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Wednesday, April 30, 2025

Govt takes aim at cybercrime

by

20150208

Gov­ern­ment is ag­gres­sive­ly draft­ing ef­fec­tive leg­is­la­tion to com­bat cy­ber­crime, says Cor­nell Buck­radee, ad­vi­sor to Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Min­is­ter Dr Ru­pert Grif­fith.Speak­ing on be­half of the min­is­ter at the vir­tu­al launch of the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union's (CTU) head­quar­ters in Port-of-Spain, Buck­radee said the min­istry is plac­ing great pri­or­i­ty on e-Leg­isla­tive ini­tia­tives in­clud­ing amend­ments to the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Act and the Elec­tron­ic Trans­ac­tion Act.

He said the pol­i­cy frame­work for T&T's in­for­ma­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) sec­tor was dri­ven by an un­der­stand­ing that ex­pand­ed con­nec­tiv­i­ty would stim­u­late do­mes­tic growth and pro­vide scope for greater par­tic­i­pa­tion by the pop­u­la­tion in the glob­al in­for­ma­tion econ­o­my.

Buck­radee said the state would adopt a set of un­der­ly­ing pol­i­cy prin­ci­ples which in­clud­ed nur­tur­ing a sus­tain­able and fi­nan­cial­ly vi­able com­mu­ni­ca­tions sec­tor and de­vel­op­ing a ro­bust pol­i­cy and reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work that en­sures com­pe­ti­tion and en­cour­ages growth.

"While we have achieved much, we are not com­pla­cent about our cur­rent po­si­tion. Go­ing for­ward, we have sev­er­al ini­tia­tives in­clud­ing that of im­prove­ments in the ICT leg­isla­tive en­vi­ron­ment en­com­pass­ing the ar­eas of e-com­merce, e-bank­ing and oth­er on-line ser­vices. T&T is al­so cur­rent­ly work­ing on de­vel­op­ing its cy­ber­crime leg­is­la­tion to prop­er­ly reg­u­late and safe­guard cy­ber-ac­tiv­i­ties."

He added: "We are now go­ing fur­ther in e-Gov­ern­ment so as to trans­form how we cre­ate and de­liv­er pub­lic ser­vice. In recog­ni­tion that we have a more ed­u­cat­ed and tech­no­log­i­cal­ly-savvy cit­i­zen­ry that has high­er ex­pec­ta­tions and wants to play a more ac­tive role in na­tion­al af­fairs, the Min­istry of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, through its agency iGovtt has been bring­ing an in­creas­ing amount of Gov­ern­ment ser­vices on­line."

He said the min­istry is col­lab­o­rat­ing with in­ter­na­tion­al re­search in­sti­tutes, uni­ver­si­ties and oth­ers that are lead­ers to iden­ti­fy and de­vel­op the best con­cepts, ideas and strate­gies.

Buck­radee said the min­istry is rolling out its na­tion­al ICT plan, SmarTT, a vir­tu­al road map with the aim of mak­ing the ICT sec­tor a ma­jor con­trib­u­tor to GDP in the short­est pos­si­ble time. SmarTT fo­cus­es on en­hanc­ing the qual­i­ty of life, im­prov­ing ser­vice de­liv­ery, in­creas­ing na­tion­al com­pet­i­tive­ness and cre­at­ing new op­por­tu­ni­ties for cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es.

"Our goal is to cul­ti­vate so­ci­ety in which our cit­i­zens are em­pow­ered and hu­man imag­i­na­tion dri­ves so­cial trans­for­ma­tion and eco­nom­ic growth. The gov­ern­ment of T&T has recog­nised that our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem must keep pace with the rapid growth of tech­nol­o­gy of the 21st cen­tu­ry.

"In ad­di­tion to our high­ly suc­cess­ful lap­top ini­tia­tive for every child with­in the sec­ondary school sys­tem and the in­no­v­a­tive Smart Class­room project, this Gov­ern­ment has in­cor­po­rat­ed ICT with­in its ed­u­ca­tion cur­ric­u­lar at var­i­ous lev­els," he said.


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