The Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion (MPA) has an­nounced that the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ (UWI) Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness (ALJGSB) has been se­lect­ed to de­vel­op the Re­mote Work Pol­i­cy for the T&T Pub­lic Ser­vice.

A state­ment yes­ter­day said the min­istry had en­tered in­to the ne­go­ti­a­tions phase with the ALJGSB to take the process for­ward.

The Re­mote Work Pol­i­cy, which will be de­vel­oped on a phased ba­sis over the com­ing months, is card­ed for com­ple­tion in 2024.

“As the min­istry charged with the mod­erni­sa­tion of the Pub­lic Ser­vice, we will be work­ing close­ly with the Min­istry of Labour to en­sure that a fair, pro­gres­sive, proac­tive frame­work is de­vel­oped, one that con­sid­ers sev­er­al is­sues, in­clud­ing that not all em­ploy­ees meet the cri­te­ria to work re­mote­ly,” Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion, Allyson West, said in the state­ment.

The mul­ti-phased plan in­cludes an au­dit of the cur­rent sys­tem, con­sul­tan­cies with stake­hold­ers and a con­sis­tent eval­u­a­tion of the progress in the de­vel­op­ment of Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy.

She added, “Re­mote work is not just about mon­i­tor­ing an em­ploy­ee’s progress, but al­so en­sur­ing that the frame­work ad­e­quate­ly ad­dress­es all rel­e­vant is­sues, from the na­ture of the job, to the readi­ness of the agency’s plat­form, and clear­ly iden­ti­fies the re­mote lo­ca­tion re­quire­ments to ac­com­mo­date re­mote work ac­tiv­i­ty. Above all, it is crit­i­cal that re­mote work is con­sis­tent with our Gov­ern­ment’s dri­ve to im­prove the pro­vi­sion of Pub­lic Ser­vices for our cit­i­zens and stake­hold­ers.”