Trinidad and To­ba­go’s push to po­si­tion it­self as a re­gion­al leader in dig­i­tal in­no­va­tion re­ceived an in­ter­na­tion­al boost this week af­ter Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence Sen­a­tor Do­minic Smith was in­vit­ed to join a glob­al board fo­cused on ad­vanc­ing dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion.

Smith re­ceived the in­vi­ta­tion dur­ing high-lev­el dis­cus­sions with of­fi­cials from the In­ter­na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Union (ITU) at the ITU Re­gion­al De­vel­op­ment Fo­rum for the Amer­i­c­as and the Re­gion­al Work­shop on Reg­u­la­to­ry In­no­va­tion and Sand­box held in Carta­ge­na, Colom­bia, on Wednes­day.

The min­is­ter led a del­e­ga­tion that in­clud­ed Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Cory Bel­fon and Ex­ec­u­tive Strate­gic Ad­vi­sor for AI and Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Nico­las Mal­oney. The team met with Di­rec­tor of the ITU Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion De­vel­op­ment Bu­reau, Dr Cos­mas Luck­yson Zavaza­va, to ex­plore ar­eas of col­lab­o­ra­tion aimed at strength­en­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s dig­i­tal agen­da.

Among the out­comes of the meet­ing was an agree­ment to ex­plore the es­tab­lish­ment of ITU Acad­e­my Train­ing Cen­tres and Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Cen­tres in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Dis­cus­sions al­so fo­cused on ex­pand­ing con­nec­tiv­i­ty, in­creas­ing dig­i­tal in­clu­sion and de­vel­op­ing the work­force need­ed to sup­port Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence and Dig­i­tal Pub­lic In­fra­struc­ture ini­tia­tives.

Dur­ing the talks, Smith out­lined sev­er­al na­tion­al pri­or­i­ties, in­clud­ing the cre­ation of a sin­gle Na­tion­al Uni­fied Mo­bile Plat­form, de­scribed as a Su­per­App, that would al­low cit­i­zens to ac­cess mul­ti­ple gov­ern­ment ser­vices in one place.

He al­so high­light­ed plans sur­round­ing a Dig­i­tal Iden­ti­ty frame­work, in­ter­op­er­abil­i­ty projects across gov­ern­ment agen­cies and broad­er pub­lic sec­tor dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion ef­forts.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, Zavaza­va in­vit­ed Smith to serve on the Board of the Al­liance for Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion and Ac­cel­er­a­tion Cen­tres and dis­cussed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of es­tab­lish­ing an Ac­cel­er­a­tion Cen­tre in Trinidad and To­ba­go to pro­mote in­no­va­tion, en­tre­pre­neur­ship and dig­i­tal skills.

Smith said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10 per cent of the coun­try’s 90,000 pub­lic ser­vants have al­ready re­ceived AI-re­lat­ed train­ing through ini­tia­tives such as the AI Acad­e­my and Fu­tur­eReadyTT.

He said strate­gic part­ner­ships with or­gan­i­sa­tions such as the ITU would sup­port in­no­va­tion, ex­pand op­por­tu­ni­ties and help ac­cel­er­ate in­clu­sive dig­i­tal growth across the coun­try.