The World Bank Group has con­firmed that T&T is open da­ta ready with strong high-lev­el com­mit­ment to open gov­ern­ment.

The Na­tion­al Open Da­ta Readi­ness As­sess­ment (ODRA), a col­lab­o­ra­tive ven­ture be­tween the Min­istry of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, Min­istry of Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my and the World Bank Group (WBG), was con­duct­ed with gov­ern­ment min­istries and agen­cies, civ­il so­ci­ety and the pri­vate sec­tor from Feb­ru­ary 23-March 2, and April 27�May 2.

The qual­i­ta­tive in­put from these stake­hold­ers as­sist­ed with the prepa­ra­tion of the Draft Na­tion­al ODRA Re­port, which con­tains the WBG's find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions for de­vel­op­ment and im­ple­men­ta­tion of a Na­tion­al Open Da­ta Strat­e­gy in T&T.

The ODRA eval­u­ates readi­ness based on eight di­men­sions and T&T was rat­ed as clear­ly ready in four cat­e­gories, in­clud­ing tech­nol­o­gy and skills in­fra­struc­ture. In five oth­er cat­e­gories the coun­try re­ceived a yel­low rat­ing, in­di­cat­ing that ev­i­dence of readi­ness is less clear.

Be­ing open da­ta ready and par­tic­i­pat­ing in an open da­ta ini­tia­tive as­sists the coun­try in its goal to de­vel­op an open, ac­count­able and trans­par­ent pub­lic sec­tor and de­liv­ery of pub­lic ser­vices to its cit­i­zens.

It au­gurs well for the Na­tion­al Broad­band Plan for De­vel­op­ment which aims to en­sure that cit­i­zens across T&T have ac­cess to high speed broad­band con­nec­tiv­i­ty, an im­por­tant dri­ver of eco­nom­ic growth and de­vel­op­ment and fa­cil­i­tates job cre­ation.

This is part of the Na­tion­al ICT Plan 2014-2018, smarTT, aimed at trans­form­ing the coun­try in­to a more di­ver­si­fied, in­for­ma­tion and knowl­edge-dri­ven econ­o­my.

In re­spond­ing to The World Bank Group's an­nounce­ment, Dr Ru­pert Grif­fith, Min­is­ter of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, said there are plans to work with the rel­e­vant agen­cies and stake­hold­ers to en­act the Open Da­ta Ac­tion Plan pre­sent­ed by the World Bank.