Millions of documents scanned, Years to get there before TCI gets Effective E-Government System

Projects & Plans Explained by Finance Minister E. Jay Saunders

#TurksandCaicos, November 16, 20321 – The goal is not simply turning paper documents into electronic ones or connecting everyone to the government’s services via the internet.  It requires understanding inefficiencies in the systems, improving them and then capturing those essential hard copy files in such a way that the Turks and Caicos Islands Government would be able to,  far into the future,  access even the content upon each document in order to raise customer service levels and heighten efficiency.  And it will not be easy; the Turks and Caicos is looking at years before the process is completed, and longer than anticipated before it is implemented.

Eight months in office and the PNP Administration is still in the information gathering stage in the transition to E-Government.

“What we’ve spent the first couple of months doing around E-government is an information gathering exercise to find out what Government has first before we start to build around it.  It’s taken a bit longer than we would have expected,” said E. Jay Saunders, Minister of Finance, Investment and Trade.

Saunders, who is also the country’s Deputy Premier, is pegged to lead the reformation.

In the Progressive National Party’s campaign manifesto:  A Citizen’s Contract 2021, the objectives and benefits of a Digital Government are outlined and residents are ready for the change.

Excerpt:  “A Digital Government will save the TCI millions of dollars, ensure efficient, effective and equitable delivery of public service, build public trust, ensure transparency, participation and collaboration between government agencies.  Your next PNP Government will be digitized…”

To jump start the digitization of government, the newly elected PNP Administration earmarked $2 Million in this year’s fiscal budget.

“We’re now trying to move very quickly and my concern is that we have a lot to do before the end of this term.  So we are going to have a number of things in parallel but the most important thing that we are trying to do right now and what we have started to do is – from a few months ago – the information gathering exercise and prioritizing a number of projects.”

Prioritized are the Road Safety Department and the Land Registry Department.  In both agencies, documents to be captured electronically number in the hundreds of thousands and their operational processes have been the subject of public criticism.

“The Land Registry has – in round numbers – over 700,000 documents that they need scanned about 12,000 of them are water-logged because they got caught in the hurricane.  And they cannot be taken out of their water logged stated otherwise they will become dry out and brittle and so we have to come up with a way to understanding how we are going to scan those documents,” said deputy premier Saunders in a press conference on November 8.

Hon Saunders revealed the solution to this incredible challenge is not found in scanning each document individually.

“If you know the Land Registry documents, the form isn’t  a standard shape and its hand-written and crossed out.  And then being able to scan those and have people make sense of them, so that you are able to search them.”

Each vital document will require data entry staff, accurately giving every file an electronic tag.  This, explained Minister Saunders will ensure when the information is searched, it can be promptly located for seamless, proficient service.

“You’re never going to scan 750,000 documents with three or four people, even ten persons on a flat-bed scanner.  You need industrial scanners that can scan hundreds of pages per minute.  So what we will do is build capacity in Government, where persons jobs are data entry but its around digital data entry.”

These data entry clerks will cater to truck-loads of information at a time; that was the picture the deputy premier painted when he address media and the nation from the Office of the Premier in Providenciales two weeks ago.

The industrial powered scanners will accelerate the conversion process with TCIG information uploaded to a cloud system.  It was reiterated that the work toward a digital government is more than securing an electronic copy of government files, it requires systems overhauls that work to reduce the current frustrations on all sides of service.

“Let’s take the Ministry of Home Affairs again, the Road (Safety) and Traffic Departments; before we go in there and say ‘this is what they need’, we wanted to know what they had first.  We need to go in there and understand what it is they are trying to achieve, because the last thing we wanted to do is take inefficiencies and bring the same inefficiencies into an electronic system.”

Over the next few weeks, islanders, who are anticipating the advent of e-government can expect to hear what projects, will be tackled first.  The PNP Administration is working to fulfill a key election campaign promise, through a man who is an award winning tech-wiz, having crafted his own e-wallet.

“If you think about it, Government will have millions of documents that we need to scan in order to make the E-Government useful,” said Hon Saunders admitting that the old information stuck in analog is just as valuable as the new information which can be digitized now.  “We need to get through that exercise by scanning and it’s a huge exercise.  It won’t be finished within this term.  It will be a multi- term, multi-million dollar exercise.”