and focusing on grass-roots, skills and local innovation. This joined up approach is accessible for businesses who need help to grow or set up in Jersey. In the last year we have also seen significant progress in our aim to make access to licences, funding and skills easier. It has helped that our Government has been very responsive to our evidence-led arguments and amended policies to encourage growth in the digital sector.
This evidence-led approach has also come with benefits in terms of understanding our existing digital sector, as without that it is difficult to know where strengths and weaknesses lie, where to focus and how to measure the impact of new initiatives. We have worked closely with the States of Jersey Statistics Unit and Population Office to analyse the data we have on companies and individuals and identified significant growth in our digital sector over the past 5 years or so. We can see that 2,650 people are currently employed in our digital sector, a notable increase of 28% since 2010. Of this growth 27% comes from start-ups, 17% from relocations and the remaining 47% from businesses established before 2010. The three major areas of change have been in the Digital Creative industry, Enterprise Solutions, App and Software Development, and within the existing Telecoms and Networks sub-sectors. So far this growth has largely been driven by the needs of other local industries, especially the finance sector, but in future we also need to look at establishing new digital sectors that are self-supporting and export driven.
When we look at other potential strengths Jersey possesses, they might include our ability to move more quickly than larger jurisdictions, as well as faster access to key decision makers. They might also include the ability to bring together organisations faster, that can then work together to deliver all key components of a project within fewer players, avoiding time delays and complexity. I often refer to Jersey as being ‘a
nice sized train set’, meaning you can get everything you need but in a smaller, simpler package. In previous roles I have had experience in developing new technology products and services and it was always easier to test on closed user-groups such as university campuses. In many ways Jersey is a campus – 100,000 people on an island with a single governance layer.
So, we know what we have to offer digital companies, but where do we have the best chance of building some new specialisms? At the end of 2015 we commissioned KPMG to build an evidence-led strategy for focusing on specific areas so we could streamline our efforts as a catalyst for the digital sector. They were given a brief to consider all potential areas of digital focus, as well as those in which we would be unable to compete with other jurisdictions. From this the three priority areas of fintech, Digital Health and Internet of Things (IoT), with a focus on using Jersey as a testbed, were selected.
Once these areas of focus had been established, it was down to our team to organise a series of fintech, Digital Health and IoT working groups that would aim to encourage individuals and businesses in each area to collaborate and develop projects. As out of the three fintech is most varied, we hosted a Fintech Unconference to define areas of fintech that are of most interest to our Tech, Finance and Government communities. The outcome of this was Proposition Development Groups (PDGs) in Wealth Management Technology, Blockchain and Regulatory Technology (regtech). In addition to the working groups and PDGs, we have also held a number of NewFinance events, offering individuals an opportunity to learn about and discuss key areas of development in fintech.
For IoT and Jersey as a testbed, we have brought together our tech players, telecoms companies, utilities and Government to develop ‘smart island’ plans. Using these plans we will be able to pull together our technical expertise and control of infrastructure to develop a range of propositions. We already have commitment to build a LoRa network (which interestingly uses the old CB radio frequencies) to cover the whole island and allow remote devices to connect wirelessly to a central hub. These devices will be able to connect with management systems and an open-data database, which will allow people to trial a range of applications such as air quality testing, traffic monitoring, etc.
One of the areas I am most pleased about is our work on
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A Digital Island
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