Minister Smith champions AI-driven transformation

Do­minic Smith, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence, has called for a new era of col­lab­o­ra­tion among gov­ern­ment, in­dus­try, acad­e­mia and civ­il so­ci­ety to un­lock the full po­ten­tial of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion for the ben­e­fit of cit­i­zens.

Speak­ing at the AM­CHAM T&T Tech Hub Is­lands Sum­mit ear­li­er to­day, Smith said Trinidad and To­ba­go has reached a piv­otal mo­ment in its dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion jour­ney, where suc­cess will be mea­sured by the im­pact tech­nol­o­gy has on peo­ple's lives.

“The ques­tion is no longer whether we should em­brace tech­nol­o­gy, but whether we are us­ing tech­nol­o­gy to cre­ate mean­ing­ful change. Tech­nol­o­gy has val­ue on­ly when it de­liv­ers mean­ing­ful out­comes for peo­ple,” he said.

The Min­is­ter high­light­ed Ver­i­fyTT as a cor­ner­stone of Trinidad and To­ba­go's Dig­i­tal Pub­lic In­fra­struc­ture (DPI), en­abling trust­ed dig­i­tal iden­ti­ties and lay­ing the foun­da­tion for more seam­less, se­cure and in­te­grat­ed pub­lic ser­vices.

He al­so out­lined plans to digi­tise more pub­lic ser­vices, in­clud­ing ap­pli­ca­tions for birth cer­tifi­cates, cer­tifi­cates of char­ac­ter, pass­ports, and oth­er high-de­mand gov­ern­ment ser­vices, mak­ing in­ter­ac­tions with the State faster, sim­pler and more con­ve­nient.

Smith reaf­firmed the Gov­ern­ment's com­mit­ment to de­vel­op­ing a fu­ture-ready work­force through the Fu­ture Ready TT ini­tia­tive, a part­ner­ship be­tween the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

Through the ini­tia­tive, cit­i­zens will gain prac­ti­cal dig­i­tal and AI skills need­ed to par­tic­i­pate and com­pete in an in­creas­ing­ly tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven econ­o­my.

Ref­er­enc­ing World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum pro­jec­tions that near­ly 40 per cent of work­ers' core skills will change by 2030, Smith stressed the im­por­tance of life­long learn­ing and re­spon­si­ble AI adop­tion.

Smith high­light­ed part­ner­ships with the Eu­ro­pean Union, Es­to­nia, Den­mark, In­dia and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates as key to ac­cel­er­at­ing dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and strength­en­ing glob­al best prac­tice shar­ing.

He not­ed that a re­cent AI pi­lot pro­gramme with­in the pub­lic ser­vice in­creased pro­duc­tiv­i­ty by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 75 per cent across se­lect­ed work­flows, demon­strat­ing AI's abil­i­ty to im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy and en­hance pub­lic ser­vice de­liv­ery.

As the first Caribbean na­tion to es­tab­lish a Min­istry ded­i­cat­ed to Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence, Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues to po­si­tion it­self as a re­gion­al leader in dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and the re­spon­si­ble adop­tion of AI.

Con­clud­ing his ad­dress, Smith urged gov­ern­ment, in­dus­try, ed­u­ca­tors and in­no­va­tors to work to­geth­er to build a dig­i­tal­ly en­abled Trinidad and To­ba­go.

He em­pha­sised re­spon­si­ble in­no­va­tion and in­clu­sion go­ing for­ward.