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Friday, February 14, 2025

IDB CIO: T&T overcoming technology challenges

by

GEISHA KOWLESSAR-ALONZO
22 days ago
20250122

T&T, like oth­er de­vel­op­men­tal coun­tries in the Caribbean, is still fac­ing some foun­da­tion­al chal­lenges when it comes to im­ple­men­ta­tion and the us­age of tech­nol­o­gy to gain ad­vance­ments, says Jean-Michel Bau­doin, chief in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer and gen­er­al man­ag­er of the Tech­nol­o­gy and Trans­for­ma­tion De­part­ment of the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB).

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian at the of­fi­cial launch of the IDB’s Emerg­ing Tech­nol­o­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry – Tech­Lab T&T Hub on Tues­day, Bau­doin not­ed that while there are lots of op­por­tu­ni­ties, what is im­por­tant is that de­vel­op­ing economies like Trinidad, and the rest of the Caribbean, do not get left be­hind.

Speak­ing at the IDB’s of­fice in St Clair, Port-of-Spain, Bau­doin out­lined con­nec­tiv­i­ty as the first chal­lenge.

“We talk a lot about AI and you know, drones and every­thing, but the ba­sic el­e­ment is mak­ing sure that every­body has con­nec­tiv­i­ty.

“Sec­ond one that I see is what we call dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy ... I think it’s very, very im­por­tant that we do not leave any­body be­hind. So there are some peo­ple that are lit­er­ate when it comes to tech­nol­o­gy and dig­i­tal, but there are some peo­ple who are not,” Bau­doin fur­ther ex­plained.

Fur­ther, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty is still an is­sue fac­ing T&T as well as the rest of the world.

“It’s not some­thing that is spe­cif­ic to the Caribbean or Trinidad. Every in­sti­tu­tion, every coun­try is at­tacked by cy­ber­crim­i­nals and the more you are mov­ing in­to this dig­i­tal jour­ney, the more you get ex­posed,” Bau­doin added.

Fun­da­men­tal to all this, he em­pha­sised is hav­ing prop­er reg­u­la­tions in place.

“We need reg­u­la­tions, es­pe­cial­ly when it comes to AI. The prob­lem is not whether or not reg­u­la­tions are go­ing to kill in­no­va­tion. The prob­lem is the flex­i­bil­i­ty that we bring to the reg­u­la­tions and the time that it takes to make reg­u­la­tions,” Bau­doin said.

These chal­lenges, he said, are not on­ly ap­plic­a­ble to T&T but al­so oth­er Caribbean coun­tries and even the rest of the world.

“It’s just a ques­tion of dif­fer­ent ma­tu­ri­ty on those things. But even in de­vel­oped coun­tries, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty is a prob­lem. Even in de­vel­oped coun­tries like the US or in Eu­rope, dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy is al­so a prob­lem and cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty as well. So this is not spe­cif­ic to Trinidad or the Caribbean, but it’s there and it’s just a ques­tion of ma­tu­ri­ty and we have to close the gap. That’s what we have to do,” Bau­doin ad­vised.

On his sec­ond vis­it to T&T, Bau­doin gleaned some in­sights in­to this coun­try’s dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion progress thus far, in­clud­ing at the statu­to­ry wa­ter provider, Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) where that en­ti­ty is us­ing da­ta and al­so think­ing about us­ing big da­ta and AI to man­age wa­ter more ef­fi­cient­ly.

In oth­er ar­eas he shared, “We dis­cussed ed­u­ca­tion and AI and how that can change ed­u­ca­tion. Dig­i­tal health as well. We talked about com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment, so we see that tech­nol­o­gy is go­ing to change pret­ty much every­thing,” he said.

On how he would rate T&T in its dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion jour­ney this far, Bau­doin said for him, “it’s al­ways dif­fi­cult to rate,” adding “And I don’t like to rate.”

How­ev­er, he not­ed T&T’s “en­thu­si­asm and tal­ent” when it comes to dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and al­so use of tech­nol­o­gy.

“I’ve been here for two days so I can­not com­plete­ly give you a full as­sess­ment of every­thing. But, again the mind­set is al­ways very im­por­tant. When you have the tal­ent, when you have the will­ing­ness as well to col­lab­o­rate with oth­er in­sti­tu­tions like the IDB, you have all the in­gre­di­ents to make that a suc­cess.

“Is this go­ing to be a suc­cess? You have to come back in two years and ask me again. But at least all the in­gre­di­ents are here for a suc­cess­ful trans­for­ma­tion,” Bau­doin said.

In shar­ing de­tails about the Tech Lab, Bau­doin said it is not a fund­ing mech­a­nism but rather “an ex­per­i­ment place.”

“This is a place where we can bring peo­ple from Trinidad, the re­gion, pri­vate sec­tor, civ­il so­ci­ety, acad­e­mia to­geth­er to be able to ex­per­i­ment and test new tech­nol­o­gy.

“There is the tech lab in Trinidad, be­cause we want­ed to put a flag here but then you have ac­cess to some re­sources that we have in the oth­er re­gion­al tech labs and that we have in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean and al­so the Tech Lab that we have in Wash­ing­ton.

“So you have ac­cess to a pool of re­sources, hu­man re­sources, skills, as­sets ... so a set of knowl­edge that you can use to ac­cel­er­ate your trans­for­ma­tion,” Bau­doin fur­ther ex­plained.

He added there is in­ter­nal fund­ing from the IDB which will be used to pay for the equip­ment in­clud­ing ro­bots, 3D print­ers, drones among oth­er things.

While he could not pro­vide a cost for this, Bau­doin stat­ed, “You can­not put a price tag be­hind test­ing an idea, mak­ing sure that it’s work­ing prop­er­ly, scal­ing it and fi­nanc­ing it.

“What we are look­ing at right now is not nec­es­sar­i­ly the amount, but it’s where do we want to in­vest and where do we want to make a dif­fer­ence. I think that’s the most im­por­tant things that we have here. So im­pact is clear­ly what we want to do here.”

IDB has been a

long-stand­ing al­ly of T&T

In March last year, Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and the Pres­i­dent of the IDB Ilan Gold­fa­jn, signed a US$90 mil­lion con­di­tion­al cred­it line for in­vest­ment projects, which in­clude a first in­di­vid­ual loan of US$42 mil­lion to fa­cil­i­tate the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of T&T by sup­port­ing the ex­pan­sion and en­hance­ment of the dig­i­tal econ­o­my.

In 2022, IDB ap­proved a US$80 mil­lion ($544 mil­lion) loan to boost the ef­fi­cien­cy, qual­i­ty, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, and re­silience of this coun­try’s drink­ing wa­ter sup­ply and wa­ter se­cu­ri­ty.

That loan is part of a US$315 mil­lion con­di­tion­al cred­it line for T&T’s Na­tion­al Wa­ter Sec­tor Trans­for­ma­tion Pro­gramme.

The IDB not­ed the pro­gramme would di­rect­ly ben­e­fit an es­ti­mat­ed 1,025,000 res­i­dents (310,665 house­holds), plus an ad­di­tion­al 279,500 res­i­dents (84,705 house­holds) in sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

Ac­cord­ing to the IDB, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 16,841 busi­ness, agri­cul­tur­al, and in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers and char­i­ta­ble in­sti­tu­tions in dif­fer­ent sup­ply ar­eas will ben­e­fit as well.

BOX

The Tech Lab, es­tab­lished in 2017 as the emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy lab­o­ra­to­ry of the IDB Group, is a key part of the bank’s tech­nol­o­gy de­part­ment.

Its mis­sion is to utilise emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies to ac­cel­er­ate de­vel­op­ment in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

Tues­day’s launch marks the es­tab­lish­ment of a dig­i­tal hub for the Caribbean aimed at:

*Cre­at­ing trans­for­ma­tive so­lu­tions to pro­mote sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment;

*Im­prov­ing ac­cess to pub­lic ser­vices;

*Ad­dress­ing so­cioe­co­nom­ic and en­vi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges; and

*Ex­plor­ing and safe­ly im­ple­ment­ing in­no­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies.

About the IDB

Since its cre­ation in 1959, the IDB has been ded­i­cat­ed to im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty of life for mil­lions of peo­ple in its 26 bor­row­ing mem­ber coun­tries across Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean. Head­quar­tered in Wash­ing­ton, DC the IDB pro­vides fi­nan­cial and tech­ni­cal sup­port to na­tion­al and sub-na­tion­al gov­ern­ments and oth­er en­ti­ties in the re­gion as well as con­duct­ing cut­ting-edge re­search and de­vel­op in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions to ad­dress de­vel­op­ment chal­lenges both lo­cal­ly and glob­al­ly.


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