Coming Soon: Fully Digitized Government and Municipal Services at your Fingertips
In the coming weeks and months, Belize will join the rest of the world in replacing the current way of doing business within the public sector with a whole new digital system. Today the Ministry of E-Governance led the way in launching a series of training courses in digital transformation for public officers and employees of municipal governments. What that means is that when the system is made available at the end of the training, you’ll be able to enjoy quicker, easier, services at the click of a button or key on your phone or laptop. It comes with training assistance provided by the United Nations Development Program. News Five’s Marion Ali was at the Best Western Belize Biltmore Plaza Hotel for the launching and filed this report.
Marion Ali, Reporting
THE COVID lockdown expedited government systems across the world to promptly adapt to digitizing their networks, and Belize has latched on to a new e-governance infrastructure that will change the archaic way it conducts business.
Jose Urbina
Jose Urbina, CEO, Ministry of Public Utilities, Energy, Logistics & E-Governance
“How do we go about transforming ministries to be able to provide services online. In essence, that is what is being taught as part of the curriculum of this course. It is a four-week course, very short and compact that would give a better idea to public servants in terms of how do we grow, how do we make ourselves more efficient.”
Learning the processes to become more efficient is what public and municipal officers will spend the next four weeks doing. They will be divided into different cohorts. The end result should be a shortening of basic processes such as seeking information to file an application. What once took weeks on end, sometimes having to make inconvenient, time-consuming and costly trips across district lines, will now become achievable in just a couple of minutes online.CEO in the Ministry of E-Governance, Jose Urbina says the process will also mean that you will be able to transact across multiple ministries from the comfort of your home or office.
Jose Urbina
“Also, what the digital transformation within government entails is that…be able to walk in and if that citizen is able to make a renewal of passport…then be shared within ministries. But we look at the processes…things are being worked out.”
Ian King
Ian King, Deputy Resident Representative, U.N.D.P.
“As Belize moves forward in what we’ve seen in…to provide these solutions.”
This new system is also designed to expedite the process to open a business within the private sector or for foreign investors.
Jose Urbina
“Also, what the digital transformation within government entails is that the citizen would be able to walk in and if that citizen has made a renewal of their passport at Immigration, and Immigration has captured that information, that information would then be shared within ministries. But we look at the processes, how do we interact, for example with Treasury, or if we need to make a payment, let do online payment. How do we synchronize online payment with Treasury with a Treasury receipt so that us as citizens don’t need to go to Treasury, make a payment, come back to the Department and show it as proof of payment. So all of these things are being worked out.”
But how does a small country like Belize protect the integrity of such a system in the face of terrorism? UNDP’s Resident Representative, Ian King explained that there needs to be protection against those types of situations.
Ian King
“As Belize moves forward in what we’ve seen in COVID, we need to learn to work digitally, we need to have this kind of approach to provide these solutions.”
This new system is also designed to expedite the process to open a business within the private sector or for foreign investors.
Jose Urbina
“When we look at small businesses or even medium to large businesses that want to register, that also need to interact with the local building authority or the Central Building Authority, especially when you look at foreign investment also, you need to interact with Central Bank and DOE. These are the inter-operabilities that needs to happen within governments so that we’re able to facilitate the process. For a foreign investor to come into our country, right now it takes almost a year to process. Once the process is working properly, we can cut it down to a week, or almost overnight.”
But how does a small country like Belize protect the integrity of such a system in the face of terrorism? UNDP’s Resident Representative, Ian King explained that there needs to be protection against those types of situations.
Ian King
“You need to protect against inappropriate access or distribution and hacking and so on. We know that those are things that need to be in place and I believe that we do know the solutions to putting them in place. It’s costs like anything else, just like at home you want to protect yourself you have to invest in measures to protect your home. Similar with your digital information but you are less vulnerable to a single failure event than you are in the context of natural hazard coming from a high level of flood or fire burning down a registry and therefore everything is lost. We’ve seen that in different parts of the world and different parts of the Caribbean in fact, and therefore it’s quite important that you actually have that. So this actually builds that.”
Marion Ali for News Five
