GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Act­ing per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion, Cory Bel­fon, says giv­en re­cent events re­gard­ing cy­ber at­tacks, the min­istry con­tin­ues to put mea­sures in place to mit­i­gate against these in­ci­dents while at the same time main­tain­ing pub­lic trust.

He made the com­ments while speak­ing on day two of the UN Big Da­ta Fo­rum, which was held at the Hy­att Re­gency ho­tel on yes­ter­day.

Not­ing that da­ta pro­tec­tion and open da­ta are not mu­tu­al­ly ex­clu­sive, Bel­fon em­pha­sised there are al­so con­tin­ued ef­forts by the min­istry to build pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence.

"We are cur­rent­ly ac­tive­ly work­ing on both our ef­forts to em­pha­sise pri­va­cy, build pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence and main­tain the se­cu­ri­ty of our da­ta. These are based up­on three ma­jor ar­eas of work," he said.

Bel­fon ex­plained this in­clud­ed the full procla­ma­tion of the Da­ta Pro­tec­tion Act which the min­istry hopes to con­clude by the end of 2024.

Al­so, he said as­so­ci­at­ed with the Act is the op­er­al­i­sa­tion of the Of­fice of the In­for­ma­tion Com­mis­sion­er, which will al­so be com­plet­ed dur­ing 2024.

"Third­ly, we have placed the high­est pri­or­i­ty on build­ing a ro­bust cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty en­vi­ron­ment in­clud­ing en­sur­ing that pub­lic sec­tor dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion ini­tia­tives in­clude se­cu­ri­ty by de­sign as one of their de­sign prin­ci­ples," Bel­fon said.

He al­so spoke about fa­cil­i­tat­ing the de­vel­op­ment of T&T's na­tion­al da­ta strat­e­gy.

"As we work to­geth­er to build a dig­i­tal T&T we find our­selves on the cusp of a brave and ex­cit­ing new world. This is tru­ly a time of dis­rup­tion. The ef­fec­tive man­age­ment of da­ta is crit­i­cal for en­sur­ing this trans­for­ma­tion is pos­i­tive and ben­e­fi­cial for all of our cit­i­zens.

"The na­tion­al da­ta strat­e­gy is need­ed to meet the very di­verse needs of a wide va­ri­ety of stake­hold­ers in civ­il so­ci­ety, pri­vate sec­tor and the Gov­ern­ment," he ex­plained.

Bel­fon fur­ther not­ed that it fo­cus­es on main­tain­ing high da­ta stan­dards, flex­i­bil­i­ty and re­li­a­bil­i­ty in­clud­ing in­ter­na­tion­al prac­tices for da­ta use.

This strat­e­gy, he said, is a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort that seeks to har­ness the trans­for­ma­tive pow­er of da­ta for a brighter and a more eq­ui­table fu­ture, serv­ing as a blue­print to im­prove de­ci­sion-mak­ing, pro­tect pri­va­cy rights, en­sur­ing da­ta se­cu­ri­ty and fos­ter­ing trans­paren­cy.

"We at the min­istry con­sid­er da­ta to be one of the foun­da­tion stones up­on which the na­tion­al dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion agen­da is con­struct­ed.

"We digi­tise da­ta and digi­tis­ing da­ta en­ables us to dig­i­talise our sys­tems and busi­ness process­es. This, in turn, en­ables the cre­ation of the en­abling en­vi­ron­ment in which dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion can oc­cur," Bel­fon added.

Say­ing that this coun­try has tra­di­tion­al­ly re­lied on the en­er­gy sec­tor to dri­ve eco­nom­ic growth and de­vel­op­ment, Bel­fon not­ed that in re­cent times the need to iden­ti­fy and take full ad­van­tage of the many op­por­tu­ni­ties that present them­selves in this new dig­i­tal age has been in­creas­ing­ly recog­nised.

"As we con­tin­ue to digi­tise and dig­i­talise, we are start­ing to see the emer­gence of an­oth­er key strate­gic re­source which is our da­ta and of course, of the key char­ac­ter­is­tics of da­ta as a strate­gic as­set is that it is not a fi­nite re­source but is in fact, in­creas­ing ex­po­nen­tial­ly in both size and scope," Bel­fon added.