1. Assessment of a pilot Public Private Partnership tailored weather services project towards operationalizing an Information Technology System Maintenance and Upkeep Program
Marlon Noel and Kenneth Kerr
Trinidad and Tobago Meteorological Services
Trinidad and Tobago Meteorological Service Challenged
Result: Prototype of Weather Product Associated with
Public Private Partnership
Outcomes
Challenges
Trinidad and Tobago is extremely vulnerable to climate extremes for two key reasons: it’s particular socio-economic situation where there is heavy reliance on fragile natural resources and the fact that it is a Small Island Developing State influenced by large ocean-atmosphere interactions such as the trade winds, the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone, El Niño and La Niña, tropical storms and hurricanes, other severe weather and climate extremes
Readiness of the TTMS to engage the private sector in Trinidad and Tobago in PPP initiatives was found to be inadequate
Legal underpinning to engage with the private sector in commercial opportunities is lacking
Top down rather than a bottom up approach was needed for appropriate buy-in by parent Ministry. This led to limited transparency, cautiousness in disclosing details on the potential products or pertinent market related information
TTMS lacked the capacity to adequately engage in careful analysis of the advantages and risks the partnership posed.
Weak relationship exist between the TTMS and private sector companies in general
Insufficient use of new technologies in producing and analysing data from automatic weather stations compromised the accuracy and reliability of the data provided to the company
TTMS challenged in engaging the private company in dialogue that required additional skills, such as marketing and placing value on climate services generation, products and services.
The negative effects of this combination mean that Trinidad and Tobago is particularly sensitive to climate extremes which threaten its sustainable development goals and compromise its adaptation strategies and decision making
Trinidad & Tobago
Demand on the Trinidad and Tobago Meteorological Service (TTMS) for a higher number and availability of quality products and services has placed its already compromised and constrained resources under significant stress.
This threatens to derail its thrust towards excellence in service delivery, as mandated by its stakeholders and Government
Achieving excellence in service delivery comes with a variety of challenges.
Chief among these:
Steady decline of budgetary allocation
Expansion of the local weather enterprise
Together these bring the risk of the TTMS becoming less significant if it fails to upgrade its products and services.
Positives
TTMS presented with an opportunity to provide more efficient and qualitatively improved services.
Potential to facilitate private sector investment in additional observation stations to strengthen the national observation network.
Potential to provide revenue generation and retention flexibility to the TTMS to assist in IT and equipment infrastructure requirements needed to generate, process and disseminate high quality, timely and reliable climate and weather data and tailored products.
Assist in meeting both the growing demand for weather and climate services within the public and private interests and the need by both the TTMS and the company to increase revenue streams geared towards sustainability.
Increasing the availability and reliability of improved weather and climate products will engender a citizenry that is weather smart and climate ready and will lead to better informed decisions that can reduce loss of life and damage to property and infrastructure during extreme weather events.
Can facilitate opportunities for new creatives and products that can improve the economic output of the country and lead to improved revenue generating streams for government.
Provide the TTMS with the opportunity to be involved with innovation and state-of-the-art technologies.
Business opportunities and commercial viability for the use of weather and climate information are increasing within the public and private sectors of Trinidad and Tobago.
Private companies who were never involved with providing weather services are now seeing tremendous commercial potential in getting involved in the delivery and marketing of tailored weather information and products
Figure 1 . Prototype made available to the TTMS without its input and quality assurance
Product Discovery
Method
Company used a bottom up approach product discovery method based on four phases:
Problem Definition
Exploring
Solutioning
Prototyping.
Summary
Governance structure of the TTMS encumbers it in PPP ventures. Top down approach may provide better outcomes.
TTMS readiness to engage the private sector in PPP is not where it should be.
Challenges its ease of doing business with the private sector in partnership.
Future PPP projects needs to be carefully analysed for advantages and opportunist risks
TTMS must engage PPP with adequate capacity at its disposal to dialogue on marketing and placing value on climate service
Figure 2. TTMS providing quality assurance during the prototype development phase of the product