Online users log on to Town and Country’s DevelopTT system (Trinidad Guardian)

Author: Charles Kong Soo

Link to original article: https://www.guardian.co.tt/news/online-users-log-on-to-town-and-countrys-developtt-system-6.2.1074114.cd8fbe2191

Story published in the Trinidad Guardian on Monday 9^th March, 2020.

De­vel­opTT now has at least 12 ttcon­nect reg­is­tered on­line users with­in four hours of the sys­tem’s live pi­lot launch on March 4, 2020.

In a re­lease on the day of the launch, the Min­istry of Plan­ning and Development said the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion (TCPD) began the De­vel­opTT sys­tem pi­lot at the North Re­gion­al Of­fice of the TCPD.

De­vel­opTT is an on­line, Au­to­mat­ed Con­struc­tion Per­mit­ting Sys­tem (ACPS) ini­ti­at­ed by the Ministry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment and the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try.

“To use the De­vel­opTT sys­tem, users as an in­di­vid­ual or as a busi­ness/com­pa­ny must be reg­is­tered with ttcon­nect and hold valid TTBi­zLink cre­den­tials in or­der to ac­cess the por­tal.”

The Au­tomated Con­struc­tion Permit­ting Sys­tem (ACPS), brand­ed De­vel­opTT, is in­tend­ed to standard­ize the pro­cess­ing of de­vel­op­ment ap­pli­ca­tions to en­sure trans­paren­cy and vis­i­bil­i­ty at every step of the build­ing, plan­ning and de­vel­op­ment process.

The first month of the De­vel­opTT pi­lot phase will wel­come sub­mis­sions of dig­i­tal plan­ning per­mis­sion ap­pli­ca­tions with­in the bound­aries of the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion (T1M Plan­ning Re­gion).

TCPD urges all users to get reg­is­tered be­cause the pi­lot will be ex­pand­ed to the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and a por­tion of the San Juan/Laven­tille re­gion­al bound­aries.

The pri­ma­ry pur­pose of the pilot project is to demon­strate that the DevelopTT sys­tem as de­signed, works in the re­al-world en­vi­ron­ment as ex­pect­ed and meets the busi­ness re­quire­ments of agen­cies in­volved in con­struc­tion per­mit­ting. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, con­duct­ing the pi­lot re­duces the risk of fail­ure and en­coun­ter­ing ma­jor prob­lems dur­ing na­tion­wide roll­out of the sys­tem. Once the pi­lot project is ex­e­cut­ed, the risks that were iden­ti­fied at the be­gin­ning of the project can be eval­u­at­ed. Na­tion­al roll-out will com­mence once is­sues not­ed in the pi­lot are ad­dressed and non-pi­lot agen­cies are trained.

To as­sist ap­pli­cants, a De­vel­opTT helpdesk is sta­tioned at the North Regional Of­fice of the TCPD on Lev­el 13, Er­ic Williams Fi­nan­cial Building, In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain. The sta­tion is staffed with Cus­tomer Ser­vice Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (CSRs), and com­put­er ac­cess is available to al­low users to get reg­is­tered for their ttcon­nect ID.

To use the De­vel­opTT sys­tem, users as an in­di­vid­ual or as a busi­ness/com­pa­ny, must be reg­is­tered with ttcon­nect and hold valid TTBi­zLink cre­den­tials in or­der to ac­cess the por­tal.

This ini­tia­tive is in align­ment with the Gov­ern­ment’s Vi­sion 2030 Na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment Strat­e­gy: Theme III, Im­prov­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty through qual­i­ty in­fra­struc­ture and trans­port; and po­si­tions the na­tion to achieve Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals, Goal: 9 – In­dus­try In­no­va­tion and In­fra­struc­ture and Goal: 11- Sus­tain­able Cities and Com­mu­ni­ties.