Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education, Skills, Youth and Information, Dr. Kasan Troupe, has emphasised the urgent need to digitise record keeping systems across the education sector, citing hard lessons learned in the wake of Hurricane Melissa.
She highlighted the challenges schools experienced in locating students after the hurricane, noting that the destruction of physical records severely hindered response efforts.
“Our principals would say to us, ‘we don’t have the addresses because the files have been damaged’. So, this has forced us to move expeditiously into the digitisation of our records and, of course, rolling out the information management systems at the tertiary level and at the secondary, primary and infant-school levels,” Dr. Troupe said.
She delivered remarks during Monday’s (April 20) Records Information Management (RIM) Implementation Programme Offboarding Ceremony, held at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston.
The Permanent Secretary argued that an increasingly digital and interconnected public service requires strengthened RIM practices.
“We don’t need any more reminders of how important that is. I draw your attention to a recent special interest story that was posted by UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) in the media about two or four schools who testified that they were able to reduce the number of students that were unaccounted for because they were actively using the Education Management Information System. So they had, in very quick succession, more of their students in school than out of school,” she shared.
Dr. Troupe noted that the Ministry intends to strengthen data systems for tracking student performance and managing school administration, while also enhancing access to information across the education sector.
“These efforts depend fundamentally on reliable, secure and well-managed information systems. So colleagues, it’s not about whether or not we can do this. We must do this,” she said, adding that student data must be accurate, protected and accessible when needed.
The Permanent Secretary further underscored the importance of proper record keeping in safeguarding institutional continuity.
“Too often, when a new principal comes in our system, there’s no record to make sure that there’s continuity of operations. It’s almost like they have to start all over,” she shared.
Meanwhile, Dr. Troupe emphasised that RIM is a critical enabler of the education transformation process, pointing out that effective records and information management remains both foundational and fundamental to good governance.
“It strengthens accountability and transparency, supports timely and evidence-based decision-making, preserves institutional memory and improves the efficiency and quality of public service delivery,” she stated.