Our nation's economic future beyond oil and gas depends on our collective ability to collaborate: to deploy our national resources, build our human capital, and create the resilient, diversified economy we deserve.
We believe a robust, interconnected digital economy is the most critical pillar for that future.
However, this transformation faces two significant roadblocks:
- The Tools Gap: Many local businesses struggle to access the affordable, powerful digital platforms needed to modernize and compete.
- The Skills Gap: A persistent gap remains in the availability of skilled professionals needed to operate, adapt, and innovate with these new systems.
The Digital Economy Accelerator is a ready-to-deploy framework designed to solve both challenges simultaneously. It is a strategy to build our human capital, deploy our national resources, and create the sustainable digital-first economy we need.
Pillar 1: Fixing the tools gap with a Digital Business Platform
The first pillar provides the technological backbone for this national effort. It involves the deployment of a comprehensive digital business platform – an integrated suite of AI-enabled, open-source applications (apps) covering the entire spectrum of operations:
- Productivity & Collaboration: not Office, SharePoint or Teams.
- Customer Engagement: not Dynamics CRM, Salesforce, Shopify or HubSpot.
- Enterprise Resource Planning: not Dynamics 365, NetSuite or Sage.
- HR & Payroll: not Workday, Peoplesoft or Fusion.
- Developer tools: open not proprietary, locked into Microsoft's ecosystem
Provisioned for SaaS & PaaS application in local and international data centers, this Cloud platform is designed to democratize access, streamline services, ensure adaptability and provide a common foundation.
Pillar 2: Resolving the Skills Gap through empowerment
The foundation of any digital economy is its human capital. This second pillar focuses on building a skilled, future-ready workforce for Trinidad and Tobago. We achieve this by forging deep partnerships with Academia and national training institutions, supplementing their world-class curriculum with an open learning management system (LMS). This system provides accessible, free certification courses on the specific digital tools our economy needs. This initiative is designed to:
- Bridge the Skills Gap: Create a sustainable pipeline of job-ready talent that is certified on modern, practical platforms.
- Foster Local Expertise: By co-creating content with academic institutions, we develop local capacity to manage, customize, and innovate with advanced digital systems.
This talent engine ensures that as our nation’s digital infrastructure grows, so too does our ability to effectively utilize and evolve it, creating local opportunities and reducing reliance on external expertise.
Connecting for collaboration
A vibrant digital economy thrives on collaboration: establish a dynamic marketplace that connects the newly skilled talent (Pillar 2) with businesses and public sector entities seeking digital transformation (Pillar 1).
This fosters deep public/private partnerships, enabling a synergistic exchange of resources, data, and innovation.
This collaborative environment allows for a unified approach to national challenges, leveraging collective strengths for greater impact.
A Virtuous Cycle of National Growth
When these pillars are established, they activate a powerful virtuous cycle: as businesses and government agencies adopt the national digital business platform, they create demand for skilled digital professionals. The talent engine, in partnership with academia, supplies this demand with certified, practical experience. This influx of talent further drives innovation and optimization within the platform, leading to even greater efficiencies and new digital solutions, ultimately creating more opportunities and strengthening the entire economy.
A National Imperative: Financing Our Digital Future
The scale of this vision requires a robust and strategic financing model. We recognize that the Trinidad and Tobago government, through initiatives like the Public Sector Investment Programme (PSIP) and the National Digital Transformation Strategy (NDTS), has already prioritized significant capital for digital advancement. Similarly, international partners like the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF) have committed substantial funds towards digital skills and infrastructure.
Our Digital Economy Accelerator is uniquely positioned to serve as the efficient implementation platform for these existing allocations. By aligning with national priorities and international funding objectives, we offer a proven, integrated mechanism to deploy capital effectively. Furthermore, private sector co-investment, through corporate sponsorships of talent programs and subscriptions to the digital business platform, will ensure long-term sustainability and foster a true public-private partnership for national development.
Join the Initiative
This framework is a ready-to-deploy strategy for our national diversification. We invite leaders from the public sector, private industry, and academia to join this transformative initiative.
To learn more about this national ecosystem strategy and how your organization can participate, we encourage you to click on the "Contact Us" button.
A Call for National Partnership: Building T&T’s Digital-First Economy