T&T moves to digital immigration forms but Govt won’t give cost now

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

The cost to shift the coun­try from the pa­per-based im­mi­gra­tion ar­rival and de­par­ture forms to a dig­i­tal plat­form re­mains un­known, as it re­lates to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

This was re­vealed by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing at the launch of the plat­form, Alexan­der said the cost would be made known at some point.

“Be­cause of the se­cu­ri­ty in­volved, we don’t want to dis­cuss the cost at this time. How­ev­er, there can­not be a cost at­tached to im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty of life of cit­i­zens, so I want you to keep that in mind.”

Alexan­der said the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to do “things along a cer­tain line” un­til it is nec­es­sary to re­veal the cost.

He added that re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty body, Cari­com Im­ple­men­ta­tion Agency for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty (IM­PACS), is the ven­dor for the pro­gramme.

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence Do­minic Smith sup­port­ed Alexan­der, stress­ing that the Gov­ern­ment’s ethos is that of trans­paren­cy.

“Any­thing re­lat­ed to cost is no se­cret. There is a lev­el of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty across this Gov­ern­ment that has not been seen in a very long time. So, I think what the min­is­ter is try­ing to re­veal to you is that the con­cen­tra­tion is on the net ben­e­fit and re­ward of the sys­tem. So, the fo­cus should be on that. But for cost, the Gov­ern­ment’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is to get val­ue for mon­ey.”

He said the ques­tions on cost should not over­shad­ow the over­all ben­e­fits and asked that “we move away from the pol­i­tics of this, as there is no cor­re­la­tion be­tween the ques­tion of cost and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.”

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day to get more in­for­ma­tion on the plat­form and its as­so­ci­at­ed cost, Cari­com IM­PACS re­ferred Guardian Me­dia to the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry.

Per­tain­ing to se­cur­ing the da­ta of trav­ellers, Smith said: “In­for­ma­tion has been avail­able in pa­per-based for­mat as well, why hasn’t that been leaked. Sec­ond­ly, we’ve been work­ing with many bod­ies re­lat­ed to cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, and we’ve tak­en the ap­pro­pri­ate steps to safe­guard and pro­vide the ap­pro­pri­ate guardrails for this de­ploy­ment.”

While cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty is a key func­tion in the roll­out of the plat­form, en­ter­prise risk con­sul­tant Shi­va Paras­ram says leg­isla­tive sup­port is al­so need­ed.

“I know this is some­thing that was in the works for a while now. I think the prob­lem over­all is that we still have, I wouldn’t say, no prop­er leg­is­la­tion for client in­for­ma­tion and cit­i­zen in­for­ma­tion. But if you take, for ex­am­ple, Bar­ba­dos, it has a full da­ta pro­tec­tion act. We’re head­ing in that di­rec­tion, but I think that should be sped up.”

Alexan­der said the on­line plat­form, some­thing dis­cussed for years, is now com­ing on stream be­cause of “good gov­er­nance,” with the leg­isla­tive sup­port com­ing through amend­ments in the Im­mi­gra­tion Act.

The on­line plat­form will be in six lan­guages for now and will go on­line from Sat­ur­day, with the pa­per-based forms done away with from March 17.

Those who are not tech-savvy will be as­sist­ed at the ports.

Un­der the sys­tem, users must cre­ate an ac­count on the Gov­ern­ment’s por­tal, up­load a pho­to of their pass­port bio­da­ta page and com­plete the form with­in 72 hours be­fore ar­rival or de­par­ture.

Once sub­mit­ted, trav­ellers will re­ceive a dig­i­tal re­ceipt with a unique code and QR code to present to im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials.

Trav­ellers must log on to www.trav­el.gov.tt. to ac­cess the forms.