| Overview : In Belize, the InfoSegura Project is being co-implemented by the Ministry of Home Affairs & New Growth Industries, through the Belize Crime Observatory (BCO), in partnership with the UNDP. The BCO was established in October 2016 to “foster the development of public policies that address public safety and national security issues through the collection, analysis and dissemination of quality, timely and multidimensional data on crime and violence trends in the country.” The Ministry of Home Affairs & New Growth Industries places very high priority on innovation and technology, particularly in the context of leveraging Information and Communications Technology (ICT) resources to achieve greater impact through its efforts to improve citizen security in Belize. The Government of Belize has been developing the Plan Belize - Medium Term Development Strategy (2021-2025), and the two priority thematic areas most relevant to this Consultancy are Citizen Security and Good Governance. This InfoSegura-supported activity also aligns with Belize’s vision enshrined in the new National Digital Agenda (2022-2025). On 10 November 2021, the Government of Belize announced that Cabinet had endorsed the National Digital Agenda for the period 2022 to 2025 called “Towards a Digital Belize.” The agenda, which was launched on 6 December 2021, aims to simplify procedures for government services, improving service delivery, and facilitating economic recovery through digitalization. The expected outcome is a more open, efficient, and effective government, thereby representing the integration of ICT at all levels of society. The training programme to be developed through this Consultancy will strengthen Belize’s technical capacity for virtualization of crime data and information services, contributing to the realization of Belize’s Crime Intelligence Architecture (CIA) by 2023, as set out in the Belize Crime Observatory’s Strategic Action Plan for the period 2020-2023. The activity will also strengthen the interagency sharing of crime data and information, through virtualization, providing more efficient service delivery across a wide arrange of network partners, thereby expediting the delivery of data and information to support faster interventions to improve public safety. |
