The Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence has of­fi­cial­ly launched an AI Acad­e­my, a six-month pi­lot pro­gramme de­signed to strength­en ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) com­pe­ten­cies across T&T’s pub­lic ser­vice.

The ini­tia­tive was un­veiled dur­ing a vir­tu­al event on Tues­day, where rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the min­istry, CAF – De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP) and Unit­ed Na­tions In­ter­na­tion­al Com­put­ing Cen­tre (UNICC) out­lined the pro­gramme’s goals and na­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance.

The we­bi­nar fea­tured re­marks from Nariya Baksh, di­rec­tor of the pub­lic ser­vice acad­e­my at the min­istry; Bernar­do Re­que­na, di­rec­tor rep­re­sen­ta­tive of CAF in T&T; and Ugo Blan­co, res­i­dent rep­re­sen­ta­tive for UNDP T&T.

In her re­marks, Baksh em­pha­sised the acad­e­my re­flect­ed the min­istry’s long-term vi­sion for tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven trans­for­ma­tion.

“The AI Acad­e­my em­bod­ies the min­istry’s man­date, found­ed on three core pil­lars: dig­i­tal ser­vices, smart and ef­fi­cient gov­ern­ment, and a dig­i­tal na­tion,” she said, adding, “To achieve this man­date, our ini­tia­tives must be built on ro­bust ed­u­ca­tion and the em­pow­er­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s great­est as­set—our peo­ple.”

Of­fi­cials de­scribed the acad­e­my as a pi­o­neer­ing ef­fort that comes at a cru­cial time, as gov­ern­ments across the Caribbean seek to mod­ernise op­er­a­tions and pre­pare for rapid tech­no­log­i­cal change.

The pi­lot is im­ple­ment­ed by the UNDP in part­ner­ship with UNICC and fi­nan­cial­ly sup­port­ed by CAF.

Through the pro­gramme, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 100 pub­lic of­fi­cers would re­ceive struc­tured train­ing in prac­ti­cal and re­spon­si­ble AI use.

In ad­di­tion, a se­lect group of ten of­fi­cers would work with­in a se­cure AI Sand­box en­vi­ron­ment to de­vel­op two to three pro­to­type AI so­lu­tions tar­get­ed to na­tion­al pri­or­i­ties.

The min­istry would al­so re­ceive guid­ance on best prac­tices for AI im­ple­men­ta­tion, in­clud­ing da­ta gov­er­nance, work­force train­ing, in­fra­struc­ture con­sid­er­a­tions, and fos­ter­ing cross-agency col­lab­o­ra­tion.

A re­lease from the min­istry added that the acad­e­my di­rect­ly sup­ports the gov­ern­ment’s dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and in­no­va­tion agen­da by ad­dress­ing crit­i­cal ca­pac­i­ty gaps and en­abling more ef­fi­cient, ev­i­dence-based de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

By equip­ping pub­lic of­fi­cers with ap­plied AI skills, the ini­tia­tive aims to im­prove ser­vice de­liv­ery, stream­line op­er­a­tions, and cre­ate a more ag­ile and adapt­able pub­lic sec­tor, it added.