Gail Alexan­der

The Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion has re­ceived the first draft of the re­mote work pol­i­cy for T&T's Civ­il Ser­vice, which is cur­rent­ly un­der re­view pend­ing ap­proval by the project's steer­ing com­mit­tee. Ap­proval is ex­pect­ed to take place short­ly.

How­ev­er, the project is at phase three of a five-phase frame­work and up­on com­ple­tion of phase five, the fi­nal re­mote work pol­i­cy frame­work and im­ple­men­ta­tion plan will then be sub­mit­ted to the Cab­i­net for its con­sid­er­a­tion.

Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Allyson West in­di­cat­ed this in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day re­ply­ing to UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark's call for an up­date and time­line for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the re­mote work pol­i­cy for the civ­il ser­vice.

West said Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers Ad­vi­so­ry Ser­vices (PwC) was con­tract­ed on Jan­u­ary 22, 2024, by the Min­istry to pro­vide con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices for the de­vel­op­ment of the re­mote work pol­i­cy for T&T's Civ­il Ser­vice.

PwC emerged as the suc­cess­ful con­sul­tant out of three in the ap­proved pro­cure­ment process. Project launch was Jan­u­ary 26, 2024.

The con­sul­tan­cy will be de­liv­ered in five phas­es:

* Phase 1 (align – project plan­ning and mo­bil­i­sa­tion);

* Phase 2 (in­no­vate – prob­lem de­f­i­n­i­tion and pol­i­cy analy­sis);

* Phase 3: (evolve – pol­i­cy de­sign and test­ing);

* Phase 4 (re­lease – pol­i­cy de­vel­op­ment); and

* Phase 5 (close – project close and im­ple­men­ta­tion sup­port).

The first phase has been com­plet­ed with the first de­liv­er­able, the 'in­cep­tion re­port' ap­proved by the Min­istry's steer­ing com­mit­tee on June 6, 2024.

Phase two, which re­quired the com­plete di­ag­nos­tic of the civ­il ser­vice, has al­so been com­plet­ed. That in­volved meet­ings by PwC and the Min­istry with key stake­hold­ers af­ford­ing PwC a greater un­der­stand­ing of the civ­il ser­vice. That helped de­ter­mine the lev­el of in­ter­est in re­mote work; lev­el of readi­ness for this (in­clu­sive of tech­no­log­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture, or­gan­i­sa­tion cul­ture, em­ploy­ee ca­pa­bil­i­ty to in­de­pen­dent­ly work etc); type of work, de­mo­graph­ics; and lev­el of ef­fi­cien­cy/pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

West said the project is now in phase three and "the draft pol­i­cy and the pro­pos­al for pi­lot test­ing is cur­rent­ly be­fore the Cab­i­net's fi­nance and gen­er­al pur­pos­es sub-com­mit­tee (F&GP) where it is the sub­ject of ro­bust re­view and en­quiry. The com­ple­tion of the oth­er phas­es is de­pen­dent on whether and when Cab­i­net’s ap­proval is re­ceived to pro­ceed."

The fi­nal draft pol­i­cy will be in­formed by, but not lim­it­ed to, a num­ber of ac­tiv­i­ties in­clud­ing is­su­ing base­line sur­veys to all civ­il ser­vice em­ploy­ees to as­cer­tain their view on the im­pact of re­mote work as it per­tains to ef­fi­cien­cy, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, work-life bal­ance and com­mute dis­tance.

The fi­nal draft re­mote work pol­i­cy and frame­work will, on com­ple­tion, sig­nal the end of phase four of the project and feed­back will be ob­tained on it along with min­is­te­r­i­al re­view.

West said on com­ple­tion of phase five, the fi­nal re­mote work pol­i­cy frame­work and im­ple­men­ta­tion plan will be sub­mit­ted for Cab­i­net's con­sid­er­a­tion.

She said while there is a time­frame for the project as agreed be­tween the project team and min­istry, the time­frame for com­ple­tion of the plan is very de­pen­dent on the time­line with­in which the Cab­i­net re­views and ap­proves the test­ing as well as the fi­nal prod­uct.

A fi­nal test is sup­posed to be in the next phase and F&GP's com­ments and rec­om­men­da­tions on that are await­ed, West said.