Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Re­port­ing from Mex­i­co City, Mex­i­co

The con­ver­sa­tions tak­ing place in Trinidad and To­ba­go over da­ta cen­tres, digi­ti­sa­tion and di­ver­si­ty are al­so hap­pen­ing across Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, with gov­ern­ments grap­pling over how to mod­ernise pub­lic ser­vices, at­tract in­vest­ment, build dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture and pre­pare for an econ­o­my in­creas­ing­ly dri­ven by da­ta.

Those is­sues dom­i­nat­ed CAF, the De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean’s an­nu­al board of di­rec­tors meet­ing, bring­ing to­geth­er min­is­ters of fi­nance, econ­o­my and plan­ning, cen­tral bank gov­er­nors, se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, busi­ness lead­ers and tech­nol­o­gy ex­perts from across the re­gion to ex­am­ine how dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion can re­verse the re­gion’s slug­gish pro­duc­tiv­i­ty growth, strength­en fis­cal sus­tain­abil­i­ty and cre­ate new eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties.

For T&T, one of the most sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ties may lie in be­com­ing a re­gion­al home for what CAF calls “dig­i­tal em­bassies.”

Pablo Bel­lo, CAF’s head of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and head of im­pact mea­sure­ment, said the in­sti­tu­tion is work­ing with T&T on a dig­i­tal agen­da that ex­tends well be­yond con­struct­ing a da­ta cen­tre.

Gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives re­cent­ly trav­elled with CAF of­fi­cials to Es­to­nia and Den­mark to ex­am­ine how those coun­tries trans­formed gov­ern­ment ser­vices through dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy.

“There is a com­po­nent that is in­fra­struc­ture, which has to do with the con­struc­tion of the da­ta cen­tre,” Bel­lo said.

He ac­knowl­edged the on­go­ing pub­lic de­bate in T&T sur­round­ing pro­posed large-scale da­ta cen­tres and their en­vi­ron­men­tal foot­print, but stressed that the CAF-backed fa­cil­i­ty is “a much more mea­sured da­ta cen­tre” built un­der “very strict sus­tain­abil­i­ty” stan­dards.

How­ev­er, Bel­lo said dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture is on­ly one part of the equa­tion.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go will need to re­in­force its in­ter­na­tion­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty,” he said.

“So we are al­so talk­ing about how to de­vel­op new sub­ma­rine ca­bles.”

The big­ger op­por­tu­ni­ty, Bel­lo ar­gued, is po­si­tion­ing T&T as a trust­ed dig­i­tal host for neigh­bour­ing Caribbean na­tions.

“The con­cept of dig­i­tal em­bassies is very in­ter­est­ing,” he said.

“It is ba­si­cal­ly the idea of hav­ing a da­ta cen­tre, for ex­am­ple, in Trinidad and To­ba­go, but in which there can be sov­er­eign da­ta from oth­er coun­tries of the An­tilles.”

Un­der the mod­el, coun­tries that can­not jus­ti­fy build­ing their own large-scale da­ta cen­tres could se­cure­ly host gov­ern­ment da­ta in Trinidad and To­ba­go while re­tain­ing com­plete le­gal own­er­ship.

“That is why it is the con­cept of em­bassies,” Bel­lo said.

“It ap­plies the sov­er­eign­ty of the oth­er ter­ri­to­ry and the laws of the oth­er ter­ri­to­ry.”

He said such an arrange­ment could al­low small­er Caribbean na­tions to ac­cess world-class dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture with­out mak­ing bil­lion-dol­lar in­vest­ments while po­si­tion­ing T&T as a re­gion­al tech­nol­o­gy hub.

“We are work­ing with the au­thor­i­ties of Trinidad and To­ba­go and I think we have an am­bi­tious plan linked to the in­fra­struc­ture but al­so to the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of the State.”

“We hope to be able to ad­vance in this agen­da in the next months.”

Learn­ing from the re­gion

Through­out Latin Amer­i­ca every coun­try is tak­ing a dif­fer­ent path but sev­er­al com­mon themes are emerg­ing.

El Sal­vador has fo­cused on re­mov­ing bu­reau­cra­cy be­fore in­tro­duc­ing new tech­nol­o­gy. The coun­try has passed laws cov­er­ing ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, dig­i­tal as­sets and state mod­erni­sa­tion while part­ner­ing with Google to digi­tise pub­lic ser­vices.

Rather than view­ing tech­nol­o­gy spend­ing as an­oth­er gov­ern­ment ex­pense, Bel­lo ar­gued it should be treat­ed as an in­vest­ment that cre­ates fu­ture eco­nom­ic growth.

CAF fi­nanc­ing has al­so sup­port­ed El Sal­vador’s AI-as­sist­ed telemed­i­cine pro­gramme, which has al­ready han­dled around three mil­lion con­sul­ta­tions, while the coun­try is ex­pand­ing dig­i­tal ed­u­ca­tion and in­ter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty to every school.

Cos­ta Ri­ca of­fered an­oth­er les­son.

Of­fi­cials said gov­ern­ments of­ten make the mis­take of digi­tis­ing bro­ken sys­tems in­stead of fix­ing them first.

Af­ter dis­cov­er­ing dozens of dis­con­nect­ed gov­ern­ment plat­forms that could not com­mu­ni­cate with one an­oth­er, Cos­ta Ri­ca shift­ed its ap­proach to sim­pli­fy reg­u­la­tions be­fore digi­tis­ing ser­vices, ar­gu­ing that tech­nol­o­gy should trans­form gov­ern­ment rather than sim­ply repli­cate pa­per-based bu­reau­cra­cy on­line.

Mex­i­co has gone even fur­ther by plac­ing dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, reg­u­la­to­ry re­form and gov­ern­ment sim­pli­fi­ca­tion un­der a sin­gle min­istry.

That strat­e­gy has al­lowed some busi­ness­es to be legal­ly es­tab­lished in un­der ten min­utes through a na­tion­al dig­i­tal plat­form while cre­at­ing in­ter­op­er­a­ble gov­ern­ment sys­tems that re­duce pa­per­work across agen­cies.

AI chang­ing every­thing

Ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence is al­so rapid­ly chang­ing what da­ta cen­tres look like and the in­fra­struc­ture need­ed to sup­port them.

Ernesto Piedras, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of The Com­pet­i­tive In­tel­li­gence Unit, said AI has fun­da­men­tal­ly al­tered the in­dus­try, cre­at­ing spe­cialised fa­cil­i­ties ded­i­cat­ed ei­ther to train­ing AI mod­els or de­liv­er­ing AI ser­vices to users.

“I don’t even think we have seen at this time what is re­al­ly com­ing,” he said, de­scrib­ing AI as the lat­est evo­lu­tion in a sec­tor that has al­ready trans­formed from host­ing en­ter­prise servers to sup­port­ing cloud com­put­ing.

Piedras said AI has fun­da­men­tal­ly changed the pur­pose of da­ta cen­tres. Some fa­cil­i­ties are now ded­i­cat­ed en­tire­ly to train­ing AI mod­els, pro­cess­ing vast amounts of da­ta around the clock, while oth­ers fo­cus on “in­fer­ence,” de­liv­er­ing re­spons­es to users through AI-pow­ered ap­pli­ca­tions.

He ex­plained that AI on­ly be­came pos­si­ble when three el­e­ments con­verged: mas­sive amounts of digi­tised da­ta, so­phis­ti­cat­ed al­go­rithms and the com­put­ing pow­er to process them. While al­go­rithms have ex­ist­ed since the 1950s, ad­vances in digi­ti­sa­tion and com­put­ing ca­pac­i­ty have trig­gered what he de­scribed as a glob­al AI race, led by the Unit­ed States and Chi­na and in­creas­ing­ly ex­pand­ing in­to Latin Amer­i­ca.

The tech­nol­o­gy is al­so dri­ving un­prece­dent­ed in­fra­struc­ture de­mands. Tra­di­tion­al da­ta cen­tres op­er­at­ed with elec­tri­cal den­si­ties of just two to three kilo­watts per serv­er rack. Cloud com­put­ing in­creased that to 15 to 20 kilo­watts, while AI fa­cil­i­ties now re­quire be­tween 100 kilo­watts and as much as one megawatt per rack. Piedras said those de­mands make clean en­er­gy, mod­ern trans­mis­sion net­works and wa­ter-ef­fi­cient cool­ing sys­tems crit­i­cal if coun­tries hope to at­tract AI in­vest­ment sus­tain­ably.