Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter in wait­ing, Stu­art Young, is stress­ing the need for an im­me­di­ate and sig­nif­i­cant push to­wards digi­ti­sa­tion.

Dur­ing the launch of the Na­tion­al Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Strat­e­gy sym­po­sium on Wednes­day, Young said it can no longer be a con­cept for the fu­ture but a ne­ces­si­ty for na­tion­al progress.

“We in the pub­lic ser­vice and we the gov­ern­ment will be util­is­ing these tools. It must be every sin­gle ser­vice to our pub­lic and our pop­u­la­tion can be made more ef­fi­cient, can be made sim­pler by the util­i­sa­tion of the tech­nol­o­gy avail­able,” said Young.

He said while the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion, head­ed by Sen­a­tor Has­sel Bac­chus, has mapped the way for­ward in the dig­i­tal age and be­gan tak­ing steps, there was room for more to be done.

“You have had enough time now to go through your in­cu­ba­tion pe­ri­od. It has been a very quick pe­ri­od. Set­ting up a brand new min­istry took a bit longer. I would have liked if I was there push­ing from the back­ground. But from my per­spec­tive you’ve had your pe­ri­od in the crib. I am not wait­ing for you to crawl. Get ready to run be­cause this is where I in­tend the next chap­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go to go to.” 

With his eye set on prac­ti­cal im­ple­men­ta­tion, Young al­so warned against those averse to change.

“There is al­ways re­sis­tance to change but there are on­ly two con­stants in life, death and change and it is time we em­brace it. It is time we utilise the tools that are avail­able to make life sim­pler and to make life more ef­fi­cient be­cause the next gov­ern­ment is go­ing to launch us in­to that lev­el of ef­fi­cien­cy and we saw it work and I am not pre­pared to ac­cept too much re­sis­tance and that this leg­is­la­tion does not ex­ist be­cause we changed the leg­is­la­tion,” Young said.

He was al­so crit­i­cal about the role of cy­ber­safe­ty in the dig­i­tal thrust.

“We’re very aware of it and we’ve been fo­cused on it in the past few months and that of course is the se­cu­ri­ty as­pect and the cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty as­pect be­cause we are not where we need to be and it is some­thing that is con­stant­ly chang­ing all over the world.”

Bac­chus, fur­ther cau­tioned that or­gan­i­sa­tions that failed to adapt to the ac­cel­er­at­ing de­mands of the dig­i­tal age risk falling be­hind.

“It is there­fore no sur­prise that the changes that are dri­ven by dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion are dis­rup­tive and the im­pact on our lives is not so much evo­lu­tion­ary but more rev­o­lu­tion­ary.”