The Tribune

By NICO SCAVELLA

Tribune Staff Reporter

nscavella@tribunemedia.net

ATTORNEY General Allyson Maynard-Gibson yesterday announced the relaunch of Bahamas Laws Online, a database of consolidated statutes and subsidiary legislation of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas.

The new and improved website, a joint effort between the Office of the Attorney General, Department of Information and Technology, and Government Printing seeks to provide Bahamians and others easy, digital access to the country’s laws in a time dominated by the use and influence of technology.

According to Mrs Maynard-Gibson, the site now offers access to legislation as current as December 31, 2014, as opposed to it previously offering legislation only up to December 31, 2009.

She announced the launch yesterday as part of the Christie administration’s “big vision” for e-government.

“We expect that people will obey the law, we expect that people know the law,” Mrs Maynard-Gibson said at her office. “The entire team at the Office of the Attorney General has been really focused on the importance of how we give our community access to the law, especially in the day of people interacting with their government on their smart phones.”

According to officials, persons can access the laws on laws.bahamas.gov.bs by clicking on “Legislation” on the home page.

From there, and after accepting the terms of conditions of the website, persons will see a list of principal and subsidiary legislation listed alphabetically. There is also an option to view laws as they were passed by year, as well as the option to access subsidiary legislation by year.

The links to the legislation provide a Portable Document Format (PDF) version, which can be viewed digitally or printed.

“This is a big vision the government has for e-government, and the Department of Information Technology has spent a lot of time demonstrating that this can be done,” Mrs Maynard-Gibson said.

“That site is not the official gazette, but we wanted to make sure that people can go there and be comfy going to that site, and feeling as best as they could and we could that they would get accurate information there. A lot of time was spent ensuring the accuracy there.”

According to Mrs Maynard-Gibson, the new site took one year to update.

She said new laws will be uploaded on the site within seven days of them being passed in Parliament.