Tony Moretta, chief executive of Digital Jersey, says that the Island must move fast to maintain and enhance its position.
Last year was undoubtedly a busy one for Digital Jersey. From getting start-ups going on their growth journey and positioning Jersey as an international testbed for technology, through to championing innovation in healthcare and establishing a cutting-edge framework for data stewardship, the team has certainly been busy.
With the digital landscape continuing to move at pace, all of this has been important. We have remained focused over the past 12 months on the reality that initiatives like these are critical to shaping and, importantly, enhancing our Island’s future, often in exciting and diverse ways.
Our vision is for Jersey to become a truly smart island… and the good news is that it has all the right ingredients to realise that aspiration, with a campus-like island environment, highly advanced infrastructure and a driven and capable digital community.
But with other centres continuing to hone their own propositions and with technology evolving rapidly, it’s really important that, as we look to the year ahead, we don’t take our foot off the accelerator.
Impact
There has been a number of particularly significant achievements for Jersey’s digital sector over the past year.
One area we’re excited about is data stewardship – the secure and efficient management and transfer of often sensitive and complex information between organisations.
Quality data is vital in helping organisations to perform better and in supporting the evolution of AI. Recognising that, in 2024 we made real progress with our LifeCycle data trust pilot project, gathering data generated by cyclists and storing that data securely in a “data trust”. It’s a groundbreaking use of the trust structure for which Jersey is so well known, which could provide Jersey with considerable commercial opportunities.
Another key achievement has been the successful and ongoing roll-out of Impact Jersey, which has been designed to empower innovators, both at home and elsewhere, to deliver cutting-edge digital solutions to solve real challenges in Jersey, ultimately helping to make the lives of Islanders better.
Over the course of the year, we’ve seen the winners of grants from the first Impact Jersey open programme make fantastic progress with their ideas, through projects relating to carbon capture and air quality, through to the use of drones for emergency services and enabling the use of electric vehicles among corporates. It’s a reflection of how technology can help make a positive difference in diverse areas – and none of this would have been possible without Impact Jersey support.
We also launched the CareTech Challenge under the Impact Jersey banner, aimed at developing tech-driven solutions to address the health and care of Jersey’s ageing population, and towards the end of the year, the CXTech Challenge, which aims to apply technology to enhance local visitor and retail experiences. The response to both of those has been fantastic.
Digital talent
Other initiatives have also reinforced our commitment to integrating technology across all areas of our economy and community.
A drone trial, facilitated by Ports of Jersey and supported by Digital Jersey and Volant Authority, was undertaken in early 2024, for example, testing out uncrewed aerial technology. This is an example of how Jersey can be a “testbed” environment for new technologies.
We also continued to support digital talent in different ways, launching our second Tech Startup Bootcamp to support local entrepreneurs. The winner, Colm Farrington, has since gone on to develop his wining local community ROC platform, with considerable success.
Digital Jersey also became a Centre of Excellence for the F1 in Schools programme, which tasks secondary-school students with making a miniature F1 car, helping them to build STEM and wider business and life skills in the process. A total of 18 teams of students from Island schools are taking part, and their enthusiasm for the project through the support sessions we’ve held at the Digital Jersey Hub and the academy has been remarkable.
We were also able to celebrate Jersey’s collective digital talent at our largest-ever Tech Awards in early 2024, and we’re excited to be formally launching our 2025 awards early this year.
Exciting plans
The progress made in 2024 puts Jersey in a really strong place. The fact that Jersey appears in 17th place in the latest Smart Centres Index, and is the only centre in the top 25 to have improved its rating this year, suggests that we are on the right track and provides an indication of just how serious we are about our smart-island aspirations.
This year will undoubtedly be challenging, and with tighter resources we will need to focus and prioritise.
But our aims are clear:
- To support our members and the wider industry by increasing the number of digital businesses in Jersey and nurturing a thriving tech ecosystem of innovators and entrepreneurs.
- To drive forward and accelerate innovation and the roll-out of technology across all sectors of Jersey’s economy and community.
- To help make a positive impact and enhance productivity.
- To ensure digital skills across the Island – from school students to the working population across the private, public and not-for-profit sectors – continue to grow, so that, collectively, we are fit for the future.
In particular, we have exciting plans to build on the success of our data trust work, we’ll be continuing to work with the winners of grants through Impact Jersey, we will be working with Jersey’s farming community as part of our AgriTech workstream, and we’ll see our school students race their F1 cars against each other to see who goes through to the national finals.
The world of technology doesn’t stand still and it’s vital we maintain this momentum into 2025 because we are well on our way to realising our smart-island ambitions, and the tangible benefits of that are very exciting indeed.
