Online payment of driver’s licences soon

BY the end of June, Barbadians will be able to make online payments to renew their driver’s licences from the comfort of their own home.

This was revealed yesterday by Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology, Senator Kay McConney, who was speaking during a discussion entitled “Virtual Reality” featured on the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation yesterday morning.

This initiative will be carried out in association with the Ministry of Transport, Works and Maintenance and the Barbados Revenue Authority, and will be facilitated through government’s payment platform EZ Pay.

Declaring that the country is moving forward, Senator McConney noted that work is also under way to advance the National Digital ID.

“We want services online, not just government but the private sector and countries around the world. We need to have an ID that has trust online and therefore the development of a digital ID, which is that ID that you use when you want to transact business online and that can be trusted.

“Once that ID is in place and we have built the relationships internationally, that link into that ID, we will find that our capacity to do business…will be greatly enhanced and more services will become accessible to us,” she said.

Giving an update on the public sector modernisation programme, she said the digitisation of our records is being advanced. “COVID 19 has slowed us somewhat but the good news is that we now have kicked off the pilot for the digitisation of government records; we are starting with the Ministry of Innovation and the Immigration Department. Once that pilot [is over], which ... we expect to complete in three months, then we will know what it takes to scale up and then we can scale up to the rest of government at a faster place”.

She said that the Electronic Documents and Records Management System will move much of that paper currently in the system into electronic form.

The senator noted that through EZ Pay+, which was relaunched last September, a significant amount of payments have been collected for government. “The wonderful thing about being online is that we are able to do a whole lot more faster, cheaper and to meet the expectations of our citizens better.”

McConney also revealed during the discussion that Barbados has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Estonia. “We have an opportunity to learn from those who have excelled and who continue to innovate in that area. It is recognising this is a world of mass collaboration, and we must collaborate in a way to move forward.” (JH)