And for some time now you have been hearing the Public Service Union speak of its issues with the biometric identification system installed in the public service - outsourced to a company named NEOPEOPLES.
Today the CEO addressed some of those concerns:
Jose Urbina, CEO - Ministry E-Governance
"To begin in reference to the time management aspect that the Ministry of Public Service is implementing within the government of Belize, I think it is a technology that has been widely used in the private sector here in Belize so it's nothing new for employers to implement a biometric time management system rightfully stated the concern of how do we protect that data, reason why we're now having these conferences and we will have more in the future to build capacity and educate the general public as it relates to cybersecurity and protection of data. I think that the partnership that the ministry of public service has worked out, aligns with the necessary cybersecurity and data protection considerations that are needed to protect the employees information. Again it's nothing new, for the public service it is something new and I believe that time management is something needed in the public sector."
A point of concern for the union that these services were outsourced when government has its own Central Information Technology Office what can administer that same kind of system. But according to the CEO it is cheaper to get a cloud solution:
Reporter
"Why is it that you have to go out of the public service for this when you actually have CITO and I believe the public service union has said that they can handle that?"
Jose Urbina, CEO - Ministry E-Governance
"Well, one thing is the perspective of the public service union, ofcourse CITO is a very credible institution within the government of Belize. They are the only ISO certified data center in the region I believe if I'm not mistaken however there are limitations within the infrastructural capacity of CITO. Now I'm not saying that they are unable to host the existing system but definitely this are discussion that need to be had. We also need to consider that while CITO may be in a position to host hardware for this system it also comes with a capital investment that may be required for those servers and infrastructure that may be needed. When we look at different solutions nowadays, be it a hybrid solution sometimes, I'm not saying that in this case, sometimes hybrid or cloud solutions are cheaper and easier to maintain and ofcourse those come with built in cybersecurity considerations already."
