Above: Luis Guillot. Photo courtesy Huawei.

BitDepth#1265 for September 03, 2020.

“Government digital transformation is no longer an option,” said Luis Guillot, Huawei’s CTO Government Solutions, Latin America at a Canto Conversations webinar on August 25.

“Governments have to develop the ability to make sense of all the information they are gathering so they can make better decisions. They need to know what happens, when it happens, where it happens, why it happens, who did it, how they did it and what’s coming next.”

Guillot emphasised the importance of gathering information legally and with the understanding of citizens, of putting science above politics and of communicating clearly and regularly with citizens.

Governments, he believes, can readily access the tools to understand the big datasets being created through the gathering of covid19 and that’s necessary to understand how to handle infection rates and patterns.

Those are sensible words, but until covid19, the TT government hadn’t expressed much functional interest in the concept of data as a tool of governance, having already spent an entire term of office paying lip service to the admirable but unreachable idea of a National Statistical Institute to replace the collapsed Central Statistical Office.

As recently as December 2019, Sean O’Brien, head statistician at the Central Statistical Office said, “A large part of my job is to be taking blame for not supplying data that I don’t get the first place.”

It’s possible that the failures and successes that have been part of the data gathering required for covid19 decisions might have stoked some refreshed interest in data-driven governance in TT, or it might still be considered too wonky to garner suitable political capital.
Regionally, Guillot pointed to several Huawei success stories.

“We are transforming [Guyana and Suriname] to be connected with a very strong network, with two centralised data centers,” he said.
“In Mexico, we developed a network to connect all of the educational processes six years ago. We did not implement distance learning, but all of the schools got Internet, the infrastructure to communicate and share their information.”

“In Panama and Argentina we are helping to implement the technology that will allow them to reopen the borders and ensure that arrivals are not contagious.”
Guillot sees Huawei’s key contribution to the challenges of online learning as participating in the building of robust Internet connectivity.

Guillot emphasised the importance of gathering information legally and with the understanding of citizens, of putting science above politics.

“For online learning, you need a strong network, whether it is provided by carriers or by a national broadband network,” he said.
“Connectivity has to be considered an essential service.”
“Make sure that you have a teaching process that is adapted to this new teaching system and that you have content developed for it. You have to involve the teachers in this and you have to engage parents, because they have to supervise the environment.”
In overall governance, Guillot has specific suggestions.

Guillot urged governments to implement a nationwide identity system and digital signature; something the TT government has said they intend to pursue.
Mobile and online government transactions should replace over-the-counter services and where they cannot easily be replaced, should be consolidated into one-stop service centres, something that TTConnect was supposed to become before the will to complete the work fizzled.

The creation of a common situation dashboard for all governance issues that pools skills, data and inventory for more nimble reassignment of resources and capabilities.
Creating a platform for businesses to interact, collaborate and share resources and facilities, an enabling step beyond the single electronic window database that the government has created to simplify business to government interactions that expands to embrace small and medium enterprise support in practical ways.

And finally, Guillot believes that governments should embrace AI enabled decision-making to make sense of big datasets at speeds closer to real-time.
None of this is easy, he warned.

When Mexico City, where Guillot lives, implemented surveillance cameras, the government first installed the cameras to protect schools. That got citizens on board so that when the cameras were then installed in high-crime areas, there was already acceptance by the public.

“Getting buy-in is fairly simple, but it takes will. You have to explain to citizens what you are doing and what’s going to be the benefit and you have to do small, incremental quick wins. People don’t like change, even change for the good.”