Smith agrees to set up ITU training centres

An agree­ment to de­vel­op dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion train­ing cen­tres was se­cured at the ITU Re­gion­al De­vel­op­ment Fo­rum for the Amer­i­c­as (RDF-AMS) and the Re­gion­al Work­shop on Reg­u­la­to­ry In­no­va­tion and Sand­box in Carta­ge­na, Colom­bia, on Wednes­day, June 17, 2026.

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence, Do­minic Smith, at­tend­ed the event, where he led a del­e­ga­tion com­pris­ing per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Cory Bel­fon and ex­ec­u­tive strate­gic ad­vi­sor for AI and dig­i­tal rans­for­ma­tion, Nico­las Mal­oney.

T&T’s del­e­ga­tions held dis­cus­sions with Di­rec­tor of the In­ter­na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Union (ITU) telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion de­vel­op­ment bu­reau, Dr Cos­mas Luck­yson Zavaza­va, which led to an agree­ment to ex­plore the es­tab­lish­ment of ITU Acad­e­my Train­ing Cen­tres and Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Cen­tres in T&T.

Ac­cord­ing to a news re­lease from the Min­istry, “Ad­di­tion­al ar­eas of co­op­er­a­tion in­clud­ed ex­pand­ing con­nec­tiv­i­ty and dig­i­tal in­clu­sion, and build­ing the skills need­ed to sup­port Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI) and Dig­i­tal Pub­lic In­fra­struc­ture (DPI) ini­tia­tives.”

Min­is­ter Smith said, “Our dis­cus­sions with the ITU re­in­force Trinidad and To­ba­go’s com­mit­ment to be­com­ing a re­gion­al leader in dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence. Through strate­gic part­ner­ships, we are ex­pand­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­no­va­tion, skills de­vel­op­ment and in­clu­sive dig­i­tal growth that will ben­e­fit cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es alike,”

Smith al­so spoke on the de­vel­op­ment of a sin­gle na­tion­al uni­fied mo­bile plat­form (Su­per­App) to ac­cess mul­ti­ple e-Gov­ern­ment Ser­vices of­fered by GORTT, the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a dig­i­tal iden­ti­ty frame­work, in­ter­op­er­abil­i­ty ini­tia­tives, and the ex­e­cu­tion of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion projects across the pub­lic sec­tor.

The re­lease stat­ed, “Dr Zavaza­va in­vit­ed Min­is­ter Smith to join the board of the Al­liance for Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion and Ac­cel­er­a­tion Cen­tres and dis­cussed the po­ten­tial es­tab­lish­ment of an Ac­cel­er­a­tion Cen­tre in Trinidad and To­ba­go to sup­port in­no­va­tion, en­tre­pre­neur­ship and dig­i­tal skills de­vel­op­ment.”

The re­lease stat­ed the Gov­ern­ment plans to ex­pand the use of AI tech­nolo­gies across the pub­lic ser­vice, not­ing that ap­prox­i­mate­ly ten per cent of the coun­try’s 90,000 pub­lic ser­vants have al­ready re­ceived AI-re­lat­ed train­ing through the AI Acad­e­my or Fu­tur­eReadyTT. Dis­cus­sions al­so ex­plored op­por­tu­ni­ties for T&T to par­tic­i­pate in in­ter­na­tion­al AI ini­tia­tives, in­clud­ing serv­ing as a pi­lot coun­try for open-source gen­er­a­tive AI so­lu­tions in the pub­lic sec­tor.

The ITU al­so of­fered tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance in ar­eas in­clud­ing ICT de­vel­op­ment mea­sure­ment, dig­i­tal pol­i­cy and leg­isla­tive frame­works, and pub­lic aware­ness ini­tia­tives to sup­port tech­nol­o­gy adop­tion, the min­istry stat­ed.