The Department of Commerce plans to soon implement innovations that will better serve the community and launching a new online portal is just one of its plans.<\/p>\n
Commerce Secretary Mark O. Rabauliman said the new online portal would make transactions with the department more efficient.<\/p>\n
The project is also the result of the agency\u2019s application to gain grants. \u201cOf course we\u2019re trying to apply for other grants but the critical one is the online portal, which is a grant that we received from the [Office of Insular Affairs]\u201d said Rabauliman. \u201cThis project is to streamline all processing and enable online payment, all for the sake of convenience. [This is] to also streamline all processes and transactions in our department and other attached agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Office of Weights and Measures, one of two attached agencies under the Enforcement and Compliance Division (the other being the Bureau of Taxicabs headed by director David Palacios) would also get an upgrade.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn our enforcement side, [OWM] just recently got certified for package weighing. We\u2019re also looking to purchase a new software that would help our officers with their field work for more automation and this would include our surrounding islands [Tinian and Rota],\u201d said Rabauliman.<\/p>\n
He said he would meet with all agencies and divisions under his department so they could review some of the programs they offer. They also just finished with their household expenditure survey a few months ago and would soon release the data.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs far as economic development, we would meet with all stakeholders and revisit other agencies to see what programs they\u2019ve been working on, to kind of get an update, know the status of these programs, and to see if it needs enhancement,\u201d said Rabauliman.<\/p>\n
He is also monitoring the insurance side of the Affordable Care Act after President-elect Donald J. Trump and the GOP-dominated U.S. Congress stated that they plan to repeal it. \u201cWe\u2019re also revisiting the insurance because the President-elect wants to repeal it. \u2026We want to see what direction they want to go with it. We\u2019re constantly communicating with our State counterparts so that\u2019s something that we\u2019re really keeping an eye on,\u201d added Rabauliman, who is also the department\u2019s insurance commissioner.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe last time, the territories were not included and now we are given a seat at the table where we could put in our contributions,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Department of Commerce plans to soon implement innovations that will better serve the community…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1219,54,14943],"class_list":["post-243692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-affordable-care-act","tag-agency","tag-david-palacios"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243692\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}