Digital divide between State, private sector

This was the overall message coming out of a seminar on ICT entrepreneurship held on Wednesday at the Telecommunication Authority of Trinidad and Tobago (TATT) office in Barataria.

The event saw Albertina Navas of the Arthur Lok Jack Graduate School offer timely tips on how businesses can improve their online profile, such as by the use of mobile apps and social media sites such as Twitter.

National ICT Company (igovTT) CEO Trevor Libert gave an account of the Government’s ICT platforms such as the “TTConnect” portal whose TT Biz link hosts 46 e-services.

He said fresh legislation is needed to allow people to pay bills online to State entities.

However the comments of several audience members suggested a disconnect between TT’s public platforms for ICT and private aspirations.

Irwin Williams of Teleos Systems said his firm has made 20 “apps” but that in TT it is very hard to move from a concept to earning a sustainable income.

ICT consultant Sachin Ganpat said the State’s ICT rollout is moving at a snail’s pace, even as the country’s business competitiveness ranking in key areas of ICT remained very low, as judged by the World Economic Forum. “We are failing.” He later added that TT has a good quality of human capital in the ICT sector but it is not adequately utilised, in what he saw as a systemic discouragement of ICT entrepreneurs.