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Tuesday, 19.03.2024
eGovernment Forschung seit 2001 | eGovernment Research since 2001

The government has launched a new online application process for police clearance certificates which joins a slowly emerging suite of public services being provided online. Although officials have been talking about expanding e-government for almost a decade, it is still moving very slowly and only a small number of fees or payments to government departments can be made via the internet. But in this case, the redesigned portal and police clearance application process allows people to pay the fee as well as deal with the paperwork online.

Officials said in a government release last week that the new service and other e-government services that are emerging are a collaboration between the e-Government Unit in the Cabinet Office, the Computer Services Department, and in this case the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service (RCIPS), with strategic direction from the e-Government Steering Committee. The sites can be accessed at eservices.gov.ky.

As part of the electronic application process for police clearance certificates, users will be able to pay securely online and government will not collect or retain card information. At the moment the RCIPS processes around 150 applications for police clearance certificates a day, or 3,000 a month.

Cabinet Secretary Samuel Rose said the revamped process will reduce the inconvenience to customers by eliminating one of the two trips previously required to the records office. It also streamlines the number of data systems with which RCIPS staff must engage from six to two.

Commissioner of Police Derek Byrne said, “We believe this will have a strongly positive impact on our customers and our staff, who have often had to sacrifice lunch breaks to ensure that customers are served in a timely way during the cumbersome manual process. The efficiency of the online process reinforces the type of accessibility and convenience we are striving to provide to the public as a modern police service”

Premier and Home Affairs Minister Alden McLaughlin said increased provision of e-government services was important to the growth of the Cayman Islands economy.

“For that reason our goals in establishing the e-government programme were that it should improve customers’ experience, by reducing the time and costs of service delivery. Other goals were to enhance public perception of the civil service and increase the Cayman Islands’ competitiveness with other jurisdictions,” he said.

Acting Governor Franz Manderson, who chairs the e-Government Steering Committee said the decision to prioritise the project had followed research into needs of the public and stakeholders within government about which local services should be provided online.

“We believed that it was extremely important for us to thoroughly assess existing needs and to develop an evidence base that would inform our work before proceeding,” Manderson stated.

The creation of an e-services portal facilitates links to the existing services hosted by government agencies, such as the Departments of Vehicle and Drivers’ Licensing; Lands and Survey; and Planning; as well as the National Workforce Development Agency and the General Registry. While some services require registration, others, including applications for police clearance certificates, do not. Designers have also built-in a range of display options for the public to aid in finding the services they require.

MHA Acting Chief Officer Michael Nixon said that the e-services portal and online police clearance certificates project reflects a new strategic approach to the deployment of Computer Services Department resources. Director Simon Spiers committed web development, application development and security teams, to work on the projects under the leadership of e-Government Director Ian Tibbetts, and the e-Government Steering Committee.

Next up for e-government will be refinements to the online police clearance certificates process, the publication of a draft national strategy, procurement for the physical infrastructure of an e-government platform, and the presentation of recommendations for an electronic identification component to the e-Government Steering Committee, officials stated in the release.

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Quelle/Source: Cayman News Service, 17.05.2017

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