Digital Services Transformation – Government of Grenada

MGRM delivered in record time, a National Portal, Digital Service Delivery Platform, a Capacity Building Platform and an E-Learning Platform for the people of Grenada, Carriacou & Petite Martinique.

The Challenge

The Government of Grenada is a hidden gem of the Caribbean, with its population of 110,000 spread across the islands of Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique. More than 1 million foreigners visit Grenada each year. It has a strong diaspora of 400,000 members scattered globally. Information about Grenada was neither up-to-date or available in a single location, making it difficult to access any information about the beautiful country.

Accessing Government Service from any of its 16+ ministries requires a minimum of two visits, that’s often two days of effort by an average citizen, costing upward of 50 EC Dollars($ US 20), a lot for a small economy. Minimum service turnaround time was 4-5 days. Barring some business functions like tax collection, no digital service existed.

Inclusive Capacity Development of the 8000+ government staff was not feasible. However, the Government of Grenada was efficient in training a few staff each year, often abroad, training that never percolated to the lower rung government staff.

The 150+ schools of Grenada were good performers at the Caribbean CXC Exams. However, no form of E-Learning existed. When the CXC switched from physical exams to online exams, the educational system was simply unprepared to make the transition.

The Solution

MGRM proposed a comprehensive solution comprising of the MStar National Portal that spanned all ministries and departments, M-Gov Master Governance Platform for service delivery of 100+ services, MStar LSP for e-learning, and MStar TSP for capacity building.

MGRM helped the 16+ ministries of the Government of Grenada develop a comprehensive & well-researched Information and Interaction Architecture for a national portal. With complete consensus from the various line ministries, we went on to develop a state-of-the­art multi-ministerial multi-departmental portal that’s based on advanced user experience, security standards. Exiting information was then migrated, and where no information existed, they were created through multiple user engagement workshops.

The unique architecture of the portal allowed trans-ministerial departments such as the Ministry of Information and Communication Technologies to administer users, manage backups, and manage its deployment on Amazon Cloud, while line ministries were trained to update news, notifications and government content, and others limited to their line ministry.

For the first time, citizens, businesses, visitors and the diaspora got to see a comprehensive view of Grenada with all its richness, with all its departments, their activities, accomplishments and functions. They welcomed the fact that all ministerial data were finally visible and accessible in one place.

Service Delivery Platform (eservices.gov.gd)

MGRM developed and delivered a highly scalable Master Governance Platform for digital service delivery & transformation. Following a twelve month intense interaction that captured 100+ services of the government, MGRM team of software engineers set to re­engineer business processes to help reduce burden of work, eliminate duplication, and to overall accelerate time to deliver services.

In addition, the team ensured that all data of the government are available in one place, enabling them to focus on advanced level of security, and for advanced beneficiary engagement and analytics. Post signoff, M-Gov Master Governance Platform, a comprehensive digital service delivery platform was built and deployed on Amazon Cloud.

 

The Master Governance Platform comprises of salient features that add significant value to any national endeavor. Firstly, a robust citizen, business and visitor registration process results in easy validation of their credentials to issue a Unique ID for the individual. Once completed in line with the constitutional mandates of the Government, users are provided a unique Government ID and password with the option to enable two factor and multi­factor authentication, making the platform robust and secure.

Once registered, citizens, businesses and visitors alike can access a catalog of services, presently about 120 of them. By simply providing incremental data (with the major chunk of data coming from the original registration), individuals can easily apply for new services, with the ability to make online payment and to easily track service status until its completion. Since most services are automated, the officer just validate the few additional data provided, making decision making and service delivery a simple task. Unlike previous manual process, where most time got wasted in validating credentials, and in auditing the authenticity of service relevant claims, services were available for approval within a few minutes instead of days, thanks to a robust registration system pioneered by us.

MStar Learning Support Platform (MStar LSP)

MGRM implemented MStar LSP for all schools of Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique. Students and teachers had access to a plethora of new tools and techniques never before possible in a manual and face-to-face classroom system. Formative and summative assessments, brain-storming, collaborative and social learning, discussion forums and wikis were all accessible within a single window, thanks to MStar.

Additionally, lesson and sample papers from prior exams were migrated to the system, with intense training and handholding provided to Teachers, Principals, District Officers and Ministerial Staff in the three islands.

The implementation was timely, enabling easy migration of the system from a purely manual to the new digital Caribbean Common Exam (CXC). In addition, with the lockdown mandated by COVID, MStar LSP enabled all schools to function remotely without disruption, with teachers conducting classes, and assignments routinely using MStar advanced e-learning platform, clearly saving a year of academics, which can mean a lot for a Small Island Developing State (SIDS).

MStar Training Support Platform (MStar TSP)

MGRM implemented MStar TSP, a specialized platform for capacity building, training and skills development, for the Prime Minister’s Office and various line ministries. In addition to delivering an advanced training platform, we helped migrate more than ten training programs of the government, while training hundreds of staff on developing and administering course content, staff registration and management.

Each line ministry and department had their own access to develop and deploy their own courses, a feature that was much welcome. Individuals who attended advanced training conducted by the United Nations, WHO, World Bank, International Monitory Fund (IMF) and others were eager to share their training with their colleagues to ensure comprehensive capacity development with the government ranks. This resulted in immense satisfaction among the staff, and a sense of continual development in an otherwise slow but beautiful Caribbean tourist destination, something that would not have been possible without this advanced training platform.

Outcomes

• Enhanced Ease of Doing Business environment
• Improved country ranking by IMF and World Bank enabled Grenada to access additional valuable developmental funds required to counter the effects of climate change
• Streamlined information architecture for the whole of government portal
• A national portal that delivers news, notifications, government services and information all in one place, a giant leap for a small island developing state
• A single unified service delivery platform that integrated multi-departmental workflows to deliver all citizen and business services using a state of the art platform
• All citizen service-delivery data in one location, enabling advanced levels of data security and analytics, decision support, and governmental oversight
• Advanced e-learning platform enabled Grenada to easily & timely manner step into the purely online Caribbean Examination System, and weather the adverse effects of COVID by integrating teachers and learners across the three island states
• An integrated training platform that enables easy capacity building at scale

Benefits

• Easy access to whole of government data from a single place
• High visibility of Grenada in the e-governance and e-government space
• High level of citizen and visitor satisfaction from easy access to data and services
• Significant reduction in cost to access and deliver service for citizens & government respectively
• High level of government officer satisfaction from ease of service delivery
• Enhanced & inclusive training opportunities for whole of government