Tobago's Thrust To Become Digital

Tobago says it is making strides to become a digital island. Despite admitting that there is a quite a bit of catching up to do, Administrator for the Division of Infrastructure, Quarries and Urban Development, Karl Murray, said it is something that is taking priority. "The THA has accepted and has decided to partner with the Ministry of Public Administration in its recent attempts to upgrade its IRIS, its PeopleSoft software, so that in terms of our HR management and while Trinidad to a certain extent over the years, would have been advancing towards a digital nation, the THA more or less has been more or less subsumed under a paper-driven and are continually overburdened some paper-driven type operations. The Chief Secretary has mandated that the island move and keep up or even try to surpass its sister counterpart in the drive towards a digital nation." Minister of Digital Transformation, Hassel Bacchus, urged the island to ensure they take all aspects into consideration. "Without meaning to get too granular into it, there are issues of security, issues of communications, there are a number of issues that are embodied inside that have to be funded and achieved. Let me not use the word funded, let me use the word achieve, if you want to get to the point of which you have to get to. The noble endeavour of the website which you place all this information, it has to be updated. It has to be kept up to speed. It has to be validated, it has to be protected and then of course the community that you want to participate in it has to be empowered, embodied, emboldened, and, of course, equipped to be able to utilise it for the purpose of which you have." They were speaking during a Public Administration and Appropriations Committee Meeting in the Parliament on Wednesday.