My rid­ing part­ner, Steve, will sure­ly as­sert that I am once again flog­ging the seem­ing­ly dead or dy­ing horse of our coun­try’s dig­i­tal am­bi­tions.

But I am pre­pared to risk in­sult and mock­ery for the sake of yet again plac­ing on pub­lic record my be­lief that the cur­rent tran­si­tion to things dig­i­tal cur­rent­ly con­fronts emo­tion­al and in­sti­tu­tion­al bar­ri­ers con­struct­ed of re­in­forced brick and steel.

I have wit­nessed the techies tear both dark and grey­ing hair from their heads over this. At a time when se­ri­ous so­ci­eties are mulling the pos­i­tives and neg­a­tives of gen­er­a­tive Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI)—sev­er­al jumps ahead of sim­ple dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion—there are lo­cal and re­gion­al bu­reau­cra­cies and pri­vate sec­tor en­ti­ties stum­bling over ques­tions of first-phase con­ver­sion and the ap­pli­ca­tion of rapid­ly age­ing, au­to­mat­ed so­lu­tions.

The ex­perts con­sid­er peo­ple like me to be cit­i­zen or cus­tomer “users”, be­cause we don’t have to mas­ter the tech­ni­cal and op­er­a­tional re­quire­ments but need at least to ac­knowl­edge some amaz­ing leaps in our abil­i­ty to con­duct com­plex trans­ac­tions us­ing dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy.

I have no in­ten­tion of get­ting in­volved in big peo­ple busi­ness, but I am al­most cer­tain that the cur­rent un­seem­ly fi­as­co in­volv­ing the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al is not com­plete­ly dis­as­so­ci­at­ed from this phe­nom­e­non of bungling un­pre­pared­ness.

I tried to fol­low the min­is­ter’s ex­pla­na­tions which sought to get to the bot­tom of the ac­count­ing anom­aly in ques­tion and it res­onat­ed in so many fa­mil­iar ways when you con­sid­er the re­peat­ed ad­mo­ni­tions pub­lished in this space.

That this ex­plains the co­nun­drum and paints the mis­ap­pli­ca­tion of an au­to­mat­ed process as a best-case sce­nario is piteous, to say the least.

But that’s as far as I will go on this ques­tion.

So, let’s al­so have a look at what’s hap­pen­ing at our air­ports (and per­haps our sea­ports). I do not sense the hand of ill in­tent in the cur­rent state of dig­i­tal un­der­de­vel­op­ment. But there is, at min­i­mum, ag­gres­sive hes­i­ta­tion with em­ploy­ing read­i­ly avail­able, sim­ple tech­no­log­i­cal so­lu­tions.

Elec­tron­ic Em­barka­tion-Dis­em­barka­tion (ED) cards, for ex­am­ple, are now stan­dard fare in sev­er­al Caribbean coun­tries – ap­plied in vary­ing de­grees of so­phis­ti­ca­tion, of course, be­cause they too face Lud­dite ap­pre­hen­sions.

Over here, we are still com­plet­ing pa­per doc­u­ments with in­for­ma­tion al­ready in an ef­fi­cient Ad­vance Pas­sen­ger In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem (APIS) em­ployed by most air­lines/Caribbean coun­tries and which can be ac­cessed by au­thor­i­ties here by a swipe of a bar­code or pass­port at an im­mi­gra­tion desk or kiosk (re­mem­ber those?).

The use of these use­less forms in T&T is even more ridicu­lous these days be­cause you are now re­quired to hand­write in any ar­bi­trary space (be­cause there is no field in the cur­rent de­par­ture form) the ex­piry date of your pass­port. Refuse to do it and you aren’t go­ing any­where! In­stead of the sit­u­a­tion get­ting bet­ter, it is get­ting worse.

Sure. It’s not just us. I am aware of what tran­spires among our re­gion­al neigh­bours. Elec­tron­ic process­es are al­so viewed there as se­ri­ous threats to au­thor­i­ty and both high and low-lev­el pow­er. The use of elec­tron­ic ED cards is, con­se­quent­ly, not al­ways a flaw­less process.

Now, for the ttcon­nect web­site —this mar­vel of dig­i­tal gov­er­nance that promised a one-stop ex­pe­ri­ence when ac­cess­ing on­line gov­ern­ment ser­vices, but which is now re­duced to be­ing a di­rec­to­ry of links to gov­ern­ment of­fices.

The cold, hard fact is that this sig­nif­i­cant por­tal, which could have at least sym­bol­ised recog­ni­tion of a new dig­i­tal re­al­i­ty, has not been work­ing as it should for al­most two years now.

Back in 2018 when the coun­try’s ICT Plan 2018-2022 was be­ing in­tro­duced to hope­ful busi­ness­peo­ple, late Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald was quot­ed as say­ing: “The world is chang­ing and it is do­ing so much more rapid­ly than be­fore, thanks to con­stant evo­lu­tions and in­no­va­tions in the field of tech­nol­o­gy. It cer­tain­ly does not serve our coun­try’s in­ter­ests if we sit idly by and al­low our­selves to be left be­hind while the rest of the world moves on.”

Six years lat­er, can we say we are be­ing left be­hind? My pal, Steve, rather cru­el­ly con­cludes that we are fad­ing from view in the rear-view mir­rors of most of the rest of the world at our lev­el of eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.