Nadaleen Singh

San­dra Jones, head of the pub­lic ser­vice and Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter yes­ter­day ex­pressed con­fi­dence that T&T can re­form its pub­lic sec­tor fi­nan­cial re­port­ing sys­tem, but says that the re­form can­not hap­pen im­me­di­ate­ly.

Jones has been work­ing in the pub­lic sec­tor for more than three decades and has worked at sev­er­al gov­ern­ment agen­cies and min­istries.

She said: "If you have a plan, you would be able to move it for­ward. I am aware at the Min­istry of Fi­nance they do have a plan and ICATT (In­sti­tute of Chart­ed Ac­coun­tants of T&T) is work­ing with them as well. They (the pre­sen­ters) talked about the po­lit­i­cal will, (in the pub­lic sec­tor) it's there."

Jones was speak­ing to re­porters dur­ing the cof­fee break at the con­fer­ence on Pro­mot­ing Pub­lic Sec­tor Fi­nan­cial Re­port­ing re­form 2016, which was held yes­ter­day, at Hilton ho­tel, St Ann's.

Jus­ti­fy­ing her point that the po­lit­i­cal will ex­ist­ed in T&T to re­form the pub­lic sec­tor fi­nan­cial re­port­ing sys­tem, she said in Par­lia­ment trends were show­ing that there was more ac­count­abil­i­ty. She added: "We have to look to en­sure that there are very lit­tle leak­ages on how pub­lic funds are mov­ing for­ward."

What was clear, Jones said, was that the in­fra­struc­ture must be in place in­clud­ing, train­ing of staff and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion, which are the cat­a­lysts for en­sur­ing that the goal of ref­or­ma­tion of the pub­lic sec­tor fi­nan­cial re­port­ing sys­tem is achieved.

Asked whether the bu­reau­cra­cy would be an ob­sta­cle to re­form­ing the pub­lic sec­tor, she said bu­reau­cra­cy was al­ways a "good" thing be­cause it was part of how "we (in the pub­lic sec­tor) work." Jones added that on­ly when there is too much bu­reau­cra­cy then it be­came a "chal­lenge."

She said one pri­or­i­ty area was to put an ef­fi­cient In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy sys­tem in place so it made the pub­lic ser­vice work bet­ter.

"We talk about the is­sue of the as­set man­age­ment, there are a num­ber of things that need to be put in place to treat with that. When you get the sys­tem in place you have to start train­ing, it's a big project to get it go­ing," she said.

While it was a cost­ly project, she said, when it was com­plet­ed the ben­e­fits would out­weigh the costs as there would be bet­ter ac­count­abil­i­ty for the use of pub­lic funds.

Us­ing the ex­am­ple of prepar­ing pay­roll, she said it was done man­u­al­ly be­fore but now that it was be­ing pre­pared elec­tron­i­cal­ly, "it has made a world of dif­fer­ence."

Ad­dress­ing the is­sue of work­er pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, she said all min­istries had to do job ap­praisals for their em­ploy­ees so that any in­creas­es in salary can be jus­ti­fied.