The In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank is con­cerned about the slow im­ple­men­ta­tion of dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion in Latin Amer­i­can and the Caribbean.

In the re­port “Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean Mi­cro­eco­nom­ic Re­port en­ti­tled Dig­i­tal­is­ing Pub­lic Ser­vices: Op­por­tu­ni­ties for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean” which was pub­lished this month, the IDB not­ed that the re­gion was still sig­nif­i­cant­ly be­hind the rest of the world in term of adopt­ing dig­i­tal prac­tices.

The re­port stat­ed: “Com­pared to de­vel­oped coun­tries, gov­ern­ments in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean are sig­nif­i­cant­ly lag­ging in of­fer­ing dig­i­tal ap­pli­ca­tions such as learn­ing plat­forms, apps to pro­mote healthy be­hav­iours, apps for on­line busi­ness reg­is­tra­tion and tax e-fil­ing. In many cas­es, gov­ern­ments of­fer some type of dig­i­tal pub­lic ser­vice re­lat­ed to an im­por­tant de­vel­op­ment chal­lenge, but the spe­cif­ic ser­vice pro­vid­ed is not ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate large val­ue to so­ci­ety.”

The re­port sin­gled out the lim­it­ed dig­i­tal ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty avail­able for pub­lic ser­vices, which has cre­at­ed great is­sues for cit­i­zens in the re­gion, par­tic­u­lar­ly af­ter the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The re­port stat­ed: “The coun­tries of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean are lag­ging be­hind coun­tries world­wide in the pro­vi­sion of dig­i­tal trans­ac­tion­al ser­vices. On the Unit­ed Na­tion’s On­line Ser­vice In­dex, on­ly Brazil, Ar­genti­na, and Chile are among the top 30 coun­tries in the world. These lags were laid bare dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

“In civ­il reg­is­tra­tion, cit­i­zens face dif­fi­cul­ties mak­ing ba­sic trans­ac­tions with gov­ern­ments such as ob­tain­ing an iden­ti­ty card. And in so­cial pro­tec­tion, high lev­els of tax eva­sion and im­per­fect tar­get­ing of sub­si­dies di­min­ish the ca­pac­i­ty of gov­ern­ments to re­duce pover­ty through ef­fec­tive re­dis­tri­b­u­tion of re­sources,” said the re­port.

The re­port al­so not­ed the lack of in­fra­struc­ture and gen­er­al know-how had al­so left the re­gion par­tic­u­lar­ly sus­cep­ti­ble to cy­ber­at­tacks.

The re­port ex­plained: “Dig­i­tal ap­pli­ca­tions al­so raise the risk of da­ta pri­va­cy in­fringe­ment. A strength of dig­i­tal tools is their abil­i­ty to col­lect, store, and process large amounts of da­ta, but reg­u­la­tions need to be put in place to pro­tect the pri­va­cy of sen­si­tive per­son­alised da­ta so that the rights and free­doms of cit­i­zens are re­spect­ed by gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ties.”

The re­port con­tin­ued: “An­oth­er threat to pri­va­cy comes from non-gov­ern­men­tal ac­tors, whether do­mes­tic or for­eign. As da­ta ex­changes through dig­i­tal ap­pli­ca­tions are ac­ces­si­ble on com­put­er net­works, they may be­come vul­ner­a­ble to hack­ing and cy­ber­at­tacks by unau­tho­rised users. Thus, it is im­por­tant to em­bed dig­i­tal ap­pli­ca­tions in a se­cure in­ter­net in­fra­struc­ture and de­vel­op a reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work for da­ta ac­cess. Fi­nal­ly, as more and more ap­pli­ca­tions are be­ing de­vel­oped in both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors, user ac­tiv­i­ty on dig­i­tal de­vices may ex­pand to the point where its val­ue is di­min­ished by in­for­ma­tion over­load and lim­it­ed at­ten­tion.”

Last Fri­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ac­knowl­edged that the gov­ern­ment had to push on with its dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion dri­ve, even as there re­mained an ac­tive re­sis­tance to the adop­tion.

The Prime Min­is­ter him­self ad­mit­ted to his dis­trust of au­to­mat­ic teller ma­chines (ATMs), but said the changes would be to the coun­try’s ben­e­fit in the long run.

“I say that the one thing that would be there for sure is the re­sis­tance to the new op­por­tu­ni­ties by peo­ple like me, who may be scared off or have come from so far back, and we are so in­vest­ed in what ex­ists that the change that is re­quired may be be­yond us. But be­cause the Gov­ern­ment un­der­stands that there are huge ben­e­fits to be had, we are forg­ing ahead and tak­ing along with us. Those who are avail­able to take it on board right now. But know­ing that even­tu­al­ly, all of us would be tak­en along by this cur­rent of tech­nol­o­gy that flows across the world, whether we want to or not,” said the Prime Min­is­ter at the do­na­tion cer­e­mo­ny held last Fri­day at the Care­nage Po­lice Youth Club and Home­work Cen­tre where one IdeaHub in­ter­ac­tive smart board and 50 tablets were giv­en to the Care­nage com­mu­ni­ty by Huawei.

“We are mov­ing to dig­i­talise and digi­tise our data­bas­es in all min­istries, bit by bit step by step. Some min­istries are well ahead of oth­ers,” the Prime Min­is­ter con­tin­ued, “With each pass­ing month, each pass­ing year, you will see the coun­try us­ing more and more tech­nol­o­gy and get­ting the ben­e­fit of the gov­ern­ment’s op­er­a­tions and the com­mu­ni­ty and the na­tion’s op­er­a­tions.

“We have to trans­form and we are trans­form­ing our­selves, our homes, our chil­dren, our busi­ness, our na­tion is to be and is be­ing trans­formed,” he said.

How­ev­er, the ex­tent of that tran­si­tion so far is up for de­bate, as there was a con­tin­u­ous call from both the or­di­nary cit­i­zen and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty for these el­e­ments to be im­proved in the pub­lic ser­vice be­fore the read­ing of the last month’s bud­get.

The IDB re­port not­ed that these chal­lenges were com­mon among Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean and in­deed a gate­way to cor­rup­tion.

“Trans­ac­tion­al ser­vices in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean are of­ten dif­fi­cult. On av­er­age, they re­quire 5.5 hours of ac­tive time for cit­i­zens, rang­ing from 2 hours in Chile to 11 hours in Bo­livia (Roseth, Reyes, and San­ti­so 2018). Fur­ther­more, half of all trans­ac­tions re­quire two trips or more to gov­ern­ment of­fices and a quar­ter of them re­quire three or more trips. They are al­so a fo­cal point for cor­rup­tion: a third of Latin Amer­i­cans paid a bribe to ac­cess a trans­ac­tion­al pub­lic ser­vice in 2017,” the IDB re­port not­ed.

This is­sue was al­so al­lud­ed to by the Prime Min­is­ter on Fri­day, as he re­ferred to the in­tro­duc­tion of the ASY­CU­DA World Sys­tem for Cus­toms and Ex­cise a few years ago.

“I can tell you for a fact, there was great re­sis­tance in some quar­ters to hav­ing it be­ing put there. Peo­ple pre­fer to have these huge vol­umes of books that you turn all the pages and they get dog-eared, and peo­ple tear out what they want and leave what they don’t want. And to find out how to code your doc­u­ment, and what you im­port, what the code is, oh man! And it takes three days or one of­fi­cer to agree on what it is. Nowa­days, you put the name of the item there and it in­stant­ly tells you what it is and tells you what the code is and tells you what the cus­toms du­ties and so on.

“You will not be­lieve how much re­sis­tance there was to that. Be­cause what ex­ists, usu­al­ly serves the pur­pose of some peo­ple,” said the Prime Min­is­ter.

Yet some of those in op­po­si­tion to dig­i­tal prac­tices have point­ed to po­ten­tial ex­clu­sion of mem­bers of the pub­lic who may not have the de­vices to ac­cess these ser­vices. How­ev­er, the IDB re­port not­ed some strate­gies could be im­ple­ment­ed to lev­el the play­ing field.

The re­port said: “Gov­ern­ments should make sure that low-in­come pop­u­la­tions ben­e­fit from dig­i­tal pub­lic ser­vices by adopt­ing a few sen­si­ble prin­ci­ples. In par­tic­u­lar, gov­ern­ments should:

(i) De­vel­op and de­ploy so­lu­tions that work well with ba­sic smart­phones with spo­radic In­ter­net ac­cess (such as What­sApp) so that low-in­come pop­u­la­tions with ac­cess to these de­vices can take ad­van­tage of the new dig­i­tal pub­lic ser­vices of­fered;

(ii) Tar­get pro­mo­tion ef­forts to spur adop­tion of dig­i­tal pub­lic ser­vices among low-in­come peo­ple to en­sure that this pop­u­la­tion reaps the ben­e­fits of the dig­i­tal pub­lic ser­vices pro­vid­ed; and

(iii) Chan­nel sav­ings aris­ing from de­ploy­ing low-cost dig­i­tal ser­vices to those that have ac­cess (eg, ur­ban pop­u­la­tions) in or­der to pro­vide ef­fec­tive non-dig­i­tal ser­vices to those that cur­rent­ly do not have ac­cess (eg rur­al pop­u­la­tions).”

The re­port al­so sug­gest­ed that im­proved dig­i­tal ser­vices in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem could help de­crease the dropout rate in schools, while al­so aid­ing in im­prov­ing ef­fi­cien­cies in the health sys­tem.