In a coun­try where sev­er­al busi­ness­es still do not al­low for LINX trans­ac­tions, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert raised a few eye­brows re­cent­ly when he gave a tar­get for Trinidad and To­ba­go to be­come a cash­less so­ci­ety.

“So we set our­selves quite an am­bi­tious time­line. So by the end of De­cem­ber 2022, we must have achieved most if not all of the as­sign­ments we have set for our­selves,” said Im­bert dur­ing the Unit­ed Na­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go Big Da­ta Fo­rum.

He said, “A na­tion­al iden­ti­ty for cit­i­zens, cash­less trans­ac­tions for most, if not all of the pub­lic ser­vice, and pub­lic ac­cess to da­ta when en­sur­ing pri­va­cy. So that’s the time­line in the next year.”

De­cem­ber 22 is ex­act­ly 12 months away. In May, then Min­is­ter of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Allyson West lament­ed the slow progress the Min­istry had made since it was formed fol­low­ing the 2020 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

She said the de­lays were par­tial­ly hurt, and par­tial­ly aid­ed, by lock­down re­stric­tions but it was al­so stymied by the lack of syn­chro­ni­sa­tion and co-op­er­a­tion be­tween Min­istries to­wards the goal.

West was moved on to the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion two months af­ter that, with Sen­a­tor Has­sel Bac­chus tak­ing con­trol of the Min­istry.

Min­is­ter Im­bert’s tar­get would sug­gest that sig­nif­i­cant progress has been made since then.

The Dig­i­tal Tran­for­ma­tion Min­istry, in an emailed re­sponse to ques­tions from the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, ex­plained po­ten­tial strate­gies to meet the chal­lenge.

Ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion, “The roadmap to achieve that vi­sion will lever­age the cur­rent ca­pa­bil­i­ties.”

The Min­istry stat­ed a plan of at­tack which will tar­get five key min­istries and gov­ern­ment agen­cies which they ex­plained, “meet the cri­te­ria for this tran­si­tion, in­clud­ing the vol­ume of trans­ac­tions they con­duct, and there­fore will have a ma­jor cus­tomer im­pact.”

These Min­istries and Gov­ern­ment agen­cies are:

• Ju­di­cia­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go

• Min­istry of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs—Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al and In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Of­fice

• Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion

• In­land Rev­enue

• Min­istry of Works and Trans­port–Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion

The of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion said their work on these agen­cies would in­form their ap­proach “to ac­cel­er­ate roll­out to oth­er Min­istries, De­part­ments, and Agen­cies.”

“The ul­ti­mate goal is end-to-end con­sump­tion and de­liv­ery of goods and ser­vices—a de­lib­er­ate move­ment away from the si­lo ap­proach where one trans­ac­tion means sev­er­al in­ter­ac­tions with var­i­ous gov­ern­ment of­fices for a cit­i­zen. To this end, quite a few projects are well un­der­way, in the spir­it of col­lab­o­ra­tion with var­i­ous pub­lic sec­tor stake­hold­ers,” said of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion.

The plan will al­so in­clude the se­lec­tion of a new E-Iden­ti­ty So­lu­tion for the pub­lic to en­able a new in­ter­op­er­abil­i­ty frame­work for pro­vid­ing e-ser­vices as well as im­prove­ment in the sys­tems that sup­port the op­er­a­tions of gov­ern­ment, such as the Gov­ern­ment Net­work that con­nects Min­istries, De­part­ments and Agen­cies, and the Gov­PayTT sys­tem, which is set to sup­port as­pects of elec­tron­ic pay­ments.

The Min­istry of­fi­cial said, “In the com­ing year we will launch an ex­pand­ed and strength­ened Gov­PayTT sys­tem as well as a more re­silient and en­hanced Gov.Nett Ser­vice.”

There are al­so plans to col­lab­o­rate with Min­istry of Health on a new Na­tion­al Health In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem as well as cre­at­ing a sim­i­lar sys­tem for the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices on a new So­cial Ser­vices Man­age­ment In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem to im­prove the ad­min­is­tra­tion of these ser­vices to vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens.

The Min­istry told the Busi­ness Guard that the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion agen­da will fo­cus on three pil­lars: Dig­i­tal So­ci­ety; Dig­i­tal Gov­ern­ment and Dig­i­tal Econ­o­my, and each of these have sev­er­al pri­or­i­ty projects.

The Dig­i­tal So­ci­ety pil­lar will fo­cus on the Im­prove­ment of the TT Trav­el­Pass.

The Min­istry of­fi­cial said, “Af­ter con­tribut­ing to its (TT Trav­el­Pass) de­vel­op­ment, we have re­viewed it over the past few months, and based on our find­ings we are work­ing to im­prove the cit­i­zen ex­pe­ri­ence and to stream­line its op­er­a­tions.”

It was al­so con­firmed that a re­view of the six op­er­a­tional ICT Ac­cess Cen­tres was con­duct­ed, with as­signed project teams vis­it­ing each Cen­tre, meet­ing with Ac­cess Cen­tre staff, and hav­ing be­gun to ad­dress and re­solve op­er­a­tional is­sues.

This will be com­bined, the of­fi­cials said, with the es­tab­lish­ment and im­ple­men­ta­tion of ad­di­tion­al Ac­cess Cen­tres. The Min­istry al­so con­firmed a part­ner­ship with the Adult Lit­er­a­cy Tu­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (AL­TA), to of­fer on­line lit­er­a­cy train­ing at its Ac­cess Cen­tres.

The AL­TA part­ner­ship is cur­rent­ly be­ing pi­lot­ed at the Todd’s Road Cen­tre and is ex­pect­ed to be rolled out to oth­er com­mu­ni­ties in the next year.

Min­is­ter Im­bert al­so spoke of the TTWifi ini­tia­tive in his pre­sen­ta­tion at the Big Da­ta fo­rum, as he not­ed the need for greater ac­cess to ramp up the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of the coun­try.

He said, “En­hanc­ing ICT dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, the col­lec­tion and use of da­ta an­a­lyt­ics to dri­ve de­ci­sion mak­ing, such as in­creas­ing ICT ac­cess and clos­ing the dig­i­tal di­vide, this has been dri­ven by our in­vest­ment in ed­u­ca­tion and tech­nol­o­gy in­fra­struc­ture. We have in­tro­duced TT WiFi, which will con­tin­ue to pro­vide free broad­band ac­cess in high­ly pop­u­lat­ed and fre­quent­ed ar­eas, such as trans­port hubs, hos­pi­tal wait­ing rooms, li­braries, schools. ICT ac­cess cen­tres across the coun­try are to be in­creased from six to 50.”

The Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion con­firmed this was un­der­way, but al­so point­ed out work was be­ing done on the de­vel­op­ment of the con­cept of Con­nect­ed Com­mu­ni­ties.

The of­fi­cials said, “We are in the process of build­ing an im­ple­men­ta­tion frame­work for ac­cel­er­at­ing its es­tab­lish­ment be­gin­ning with the bor­ough of Ari­ma. We are se­lect­ing dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy and so­lu­tions which will im­prove cit­i­zen ex­pe­ri­ences in in­ter­act­ing with gov­ern­ment and in their nor­mal day-to-day ac­tiv­i­ties.”

The aim of this ap­proach, would be tran­si­tion of Ari­ma in­to a dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ty by the year 2025.

The Min­istry stat­ed it had met with the Ari­ma MP and May­or and agreed on the con­cept and what it would de­liv­er, and are cur­rent­ly iden­ti­fy­ing the apps to place un­der this ini­tia­tive.

The Min­istry al­so be­gan dis­cus­sions with the IDB seek­ing its sup­port for this ini­tia­tive, and will be en­gag­ing the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment to for­mal­ly ini­ti­ate the pro­gramme.

The Min­istry is work­ing to bring broad­band con­nec­tiv­i­ty to 10 un­der­served ar­eas, in­clud­ing Moru­ga, Ma­yaro and Char­lot­teville.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion through the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go TATT it is pro­gress­ing this de­ploy­ment in Bras­so Ve­na­do (in­clud­ing Los Ata­jos) and St John’s Parish in To­ba­go.

The Min­istry is al­so us­ing da­ta com­piled from a Da­ta Sur­vey which it is hoped, will al­low it to de­vel­op im­proved da­ta shar­ing strate­gies amongst MDAs with the ob­jec­tive of im­prov­ing ser­vice de­liv­ery and the ease of do­ing busi­ness.

The Min­istry is al­so plan­ning col­lab­o­ra­tion with the IDB on the de­sign of its De­vel­op­ers Hub and the start of cur­rent state as­sess­ment which will un­der­pin the de­vel­op­ment of its 2023 to 2028 Na­tion­al Dig­i­tal Plan with the as­sis­tance and sup­port of the UNDP.

The of­fi­cials stat­ed there were plans to en­gage with the IDB to help shape and fund its new dig­i­tal ini­tia­tives with the sup­port of their in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts.