The Government's security and national defense advisors have put together the first draft of the new National Security and Defence Strategy. It supposed to be a comprehensive and honest look at the evolving security needs of the country, and how the state's resources can best be used to improve efficiency and effectiveness.
For the past few months the Ministries of Home Affairs and Defence have been in consultations with their counterparts from abroad, and they even invited contribution from civilian organizations. They were attempting to meet a December 15 deadline, and they managed to do so just in time.
George Lovell, CEO in the Ministry of Home Affairs, granted an interview to the Government Press Office on Friday, and he discussed a few key points in this first draft:
George Lovell - CEO, Ministry of Home Affairs
"We had decided that it was important that we engaged a number of stakeholders that were non-government and private voluntary organizations and even some of those interest groups in putting together this strategy, so that when we talk about our security and defense, it is one that is inform from the whole of society and that's what is included in this document. it is a document that has an input from a wide cross sections of stakeholders both regionally and 
internationally we had Beechwood which have been retained through the services of the British high commission and through the British government and we had Pericenter which was basically a US base entity from the inter-American defense college in Washington D.C. so there is a wide cross section of expertise and information that influenced the creation of this document. This document that we did makes our lives far easier, makes our work far easier and it is something that we have to ensure that we get right and we cannot do any short cut to it. my team base on the guidance, based on the leadership from both the Ministry of Defense and from the Ministry of Home Affairs have placed into this is one of things that caused them to keep focus and we gave them sufficient time to ensure that they could have achieved for the 15th of December deadline that we had set."
The document now goes to the National Security Council, and then to the Cabinet for review.
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