The Min­istry of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs (ML­LA) and the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP) have signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MoU) to ac­cel­er­ate the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s land-re­lat­ed sys­tems and ser­vices.

In a news re­lease, the Min­istry con­firmed the MoU is con­nect­ed to a mul­ti-year project, en­ti­tled “Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion of Land-Re­lat­ed Ser­vices.”

Min­is­ter of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs, Sad­dam Ho­sein, said, “Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion must be about peo­ple. It must make it eas­i­er for cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es to ac­cess Gov­ern­ment ser­vices, elim­i­nate ad­min­is­tra­tive bot­tle­necks, and build a more re­spon­sive, trans­par­ent pub­lic sec­tor.”

Ugo Blan­co, UNDP Res­i­dent Rep­re­sen­ta­tive, said the or­gan­i­sa­tion was com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing in­sti­tu­tion­al mod­erni­sa­tion, not­ing that sus­tain­able trans­for­ma­tion re­quires pair­ing mod­ern dig­i­tal ar­chi­tec­ture with ca­pac­i­ty build­ing and ef­fec­tive in­ter-agency co­or­di­na­tion.

He said, “Past ex­pe­ri­ences show what is pos­si­ble when in­sti­tu­tions come to­geth­er around a shared vi­sion, us­ing tech­nol­o­gy not sim­ply to digi­tise process­es, but to cre­ate bet­ter ser­vices, stronger pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions and greater con­fi­dence in the sys­tems that peo­ple re­ly on every day.”

The arrange­ment is set to es­tab­lish a col­lab­o­ra­tive frame­work to mod­ernise pub­lic ser­vices de­liv­ery.

The Min­istry said, “Un­der the project, the Min­istry in part­ner­ship with the UNDP will launch a sin­gle dig­i­tal por­tal so the pub­lic and busi­ness­es can eas­i­ly han­dle land mat­ters cen­tral­ly, while al­so up­grad­ing old sys­tems and process­es and mov­ing core Land Reg­istry ser­vices on­line. Along­side these new dig­i­tal tools, the team will map ex­ist­ing state land in­for­ma­tion, im­prove how gov­ern­ment de­part­ments share and ex­change records, and pro­vide staff with the prac­ti­cal train­ing and day-to-day op­er­a­tional sup­port need­ed to keep the sys­tem op­ti­mised for con­tin­ued ser­vice de­liv­ery.”

Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, Sean Sobers, added that trans­par­ent land man­age­ment would di­rect­ly in­flu­ence fam­i­ly wealth, hous­ing, agri­cul­ture and busi­ness in­vest­ment. He said that mov­ing these ser­vices on­line will save cit­i­zens from mak­ing mul­ti­ple trips to gov­ern­ment of­fices, mak­ing trans­ac­tion pro­cess­ing faster and en­sur­ing that na­tion­al dig­i­tal up­grades ac­tive­ly sup­port every­day peo­ple, in­clud­ing rur­al res­i­dents and vul­ner­a­ble groups.

The Min­istry said the ini­tia­tive is part of Phase I of the Gov­ern­ment’s broad­er Land Ad­min­is­tra­tion Mod­erni­sa­tion Pro­gramme, run­ning in tan­dem with the UN ECLAC’s tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance to es­tab­lish a Na­tion­al Spa­tial Da­ta In­fra­struc­ture (NS­DI). To­geth­er, these ini­tia­tives aim to elim­i­nate in­sti­tu­tion­al frag­men­ta­tion and es­tab­lish a se­cure, mod­ern, and da­ta-dri­ven foun­da­tion for na­tion­al land ad­min­is­tra­tion.