Barbadians will be able to renew and pay for their driver’s licences online by the end of June this year.
Minister of Innovation, Science and Smart Technology (MIST), Senator Kay McConney, said this will be facilitated through Government’s online payment platform, EZ Pay+.
She was speaking during an interview on CBC TV8 which focussed on the new “virtual reality” as a result of novel coronavirus (COVID-19).
McConney said a number of Government payments were already made online and since its relaunch last September, a significant amount of revenue had been collected through EZ Pay+. She cited land tax, the Official Gazette, Corporate Affairs services and national insurance as examples of the transactions which were being made through the digital payment platform.
She also said her Ministry was in the process of developing a digital ID.
“As we place our services online, we need to have an ID that has trust online and therefore the development of a digital ID, which is that ID that you use when you want to transact business online, . . . that is where Barbados is now in terms of developing that.
“And once that ID is in place and we can build the relationships internationally that can link into that ID both locally and internationally, we will find that our capacity to do business in digital will be greatly enhanced and more services will become accessible to us,” she explained.
Additionally, Senator McConney said placing more services online was part of Barbados’ modernisation programme, which has made it possible to apply for a Police Certificate of Character online. She said there were now 48 professional licences which can be renewed online.
McConney said there were plans to have two other types of licences – those for doctors and lawyers – added to that pool.
Meanwhile, the Minister noted that the country was making advances in the digitisation of government records; and the pilot for the Electronic Documents and Records Management System for the public service had already kicked off with the digitisation of records at MIST and the Immigration Department. The pilot is expected to be completed in another three months.
“Then we will know what it will take for us to scale up and then we can scale up to the rest of government at a faster pace,” McConney said. (BGIS)
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