AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

As the Gov­ern­ment gears to­wards na­tion­al dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is promis­ing to elim­i­nate long wait­ing times with its on­line por­tal.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly gave the pledge yes­ter­day, as she out­lined ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 ser­vices that will be of­fered and de­liv­ered through the “click of a but­ton”, es­pe­cial­ly for teach­ers, at the of­fi­cial launch of MoE AC­CESS at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain.

“A teacher sit­u­at­ed in To­co, Ica­cos or Guayagua­yare no longer has to com­mute to ei­ther dis­trict or head of­fice to sub­mit rel­e­vant pa­per­work. Ap­proval for a leave ap­pli­ca­tion has been re­duced from weeks, some­times months, to same day and in some cas­es, min­utes,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

The por­tal will al­low teach­ers and school ad­min­is­tra­tors to record re­al-time da­ta such as which schools have the high­est lev­el of ab­sen­teeism on any giv­en day.

“It in­forms in min­utes, the schools that re­quire im­me­di­ate in­fra­struc­tur­al at­ten­tion via the school in­fra­struc­ture man­age­ment sys­tem. It can flag stu­dents, in­di­vid­ual stu­dents from over 225,000 odd stu­dents based on re­ports from Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices for ear­ly in­ter­ven­tion,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

The min­istry al­so re­vealed plans to im­ple­ment on­line text­books for stu­dents.

Al­so speak­ing at the event, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said he was im­pressed with the min­istry’s ac­com­plish­ments af­ter be­ing al­lo­cat­ed $7.453 bil­lion for 2022/2023, the sin­gle largest al­lo­ca­tion to any Gov­ern­ment min­istry.

Row­ley said oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies are al­so ex­pect­ed to pri­ori­tise the dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of their ser­vices and that this will al­so be seen with­in lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties.

“Through the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion, we have ap­proved and ac­cel­er­at­ed con­struc­tion or out­fit­ting of ICT ac­cess cen­tres across T&T. These cen­tres rep­re­sent a phys­i­cal space where our cit­i­zens who do not have ready ac­cess to per­son­al dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy, or do not quite yet un­der­stand the full range of abil­i­ties and pos­si­bil­i­ties that tech­nol­o­gy can pro­vide, can go to ac­cess, in­ter­act and learn about how it all works,” Row­ley said.

He added that the Min­istry of Health hopes to un­veil the dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of its ser­vices in 2024.