The Government took a loan motion for 8 million US dollars to the House today. The loan is from the IDB and it's to support the civil service modernization project. That project will see digital transformation and data analytics, as well as strengthening the institutional capacity for human resource management. GOB will be footing 1 million US in additional counterpart resources.
But today the Leader of the Opposition stated that while she supported it in principle, there needed to be transparency:
Tracy Panton, Leader of the Opposition
"The last time we were here, we approved over 53 million dollars in loan motions. Today by the time we get through this House meeting, we would have approved another 81 million dollars in loan motions."
"Modernization is therefore a principle we support. The issue however is whether there are adequate safeguards in place and whether the Belizean people can be assured that this investment can deliver measurable results, whether this investment will deliver value for money."
"The members on this side of the House would like to request the following: one, a copy of the detailed implementation plan. The motion speaks of deliverables such as workforce planning, expenditure control, digital transformation, data, analytics, and most importantly, institutional strengthening. Notwithstanding these very worthy objectives, we are also requesting a detailed breakdown on who and how the money will be spent."
"We ask, Mr. Speaker, how much money will be allocated to technology and innovation. How much will be spent on consultants, how much is budgeted on software licensing fees, how much will actually be invested in training Belizean public officers, and how much of this 9 million US dollars will go towards project management and administrative costs."
The Minister of the Public Service then rose to explain why this project is necessary to modernize and optimize the work that GOB does:
Henry Charles Usher, Minister of Public Service
"Mr. Speaker, why is this project needed? This project address several longstanding challenges within the public service. Number one, annual expenditures on personnel continue to exceed budget estimates, placing pressure on government finances. Number two, there are significant variances in compensation among similar job categories affecting consistency and equity. There are many instances that create this anomaly and we don't have to go into detail today but we have discussed this with public officers, with the Public Service Union, with our partners so we could gain consensus on how to move forward. The third reason why this project is needed is because there still remains weakness in enforcing policies and implementing effective control system. One of those weaknesses identified is that there is no integrated human resources system and that system is not even linked and we have to get it linked to the financial management information system so that these two digital system can start communicating with each other and putting in the necessary guardrails that we need to put in place."
