GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Da­ta could be the new oil for this coun­try says Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert.

Speak­ing at day two of the vir­tu­al UN-T&T Big Da­ta fo­rum themed, "The Trans­for­ma­tion­al Role of Big Da­ta Tech­nolo­gies and An­a­lyt­ics —Eco­nom­ic Trans­for­ma­tion, Im­bert added that the rights of users will re­main at the fore­front of any pol­i­cy gov­ern­ing Big Da­ta.

Hence, he said Gov­ern­ment will en­gage in leg­isla­tive re­view to en­sure in­stances for po­ten­tial of abuse.

"Such as the case where­by po­lit­i­cal con­sult­ing firm Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca was found to have mis­used in­di­vid­ual elec­tron­ic da­ta for the pur­pos­es of in­ter­fer­ing with the elec­toral process of var­i­ous coun­tries," Im­bert cit­ed.

He said Gov­ern­ment has set "an ag­gres­sive agen­da" to en­sure T&T does not get left be­hind in the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion process and that the coun­try is well po­si­tioned in the re­gion in its adop­tion of tech­nol­o­gy.

Not­ing that T&T has the po­ten­tial to har­ness all the po­ten­tial of Big Da­ta, the Fi­nance Min­is­ter said this is pos­si­ble due to mod­ern telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­fra­struc­ture, "state-of-the-art Tier Three" da­ta cen­tres, 100 per cent mo­bile cel­lu­lar net­work, high mo­bile pen­e­tra­tion of 142 per cent, in­ter­net pen­e­tra­tion of 77 per cent and a high­ly qual­i­fied, tal­ent­ed pool to pro­pel da­ta an­a­lyt­ics.

Dur­ing the ques­tion and an­swer ses­sion Im­bert said by the end of 2022 Gov­ern­ment is hop­ing to achieve most of its ob­jec­tives in its dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion quest in­clud­ing an elec­tron­ic na­tion­al iden­ti­ty for each cit­i­zen, cash­less trans­ac­tion through­out most of the pub­lic ser­vice and pub­lic ac­cess to da­ta while en­sur­ing pri­va­cy.

Ac­cord­ing to Im­bert train­ing and ac­cess to fund­ing will be pro­vid­ed.

"One of the most im­por­tant things is ac­cess to prop­er and mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy. We have found that quite a few peo­ple in the sys­tem are not tech savvy and they now oc­cu­py se­nior po­si­tions with­in the pub­lic ser­vice so there's a lot of train­ing that is go­ing to be re­quired," Im­bert ex­plained.

With re­spect to the par­tic­i­pa­tion of SMEs the Fi­nance Min­is­ter said Gov­ern­ment has es­tab­lished a fund to help such en­ti­ties de­vel­op more fis­cal dis­ci­pline, adding that Gov­ern­ment has al­so agreed to pro­vide ser­vices like ac­count­ing and man­age­ment which some SMEs may not be able to af­ford or ac­cess eas­i­ly.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Im­bert said the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to cre­ate its own Big Da­ta cen­tres rather than re­ly­ing on out­side in­vestor in­ter­est and tech­nol­o­gy.

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter al­so con­grat­u­la­tions the Unit­ed Na­tions for its suc­cess in host­ing the sec­ond it­er­a­tion of the Big Da­ta Fo­rum, not­ing that in 2020 the UN said this coun­try is well-poised to be the home for a "cen­tre of ex­cel­lence" on Big Da­ta an­a­lyt­ics.