Or­gan­i­sa­tion­al or in­sti­tu­tion­al mem­o­ry refers to how or­gan­i­sa­tions store, re­tain and reuse da­ta, knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ences over time. This mem­o­ry is cod­i­fied in the rules and reg­u­la­tions, or in the sys­tems and process­es that guide every­day ac­tions. Some­times cir­cum­stances change, re­quir­ing pro­ce­dures to be rewrit­ten to ac­com­mo­date new learn­ing or tech­no­log­i­cal changes. In­tro­duc­ing the changes re­quires con­sul­ta­tion with per­sons af­fect­ed by those changes.

A re­view of re­cent failed pub­lic sec­tor ini­tia­tives will show that many new, use­ful ini­tia­tives failed be­cause the con­sul­ta­tion process was in­ef­fec­tive or non-ex­is­tent. These fail­ures span a wide range of pub­lic sec­tor ini­tia­tives and have, on oc­ca­sion, led to po­lit­i­cal con­se­quences. Re­cent ex­am­ples in­clude the re­jec­tion of the Prop­er­ty Tax, the non-im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty, the alu­mini­um smelter and the San­dals project.

Con­sul­ta­tion with the rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers is an im­por­tant step that is ei­ther over­looked or ig­nored by gov­ern­ments in the haste to im­ple­ment projects or ideas con­sid­ered im­por­tant.

The im­ple­men­ta­tion of mo­bile po­lice posts is an ex­am­ple of a project that has wide­spread pub­lic ap­peal due to the crime sit­u­a­tion. How­ev­er, there was no con­sul­ta­tion with lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies on the sit­ing of these posts, even though the posts in­volve some con­struc­tion on land un­der the con­trol of those au­thor­i­ties and re­quire their per­mis­sion. It is not good prac­tice for agents of the state to break the law.

The an­nounce­ment that the Gov­ern­ment has signed three mem­o­ran­da of un­der­stand­ing, two of which con­cern da­ta cen­tres, raised eye­brows and gen­er­at­ed crit­i­cism. Last week, Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Oropouche East, the con­stituen­cy that will host the project, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, con­firmed that Gov­ern­ment has agreed to the con­struc­tion of a da­ta cen­tre. He said suit­able land has been iden­ti­fied to build the fa­cil­i­ty with­in the Debe Spe­cial Eco­nom­ic Zone, lo­cat­ed off the M2 Ring Road. This sig­ni­fies a clear in­ten­tion to pro­ceed with this project with some alacrity.

Dr Mooni­lal said the project was par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant for south­ern Trinidad, as it would ini­ti­ate in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment in the area. He based his sup­port for the project on the need to cre­ate jobs fol­low­ing the clo­sures of Ca­roni and Petrotrin. Ca­roni was closed in 2003, 23 years ago; Petrotrin in 2018. He, how­ev­er, re­ject­ed res­i­dents’ con­cerns over heat and noise pol­lu­tion.

Crit­ics have ob­ject­ed to the es­tab­lish­ment of da­ta cen­tres, ar­gu­ing that they are a mas­sive drain on the en­er­gy grid and strain wa­ter re­sources. Some telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and eco­nom­ic an­a­lysts have cau­tioned that the scale of the pro­posed projects war­rants scruti­ny of long-term util­i­ty costs and en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts. These are con­cerns which have been voiced in more de­vel­oped coun­tries. In­deed, sev­er­al na­tion­al and sub-na­tion­al gov­ern­ments have im­ple­ment­ed strict mora­to­ri­ums, tem­po­rary bans, or ge­o­graph­ic caps on the con­struc­tion of da­ta cen­tres due to se­vere strain on lo­cal pow­er grids and wa­ter sup­plies.

The re­sponse has been to dis­miss crit­ics as naysay­ers who com­plain re­gard­less of the out­come. The ob­jec­tions have not yet co­a­lesced in­to broad op­po­si­tion sen­ti­ment. But these are ear­ly days. No pub­lic of­fi­cial has yet con­firmed that the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty has con­duct­ed due dili­gence to eval­u­ate pub­lic con­cerns or giv­en clear­ance for con­struc­tion to be­gin. It is pru­dent, there­fore, for the Gov­ern­ment to re­lease any nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion to as­suage pub­lic fears and to con­sult with stake­hold­ers.