PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence, Do­minic Smith, says the Gov­ern­ment is pro­gress­ing with work on build­ing a mod­ern, cit­i­zen-cen­tred and dig­i­tal­ly en­abled Pub­lic Ser­vice.

In his ad­dress at the Pub­lic Ser­vice Open House 2026 at Nalis in Port-of-Spain, in com­mem­o­ra­tion of Unit­ed Na­tions Pub­lic Ser­vice Day yes­ter­day, he ex­plained his Min­istry’s re­cent launch of Fu­ture Ready TT, in part­ner­ship with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, was aimed to­wards achiev­ing that goal.

He said, “This ini­tia­tive is help­ing to equip stu­dents, ed­u­ca­tors and pub­lic of­fi­cers with dig­i­tal skills and AI-based tools need­ed to suc­ceed in the field of change.”

Smith said the Gov­ern­ment’s vi­sion to build a pub­lic ser­vice that is dig­i­tal­ly en­abled, cit­i­zen-fo­cused and fu­ture-ready is not old talk.

“It is here, it is now and we need your ac­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion in the process. The ini­tia­tive com­ple­ments our gov­ern­ment’s dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion projects, such as Ver­i­fyTT, which is a se­cure dig­i­tal cre­den­tials plat­form that en­ables cit­i­zens to ac­cess and share of­fi­cial records elec­tron­i­cal­ly. To­geth­er, these ef­forts aim to po­si­tion this coun­try as a leader in dig­i­tal in­no­va­tion and en­sure its cit­i­zens are equipped to com­pete and thrive in a rapid­ly evolv­ing glob­al econ­o­my,” the min­is­ter said.

“Achiev­ing this vi­sion re­quires a part­ner­ship be­tween gov­ern­ment in­sti­tu­tions, pub­lic of­fi­cers, cit­i­zens, ed­u­ca­tors, in­dus­try and com­mu­ni­ties. But it al­so re­quires a shared com­mit­ment to in­no­va­tion, trans­paren­cy and con­tin­u­ous im­prove­ment,” Smith added.

The Open House pro­vid­ed a plat­form for cit­i­zens to in­ter­act di­rect­ly with Gov­ern­ment agen­cies, ex­plore ser­vices, and ex­pe­ri­ence first-hand the dig­i­tal and tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ments shap­ing the fu­ture of pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Smith stressed that pub­lic of­fi­cers re­main at the heart of na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, and their work con­tin­ues to trans­form pol­i­cy in­to ac­tion and im­prove the qual­i­ty of life for cit­i­zens.