GREAT BAY(DCOMM):--- Ten civil servants from the Government of Sint Maarten has completed five days of training in a Basic User and Database Administration workshop. The workshop started June 1st and concluded on June 5th.
Organized by the National Development Plan (NDP) team from the Department of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (BAK), the implementing agency for NDP project, the 10 civil servants now have the knowledge to work with the country databases SintMaartenInfo and CensusInfo Sint Maarten.
A follow-up training will be the next step – training the trainers – that will enable the 10 civil servants to assists others in learning how to utilize the database system.
Representatives from the Department of Statistics will also in the near future travel to the United States (New York) for a more advanced training at a Learning Lab.
Representatives of the various ministries now know how to create and manage databases within their ministry and how to upload their processed data into SintMaartenInfo for all stakeholders inside and outside of government to use - search for data, produce objects like tables, graphs and maps for presentations and reporting purposes to regional and international entities.
The Secretary Generals of the seven ministries were given a presentation on Wednesday morning and they were pleasantly surprised by what SintMaarteninfo looked like and the amount of data that was already in the database.
The information included Millennium Development Goals (MGDs) data as well as population and housing census data. The system ties close to the NDP and with the enhanced systems in place; it can be used to monitor the country’s NDP.
The Secretary General of the Ministry of Tourism, Economic Affairs, Transport and Telecommunications Miguel De Weever, pointed out the importance of having a government taskforce that would continue to take the lead in making this database a success by taking initiatives in determining the way forward after implementation.
The formation of this taskforce is already set in motion and they will be responsible for further planning and making decisions on for example which country specific indicators should be used besides the global ones MDGs and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s).
The data will help Government policy developers and planners to use evidence based information for policy development which is necessary to implement the NDP.
The workshop was a basic level training that took place at OSSEM Solutions.
The introduction of this database will further consolidate Governments efforts in evidenced based sustainable development planning. It establishes a national database that enables Government to monitor the developmental progress of the country.
Department of Statistics within the Ministry of Tourism, Economic affairs Transport and Telecommunication, will oversee the implementation of the SintMaartenInfo database in Sint Maarten with the assistance of key personnel from the other government ministries.
Only through a process of collecting, digitalizing and confirming data validity is government able to truly measure progress in achieving the policy results that are expected to be accomplished.
