The Tribune

By RICARDO WELLS

Tribune Staff Reporter

rwells@tribunemedia.net

DEPUTY Prime Minister K Peter Turnquest has suggested the government is considering ways to modernise several of the country's registry operations, with a view to simplify and streamline critical government services.

Mr Turnquest, who was the guest speaker at a Bahamas Association of Land Surveyors symposium held at the Hilton yesterday, said this new form of technology, if instituted correctly, could have a tremendous benefit to the Bahamas and the way general business is done.

The East Grand Bahama MP juxtaposed the idea of the modernisation process with the legacy issues that have plagued land acquisition and generational deed verification, insisting this new method would ease processes and security around accessing records.

Mr Turnquest said: "This is all new technology and so we are a little bit behind in some other jurisdictions, but we are excited about the potential of that technology, and we certainly are trying to move now rapidly to do our due diligence and background studies to determine what is involved, how this technology can be utilised to effectively manage data and data records for us, and make the whole process easier."

He continued: "Again, this kind of new technology, it's not totally new but it's kind of still on the front edge of development, and so from what we have been able to determine thus far, it will have, it can have tremendous benefit to us in terms of our ease of doing business and, as I say, the ease of accessing records and the security of accessing records.

"For instance, if you have tried to open a bank account, you know how difficult it is - you have to bring all your personal records and it takes weeks if not months to get that account open.

Institution

"But if you can establish a digital record that is secured, and establish it once, then that same record can be accessed by any financial institution or any other institution that you need, without you having to again present that same information," Mr Turnquest added.

He asserted the change, in addition to speeding up the process "very much," offers "a lot of promise".

Mr Turnquest said while there are some regulatory and cyber security issues which still need to be considered before a complete roll out of the new system, he was hopeful aspects could be seen and adopted in the "not too distant future".