The Port of Spain City Corporation has announced plans to undergo digital transformation to enhance its services to the public.

At the city council’s monthly statutory meeting at City Hall on Friday, mayor Joel Martinez said the corporation has decided to get on board with the Ministry of Digital Transformation’s aim to transform and enhance the government’s delivery of goods and services using technology.

His comments followed a meeting on July 19, between himself, Minister of Rural Development and Local Government Kazim Hosein, and minister of the new Ministry of Digital Transformation Hassel Bacchus.

At that meeting, Martinez said he raised issues of cybersecurity with Bacchus.

“This affected the digital footprint and the structure of the corporation. And he assured me that we will create platforms to enhance the resilience and the accessibility and encourage our citizens to build on what we currently have, so that at the end of the day it can be easy to use.”

Reporting the outcome of that meeting, Martinez told the corporation, “We must make it easy for us to have meetings, we must be able to receive our documentation electronically or on time. We must be able to save costs. At the end of the day, it's easier with digital transformation, as it is all about the delivery of service to citizens of this capital city.

"We have to trust technology, we must be ready for the digital government, we must deal with the issues of maleficent, we must be able to extract data because we need to analyse, and record-keeping. We must understand that electronic services are here to stay and it's a new law."

Martinez also said, “We need to be statistical in how we treat data, we need to build our digital footprint.”