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My Recap of the Trinidad and Tobago Internet Governance Forum 2023

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I got up and went to the mini mart and then bought my doubles for breakfast and then ate my doubles and was ready for the forum. Thank you to the organisers of this event and the partners. I think more persons should come on board. It is an opportunity to inform and educate and learn from each other. I hope the powers that be are tuning in and making notes and then more importantly, taking action. Trinidad and Tobago Internet Governance Forum is a yearly event that brings together persons interested in discussing topics related to our use of the internet. Since 2018 (for 6 years) I have watched every session religiously. See my blog posts from 2022 and 2021.

You can contribute topics and speakers. I had proposed a topic about work from home that got meshed with a broader topic "The digitization of Government and Society will positively affect the lives of citizens and Economy in Trinidad and Tobago". My proposed topic was "Work from home as the norm". Then the broader topic of "How digital acceptance, transformation and implementation will shape our future." Trinidad and Tobago is on a digital transformation journey. Citizens are asking for solutions to problems like traffic, scarcity of foreign exchange, lack of diversification and crime. Let us explore what a technology enabled future in our country could look like. I think we should look at benefits of a strong internet and future prosperity. We need options, cheaper and robust internet, and solving the digital divide and providing for underserved areas.

I will share briefly my thoughts on this year's topic categories - internet resilience, ICT in education, digital transformation and cybersecurity. I think user education plays a major role in internet resilience. How to troubleshoot internet connectivity issues as an example. Like everything else there are advantages and disadvantages to online learning. I think a hybrid approach would be effective where students have an option. I would like to see tech education and coding be mandatory just like Maths and English. This would make it easier to get persons on board in the future. I think digital transformation is more about people and processes than technology itself. Technology is just the enabler. We have to be proactive rather than reactive with regards to cybersecurity in Trinidad and Tobago.

I will now share my takeaways from this years sessions which I also shared on twitter under the hashtags #ttigf and #ttigf2023. Digital inclusion must be a top priority on our national agenda. Concerns about fragmentation and the need for a global and open internet exists. We need ways of measuring internet resilience. There is a proposal to setup a Caribbean Internet Resilience Task Force. We need to make more use of learning-by-doing. ICT in education needs to be more interactive and teachers need to know how to use the different tools. We can develop our own local learning content and tools and reduce our dependence on foreign. That was it for day one.

There was also two sessions and an open forum on day two and here are some more of my takeaways. We are not about making things digital only, we want to make people's lives better. E-identity is a main project for the government at this time in the digital transformation journey. The customer experience is very important for digital government. There are two types, those that were hacked and those that will be hacked. In the same way we progress, the threats also progress. Being prepared and having a good incident response plan is important.
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