Business View Caribbean - January 2016 25
lenges of the Governor’s office. “My vision and my view
comes from a real potpourri of experiences from the
front line of government, through its middle manage-
ment, right up to its top, and from the wide spectrum
of issues having to do with management and labor, to
working with my clients in terms of trying to improve
their bottom line and their competitive advantage in
the marketplace - the whole nine yards,” he says.
“And so, my view for the Virgin Islands is really basic
in terms of the public sector,” he continues. “I ran on
a platform of becoming more efficient and becoming
more timely with the development and implementa-
tion of public policy. We’re really not efficient. We don’t
spend our resources in a manner that’s important for
the conduct of government, whether it’s the providing
of security through proper policing, the development
and growth of our infrastructure, understanding the
dynamics of and the cost of energy; being able to at-
tract business; and how to control and manage the
cost of living in the Virgin Islands.
Mapp also believes that the Virgin Islands “missed the
boat” by not developing technologically and not train-
ing a workforce that could adapt to the ever smarter
demands of employment outside of the service sector
and the manufacturing industries. “We’re too far be-
hind the curve,” he says. “The economy is not just tour-
ism. We need to train people to adapt to change and
to implement it. So, we have a broken system, a dis-
jointed system; not a community that lacks capability,
but a community with the pieces all over the place and
a general belief that if we throw money at the problem
it would be solved as opposed to looking at the core
basis of the problem and resolving what’s generating
the inefficiency - what’s generating the problem and
solving it there.”
So, Governor Mapp has many items on his to-do list:
He wants his administration to upgrade the delivery of
government services by implementing online technolo-
gies so that, for example, people can pay their taxes
or get access to governmental documents without hav-
