Less than three months in office, the new Dickon Mitchell-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) government has set about making improvements to the Government Website.
A high-level source told THE NEW TODAY that the newlook government website should for the first time include the publication of the Government Gazette on it.
He said it was always part of the strategic planning of Congress if it won the June 23 general election “to make sure that the Gazette goes there (website) but it’s not there as yet.”
“Very soon it will be there and definitely for the new site it’s going to be there – we are trying to make a lot of things digital,” he added.
According to the official, the current team that is working on enhancing the Government Website will have to first determine whether or not there are any legal issues involved in including the Gazette as part of the website.
He said the team members are not legally sure as yet about the rules of engagement but are committed to making sure that the Gazette can be put in a digital format.
“It is something we want to do so if it can’t be done we will put whatever legislation (in place) to make sure that it can be done. It is something that we have earmarked as something that needs to be done,” he added.
The official described the newlook Government Website as a work in progress that should be much better than what was left behind by the former New National Party (NNP) government of defeated Prime Minister Dr. Keith Mitchell.
“We just put up something temporary but in the meantime we are working on a much better one which will take a little bit more time,” he said.
The official alluded to a number of issues with the old government website under the previous administration, especially with what he said was “a lot of security stuff.”
“When people go on the site, it had virus and so we had to clean that out, change servers and so on. So we did quite a bit of retrofitting on the site to get it to work,” he remarked.
The official disclosed that for at least a whole year the government site was virtually inaccessible to persons.
“…It’s now back up – we have solved the issues with the domain, security and so on,” he told THE NEW TODAY.
The official with the new Congress government could not shed any light on reports in some quarters that the Mitchell-led regime had allegedly run into problems with persons from India who had created and was maintaining the Website for the Spice Isle.
“I heard about the Indian thing … they locked them out and they had to redo a site or whatever but I don’t have much details,” he said.
According to the official, what was inherited by the NDC government from the Mitchell regime “was not part of that (the Indian thing)” and the new administration is confident that it has been able to put together a much improved website that is “up and running now.”
“People think it’s a brand new site (but) in my opinion it’s a temporary thing. It’s a new site but not the final thing that I would want to put out there,” he said.
“I am working on something better but that’s going to take about 3 months or so. What we have now is a new site with the existing information but a new look – call it phase 1,” he added.
During the just-concluded campaign for the June 23 general election, Dr. Keith Mitchell publicly admitted that new Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell and his NDC Team had a much better Social Media outfit at work than his own party.
Dr. Mitchell was also caught trying to borrow some of the initiatives of Dickon Mitchell on the campaign trail especially his use of the lighted cell phone which had Congress supporters spellbound and drawn to his every move on the political platform.