On Tues­day evening, The In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank paid trib­ute to gov­ern­ment min­istries, state-owned agen­cies, and pub­lic en­ti­ties for in­no­va­tion and ex­cel­lence in ser­vice .

The Pres­i­dent’s Award for In­no­va­tion and Ser­vice Ex­cel­lence (PrAISE), which is in its sev­enth year, high­lights projects and ser­vices un­der­tak­en by the pub­lic sec­tor in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

This com­pe­ti­tion en­cour­ages min­istries, pub­lic ser­vice de­part­ments/di­vi­sions, state-owned com­pa­nies, statu­to­ry bod­ies, mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly to sub­mit projects.

The ap­pli­ca­tions and awards are avail­able in two cat­e­gories: ser­vice ex­cel­lence and in­no­va­tion.

Projects in the ser­vice ex­cel­lence cat­e­go­ry aim to en­hance pub­lic ser­vice qual­i­ty and ex­ceed cus­tomer ex­pec­ta­tions through in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions such as cus­tomer ser­vice im­prove­ments, process ef­fi­cien­cy en­hance­ments, and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion while de­liv­er­ing su­pe­ri­or ser­vice and in­cor­po­rat­ing ro­bust feed­back mech­a­nisms to ben­e­fit the cit­i­zens of T&T, ac­cord­ing to the IDB.

En­ti­ties vy­ing for the in­no­va­tion cat­e­go­ry fo­cus on new tech­nol­o­gy im­ple­men­ta­tion, cre­ative prob­lem-solv­ing meth­ods, and process reengi­neer­ing.

The Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, and Ap­plied Arts of Trinidad and To­ba­go (COSTAATT) copped the award for In­no­va­tion with its AI-pow­ered chat­bot ‘AI Con­nect,’ in­te­grat­ed with What­sApp, which was de­vel­oped to re­spond to queries on a 24/7ba­sis.

The Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment was the re­cip­i­ent of the Ser­vice Ex­cel­lence award for its project en­ti­tled ‘Lo­cal TT,’ a pub­lic en­gage­ment and ser­vice de­liv­ery plat­form. The plat­form al­lows cit­i­zens to re­port is­sues such as road dam­age or il­le­gal dump­ing, of­fer­ing re­al-time up­dates on the sta­tus of projects.

Act­ing Pres­i­dent of T&T, Nigel de­Fre­tias com­mend­ed the achieve­ments of the fi­nal­ists and praised the pub­lic ser­vants who he said are fre­quent­ly un­fair­ly crit­i­cized but play a crit­i­cal role in re­shap­ing the im­age of the pub­lic sec­tor, not on­ly at home but al­so on the glob­al stage.

“All too of­ten, the tire­less ef­forts of our pub­lic of­fi­cers go un­recog­nised or are over­shad­owed by the flaws and in­ef­fi­cien­cies that cur­rent­ly ham­per ser­vice de­liv­ery.

“All too of­ten, pub­lic of­fi­cers are tarred with the same neg­a­tive brush and char­ac­terised by un­fair stereo­types that are not re­flec­tive of the true val­ue of their con­tri­bu­tions.

“I am there­fore deeply grate­ful to the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank for their fore­sight in es­tab­lish­ing these Pres­i­dent’s Awards for In­no­va­tion and Ser­vice Ex­cel­lence in the pub­lic sec­tor back in 2018,” said de Fre­itas.

Th Peo­ple’s Choice Award for Ser­vice Ex­cel­lence went to the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry for its Spe­cial Con­ces­sions In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem, which pro­vides sup­port for stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties dur­ing na­tion­al as­sess­ments such as the SEA, CAPE, and NCSE.

The Diego Mar­tin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion re­ceived the Cat­a­lyst for Com­mu­ni­ty Change Award, while the Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute (Cariri), went home with the Cat­a­lyst for So­cial Im­pact and Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Award.