Opening Remarks By The Hon. K. Peter Turnquest Deputy Prime Minister And Minister Of Finance Ministry Of Finance And Inter-american Development Bank's 60th anniversary seminar “the Power Of Data For National Development” Wednesday October 9th, 2019:
Good Morning.
Thank you for the invitation to speak today and deliver these opening remarks. Given the lineup of speakers and the timeliness of the conversation, I am confident that today’s proceedings will be most informative and productive.
We live in an information age where the fulfillment of our national development goals requires that the Government harness the power of data. We cannot overstate the need for this to be adequately prioritized and resourced for all governments who wish to achieve success in this day and age.
Data is one of the highest valued commodities in our world today. The private sector has been rapidly innovating ways to activate the power of data with great commercial success, albeit not without great controversy as well. The task for all governments who wish to deliver on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is to bridge the data divide.
Data for development cannot just be a buzz word for developing countries. For the Bahamas, I am pleased to say, data driven growth is a strategic priority for the Government, and we are implementing a change process that will systematically allow us to transform our capacity to produce, transform and analyse data with high-quality standards, protecting privacy and confidentiality for policy making, monitoring and accountability. It is not enough to simply collect more data. The task at hand is to produce accurate, timely and disaggregated data that are relevant for achieving our development goals.
Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit (PMDU)
The Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit (PMDU) was set up as a vehicle to give life to the Government’s data for development plan. Their operation was designed to demonstrate the value of data driven growth strategies. We have already seen the methodology bear fruit, particularly with the Unit’s early work with the Ministry of Finance and the private sector collaborating on a project to achieve ease of doing business improvements around the business licensing process.
By tracking data around the time associated with delivering business license renewals and new business registrations, we were able to set specific targets to reduce the delivery time and adopt new policies to achieve those targets. Earlier this year, the Department of Inland Revenue (DIR) reduced the time to deliver business license renewals from over 30 days to few than 48 hours. To improve the speed of starting a new business, DIR also created a new category of licensing for low-risk businesses to register.
Data drove this process, allowing the Ministry to objectively and transparently asses performance, track progress, and ultimately improve its service delivery to the benefit of the public. Another example of the priority we place on data is the reform of the Department of Information Technology, which is now the Department of Transformation and Digitization. The change here is not just in the name. The mandate of the Department has expanded, encapsulating the Government’s strategic shift to focus on data for development. The transformed Department now orients its information services around the goal of improving the Government’s service delivery (through public officers), and improving the accessibility of government services
(through ease of doing business). This is significant because DTD is not only providing technology to digitize old processes and change out legacy platforms; it is also driving the process of revamping and streamlining old systems. It makes no sense to simply digitize a 10-step process when that process could and should be 3-steps in the first place. It is a subtle but important shift in focus that is needed to deliver digital transformation in government.
While we still have a long way to go to fulfill the vision of the Government and the national development plan, we must acknowledge the strident efforts being made. You will hear more details about this work today.
It is unfortunate that sometimes in the rough and tumble of governance and partisan politics, many positive initiatives get lost in the mix. This is one notable area that we must not let be overshadowed. We have large and small scale projects taking place across government, many of them in partnership with the IDB, and they are paving the way for long-term systemic change....
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