President sets aggressive digitisation deadlines for key ministries

President Dr. Irfaan Ali has announced several digitisation targets aimed at improving efficiency across government ministries and agencies.

Speaking on the need to eliminate bureaucratic delays that burden citizens, he outlined strict deadlines for several ministries to fully digitise their operations.

“If someone gotta come to town to process their pension and must go to the Ministry of Finance, to the Accountant General Department, to the Auditor General Department, to NIS, and then some record is not there…you can come back next week and the other week.

“…you lose time, you lose money, you lose efficiency, you lose productivity and you create frustration,” President Ali explained during the launch of the Public Service Upskilling Platform on Monday.

To address this, President Ali directed the Minister of Finance to ensure that within eight months, the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) must have all its records fully digitised.

He also instructed the Minister of Public Service to oversee the complete digitisation of the public service ministry within five months.

“If we have, in every ministry, 10 persons who are experienced in digitising documents, then in the public service, we already have 300 persons who are experienced in digitizing documents, bring all 300 of them in a project way and let us clean the system up,” the Head of State stated.

President Ali insisted that every citizen must be able to access government services through a digital device.

The Ministry of Agriculture has also been given four months to activate a digital platform that will allow farmers to access online education, real-time weather data, extension support, and agricultural technologies directly in the field.

Meanwhile, the government’s single-window approval system, intended to streamline investment and development applications, must become fully optimised within two months.

“If it doesn’t happen, then people will have other priorities that they are interested in working on, and we will give them a chance to explore those other priorities,” he warned.