The Honourable Camille Robinson-Regis, Minister of Planning and Development is announcing to the public that the Town and Country Planning Division (TCPD) has completed the digitization of 40,000 application files, and approximately 1,200 layouts and 750 plotting sheets. This is the completion of the largescale conversion of the TCPD’s North Regional Office’s paper records from the year 2000 to 2017.
Minister Robinson-Regis states that this creates an ease of access to land data for the TCPD, presenting several benefits, which include:
The availability of a comprehensive, readily accessible database to assist in accurate decision making; increased efficiency of development control processes due to the elimination of unnecessary and time-consuming vault searches and the elimination of illnesses to staff caused by dust, mold and mildew found on old files. Staff can now access thousands of material and legacy information without ever having to leave their desks. This also provides an electronic medium to access historical data regarding the spatial development of Trinidad and Tobago.
This will also benefit citizens by eliminating the wait on responses to queries regarding applications and land use data. The overall goal of the Digitization Project is a complete shift to digital capture, management and storage of the TCPD’s paper- based development control legacy data to allow for easy incorporation into the Automated System of Construction Permitting. The next steps for the TCPD will be the commencement of digitization of the records of the South Regional Office in November; train the trainer sessions in December for efficient use of the digitized system by staff and completion of the Geographic Information System (GIS) component of the North Regional Office to begin in January 2020.
The Planning & Development Minister adds that this achievement falls in line with the overall Transformation Project of the TCPD which incorporates enhanced service delivery in the TCPD’s offices and through staff interactions in general; automation of the construction permitting system, which will facilitate the building application process online and of course the digitization of all records.
This will help to meet Government’s National Development (Vision 2030) theme of ‘Delivering Good Governance and Service Excellence’ while meeting Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11: ‘Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’.
The TCPD possesses almost fifty (50) years of information on the spatial development and growth of Trinidad and Tobago and it is imperative that a high premium is placed on the maintenance and management of this critical data.