Minister of Egovernance speaks on his ministry’s achievements

Another topic brought up during the ministerial panel this morning was the e-governance.  The E-governance portfolio falls under Minister Michel Chebat who spoke on how many of the governmental departments are being digitized.  As a matter of fact, currently, the Vital Statistics Unit (VSU) is closed to transition into a new digital platform.  According to Minister Chebat, this is the first time that Belize has had a ministry dedicated to e-governance and digitization.

Michel Chebat, Minister of Public Utilities, Logistics and E-governance: “Indeed, as the name of the ministry implies, it is a very diverse ministry. Not only do we have the public utilities, but we have energy, we have logistics which also includes ports and post office, and we have what we call – what I like to refer to as the new kid on the block, which is the e-governance. This is the first time any government of Belize has actually had a ministry dedicated to e-governance. And I know while most of you may be anxious to hear about energy, I’d like to share with you a little bit about what we’re doing in the other departments of the ministry. E-governance, for example, in 2021 we produced our national digital agenda. And why is this so critical for government and for people? The idea behind this is for us to be able to put on the internet our services, all of government services, so that wherever you are across the country, you’ll be able to access it. And what does that mean for our citizens? Apart from access it definitely lowers their cost. For example they will no longer need to go to Belize City to apply for a birth certificate or a death certificate. They’ll be able to get one of those from wherever they are across the country. I’m very pleased to tell you that we have now started with the digitization of all of our vital statistics documents and we hope that by the first quarter of 2024 we are going to be rolling that out. And so to complement that what we’ve also done is we’ve partnered for example with the UNDP and with the Embassy of Taiwan to set up digital connect centers in all of our rural areas in Belize. And why did we do that? It’s not only important to put our services online but we need to give our people access. And as we know, not everyone may have a computer or a smartphone and so not only are we putting our services online but we’re making it accessible to our people especially in the rural areas. And I also want to thank Beltraide, because Beltraide also is carrying out a program of these digital connect centers. So we’re putting all the pieces together to make all of our services accessible to the entire country.”

The Belize Investment Summit ended by five o’clock this evening.