Article posted by Trinidad Newsday on 19th July, 2021.
Author: Clint Chan Tack
Link to original article: https://newsday.co.tt/2021/07/19/digitisation-continues-at-town-country-planning/
THE digitization of documents has continued at the Planning and Development Ministry’s Town and Country Planning Division (TCPD) despite the current public health and state of emergency (SoE) restrictions.
“The team’s efforts have yielded over 2,000 persons registered for the online portal.”
In a statement, the ministry said, “The automation team responsible for transforming the online construction permitting service of TCPD to DevelopTT have been meeting their targets for registration of users.”
The ministry said while the staff have been working from home, they have continued their registration drive for the DevelopTT system.
“The team’s efforts have yielded over 2,000 persons registered for the online portal.”
The ministry said the number of applications received via the DevelopTT portal has been increasing towards the 2,000 mark.
“In June, the project hit another one of its key targets as DevelopTT was expanded to TCPD’s South Regional Office with the Stamp Duty Exemption Correspondence and Status of Land Correspondence services being made available via the platform for that region.”
The ministry also said the digitization team reached a major milestone in the project by digitizing over 100,000 TCPD legacy documents.
“The team completed the large-scale digitization of 100,288 files and application documents as part of Digitization Project, Phase I.”
This phase covered both TCPD’s North and South Regional Offices.
“This achievement involved the digital conversion of 1,524 plotting maps; 2,935 subdivision layouts and 95,829 green file applications.”
Green file applications are for permission to develop land and consist of outline approvals and final permission for planning applications.
“These files are now part of the Digital Vault that provides reference material to DevelopTT.”
The ministry said the TCPD’s transformation began with the launch of Service Delivery in 2017, Automation in 2018 and the digitization Phase I in May 2019. It said all projects are on target towards the transformation of a manual system to digitized delivery.
