Pos­si­bil­i­ties for Gov­ern­ment to col­lab­o­rate with Es­to­nia on the en­hance­ment of T&T’s elec­tron­ic-Gov­ern­ment (e-Gov­ern­ment) ini­tia­tives were dis­cussed yes­ter­day by Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley and Es­ton­ian Pres­i­dent Ker­sti Kalju­laid.

The talks were part of bi­lat­er­al dis­cus­sions be­tween both at yes­ter­day’s Cari­com 30th In­ter-Ses­sion­al meet­ing in St Kitts. Es­to­nia, for­mer­ly part of the So­vi­et Union, is lo­cat­ed in North­ern Eu­rope. It in­cludes more than 1,500 is­lands.

The talks be­tween Row­ley and Kalju­laid in­clud­ed di­a­logue on Es­to­nia’s ex­pe­ri­ence as a small coun­try lever­ag­ing tech­nol­o­gy to es­tab­lish it­self as a dig­i­tal leader in Eu­rope.

Cari­com lead­ers in­clud­ing Cari­com chair­man Tim­o­thy Har­ris and Cari­com sec­re­tary gen­er­al Ir­win La Rocque had ear­li­er met Kalju­laid who had ex­pressed in­ter­est in shar­ing her coun­try’s high­ly suc­cess­ful ex­pe­ri­ence in elec­tron­ic-gov­er­nance.

Es­to­nia’s mod­el in­volves a com­pat­i­ble in­fra­struc­ture fa­cil­i­tat­ing in­for­ma­tion trans­fer be­tween or­gan­i­sa­tions and ser­vices.

This works via a na­tion­al da­ta ex­change lay­er; a shared ser­vice view re­quired by cit­i­zens, com­pa­nies and au­thor­i­ties, a new mod­el of na­tion­wide e-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, and na­tion­al so­lu­tions for the ad­min­is­tra­tion of roles and au­tho­ri­sa­tions for or­gan­i­sa­tions and in­di­vid­u­als.

Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness who al­so met Kalju­laid said on his Twit­ter feed that he’s hav­ing talks with Es­to­nia on the sys­tem.

He said Es­to­nia, a small coun­try with a pop­u­la­tion of 1.3 mil­lion “...is a shin­ing ex­am­ple of how tech­nol­o­gy can be lever­aged to im­prove gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tor ser­vice de­liv­ery, en­hance ef­fi­cien­cy and cre­ate a more seam­less and or­gan­ised so­ci­ety.

On yes­ter­day’s In­ter-Ses­sion­al fi­nal day agen­da, lead­ers con­tin­ued meet­ing to ad­vance mea­sur­able steps for ac­tion on Cari­com’s Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME), rec­om­men­da­tions on air ser­vices agree­ments, pro­pos­als for a re­gion­al fer­ry ser­vice and eas­i­er se­cu­ri­ty check-in for in-tran­sit pas­sen­gers.

Se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters and the Eu­ro­pean Union black­list­ing of Cari­com mem­ber states was al­so list­ed for dis­cus­sion. —Gail Alexan­der