What will be the next step for T&T’s digi­ti­sa­tion ef­forts af­ter to­mor­row’s gen­er­al elec­tion?

One start­ing point is to look back at two events last week, which were di­rect­ly con­nect­ed to dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion.

Last Mon­day Visa an­nounced a re­new­al of its col­lab­o­ra­tion with the T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre (TTIFC).

Visa and TTIFC have been work­ing to ac­cel­er­ate the ac­cess and us­age of dig­i­tal pay­ments and fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion in this coun­try.

Visa said through this ex­tend­ed agree­ment both or­gan­i­sa­tions would con­tin­ue to ex­pand dig­i­tal ac­cep­tance ca­pa­bil­i­ties for mi­cro, small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (MSMEs), dig­i­talise gov­ern­ment pay­ments, dis­burse­ments and fi­nan­cial ser­vices and strength­en the Fin­tech sec­tor — all while ad­vanc­ing the Na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial In­clu­sion agen­da to cre­ate a more ac­ces­si­ble fi­nan­cial land­scape for all.

Chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of TTIFC, John Out­ridge said in the re­lease, “We’re ex­cit­ed to ex­tend our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Visa as we con­tin­ue ac­cel­er­at­ing growth of the lo­cal and re­gion­al Fin­Tech sec­tors through One Fin­Tech Av­enue, the first Fin­Tech in­no­va­tion cen­tre in the re­gion. Visa has been a cru­cial part­ner in our mis­sion to dri­ve sec­tor growth, and with their con­tin­ued sup­port, we will make sig­nif­i­cant strides in en­hanc­ing fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion and dig­i­tal pay­ment so­lu­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The sec­ond event oc­curred on Fri­day as the St James ICT Ac­cess Cen­tre was of­fi­cial­ly opened by the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion.

The min­istry, which was of­fi­cial­ly made a stand­alone min­istry in Ju­ly 2021, has opened over 20 such cen­tres.

De­spite Min­is­ter Has­sel Bac­chus and sev­er­al se­nior min­istry of­fi­cials stat­ing that the team had made sig­nif­i­cant progress, al­most four years lat­er, many have ques­tioned the im­pact the min­istry has made.

Look­ing be­yond the April 28 poll, ICT ex­pert Kwe­si Prescod stat­ed five ar­eas that should hold the fo­cus of the gov­ern­ment which is first past the post to­mor­row.

Those ar­eas he high­light­ed were: ac­cess, skills sec­tor de­vel­op­ment, e-gov­ern­ment and trust.

Ac­cess, he ex­plained, was in a good place and T&T’s in­ter­net pen­e­tra­tion was very high.

He told the Busi­ness Guardian, “Ac­cess to the in­ter­net is more or less uni­ver­sal, with 95 per cent of house­holds sub­scribers to the in­ter­net, and 80 per cent of cit­i­zens reg­u­lar in­ter­net users (Source Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT). The av­er­age fixed down­load speed is over 100 Mbps, and there are five com­mer­cial, pri­vate sec­tor da­ta cen­tres, with two IX­Ps (in­ter­net ex­change points). Ide­al­ly, an in­com­ing gov­ern­ment will stop in­ter­fer­ing with a sec­tor that is large­ly ef­fi­cient. They can work on fix­ing some of the eco­nom­ic dis­tor­tionary poli­cies which are af­fect­ing pri­vate sec­tor prof­itabil­i­ty.”

Prescod’s as­sess­ment was backed up by Glob­al Da­ta In­sight’s re­port on T&T which stat­ed, “At the time of re­port pro­duc­tion, the lat­est avail­able da­ta in­di­cat­ed that there were 1.28 mil­lion in­ter­net users in Trinidad and To­ba­go in Jan­u­ary 2025.

“This means that this coun­try’s in­ter­net pen­e­tra­tion rate stood at 84.7 per cent of the to­tal pop­u­la­tion at the start of the year.”

Glob­al Da­ta al­so not­ed that in­ter­net speeds in T&T had in­creased.

The re­port stat­ed that based on fig­ures pub­lished by Ook­la, in­ter­net users in this coun­try have a me­di­an fixed in­ter­net down­load speed of 119.01 Mbps at the start of 2025.

The re­port said, “Ook­la’s da­ta shows that the down­load speed of the typ­i­cal fixed in­ter­net con­nec­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go in­creased by 15.76 Mbps (+15.3 per cent) in the twelve months to Jan­u­ary 2025.”

Prescod said the oth­er items on his list, how­ev­er, need­ed a bit more work.

He ex­plained, “Skills is a work in progress. MDT did their D’Hub (De­vel­op­ers’ Hub), but there is no da­ta on its ef­fi­ca­cy. There should be more fo­cus on in­clud­ing some form of ICT in ed­u­ca­tion cur­ric­u­la - re­in­forc­ing that ICT skills are as rec­og­nized as en­gi­neer­ing law or med­i­cine and as im­por­tant as plumb­ing, elec­tri­cal wiring etc as a means of en­tre­pre­neur­ship. “

He felt that there could be more of a push from the gov­ern­ment to en­cour­age T&T to be more of a con­trib­u­tor to the ICT sec­tor in­stead of mere­ly be­ing a con­sumer.

“On sec­tor de­vel­op­ment: pro­claim the laws that will al­low us to par­tic­i­pate in the glob­al ICT sec­tor as more than con­sumers. There are a num­ber of up­stream and down­stream ex­port-ori­ent­ed ICT ser­vices in­to which T&T en­tre­pre­neurs can seek to get in­to. No po­lit­i­cal par­ty has men­tioned stuff like that. De­vel­op an ICT sec­tor and not on­ly can you save mon­ey in on­go­ing e-gov­ern­ment and e-com­merce de­vel­op­ment, but you can earn forex as a non-en­er­gy, ex­port-ori­ent­ed ser­vice pil­lar - like the fi­nance sec­tor and the nascent ma­rine sec­tor,” he said.

Prescod said in terms dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of pub­lic of­fices or ser­vices, there was a suc­cess­ful blue­print that could be fol­lowed.

“On e-gov­ern­ment, min­istries are forg­ing ahead pro­vid­ing some lev­el of egov­ern­ment ser­vices, ei­ther on their web­sites (e-ser­vices) or in the back­ground. Some min­istries and agen­cies have gone trans­ac­tion­al: peo­ple for­get the court sys­tem is end-to-end dig­i­tal. If the courts can do it, so can the rest of gov­ern­ment,” he said.

“So a plat­form ex­ists to be em­u­lat­ed - it needs to be cod­i­fied and repli­cat­ed, then com­mu­ni­cat­ed. In this way, e-gov­ern­ment im­ple­men­ta­tion and sus­tain­abil­i­ty are tied to ICT sec­tor de­vel­op­ment, and as said, no one is talk­ing about the lat­ter.”

How­ev­er, the is­sue of pub­lic trust in these sys­tems, he felt still need­ed to be ad­dressed.

Prescod added, “There are laws and in­sti­tu­tions that need to be de­vel­oped - which no man­i­festo has men­tioned re­al­ly. Es­tab­lish the Of­fice of the In­for­ma­tion Com­mis­sion­er; pass the cy­ber­crime law; cre­ate the cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty law to Cod­i­fy and es­tab­lish the TT CSIRT (Cy­ber Se­cu­ri­ty In­ci­dent Re­sponse Team); up­date the Tele­coms Act; es­tab­lish rules for eth­i­cal AI use.”

How­ev­er, he lament­ed, “These are all things that are known with­in the ICT space as need to be done - but no man­i­festo even high­lights these build­ing blocks.”

The Busi­ness Guardian looked over the man­i­festos of the ma­jor par­ties to iden­ti­fy the plans list­ed for Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion.

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s man­i­festo stat­ed plans to au­to­mate pen­sion pro­cess­ing and ben­e­fits and digi­tise pub­lic ser­vice ac­cess while al­so stat­ing plans to pro­mote dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy, en­act da­ta pri­va­cy leg­is­la­tion, in­vest in cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, and en­able dig­i­tal en­tre­pre­neur­ship.

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress on the oth­er hand stat­ed plans to em­brace the use of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and cre­ate a dig­i­tal iden­ti­ty (elD) geared to­wards mak­ing it eas­i­er to pay tax­es or reg­is­ter busi­ness­es.

The UNC al­so an­nounced plans for AI-pow­ered health­care and smart polic­ing.