The Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union (CTU) and The Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tari­at joint­ly host­ed a three-day work­shop on ef­fec­tive frame­works for build­ing a dig­i­tal econ­o­my dur­ing which Dale Mar­shall, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of Bar­ba­dos, em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of leg­is­la­tion in dri­ving dig­i­tal economies, such as da­ta pro­tec­tion, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, Fin­tech and oth­er ar­eas.

He not­ed the work­shop was time­ly, adding that crit­i­cal leg­is­la­tion is a ne­ces­si­ty which un­der­pins ef­forts to nur­ture and sup­port na­tion­al and re­gion­al dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion strate­gies.

He al­so an­nounced that a cy­ber­crime statute to re­place the 2005 Com­put­er Mis­use Act is ex­pect­ed to go to Par­lia­ment in Bar­ba­dos with­in the next two months.

Mar­shall fur­ther gave his coun­try’s com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing the reg­u­la­to­ry en­vi­ron­ment to de­vel­op its fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tion. “Bar­ba­dos will en­sure there is the req­ui­site reg­u­la­to­ry en­vi­ron­ment through its in­sti­tu­tions such as the Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices Com­mis­sion, the Cen­tral Bank and the Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion, in par­tic­u­lar, to nur­ture this fast-grow­ing fi­nan­cial ser­vices area,” he added.

The event wel­comed 40 in-per­son and 100 on­line par­tic­i­pants from 24 coun­tries from the re­gion and around the world.

In his wel­come re­marks, Pao­lo Ka­touke, se­nior di­rec­tor, trade oceans and nat­ur­al re­sources di­rec­torate, The Com­mon­wealth, high­light­ed that trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion across bor­ders could re­dound to ben­e­fits.

“Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of trade could in­crease ac­cess to fi­nance, re­duce risk of fraud and cor­rup­tion, and al­so cre­ate glob­al stan­dards for in­ter­op­er­abil­i­ty and tech­ni­cal stan­dards.

“To un­leash a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of ben­e­fits of pa­per­less trade, it is ab­solute­ly es­sen­tial to en­gage in ap­pro­pri­ate le­gal re­form,” he said.

Rod­ney Tay­lor, sec­re­tary-gen­er­al of the CTU, al­so not­ed the chang­ing land­scape of to­day’s tech­no­log­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment.

He said to move for­ward in to­day’s new, tech­no­log­i­cal­ly-dri­ven en­vi­ron­ment, it is im­por­tant to set the le­gal frame­works to dri­ve, pro­mote and en­cour­age dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion across all sec­tors.

The work­shop aimed to pro­vide par­tic­i­pants with in­sights in­to pol­i­cy rec­om­men­da­tions that can be im­ple­ment­ed na­tion­al­ly to sup­port dig­i­tal trade with­in the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my.

It was al­so a plat­form for stake­hold­ers to share ex­pe­ri­ences and best prac­tices in build­ing a thriv­ing dig­i­tal econ­o­my.

Oth­er key out­comes from the work­shop in­clud­ed iden­ti­fy­ing crit­i­cal suc­cess fac­tors to de­vel­op dig­i­tal economies and shar­ing of prac­ti­cal strate­gies for na­tion­al poli­cies and frame­works.