The Barbados Integrated Government (BIG) Portal was launched last Wednesday at the Savannah Hotel with high expectations that it will contribute to a more efficient Government, provide more services to business and citizens alike on a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week basis and speed up processes involving Government and business, for example, the clearing of goods from ports. These are a few of the aims of the portal, which is intended to bring together all the sources of information on Government at the click of a mouse.
It can be described loosely as a website of websites, providing one focal point for information on Government departments.
Citizens would have one on-line location to access information held by Government institutions, businesses could download Value Added Tax (VAT) forms and information on VAT, obtain information on progress being made in education, business development and providing citizens at Community Centres with the communication tools to make them more employable in an increasingly competitive environment.
The portal is at a pilot stage and initially caters to a select number of Government employees.
One objective is to co-ordinate work within Government more efficiently, make Government more transparent to its citizens and contribute to the work of the Office of Public Sector Reform (OPSR), which has a monumental task of making Government more responsive to citizens and significantly more efficient.
In the follow-up phases, the BIG Portal will be a central point for Government's work and citizens will be able to stay at their homes and pay a myriad of bills, for example, renew drivers' licences and pay income taxes, apply for and possibly even pay for copies of birth and baptismal certificates on-line.
Many of these services are futuristic and will be phased in over many years.
Singapore, Canada and Jamaica have been moving to implement e-Government strategies. Jamaica, for example, has been working to automate its customs department so there is pre-clearance of goods and businesses can function more efficiently.
Canada has achieved major progress in implementing an e-Government strategy to the extent that its citizens recognise that they benefit from a more efficient system. But Canada's transformation of its public sector via e-Government has taken three decades and the work continues.
Resources available
In launching the portal, which was established and runs under the wings of the Government's Data Processing Department, Commerce Minister Senator Lynette Eastmond noted that progress in adopting e-Government has been made steadily.
But the minister observed that such progress is dictated by priorities and the resources available to a small nation such as Barbados.
The minister announced that the award of a tender to develop an Information and Communications Technology (ICT) plan for Barbados was expected to be announced shortly. This plan can be seen as a major plank towards making Barbados competitive under the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME), which will open the economy to movement of labour and investment within the Caribbean.
ILLUMINAT, the Barbados-run ICT company, teamed up with ORACLE, a world-leader in database and application software and the team of the Data Processing Department to help develop the portal.
ILLUMINAT�s director Tony Yearwood said the BIG Portal was created entirely by Caribbean people.
He added that ORACLE's "back-end" technology was involved to make the portal an efficient tool for citizens, Government employees and business executives alike.
In brief remarks to a gathering of business and Government representatives, director of the Data Processing Department, Yvette Walcott, noted that development of the portal took six weeks and involved volunteers from various Government departments and the private sector.
The portal was hailed by Senator Eastmond as �revolutionary' and the work of the Data Processing Department�s team was applauded by the gathering.
Autor: Hallam Hope
Quelle: Nation News, 15.11.2044
