I can see it now. The mass­ing of the pub­lic ser­vice techno­phobes. They told us so, didn’t they? It took a cy­ber­at­tack to re­mind us, hasn’t it?

Wit­ness the Lud­dite re­coil. The re­sort to the “good old days” when pa­per and files grew yel­low in the cup­boards. All it took were locks and keys and cau­tion­ary mem­os.

And by the way, col­leagues, “ran­somware” refers to a very spe­cif­ic cat­e­go­ry of cy­ber­at­tack. I thought Mark Lyn­der­say and Celia Gib­bings made some of these things clear, cour­tesy of the TTP­BA re­cent­ly.

Any­way, stand by for the res­ur­rec­tion of sys­tems that em­pow­ered and en­riched some by slow­ing the march to moder­ni­ty.

Even so, I am still not fail­ing to re­mind peo­ple that at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2.20 pm on Thurs­day, Sep­tem­ber 23, 2021—in his ca­pac­i­ty as Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter—Stu­art Young an­nounced the ar­rival of “dig­i­tal vac­ci­na­tion cards” in “four to six weeks”.

This is not at all to knock Min­is­ter Young per­son­al­ly. I am pret­ty cer­tain he un­der­stands the im­mense val­ue of dig­i­tal gov­er­nance and is a pri­vate prac­ti­tion­er when it comes to those au­to­mat­ed things in life that make things eas­i­er and more con­ve­nient.

In fact, he prob­a­bly moans and groans each time some of us go back to those fate­ful days of pan­dem­ic mis­ery and the false hope that, at last, politi­cians and bu­reau­crats had joined to­geth­er to ac­knowl­edge new re­al­i­ties and were pre­pared to em­brace a dif­fer­ent set of so­lu­tions.

Of course, all of this goes way be­yond dig­i­tal vac­ci­na­tion cards and their in­ex­cus­able non-ap­pear­ance. But it was a use­ful test case with strong rel­e­vance to the fact that both stren­u­ous­ly ac­tive and qui­et, dis­rup­tive re­sis­tance to change are per­pet­u­al fea­tures of our ex­ceed­ing­ly slow march to in­no­va­tion.

As I have said be­fore, this is not unique to the pub­lic ser­vice and state au­thor­i­ties. Shiny, new dig­i­tal fa­cades to con­ceal man­u­al process­es are ev­i­dent through­out the pri­vate sec­tor in key ar­eas.

How­ev­er, the re­sources of the State are, by de­f­i­n­i­tion, as­sets of the pop­u­la­tion in­tend­ed to sus­tain hu­man and so­cial de­vel­op­ment and to en­sure tol­er­a­ble lev­els of ex­is­tence in our spaces.

Yet, the of­fi­cial in­stinct to pro­hib­it rather than to fa­cil­i­tate ap­pears to dom­i­nate the dri­ve to dig­i­talise and to move for­ward. In some in­stances, the move has been back­wards rather than for­ward.

I not­ed, for in­stance, PM Roo­sevelt Sker­rit’s lament re­gard­ing the con­tin­ued use of pa­per ED (Em­barka­tion and Dis­em­barka­tion) Cards for in­tra-re­gion­al air and sea trav­el be­tween Cari­com states. This was dur­ing the 50th-an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions. He quite diplo­mat­i­cal­ly did not men­tion T&T, where he de­liv­ered his speech, and where the ab­solute­ly un­nec­es­sary prac­tice of col­lect­ing and col­lat­ing ED cards con­tin­ues. The folks at CARI­COM-IM­PACS must be the most pa­tient peo­ple on the plan­et.

But we don’t on­ly in­sist on print­ing those sil­ly pieces of pa­per that do not even have enough space to spell the name of our own coun­try (I usu­al­ly write “T&T”). That’s clear­ly not enough. Now, the air­lines want you to write, on the back of the slips, the ex­piry date of your pass­port!

This adds in­sult to the emo­tion­al in­jury of pas­sen­gers who know that for en­ter­ing nu­mer­ous coun­tries of the world (in­clud­ing Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, Bar­ba­dos, Saint Lu­cia, St Kitts and Nevis, and Ja­maica), the trees used to print those use­less pieces of pa­per (in de­fi­ance of the ben­e­fits of the Ad­vance Pas­sen­ger In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem (APIS) and oth­er tech­no­log­i­cal plat­forms) are be­ing saved.

Where are the air­port kiosks on ar­rival in T&T, by the way? Could it be ev­i­dence of the agony oc­ca­sioned by the re­lin­quish­ing of au­thor­i­ty and pow­er? How come on­line pay­ment for gov­ern­ment ser­vices is be­ing tout­ed as some kind of mod­ern, rev­o­lu­tion­ary mar­vel? Dit­to down­load­able PDF forms.

It can­not be that politi­cians and se­nior pub­lic ser­vants do not know what is hap­pen­ing in so much of the rest of the world.

Now comes the cy­ber­at­tack on the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s of­fice. I see sev­er­al MPs (gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion) at­tend­ed “a work­shop” last week and some con­se­quent­ly claim to know all about the chal­lenge be­ing faced. Sigh.

Mov­ing back­wards has a way of gain­ing mo­men­tum of its own. I see longer ED forms. Dis­ap­pear­ing bar and QR codes. The re­turn of the ledgers. Lines at the cashiers. Pa­per, pa­per every­where.

Our souls would have been saved; I sup­pose. The Lud­dite SOS sat­is­fied. The past em­braced as a way of inch­ing for­ward or, worse, stand­ing still.