LABOUR and Public Service Minister Pia Glover-Rolle.
By LYNAIRE MUNNINGS
Tribune Staff Reporter
lmunnings@tribunemedia.net
THE Ministry of Labour and Public Service, in partnership with the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, launched Cloud Bahamas, a project to digitise the public service and stop relying on paper files.
“Gone are the days of manual data entry and paperwork,” said Labour Minister Pia Glover-Rolle during the event’s launch at the British Colonial Hotel.
She said Cloud Bahamas will focus on digitising and integrating documents, human resources and finance management systems for the public service.
“To put it frankly, our needs are great,” she said. “We’re behind where we should be. That’s the reality.”
“We’re making the effort. We’re doing what’s necessary to catch up through these digital transformation efforts, and fortunately, in this administration, the political will is here to make the necessary investments in technology that will catapult this nation forward.”
Economic Affairs Parliamentary Secretary Wade Watson said the initiative was years in the making, calling it a “significant milestone”.
“The Cloud Bahamas project is not just about adopting a new software, it’s about fundamentally reimagining how our public service operates,” he said.
“It’s about streamlining processes, eliminating bureaucratic bottlenecks, and empowering our dedicated public servants to focus their talents and energies where they matter most, and delivering tangible outcomes for the Bahamian people.
“Through this initiative, this government aims to harness the power of cloud, to transform the way we manage our finances, the way we manage our human resources, the way we manage our capital resources, technology, and much more.”
He urged all public service workers to embrace the transition to build a “more efficient, response and accountable public service”.
Ms Glover-Rolle also noted that job retention for minimum wage jobs is low, with her ministry aiming to facilitate training to produce long-term engagement of employees.
The Department of Labour has facilitated a series of job fairs designed to reduce the country’s unemployment level. However, Ms Glover-Rolle said that while job seekers are engaging, retention is low.
“You know, they get on the job, the company facilitates training which comes at a cost and then employees attrition out,” she said yesterday.
“So we are working towards long-term engagement of employees so that means that we have to harness it through training, through skills development, and ensuring that we don’t have skills mismatches.”
She said the low retention is common amongst those on “the lower end in terms of skills”, highlighting the need for training.
“This is why training is such a critical part of what we do in labour, ensuring that we are facilitating opportunities for our workforce to be properly skilled to be able to retain good jobs and careers,” she said.
Comments
pileit 7 months, 2 weeks ago
So what stopped them from simply expanding on mygateway.bs, which has become surprisingly functional? Needed something to announce I take it?
pt_90 7 months, 2 weeks ago
putting aside the pomp and ceremony I can see the need to seperate them. MyGateway is geared to external persons accessing govt services. I guess this is for internal workers tracking internal worker needs and services.
Most organizations wont mix the platform that thier customers use in this case (mygateway) with their intranets and systems used for employees, internal requests like vacations, sick leave, salary and benefits.(in this case (cloud bahamas).
Some companies do 'Eat thier own dogfood' where the systems perfectly align. e.g. Google utilizes Google apps internally. But in these case there is a like for like system.
SP 7 months, 2 weeks ago
We cannot survive anymore upgrades!
The biggest secret is the new Ministry of Finance Internal Revenue enhanced collections system is at a standstill for many businesses because RBC is unable to synchronize with Inland Revenues collections system.
This translates to many businesses being unable to receive their business licenses for months regardless that they have no outstanding debt to Internal Revenue and spend weeks back and forth to Inland Revenue trying to "push" for resolutions.....without success.
Many business importers cannot access their cargo sitting in limbo at Customs Gladstone road facility for months because Internal Revenue systems is unable to find their payments which prohibits the issuance of business licenses which prevents importers collecting their cargo due to not having their business license.
Regardless of importers having all receipts of payments to Internal Revenue, importers are still unable to collect their cargo without having a business license.
To add insult to injury, Internal Revenue refuses to provide letters of authorization which would allow importers to present to Customs to access their cargo AND Customs still demands importers pay late fees for storage of the cargo regardless that the importer is not at fault for the delays!
Government growing pains are to be expected, however, someone in government should have enough damn sense to facilitate importers in this situation. Why should importers be penalized for the governments screw ups?
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