What "digital agenda"?

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(Though meant for a Trinidad and Tobago audience via the T&T Guardian of October 11, 2023. It is my experience and knowledge that most of the Caribbean confronts lagging digitalisation ambitions.)

Not that I have been doing word counts over recent years, but I cannot recall a national budget statement with as many mentions of the words ‘digital’ and ‘digitalisation’ as the one we endured last week.

When it comes to such matters, I am probably overdoing it now. But I think it is necessary to keep tabs on where our country is or is not going when it comes to belatedly grasping opportunities before our very eyes that have the potential to dramatically improve the quality of our lives.

Today, we hear elaborate words and stated intentions – both within private enterprise and in the state sector. What are otherwise simple, routine exercises arranged at private levels within minutes on a laptop or handheld device are made to sound revolutionary and trendsetting.

For example, there are 16-year-olds capable of setting up secure online payment systems in the blink of an eye. True, there aren’t the legislative/regulatory bars of a state agency, but if there is this grand design and intent at a supposedly bipartisan level, what really are the real obstacles to getting such things done?

HTML forms are also hardly a mind-blowing innovation anymore. They are much more user-friendly than the PDF forms currently being touted as some kind of epochal, modern marvel by state agencies, but which greatly challenge users who neither have appropriate software for textual inserts and digital signatures or printers/scanners to undertake the arduous task of printing, signing, scanning, and emailing.

There is also the phenomenon that takes us one step forward (online appointments, for example) but two steps backward, such as “proof of residence” requirements that have been causing so many regrets among those of us who opted for online billing for utilities such as telecoms, electricity, and water.

So, yes, print that online bill, travel down to the utility to get it “stamped” and there you go! At WASA, they don’t “stamp”, you pay $11.25 at one window, then sit and wait for a “copy” at another window.

True, there is the convenience of an orderly online appointment system to renew your drivers’ licence (confirmation of which you are encouraged to print!). You download the PDF, print it, and walk with it. There goes the advantage of an online portal with the potential to minimise inconvenience and save paper.

The end product is at least the same amount of paper as before, but now the added inconvenience of the trip to the utility office, together with downloading, printing, and scanning of completed application forms.

Now, don’t get me wrong. As the finance minister suggested while presenting some startling statistics on the number of people and businesses without bank accounts, digital payment systems, or engage in online banking, the financial services sector has simply not done enough to foster sufficient confidence in such conveniences.

Framed as “the financial inclusion landscape”, minister Imbert dropped many jaws when he revealed: “72 percent of businesses do not have a business bank account, 88 percent of businesses do not accept digital payments, and 55 percent of individuals do not now have the knowledge to use mobile or web online banking.”

It is very easy to blame the victims aka prospective customers here. But it is also necessary to calculate underlying causes behind this apparent estrangement between people and the banking sector, in this instance.

It’s a deception, for example, that mechanisation of transactions to replace human contact at the counter, is now reflected in higher fees. For, much like telecoms assets, the initial capital costs are eventually offset by savings on wages, security and other recurrent cost centres.

The implicit message, therefore, is that mechanisation/digitalisation has net negative impacts on customers. Which service provider has reduced its fees because of digitalisation? Why are minister Imbert’s statistics so outrageously accurate?

It irritates many of us whenever we hear talk of a digital transition. One more example: The Environmental Management Authority (EMA) will soon be able to accept online payments (the same process the 16-year-old has now mastered), but what happens with the numerous copies of the same voluminous documents required for submission for transactions such as EIAs and the like?

When such anomalies disappear, only then you can talk boastfully about any “digital agenda.” Until then, people will continue not to trust such talk either from politicians or business leaders. Go find that bristol board vaccine certificate. Download the latest T&TEC bill. Lift that mattress. Find evidence of progress on any of this!