Government begins next phase of national AI assessment

The Gov­ern­ment has be­gun the next phase of its na­tion­al as­sess­ment of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence readi­ness with the roll­out of a mul­ti-stake­hold­er sur­vey un­der UN­ESCO’s Readi­ness As­sess­ment Method­ol­o­gy (RAM).

The ex­er­cise is be­ing co­or­di­nat­ed by the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (MPAAI) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Unit­ed Na­tions Ed­u­ca­tion­al, Sci­en­tif­ic and Cul­tur­al Or­ga­ni­za­tion (UN­ESCO) and the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP).

The sur­vey is open to stake­hold­ers from the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors, acad­e­mia, civ­il so­ci­ety and youth groups. It will as­sess Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pre­pared­ness for ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence across five ar­eas: le­gal and reg­u­la­to­ry; tech­no­log­i­cal and in­fra­struc­tur­al; so­ci­etal and cul­tur­al; sci­en­tif­ic and ed­u­ca­tion­al; and eco­nom­ic.

The RAM sur­vey fol­lows the launch of the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme’s Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence Land­scape As­sess­ment (AILA) on No­vem­ber 26, 2025. The AILA ex­am­ines ex­ist­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties, gaps and chal­lenges re­lat­ed to AI adop­tion and is ex­pect­ed to re­sult in a na­tion­al re­port with rec­om­men­da­tions and a roadmap for im­ple­men­ta­tion across sec­tors in­clud­ing health, ed­u­ca­tion and the pub­lic ser­vice.

In­for­ma­tion col­lect­ed through the sur­vey will in­form na­tion­al pol­i­cy de­vel­op­ment re­lat­ed to ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence.

Sec­tor-based con­sul­ta­tion ses­sions are sched­uled for Jan­u­ary 19 to 23, 2026, dur­ing which stake­hold­ers will re­view the sur­vey find­ings and pro­pose sec­tor-spe­cif­ic ac­tions.

A na­tion­al val­i­da­tion work­shop is sched­uled for Feb­ru­ary 27, 2026, at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine. The work­shop will bring to­geth­er gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, re­searchers, in­dus­try rep­re­sen­ta­tives and oth­er stake­hold­ers to re­view the con­sol­i­dat­ed find­ings and iden­ti­fy next steps.