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The Dominican Republic implemented the RAM alongside developing its AI strategy (ENIA), maximizing the information collected, and quickly incorporating UNESCO’s recommendations into its policies.

The implementation of the RAM and the development of the ENIA was a collaborative effort between the Dominican Government, UNESCO, and other international organizations, which coordinated their efforts to create a coherent ENIA from the results of the RAM and a consultation process.

We draw the following key insights from applying the RAM in the Dominican Republic:

The Dominican Republic informed its ENIA with the RAM results, incorporating UNESCO Recommendations across the policy. 

There are gaps in the legal dimension, in particular the need to update the privacy law and cybersecurity. However, the ENIA is prioritizing working on those pieces of legislation alongside open data.

There is a focus on addressing the gender GAP in STEM through the  Gender Statistics Strategy and the National Plan for Gender Equality and Equity. However, there is still a significant gap in STEM where higher education graduates are 20.27% men and 7.02% women, despite girls performing better in mathematics and science than boys (324 versus 327 in mathematics and 331 versus 340 in sciences) when little.

Public spending on research and development remains comparatively low at 0.086% of GDP. This translates into a low number of publications (0.0029 per thousand inhabitants), with only an average of 10 active authors per year. However, the number of tertiary education programs related to AI, Machine Learning, and Data Science is growing, reaching 11 in 2023. Moreover, the Dominican Republic averages 3.72% of ICT graduates.

88% of the population has a mobile telephone subscription, and 67% are subscribed to active mobile broadband. This suggests a gap in connectivity that must be addressed, especially when considering the existing gap in urban-rural population (49.2% versus 30.6%).

Finally, there is a relevant gap in providing data to evaluate the economic dimension of the RAM.

Key Lessons:

1. The RAM is an excellent instrument for creating a baseline of the AI ecosystem and evaluating its evolution over time.

• Evaluating AI strategies and their implementation is an ongoing challenge.

• The Dominican Republic used the first RAM’s results to hone the ENIA’s draft and incorporated its recommendation of using it to complement the existing indicators to evaluate the ENIA.

2. Making the RAM a collaborative effort, not an evaluation, lowers resistance and enhances collaboration.

• The RAM is a comprehensive evaluation, and most (if not all) countries will find gaps in their ecosystems when applying it.

• Using the results to develop and prioritize policies to fill the gaps, as the Dominican Republic did, reduces resistance among government stakeholders.

• Despite identifying relevant gaps, the Dominican Republic RAM was analyzed alongside the ENIA, which proved helpful in streamlining its acceptance and further embracing it for future evaluation.

3. The Dominican Republic's legal plans are advancing, prioritizing data protection and cybersecurity.

• The RAM showed a need to update several laws to address AI Governance.

• The existing and upcoming policies prioritize updating the Privacy and Cybersecurity laws alongside improving trust in the government’s digital services and open data policies.

• Gaps still need to be addressed, such as procurements for AI systems or revising procedural guarantees related to AI.

4. Policies related to gender equality are working on the existing gap.

• The Dominican Republic has implemented policies (PLANEG) addressing gender inequality.

• The RAM highlights the need to focus gender equality plans on ICTs, particularly with referents and affirmative action.

5. Data collection is a priority

• Similar to other results of other RAMs, there were gaps in data availability in several areas.

• A high-priority recommendation is to design the necessary instruments and infrastructure to collect the required data for a more comprehensive baseline.