Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

A trip to a To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) of­fice could soon be­come a thing of the past for res­i­dents seek­ing ac­cess to a range of pub­lic ser­vices.

The As­sem­bly has en­tered the dig­i­tal age with the launch of To­ba­go ID, an on­line plat­form de­signed to put ser­vices from var­i­ous THA di­vi­sions, de­part­ments and com­pa­nies at the pub­lic’s fin­ger­tips.

And To­bag­o­ni­ans ap­pear ready to em­brace the change.

With­in a cou­ple hours of the plat­form go­ing live on Tues­day, more than 1,000 ap­pli­cants had al­ready signed up, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine re­vealed.

Au­gus­tine, who has con­sis­tent­ly ad­vo­cat­ed for the digi­ti­sa­tion of the As­sem­bly’s op­er­a­tions, said there was noth­ing for To­bag­o­ni­ans to fear from the new sys­tem, en­cour­ag­ing res­i­dents to em­brace the To­ba­go ID and take pride in hav­ing one.

Be­yond pro­vid­ing on­line ac­cess to THA ser­vices, the plat­form is al­so de­signed to give cit­i­zens greater vis­i­bil­i­ty in­to the process, al­low­ing them to track the sta­tus of their ap­pli­ca­tions.

For Au­gus­tine, the move is about more than sim­ply re­plac­ing pa­per forms and trips to gov­ern­ment of­fices with on­line ap­pli­ca­tions.

He has ar­gued that digi­tis­ing the THA’s op­er­a­tions would fast-track process­es while im­prov­ing ef­fi­cien­cy, trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty across the As­sem­bly.

He be­lieves a dig­i­tal THA would al­so make it eas­i­er for au­thor­i­ties to iden­ti­fy prob­lems and in­ter­vene when nec­es­sary, en­sur­ing bu­reau­cra­cy can­not be used as an ex­cuse for a di­vi­sion’s in­abil­i­ty to per­form.

Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary Dr Faith Breb­nor wel­comed the de­vel­op­ment, telling Guardian Me­dia she was pleased that the on­line plat­form was fi­nal­ly op­er­a­tional.

Breb­nor, who is al­so Sec­re­tary of Health and Well­ness, point­ed to the ba­by grant as one of the ser­vices now ac­ces­si­ble through the dig­i­tal plat­form.

“I am proud of the team that has been work­ing be­hind the scenes to en­sure we would be able to pro­vide it in a dig­i­tal plat­form. As you are aware, that is the di­rec­tion the world has gone, and To­ba­go has launched its To­ba­go ID,” she said.

She praised Sec­re­tary in the Of­fice of the Chief Sec­re­tary Megan Mor­ri­son for over­see­ing the roll­out of the on­line plat­form.

Breb­nor al­so high­light­ed the role of Mor­ri­son’s team, not­ing that a group of young in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy ex­perts spear­head­ed the ini­tia­tive.

The launch marks a sig­nif­i­cant step in Au­gus­tine’s push to trans­form the way the THA in­ter­acts with the pub­lic, mov­ing ser­vices away from tra­di­tion­al bu­reau­cra­cy and to­wards a sys­tem where res­i­dents can ap­ply, ac­cess in­for­ma­tion and mon­i­tor their ap­pli­ca­tions on­line.

With more than 1,000 peo­ple sign­ing up with­in hours of its launch, To­ba­go ID has al­ready giv­en an ear­ly in­di­ca­tion of the pub­lic’s ap­petite for a more ac­ces­si­ble and dig­i­tal­ly con­nect­ed THA.