec­tion, we are look­ing at, we are look­ing at e-pay­ments as I in­di­cat­ed and cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty those are the key ar­eas that we need to ramp up and en­sure that they’re strong enough,” she said.

The Prime Min­is­ter has giv­en Min­is­ter West two years to achieve these goals, and she ad­mit­ted still faces a long road ahead. How­ev­er she is op­ti­mistic it can be achieved.
“We are work­ing to­wards a dead­line, get the chal­leng­ing dead­line, but we are work­ing hard to see to try to meet the chal­lenge,” she said.