Zulfikar Ally pledges faster gov’t services, fewer frustrating encounters

Zulfikar Ally is Guyana’s new Minister of Public Service, Government Efficiency, and Implementation. As part of President Irfaan Ali’s government, Ally has the task of vastly improving the public service and delivering more efficient services to people across the country.

“We would like the public to go into any ministry, into any government agency… get their service as fast as possible, be out of there as fast as possible, to be happy and go on with their business,” Ally told the News Room in his first interview as Public Service Minister.

The vision is clear. But how will it be executed?

The government believes that moving away from a heavily paper-based system is key. Last week, at his first press conference since being re-elected, President Ali said his government is pursuing an ambitious national digitisation programme driven by a strategic focus on digital infrastructure, artificial intelligence (AI), cross-agency collaboration, and the integration of technology systems. With this, he said, most government services should be fully digitised before the end of the second quarter in 2026.

The services to be digitised include security clearance, birth and death certificate applications. There will also be an online passport portal and digital healthcare offerings.

But Ally explained that to truly implement efficient systems, his team will visit each government ministry and agency within the next two weeks to see how work is currently being done and how that work can be improved.

And Ally said the entire public service- thousands of workers all across the country- will undergo training to embrace these new technological solutions. He is also batting for behavioural changes so that there are fewer frustrating encounters that ultimately delay service delivery.

“We want, within the next year, for everyone to wake up to a very different, modern public service and in another three to four years, people will want to be in the pubic service, because of the speed of service delivery, digitisation of the work and modern technology used,” the Public Service Minister said.